But maybe… eventually…
The door behind me opened with a quiet click.
“Tell me you didn’t just do what I think you did,” Henry said.
I didn’t turn around.
“Depends on what you think I did,” I said.
He stepped inside, shut the door, and crossed to stand beside me, hands behind his back, eyes on the screens.
His gaze instantly found Room Eighteen.
He took in Chrissy’s rumpled hair. The way she was breathing. The way her fingers trembled when she finally pushed off the wall and sat on the edge of the bed like her knees weren’t entirely reliable.
Henry sighed.
“Christ, kid.”
“I’m not a kid, Henry. I haven’t been one since I woke up after the accident,” I muttered.
“You know that’s not what I meant.” His eyes didn’t leave the monitor. “You kissed her.”
“She asked me to,” I said.
“This creates a problem for the part of you that’s running this game, Ben.” His tone was pure Henry: practical, patient, and furious in that quiet way that meant I’d driven his blood pressure through the roof again.
“She told me she’s been thinking about me for four years,” I said. “The hardware store. My eyes. Me. She said when she needs something that doesn’t hurt, her brain pulls up that day.”
Henry’s jaw flexed.
“And you thought, ‘You know what this delicate psychological experiment needs? Physical contact’,” he said. “Beautiful.”
“She passed the first test,” I snapped. “She didn’t flinch on the road. Not at the scar, not at the contract talk. She grabbed my arm in the room and asked for something of her own before she walked into a house designed to strip her down. She’s here willing to marry a wealthy stranger for her grandmother’s sake, Henry. I’m not made of stone.”
“You’re a Stonewood,” he corrected mildly. “And you don’t have the luxury of pretending this is just a love story. You need a wife, a legal one, in the immediate future, preferably with her eyes open, spine intact, and enough grit to survive the shitstorm that comes along with your last name.”
He finally turned his head and pinned me with that look that had been terrifying me since I was eight years old.
“Testing her isn’t cruelty,” he said. “It’s triage.”
“I know what it is.”
“Then stop trying to blow it up because she wrecks your self-control just by existing.”
I let out a breath through my teeth and dragged a hand down my face.
“You weren’t out there,” I said. “On the road.”
“I watched the feed,” he said. “I saw her. Nervous but steady. Respectful of you as staff. No entitlement. No screaming. She was worried about being late because she didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Then in the foyer, she backed you when I called you a ‘lowly groundskeeper’.”
He nodded at the monitor, where she was now standing in front of the open wardrobe, running her fingers over the dresses like she was afraid she’d damage the fabric just by breathing near it.
“She cleared the bar by a mile,” he said. “Which is exactly why you can’t treat her like the only thing that matters is whether or not she wants to kiss you.”
“She told me my scars don’t bother her,” I said quietly. “That they make me who I am, and that I’m still the most devastatingly handsome man she’s ever seen.”
Henry stared at me for a long beat, then looked up at the ceiling like he was asking some higher power for strength.
