I've been walking fornearly an hour, and being in the city has absorbed some of my sharp edges, the crisp air and chaotic energy outside allowing my mind to recalibrate. I left the penthouse without telling Nick where I was going. He was still in his office when I left. And I needed air. I needed to think without the weight of his presence pulling at me, making it impossible to sort my own feelings from the gravity of him.
The plainclothes security tail that followed me from the building stayed half a block behind me the entire time. One of Gabe's men, obviously. Military demeanor, measured distance, the careful invisibility of someone trained to watch without being seen. He wasn't invisible to me.
But I understand why he's there. I’m sure Nick’s been aware of my location from the moment I stepped out of the penthouse. He couldn't come after me himself, so he sent eyes instead. Part of me resents it. A larger part of me knows it's just my fiancé’s way of showing he loves me.
Even if his dismissive attitude earlier didn’t feel like it.
This is my world, Avery. I know how it works. You don't.
The words have been circling inside me for the past hour, scraping against my pride and something even more tender.
Gabe's team flanks the entrance as I return to our building. The paparazzi are nowhere to be found. That’s no small relief. Manny, our doorman, greets me with a sympathetic nod, and I slip inside without meeting anyone's eyes.
The elevator carries me upward to the ninety-third floor, and in the mirrored walls I catch my reflection. Pale, drawn, the careful composure I thought I was holding in place stripped away, replaced with a bone-deep exhaustion I can hardly reconcile.
I hate that Nick and I are out of sync. It’s beyond rare that we’re not on the same page, that we’re not so elementally attuned to each other that our friends often joke we’re two halves of the same person.
My stomach turns, a queasy roll that has nothing to do with the elevator's ascent. I'm wrung out. My emotions have been swinging wildly all day. Too hot, too on edge, my feelings bigger than the circumstances should warrant.
I take a fortifying breath as the doors slide open.
I'm nervous about what awaits me inside. My body knows it before my mind catches up, the tightness in my chest, the way my pulse kicks even before I step into the foyer. I can feel Nick somewhere in the penthouse, that pull that's lived between us since the night we met. Even furious, even hurt, my nervous system still orients toward him like a compass finding north.
I make myself cross the threshold.
He's waiting in the living room, standing near the bar with a whiskey glass in his hand. He's shed his jacket, rolled his shirt sleeves to his forearms, loosened his tie—armor partially stripped away, though what remains is armor enough. The late afternoon throws long shadows across the room, and one ofthem cuts across his face, darkening the hollow beneath his cheekbone, the tight line of his mouth.
Even now, my body responds. The breadth of his shoulders. The way his scarred right hand grips the glass, tendons visible beneath the damaged skin. The coiled stillness in him that I've learned to read as danger held carefully in check.
I set my keys on the entry table. The sound is sharp in the quiet.
He takes a drink, not yet looking at me. "You didn't answer my texts."
His voice is low, tightly controlled, and it carries an accusation that lands somewhere beneath my ribs.
"I needed space." I don't move deeper into the room. "I'm sure you knew exactly where I was."
"Gabe's man was the only thing that kept me from coming after you myself."
"I know. I saw him."
His shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly. "You don't understand what I'm trying to do." He sets the glass down and turns to face me fully, and even from across the room I can feel the force of his attention, the weight of it. "The press wants to tear you apart, Avery. They want to drag you through the mud and make you feel small. Unworthy."
I swallow, hearing the anger in his low, careful tone. "I've survived worse than tabloids, Nick."
“This is different. Now, you have your own career. Your own success. It won’t be enough for them to make you feel you don’t deserve to be with me. Given half a chance, they’ll try to take away everything you have. Everything you’ve fought so hard to become.”
“I’m not afraid of them. They ambushed me yesterday, then again today with that article. Yes, that caught me off guard. You saw me fall apart. But even in the middle of that panic, do youknow what kept cutting through? The thought of what this might do toyou. What people would say about you for being with me.”
“It’s not your job to worry about me.” The words are clipped and sharp. Almost as though I’ve insulted him somehow. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be protecting you. Protecting us.”
"You need to stop treating me like I'll shatter, Nick." I step forward now, into the room, closing some of the distance between us. "I survived my stepfather. I survived prison visiting rooms and police interrogations and years of whispers. I survived things you know about and things I have to carry alone for the rest of my life. I'm not fragile. I never was."
He looks at me like I've struck him. The mask slips, just for a heartbeat, and I see something raw underneath. Something wounded.
I press on, because I need him to hear me. "I'm not some broken thing you rescued. I was surviving long before you, and I'll survive this too. But not if you keep trying to lock me away every time something threatens us."
"That's not what I'm doing." His voice has dropped, rough at the edges. "I'm trying to protect what we have. Why can't you see that?"
