“No.”
“No, you don’t want me to push for something more, or no, you don’t want to negotiate?”
I scrub my hand over my face and push a curse from between my clenched teeth. “Right now, I don’t give a shit about any of this. Let’s pick up again tomorrow at the office.”
"Understood." His voice shifts, careful now. "You all right?"
I scoff, shaking my head. The question is so far from anything I could answer honestly that it feels absurd. "I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow, Beck."
“Okay. If you need anything else, you know how to reach me.”
“Thanks.” I end the call and set the phone down on my desk.
Suddenly there's nothing left to do. No logistics to manage. No strategy to execute. Nothing between me and the silence that seems to hang over the entire penthouse.
I shove away from the desk and stand, but there's nowhere to go. Toward her or away from her, and I don't know which is worse.
Avery doesn’t understand what I'm trying to do. She thinks I'm being controlling, that this is about pride or dominance. I should have told her it was about fear. Not hers. Mine. But the words had been knotted in the back of my throat, and I couldn’t spit them out.
Not when she was showing true courage and strength today, willing to face the media storm over her past and the insinuations that her motives for being with me had anything to do with wanting to escape her old life.
What would she think of me if she knew I still live in fear that the shameful details of my childhood might end up in a headline like the one Rennick Media ran on her?
I’m supposed to be the strong one. The one who protects.
I failed Avery today, not only because I didn’t have measures in place to prevent what happened today, but also because I lashed out at her the way I did.
Fuck.
I walk to the window because I need to move, need to do something with the restless energy crawling under my skin. Manhattan spreads out before me, a sea of glittering lights and power. Up here I've always felt untouchable. In control of the variables that matter.
Tonight I don't feel in control of anything.
I made Avery flinch. The image keeps surfacing no matter how many times I push it down. I would never strike her. She knows that.
But her body didn't know it. Her body responded to the volatility she saw in me. The fear, no matter how small, that she didn’t quite trust what I was capable of in that moment.
I know that doubt. I used to feel it every time I looked at my father. His unpredictable, explosive temper. His alcoholic rages, which always seemed to find its target in me. I understand him better now that he’s dead. After reading the letter he wrote me, I’ve even managed to forgive him.
That doesn’t change the fact that deep down, my worst fear of all is that I could ever be anything like him. Or, God forbid, that I might eventually become him.
It kills something in me to think I let Avery see me that way.
I’m scared that I broke something between us tonight. Something I don't know how to fix.
I pivot away from the windows and head out of my office before I've consciously decided to move. My body knows where it's going. I feel pulled by the same gravity that's drawn me toward her since the first time I saw her.
The hallway is dark. My footsteps make no sound on the hand-loomed rug beneath me.
I don’t know what I’ll say. I only know that I need to see her. I want her. Wanting Avery is constant, a low burn that never fully banks, and right now it's sharper than usual—edged with something that feels too much like desperation.
I want to see her face, pull her into my arms. I want to bury my face in her hair and breathe her in. Hold her until everything that happened tonight dissolves between us the way it always has before. I simply…need her.
I reach our bedroom door and find it closed. The sight of that sealed panel halts me where I stand. My heart lurches into a heavier beat.
There’s no light on the other side of the door. Either she's asleep or she's lying there, awake, not wanting to see me. Both options sit like a weight atop my chest.
I reach for the handle, then stop.
