"I know it feels that way."
"It doesn't feel that way. It is that way. I've never said those words to anyone. Not in twelve years of dating, not in any relationship, not once. I said them to you because they're true, and I don't need space to figure that out."
Her eyes glisten. She blinks it away, fast, the same way she did the night I told her she wasn't too old for me. The night I watched her fight the vulnerability with everything she had.
"Hayes." She sets the suitcase down. Takes a step toward me. Her hand comes up and cups my jaw, and her touch is warm and gentle and absolutely wrecking me. "You are the most remarkable man I have ever met. Your age has nothing to do with it. You're brave and smart and perceptive, and you have more maturity in your little finger than most men twice your age have in their entire bodies."
"But."
"But I need to know that what I feel for you survives outside this mountain. Outside the danger, the cabin, the forcedproximity. I need to know it's real in my boardroom and my life and my world, not just yours. And I can't figure that out while I'm standing in your arms, because when I'm standing in your arms, I can't think about anything except staying."
She presses her lips to mine. Soft. Tender. The kind of kiss that says everything she can't, and when she pulls back, her eyes are bright with unshed tears that she will absolutely deny tomorrow.
"Three days," she says. "Let me save my company. Let the FBI close the case. And then we talk. For real."
She picks up her suitcase and walks past me through the door. The March air carries the scent of pine and the first warmth of spring, and her heels click on the gravel path as she walks toward the lodge where Mace is waiting with transport to Reno.
I stand in the empty cabin that still smells like her perfume and her shampoo and the coffee I made her this morning. Her reading glasses are on the nightstand. She forgot them. Or left them. I don't know which, and the not knowing is its own kind of torture.
I pick them up. Fold them carefully. Set them in my jacket pocket.
Then I walk to my cabin, sit on my porch, and watch the dust settle on the road where the SUV took her down the mountain.
The compound is quiet. The threat is being handled. The client is safe, transported by a senior operator who isn't compromised by the inconvenient fact that he's in love with her.
I press my palms against my eyes and breathe.
She asked for three days.
It's already the longest three days of my life, and she's been gone twelve minutes.
8
LEX
The board meeting is a massacre. My kind of massacre.
I stand at the head of the Morrison Pharmaceuticals conference table on the forty-second floor of our San Francisco headquarters and dismantle the panic Victor Kane spent six months building. I present the FBI evidence. The SEC filing. The financial trail connecting Kane's fund to Whitfield's betrayal. I show them the stock manipulation timeline Sully constructed, the communication intercepts, the arrest warrants.
Twelve board members sit in leather chairs and watch me perform the kind of corporate surgery I was built for. Clean cuts. Precise excisions. I remove the tumor of doubt Kane planted in their minds with data, strategy, and the unwavering authority of a woman who built this company from the ground up and will be damned if a hedge fund parasite takes it from her.
By the time I finish, the vote of confidence is unanimous. David Ostrowski, who Warren's investigation confirmed had been feeding information to Kane's CFO, resigns before I have to fire him. Janet Liu seconds the motion to pursue an aggressivelegal counterattack against Meridian Capital. The stock ticks up three points before the market closes.
I win.
I've been winning for three days. The FBI executed a search warrant on Kane's personal offices yesterday. Diane Keane, my Chief Innovation Officer, turned out to be exactly what I suspected: a target, not a traitor. She's been cooperating with the investigation and providing testimony that strengthens the case. Warren tells me criminal charges against Kane are likely within the month.
My company is safe. My board is stabilized. My stock is recovering.
I should feel triumphant.
I feel hollow.
My penthouse is cold when I get home. Not temperature cold. The thermostat is set to seventy-two, same as always. The cold is something else. The absence of pine-scented air and wood smoke and a man's steady breathing against the back of my neck at three in the morning.
I set my bag on the kitchen island and pour a glass of wine. The penthouse looks exactly the way I left it two weeks ago. Chrome and marble and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Bay. Everything I chose. Everything I earned. The furniture is modern, expensive, curated by a designer I hired because I didn't have time to pick out my own couch.
There are no wooden blocks on the side table. No apron hanging on the kitchen hook. No dog-eared paperback open on the arm of the sofa. No warmth. No evidence that anyone lives here except a woman who uses this space to sleep between board meetings.
