He followed her but kept the round kitchen table between them as a buffer. “Habit. I never mix personal and professional. Never had anybody I was even slightly tempted to break the rules for before.” He blew out a breath and braced for honesty. “And part of me worried that you’d go straight to Brandon and get me fired. So yeah. I guess I’m not used to trusting anybody but myself to keep my career safe.”
She wrapped her hands around a chair back and studied her knuckles. “Okay. Fair point. I suppose I’m the same with my career.”
Sadness still clung to her, and all he could do was say it again. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what though?” She let go of the chair and paced back to the living room.
He shook his head in confusion, the whole time drinking in the sight of her. In her short green dress, she was the only spot of color in his newly beige world.
She crossed her arms over her chest and leveled a look at him. “Are you sorry for not telling me? Or for hurting me when I found out?”
His mouth snapped shut, but apparently his face gave away the answer he didn’t want to say out loud, because she huffed out a bitter laugh.
“So you’re sorry for hurting me, but you still think you did the right thing by not trusting me.”
He could lie. Heshouldlie.
But no. He at least owed her honesty now, even if it killed him. “I apologize. I’ll apologize every day for everything, but the thing is, Ididdo the right thing.” Disappointment moved across her face and landed like a blow to his gut, but he forced himself to continue. “Confidentiality is part of the job. I’ve sacrificed so much to get where I am, and I can’t just throw it all away.”
The length of his apartment separated them, and he keenly felt every foot of that distance. He moved toward her, desperate to make her understand. “What I’m doing with Lowell right now is going to get me a partnership,finally. I couldn’t jeopardize that, couldn’t jeopardize my whole life. Not even for whatever we are.”
“Whatever wewere,” she whispered.
Her defeated tone stripped away the last of his pretenses. All his promises to himself about recommitting to work and pushing aside his hopes for a relationship fell away when he looked at her. He still wanted her, and he wouldn’t,couldn’t, walk away from those feelings yet, not after he’d lived without them for as long as he had.
“We were amazing.” He closed the distance between them to stand in front of her. “We could still be amazing.”
Bam. The temperature in the room jumped twenty degrees. The tips of his running shoes brushed against her purple-polished toenails as she tipped her head up to meet his eyes.
“No. We can’t. I have to stay away from you.” But even as she spoke the words, her body swayed toward his.
“Why?” he rasped. “I mean, I knowwhy. I work for Lowell, I wasn’t honest with you, you’ve had bad past experiences. But that’s done now; the decisions are made. Why keep fighting this?”
She shook her head slowly. “Because… because it’s not safe for me.” She probably didn’t mean to give away what she was thinking, but her hand drifted up to press against her heart.
He covered it with his own, relishing the press of his skin against hers. “I’m not dangerous.”
“You are.” Her voice cracked in the quiet of his apartment, and she shook off his hand, spinning to make a restless circuit toward his kitchen. “I let myself start to care for you, and then you couldn’t even meet my eyes in that meeting. I get that you had no choice, and I get that it’s irrational for me to be angry with you for that. But you hurt me.” She folded her arms. “I just… I don’t think we’re a good idea.”
He ran his hands through his still-damp hair and let them fall to his sides, panic surging in his chest. “So, what, we keep it professional then? Ignore all this chemistry?”
His heart slammed against his ribs as he watched the animation drain from her face to be replaced by remote politeness. She was closing the door on their relationship, this door that almost never opened for him, and all he could do was stand by and watch her do it.
“Yes.” She lifted her chin. “From now on, it’s professional Mabel or no Mabel at all.” She twined her fingers together at her waist as she waited for his answer.
He sucked in a deep breath. “Nothing at all then.” He fought to speak through the despair that threatened to suffocate him.
Silence followed his words until Mabel broke it with an unamused laugh. “Okay. I get it.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
She didn’t know about him. He hadn’t explained what it meant for a demisexual to fall for someone. How rare it was, how deep his feelings ran. How after Asha, he’d believed that he’d never find another woman who would draw this out of him. Not until Mabel came along with her voice and her wit and her body. Fuck, what if he never found that again? What if this was his last chance? What if she was the one, hisperson?
But he clenched his jaw and said nothing. Telling her any of that now would just pressure her, manipulate her even, and he’d never do that to her. But he could touch her one more time, and so he did. He cupped her jaw and stroked his thumb over her cheek and down across her lower lip. She gave a shuddering sigh and closed her eyes, leaning into his palm as he struggled to find the words to explain without explaining why he was making this choice.
“Just for a little while, I can’t…” He inhaled hard. “Seeing you but not being able to touch you is too hard right now.”
He needed time to grieve, to lick his wounds. But when he searched her face for some indication that she understood that this was the opposite of a rejection, her features were an expressionless mask.
