It’s the way the morning felt like something real.
I open my phone.
A new message pops up.
Jaxon:
Thinking of you.
My whole body warms.
This isn’t slowing down.
This isn’t staying simple.
This is becoming something dangerously close to love.
And I don’t know if I can survive loving a man like him.
I avoid him.
Not in a dramatic, duck-behind-filing-cabinets way…
more like a “my soul fled my body and left a cardboard cutout in its place” way.
Every time I think about last night, my heart flips, my stomach drops, and my brain screams:
THIS IS REAL, RUN.
So I hide behind spreadsheets. I hide behind busywork. I even hide behind the vending machine at one point because I saw a glimpse of a navy suit and panicked.
I’m in full flight mode.
This is embarrassing.
By noon I’ve answered three emails, drunk four coffees, and accomplished absolutely nothing except developing a caffeine tremor.
Then I hear footsteps.
Slow, confident, expensive footsteps.
Oh god.
I look up.
He’s there.
Standing at the edge of my desk. Looking at me with that unreadable, dark-eyed gaze that could melt glaciers.
“Ruby,” he says softly.
I swallow hard. “Hi.”
“You’re avoiding me.”
I try to laugh. It comes out like a dying balloon.
“No! Who? Me? Never! Avoid you? I love… walking… near… you.”
