I could go home. Sit on my empty porch. Stare at the wall. Think the same thoughts in a different location. Drink wine alone and feel sorry for myself and wake up tomorrow with the same questions and the same ache in my chest and nothing resolved.
Or I could walk into his office and get some damn answers. Pin him down, make him explain, force him to look me in the eye and tell me the truth about all of it. The bond, the wolf, the two years, everything.
Fuck it.
I stood up. Walked to his office. Stopped in the doorway.
He looked up, and honestly, he looked terrible. Dark circles, jaw tight, hair wrecked. Tie loosened, sleeves rolled, looking like a man who hadn’t slept either and was doing a worse job hiding it.
“I have more questions.”
“Ask me anything.”
I came in. Closed the door. Sat across from him, crossed my legs, folded my hands. Same chair I’d sat in a thousand times. Different conversation.
I sat there for a second, working up the nerve to ask the thing that had been eating at me since last night. The thing I didn’t want to ask because it meant admitting out loud that I’d been wanting him to, and my pride was already in critical condition after the whole porch confession situation.
Screw it. Pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford right now.
“You knew how I felt about you.” My face was already getting warm. “You heard me say it. Over and over. To Fin. To you. You knew I had a crush on you for two years.” I forced myself to look at him. “Why didn’t you ever do anything about it?”
His jaw tightened. “Because you’re human. Because you didn’t know what I was, what the bond was, any of it. If I made a move, you’d be making a choice based on incomplete information. That’s not a choice, that’s manipulation.”
“So you just sat there. Listening to me talk about you every night, knowing how I felt, and did nothing.”
“I sat there and it killed me, Andrea. Every night. Hearing you say my name, hearing you describe what I made you feel, and not being able to say a single word back.” His voice dropped lower. “You think it was easy? Sitting on that porch while you told a dog you wanted me to smile at you, knowing I could giveyou that and a hundred other things if I just opened my damn mouth?”
My chest ached. I wasn’t expecting the rawness in his voice. The frustration that matched mine beat for beat.
“So what do you want now?” I asked. “From me. From this. What are you actually asking for here, Finneas?”
He was quiet for a long moment. His eyes dropped to the desk, then back to me. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“I know I’m tired of pretending.” He leaned back in his chair, ran a hand over his face, and when he dropped it he looked more exhausted than I’d ever seen him. “I’m tired of pretending you’re just my assistant. I’m tired of pretending I don’t think about you every second I’m awake. I’m tired of sitting three feet away from you behind a glass wall for eight hours a day acting like you don’t take up every corner of my head.” He looked at me. “I don’t know what I’m asking for. But I know I can’t keep doing this.”
I didn’t have a response to that. Not a good one, not a snarky one, not any of the deflections I’d been lobbing at him since this morning. He just sat there looking wrecked and honest and I sat there looking at him and the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, it was just full.
“The bond,” I finally said. “You said it doesn’t create feelings.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Explain that to me. Because from where I’m sitting it sounds like you’re telling me I’ve been biologically rigged to be attracted to you, and that’s a pretty convenient thing for a guy who’s been lying to me for two years to say.”
His jaw tightened. “The bond identifies compatibility. It doesn’t manufacture attraction, doesn’t override free will. If you’d met me without the bond, you’d still feel a pull. The bond just makes it stronger.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I knew from the second you walked in. My wolf recognized you before you even said your name. But you felt the pull too, without any of that. No wolf, no bond knowledge, nothing. You felt it on your own. That was real, Andrea. That was you.”
Shit. That was a good answer. I didn’t want it to be a good answer.
“So what happens if I don’t want it?”
He went still. Not pause-still. Frozen. His fingers pressed harder into the desk and I saw actual fear on his face. Not the CEO mask. Fear, raw and unguarded and aimed right at me.
“What do you mean?” Careful. Too careful.
