Dom’s hand is still on my hip. I realize I’m leaning into the contact, using his solid presence to anchor myself.
Atticus silently holds out Gerald Jr. and I hug the stuffed lobster to my chest, still shaken.
“Let’s get out of here,” Judah says quietly.
No one argues.
THIRTY-SEVEN
PHOENIX
The harbor is stillwhen I step onto the back porch, coffee mug warming my palms against the October chill.
Mason sits alone in one of the Adirondack chairs, his own cup of tea cradled in his hands.
And he’s wearing one of Judah’s flannels.
I clock this detail immediately. Mason probably doesn’t realize he grabbed it this morning. The wooden boards creak under my bare feet as I cross to the empty chair beside him.
I settle into the chair beside him without asking permission. Close enough to touch, but not touching. The cold seeps through my yoga pants immediately, and I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping both hands around my own mug for warmth.
We sit in silence.
This has always been one of our strengths—the ability to exist in the same space without filling it with noise. Mason understands that sometimes I need quiet more than conversation, and I’ve learned that his silences often say more than his words.
But this silence has teeth.
There are too many things between us now. The heat. The kisses. The revelation about Judah. The fact that we had sex—multiple times, in multiple positions, with varying degrees of desperation. The fact that neither of us has acknowledged any of it since Mason’s heat broke.
The elephant in the room has brought friends. We’ve got a whole circus of unaddressed issues setting up camp, and the ringleader is the speech I can practically see forming behind Mason’s careful mask.
He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t acknowledge my presence at all, just keeps staring at that gunmetal water with an expression I’ve learned to dread over three years of working together.
It’s the expression he wears when he knows he’s about to do something that I’m going to hate.
Oh, hell no.
He’s working himself up to quit. I can practically feel it coming like a change in the wind.
I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his fingers keep tightening around his tea mug like he’s rehearsing the speech in his head.
I take a sip of coffee and wait.
Mason draws a breath. His jaw tightens. Here it comes.
“Phoenix, I think we need to discuss?—”
“If you’re about to quit,” I interrupt, “I need you to know that I will literally chase you down the street in my socks. I will make a scene. It will be embarrassing for both of us.”
Mason’s mouth snaps shut.
“I wasn’t—“ He stops. Starts again. “This is about professionalism, Phoenix. Our relationship has been compromised. I can’t be objective anymore, and you deserve an assistant who doesn’t have this much…baggage.”
“Mason.”
“The power dynamic alone makes this untenable. You’re my employer. I’m financially dependent on you. The optics are?—“
“Mason.”
