His jaw tightened, like maybe he was reining something in.
And suddenly the pen didn’t matter at all.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“It’s fine,” I replied, too quickly.
Except it wasn’t.
My pulse had picked up, my skin buzzing like I’d just touched a live wire. I tried to tell myself it was leftover adrenaline from the meet, from the day, from everything being new and strange.
But that didn’t explain the way my stomach flipped.
Or the fact that I suddenly couldn’t stop noticing how close he was standing.
We went back to the notebook, but the air had shifted. Every movement felt amplified. Every glance held a fraction longer than before.
“So.” He cleared his throat. “If you frame it as consulting plus content creation, it shows growth. Direction.”
“Direction,” I echoed. “My mom loves that word.”
“There you go.”
I looked at him, really looked at him, and something uncomfortable nudged at the back of my mind.
Ledger wasn’t just humoring me. He seemed invested.
And I didn’t know what to do with that.
Because somewhere between the swim meet and the kitchen counter and the accidental brush of our hands, a dangerous thought had crept in.
Do I actually like him?
Not as a partner in crime. Not as a convenient solution. But ashim.
The idea sent a ripple of unease through me.
Liking Ledger complicated things. It blurred lines I’d carefully drawn. It made everything feel less controlled, less predictable. I’d agreed to this arrangement because it was strategic—mutually beneficial, clean on paper. Feelings weren’t part of the contract. Attraction was supposed to stay hypothetical. Contained.
Manageable.
Except there was nothing manageable about the way he listened when I talked, like my half-formed ideas actually mattered. Or the way he’d stepped in at the meet without hesitation, claiming me like it was instinct instead of performance. Or how being around him lately felt less like arguing and more like orbiting—close enough to feel the pull, but far enough to pretend I wasn’t affected.
I didn’t want to want him.
Because wanting him meant risk. It meant disappointment. It meant caring in a way that couldn’t be explained away as logic or survival or necessity. And I’d spent my whole life learning how to be fine without that. To be sharp, self-contained, and untouched.
But Ledger was standing there in the kitchen, earnest and supportive, offering to help me build something when no one else ever had without an agenda attached.
And as he smiled at me, soft, encouraging, and completely unaware of the war he was starting inside my chest, I realized something else too.
I didn’t want to pull away.
I didn’t want to retreat into sarcasm or rules or carefully maintained distance. I wanted to stay right here, in this strange in-between, where things felt real and uncertain and terrifying in a way that made my pulse quicken instead of slow.
And that scared me more than my mother ever could.
CHAPTER 13
