Except.
Except my body is angled toward him without my permission, my left knee turned in his direction, the space between us on the mattress registering as a measurement my hindbrain keeps trying to close. Every time I shift my weight, the distance recalculates. Nine inches. Seven. I catch myself and pull back. Eleven.
His hand is on the mattress between us. Palm down, fingers spread. Not reaching. Justthere, occupying space my hand keeps drifting toward like a compass needle finding north.
“This will be hard.” My voice is clinical. Controlled. The voice I use for settlement negotiations when the numbers aren’t in my favor. “Bond-separation symptoms. Pain, insomnia, hormonal withdrawal.”
“I’ve read the literature.”
“Then you know some people go to the brink.”
“And some don’t.” He’s staring straight ahead, at the window where gray morning light is pushing through the curtains. “There have been documented cases. People who walked away from a recognition bond and survived.”
“Not many.”
“Enough.”
My knee drifts toward him again. I lock it in place.
“We’re gambling our sanity.” I say it plainly, the way I’d state a risk factor to a client. No drama. Just the math.
“Yes.” His voice is quiet. “We are.”
The honesty of the moment—two people staring at what they’re about to do to themselves, with full knowledge of the cost—is worse than any argument we’ve had. Arguments are adversarial. This isn’t. This is two people on the same side of a terrible decision, and the brief alliance is more dangerous than the enmity ever was.
“We’re both strong.” I say it and I mean it. “We’re both disciplined. We’re both too stubborn to let a weekend in a cabin dictate the rest of our lives.”
He turns his head. Looks at me. And for one unguarded second, before the lawyer slides back into place, his eyes hold something that makes my chest compress—not pain, not desire, but the quiet devastation of a man who is about to do the hardest thing he’s ever done and has already decided to do it anyway.
“We got this,” he says.
I nod. “We got this.”
His pinky finger brushes mine on the mattress. The contact is so small it could be accidental. It isn’t. My breath catches. His hand withdraws. The eleven inches returns.
***
The bathroom mirror again. Same woman, same reflection, same sink I gripped two days ago while my world detonated. Except everything behind my eyes is different.
I trace the edge of the bite mark with my fingertip. The skin is raised. Tender. It will scar—a permanent ridge against my mahogany skin, visible to every alpha, every omega, every person who looks at my neck for the rest of my life. A brand I didn’t consent to. A claim I didn’t authorize.
He appears in the doorway behind me. Our eyes meet in the glass.
“You actually did that.” My voice is flat. The wound underneath it is open.
“I went a little crazy.” He leans against the frame, arms crossed. “When you wouldn’t admit you were mine. It was instinct.”
“Yet you don’t seem unhappy about it.” I watch his reflection.
He tries to suppress it. Fails. The smirk that crosses his face is infuriating and—against every principle I hold, againstthe entire legal and ethical framework of my adult life—devastatingly attractive.
“Can’t help it.”
I roll my eyes. Actually roll them, full rotation, at the man who just marked me for life. The gesture is so ordinary, so reflexivelyme, that it feels more intimate than anything we’ve done in the bedroom. We are people who roll their eyes at each other. That’s a category of relationship I didn’t plan for.
“How will you survive?” I ask. Not sarcasm. Real. “The separation. The withdrawal.”
The smirk drops. Something harder, older, more resolved takes its place. “I’m strong. And if I’m not, I’ll have the image of my father wasting away to keep me strong.”
