"Get. Off. Me."
A muscle in his jaw works.
For a long second—too long—he doesn't move, and the bond is howlingyes, yes, yes,and I can feel him deciding, can feel his alpha weighing whether to accept it.
Then he steps back.
One step. Just one. His hand falls from my jaw as if the release costs him something.
"Star—"
"Leave."
"This isn't—"
"Take your lies, your excuses, and your bullshit and go."
He stares at me. Whatever's on my face, he reads. His whole body is still vibrating with claim. His hands flex at his sides. And I watch him decide—watch him take whatever's happening in his chest and shove it into a box he is going to come back for.
"I'll go." His voice is not the voice from the phone, or the worktable, or any voice I have heard from him. "Today."
I don't speak.
He moves toward the door. Stops with his hand on the frame. Doesn't turn around.
"You're mine. I'll fix it."
He leaves.
I stay standing until his car starts. Until the sound fades into city traffic, and I'm sure he's gone. Until the bond at my throat stops singing for him and starts mourning him instead.
Then I collapse onto the floor behind the worktable, arms around my knees.
Paula finds me there twenty minutes later. She doesn't say anything. Just sits beside me, pulls me against her shoulder, and lets me breathe.
"He's an idiot," she says finally.
"Yeah."
"But you're okay."
"Yeah." I lie. "I'm okay."
I look at the door he just walked out of. I won't be strong enough to say no twice.
I cannot be here when he walks back in.
Chapter four
Liam
The pain starts in my chest. A physical, grinding ache behind my ribs that radiates outward like a skyscraper imploding, leaving fine particles of destruction everywhere, in my spine, my shoulders, the thick muscle of my heart. It's been forty-eight hours since I walked out of her shop. Forty-eight hours since I kissed her like a madman before she pushed me away, staring at me with eyes that had already started watering.
I deserve this pain. Every fucking inch of it.
I'm in my office, surrounded by glass and steel and the crisp, clean scents that aren’t hers. I can't breathe. My lungs are full of recycled regret. My phone sits on the desk, silent. I've called her eight times. Texted seventeen. The texts started as explanations—I need to handle something. Give me time.—then cracked into something raw:I can still taste you, and it's killing me.By morning, they'd devolved into something I don't recognize from my own fingers:Fucking respond, Star. I don’t beg.
Roan leans against my doorframe, arms crossed. "Bro, you look like shit."
