Permission to breathe again. To exist.
And now…Debra had unsettled the rhythm.
Billie replayed the look in her eyes. That mixture of disbelief and hunger when she’d told Debra she was enough. That small, startled gasp, as though she was hearing the truth for the first time.
She set her glass down on the table, the sound piercing in the silence.
She should be over it by now. Normally she would be, becausethiswasn’t supposed to happen. Billie’s own rules were there for a reason—they existed to keep her heart safe. The work was about control. About ensuring she was never at the mercy of anyone’s cruelty or love ever again. She’d learned that lesson the hardest way imaginable.
The image rose before she could stop it. Her ex’s voice echoed in her mind, uninvited. That once recognisable mixture of sweetness and cruelty that had trained her to mistake control for care.
She had been twenty-four when they’d met and foolish enough to believe that love could be built on surrender. By the time she’d realised it couldn’t, she was already half-erased…her body bruised and her confidence splintered. This apartment was a fortress built after the collapse. The place she’d crawled to when everything inside of her had been dismantled.
That was the last time Billie had confused love with surrender.
She’d spent the years since rebuilding herself into something untouchable. Her business had become her cathedral. Her work—this strange, intimate service she offered—was the only way she allowed herself to connect. Control as currency and power as protection. The body as something to master rather than lose.
That was when Brown & Co. had become her armour.
It had worked until today. Until Debra.
Then her mind drifted to Nina and the fact that it had always been uncomplicated with her. At the office, everything between them worked like clockwork. There was a mutual understanding of what was expected, and Ninaneveroverstepped. She knew her role, and she knew Billie’s rules. Whatever happened between them stayed neatly contained behind closed doors.
Billie had trainedherselfand Nina that way. She knew how to separate want from need, and pleasure from attachment. It had taken months to perfect, but now it worked.
Nina was a release valve, nothing more.
For a brief second, Billie considered calling her.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d used Nina to clear her head or to remind herself of the boundaries she’d built. Nina was good at that—responsive, eager to please, never asking questions. Billie could set the pace, dictate the tone, and when it was done, Nina would smooth her skirt, offer a shy smile, and go back to her desk.
No feelings. No mess.
But then her gaze flicked to the room around her, to the stillness that existed here. This was hers. The one place that hadn’t been touched by anyone else. Nina had never been invited in. No one had.
Billie exhaled a deep breath and set her glass down on the counter. The thought of inviting Nina here made her stomach roil. It would ruin the illusion, the boundaries would blur, and she’d have nothing left that belonged solely to her.
She walked to her desk and opened her laptop. Work usually silenced the noise. There were emails from suppliers, invoices waiting for approval, and client notes to review. She scrolled through them on autopilot, but the words refused to line up as they should.
All she could think about was Debra’s voice and the tremor in it when she’d said thank you.
Billie closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck. She needed to stop. She’d already given Debra more of herself than she’d ever intended. She wasn’t used to wanting anyone beyond the confines of her business. Her work demanded detachment…and intimacy in controlled doses. And yet here she was, standing in the glow of her own self-discipline, feeling it slip inch by inch.
She ran a hand through her hair and exhaled a long, slow breath. “Get a fucking grip and move on.”
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
She glanced down, expecting a routine notification.
Instead, it was a new booking request.
Client:Debra Allen
Requested Service:Full Service.
Requested Date:Wednesday, 11 a.m.
Billie stared at the screen, her pulse picking up a little.
