I didn’t answer.
I told myself I would. After lunch. After meetings. After my brain stopped feeling like someone had opened too many browser tabs and one of them was playing music I couldn’t find.
That was a lie too, but a familiar one.
By the time we got back to the hotel, I was wrung out. Not in crisis. Not amber. Just tired in the heavy, irritated way that made every decision feel personal. I went to my room, showered, put on sweats, and sat on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand.
Vanessa deserved an answer.
Declan deserved nothing and had somehow become the person I wanted to ask before making one.
That was the thing that scared me most.
Not the sex I kept imagining in flashes so vivid they made me grip the sink. His hand at the back of my neck. His voice telling me to open my mouth. The weight of him close enough to make my body forget everything it had assumed about itself.
Not even the fact that I wanted it from a man.
It was that I wanted him to tell me what came next and trusted that he would not use that against me.
I texted before I could lose my nerve.
Me: Can I ask for something?
Three dots appeared, disappeared, then appeared again.
Declan: Yes.
Me: Not fixing. Just an instruction.
His answer came fast.
Declan: Come to the service hallway by the west elevators in ten. Phone in pocket. Hands empty.
My body went hot and calm at the same time.
Ten minutes later, I stood in the narrow hallway near stacked banquet chairs and an ice machine that rattled like it was dying. My hands were empty. My phone was in my pocket. My heart was doing stupid things, but my feet stayed planted.
Declan arrived in a dark T-shirt and track pants, hair damp from a shower. No coach jacket. No tablet. No professional armor except the part of him that was always controlled.
He stopped two feet away.
“Color.”
“Green.”
“What did you need?”
The honest answer was too big.
I looked at the scuffed baseboard behind him, then made myself look back. “I don’t want to decide for a minute.”
His expression changed, not soft exactly. A recognition that went deeper than softness.
“One minute,” he said. “You can have that.”
My breath hitched.
He pointed to the wall beside me. “Back there.”
