I said nothing.
Finally, he broke the silence. “So this is it?” He gestured to the office, the glass, the city below. “Is this where you… what, interrogate me? Eat me?”
I arched a brow. “Depends,” I said, “on your definition of eat.”
He didn’t blink. But his pulse stuttered in his throat, and I tasted the brief spike of adrenaline.
It was intoxicating.
I ran a hand down the front of my shirt, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle. “Do you know what you are to me?” I asked.
He stared at the skyline, stubborn, then back at me. “You said it already. Mate.”
I let the word settle.
He shivered, just once. Then his face closed over. “You don’t even know me.”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
And there it was. The raw edge of possibility.
I reached for the file Ashe had prepared for me—his background, military, social, everything public and half of what was supposed to be private. I pushed it across the desk, a peace offering.
“You want out? You walk,” I said. “Nobody will stop you.”
He glanced at the folder, then at me. “You always this accommodating?”
“Only with things I don’t want to break.”
That landed. He gave a half-laugh, then stood.
I stood too.
For a moment we stood across from each other, two men, one city, a problem neither of us could solve.
He looked at the door, then at me. “If I walk, do I see you again?”
I nodded. “You’ll see me everywhere.”
He picked up the lollipop, stuck it back in his cheek, and grinned like a dare. “Stalker,” he said, but it was almost soft.
I watched him leave.
I didn’t breathe again until the elevator doors shut behind him. When I finally sat, the glass desk was still warm under my hands. Out the window, Mt. Hood floated in the dusk, sharp and white and waiting.
So was I.
Chapter Three
~ Jai ~
I hit the revolving glass door with a boot to the chrome bottom, coat collar up, and walked straight into a blast of night air that could have stripped a lesser man’s optimism clear to the bone.
Rain-wet concrete and a wind chill off the river cut me to the quick, the city lights refraction-smeared across the puddles like someone had laid out a runway for drunks and insomniacs.
Above me, Braham Wolfe’s high-rise pulsed gold on every other floor, its lobby sending out an afterglow that felt more like a lighthouse than an invitation.
I didn’t look back. Not even once.
