Page 71 of Broken Blades

"Then…" I swallowed. "What do you expect me to do?"

His mouth curved. Slow. Deliberate. That infuriating expression that meant he'd already calculated this entire conversation three moves ahead while I scrambled to keep pace.

"Practice."

The single word landed with weight I didn't want to examine. Practice meant touching. Meant proximity. Meant deliberately dismantling whatever walls I'd tried rebuilding this morning until his hands on my waist or arm around my shoulders felt natural instead of staged. Meant undoing all the careful distance I'd woken up determined to maintain.

My brain screamed warnings. Danger. Manipulation. Don't let him control this narrative.

But standing there with morning light streaming through windows and my oversized sweater doing absolutely nothing to protect me from his assessment, I knew he was right.

Tomorrow would expose every crack in my defenses if I didn't learn how to pretend comfort I didn't feel.

"Fine." The word came out clipped. "Practice."

His eyes glinted with something I couldn't name. Victory, maybe. Or something darker.

The living room swallowed sound—all dark wood and clean lines, masculine in that deliberate way that screamed control. Nothing soft. Nothing welcoming. Just space arranged with precision that probably mirrored how Wyatt organized every other aspect of his life.

He stood in the center, arms crossed over that chest I was determinedly not looking at. Waiting.

"Come here."

My whole body rebelled. Every instinct that had kept me alive through my ex's explosions, every self-preservation mechanism I'd carefully rebuilt, screamed warnings.

"No."

His jaw shifted. Not anger—something closer to impatience with a student refusing to learn necessary lessons. "You want this to work? Come here."

The challenge hung there, sharp and pointed. Because we both knew running wasn't an option. Not with cameras scheduled for tomorrow. Not with my father's merger balanced on whether I could convincingly play the role of Wyatt's girlfriend.

I forced my feet forward. Each step felt like trudging through concrete, resistance building with proximity until I stopped directly in front of him.

Too close.

His height overwhelmed—made worse by the breadth of his shoulders, the scars cutting across skin that told stories I didn't know. The sheer physical presence of him pressed against my awareness like pressure before a storm.

He lifted a hand.

I jolted back before conscious thought could intervene. Pure reflex. Body memory from different hands, different threats.

His eyebrow rose. Not surprised. Just confirming exactly what he'd already known. "Exactly why we're doing this."

Heat crawled up my neck—embarrassment mixing with frustration at my own transparency. I scowled, channeling mortification into anger because anger felt safer. "You're intimidating."

"Good."

The single word landed flat. Unapologetic. Like intimidation was a tool he wielded deliberately rather than something to apologize for.

My glare intensified. "Not helping."

Something shifted in his expression—not softening exactly, but recalibrating. His voice dropped lower, took on an edge that felt oddly like honesty wrapped in warning.

"You're going to get used to me touching you. Not because I want to⁠—"

He paused.

The silence stretched too long, loaded with weight I couldn't identify. Something flickered behind his eyes before shutting down completely, walls slamming into place so fast I almost missed the vulnerability.