Page 127 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

Instead, I get out of bed, push the nightstand against the wall to clear space, and drop to the floor.

Push-ups first. The familiar burn in my arms and shoulders, the steady rhythm of up and down. I count to fifty, then switch to sit-ups, then burpees, then shadow boxing—jab, cross, hook, uppercut, my fists cutting through the dark air of the room, my bare feet silent on the carpet.

You’re damaged goods.

Cross. Hook.

Who would ever want to touch this?

Uppercut. My shoulder screams. I ignore it.

I keep going. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. My arms burn, my lungs are screaming, sweat drips from my jaw onto the carpet, and I don’t stop because stopping means thinking, and thinking brings his voice back, and I’d rather work my body until it gives out.

By the time I finally collapse, my knuckles ache from where I gripped the edge of the bed frame during tricep dips. My tank top is soaked through. My legs are trembling so badly I almost have to crawl the three feet to the bathroom.

I stand under the shower until the water runs cold, letting it wash the sweat and the last of Marek’s voice down the drain. Then I pull on a clean shirt and climb into bed.

My head is quiet. Not empty—never empty—but quiet enough to lie down without his voice coming back.

I don’t sleep. But I don’t dream, either.

It’s enough.

The meeting is at two, and I’m sitting in Max’s office with my tablet open on my knee and my coffee cooling in my hands, trying to pretend that everything is normal. That the early hours of this morning weren’t spent doing push-ups on my bedroom floor until my arms gave out.

The briefing takes twenty minutes. Brief, factual, my eyes on the screen the entire time. I’m pretty sure they notice. Max’s gaze rests on me a moment too long, the slight crease between his brows deepening. Finn’s usual banter is gentler today, less teasing, like he’s worried he’ll spook me. Ethan says nothing, but he pours me a second coffee without asking and sets it at my elbow, paying attention to things I wish he wouldn’t.

The silence starts to settle into something I’d have to acknowledge, so I leave.

The walk back to the research wing takes four minutes across the glass bridge. Today it takes fifteen—down through the atrium, past reception where Lucy is arguing with the delivery guy about a misrouted package, through the ground-floor corridor, and back up the stairs to the research floor. It’s the route I take when the gap between who I’m pretending to be and who I actually am feels wide enough to fall into.

Evie is standing beside my desk when I push through the research wing doors, a stack of folders under one arm that could double as a doorstop, her dark red hair catching the overhead light, her face bright with the expression of a woman who has been waiting for someone to walk through that door for the last fifteen minutes and has opinions about it.

“So?” she says, before I’ve even set my bag down. “How was it?”

“How was what?”

Evie gives me a look of such theatrical exasperation that I almost laugh. “The meeting, Sophie. In Max’s office. Breathing the same air as the three most gorgeous alphas on the planet for—” she checks an imaginary watch—“what, thirty-five minutes? How was it?”

“Twenty minutes,” I correct, and immediately wish I hadn’t because Evie’s eyebrows shoot up in a way that tells me I’m never going to hear the end of this.

I swat her arm with the folder I’ve just picked up from my desk. “It was a work meeting, Evie. We discussed the rotation schedule and reviewed some staffing projections.”

“Mm-hm. And was Max wearing the dark green shirt? Because when he wears the dark green shirt, his eyes do this thing where they look like⁠—”

“Evie.”

“—like emeralds that are also somehow angry? It’s very specific. I’ve thought about it a lot.”

I press my lips together. She’s impossible. Completely, utterly impossible, and the worst part is that she makes me want to laugh in a way that has nothing to do with my cover and everything to do with the fact that she’s genuinely, uncomplicatedly delightful.

“It was a meeting,” I say, sitting down. “A perfectly professional meeting about perfectly boring topics. Nobody’s eyes looked like anything.”

Evie narrows her gaze. “You’re blushing.”

“I am not blushing. I’m warm. The bridge is stuffy.”

“The bridge is air-conditioned.”