Page 96 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

Every instinct I have is telling me to glance back. Just once, for a fraction of a second. Just to know if he’s still watching, or if he’s already gone back to his phone, back to pretending, back to the version of tonight where nothing happened between us and nothing is happening now.

I don’t look back.

“See you tomorrow, Soph,” Ethan says at the door.

I step outside and get into my car.

My heart is hammering, and it has nothing to do with Phoebe or the investigation and everything to do with Max and the quiet, devastating certainty that whatever is happening between us did not end in his office.

And I have a feeling it hasn’t even started yet.

CHAPTER 26

Ethan

It’s early morning, and Sophie is already standing outside my office door when I come around the corner with my coffee, her bag over one shoulder, her hair pulled back in a soft ponytail, wearing a cream blouse and those dainty ballet flats.

“Hey,” I say, surprised. “You’re early.”

“Couldn’t sleep anyway.” She shrugs. “Figured I’d come in and get started.”

I unlock the door and wave her in, and I watch her take in my office.

Her eyes scan the room slowly. Her gaze catches on my desk, travels to the shelves, drifts to the floor, and I see it—the exact moment Sophie encounters the reality of how I work.

I know my office is nothing like Max’s, where everything is organized, not a single thing out of place, not a shred of clutter. Or Finn’s, who has an eye for interior design—with his paintings on the wall and matching leather couches and those plants he somehow keeps alive.

Mine is—well. Mine is a disaster.

Books are everywhere except the shelves. Stacked in towers on the desk, lined up along the windowsill, piled on the floor beside the filing cabinet I stopped using two years ago because the drawers were full of journals I hadn’t sorted. There are three whiteboards, two of which are covered in diagrams and equations that made sense to me at two in the morning and will probably need translating by lunchtime. My desk is buried under a geological layer of research papers, patent applications, and sticky notes in four different colors, each color corresponding to a categorization system I developed in grad school.

There’s a half-eaten protein bar next to my keyboard. A cardigan draped over the back of my chair. A coffee mug from three days ago that I’ve been meaning to take to the kitchen and keep forgetting because every time I pick it up, I notice something on my desk that requires my immediate attention.

Sophie takes it all in. Her expression doesn’t change, but the corner of her mouth twitches, and I can see the amusement seeping through.

“I know it looks messy,” I say, setting my fresh coffee down on the one square inch of desk space not currently occupied by a stack of FDA regulatory frameworks.

“It looks like your brain threw up.”

I laugh, and she smiles in response. It’s such a small thing, but it reaches her eyes and softens her whole face, and I feel something warm settle in my chest that I wasn’t expecting.

“Fair assessment,” I say, clearing a stack of journals from the chair across from my desk so she can sit. “I know where everything is, though. That’s the important thing.”

“Do you?” She picks up the protein bar between two fingers like it’s a piece of evidence at a crime scene. “How long has this been here?”

“That’s... recent.”

“It’s petrified, Ethan.”

“It’s not petrified⁠—”

“If I threw this at someone it would leave a bruise.” She sets it down on the desk with a small, definitive clack that proves her point. “That is not food anymore. That’s a weapon.”

I take the protein bar and drop it in the bin, trying to look dignified about it. “I’ve been busy.”

“Mmhmm.” She sits in the chair I cleared, crossing one leg over the other, and looks at me with those dark, steady eyes, quietly amused at my expense.

“What’s the color system?” she asks, nodding toward the sticky notes.