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“I was across the street. Your father asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“On me? Or on all of us?”

He hesitates. It's the first time he's hesitated about anything.

“On you.”

I don't know what to do with that, so I store it away to be furious about later.

“So what happens now?” I ask. “Just so I understand. Hypothetically. If I said yes. Which I'm not going to.”

“Hypothetically,” he says, “you'd keep everything your father left you. You'd run it however you wanted. You'd have my name if you wanted it, and keep yours if you didn't. You'd have your own room if you wanted that too.”

“And you?” I ask, wishing his words didn’t have such a visceral impact on me.

“I'd stand behind you.”

“Behind me?”

“So nobody else can.”

I look up at him. He's close enough that I can smell him now. Soap and coffee. His eyes are a strange color in this light. Not really a color at all.

“You make it sound very reasonable,” I say.

“It is very reasonable.”

“It's a forced marriage, Garick.”

“Nobody's forcing you.”

“My father is.”

“Your father's dead.” He says it gently. “He doesn't get to decide anything anymore. You do.”

My chest aches. I hate that he's the one who said it. I hate that it's the first thing anyone's said all day that's made sense.

“I'm so angry with him,” I hear myself say. “He's dead, and I'm still angry.”

His hand comes up, and just as I expect it to land on the side of my shoulder, it stops, leaving an inch of space between us.

He drops it back to his side and says, “I know.”

“He couldn't just leave us something. He had to leave us instructions. Demands. Orders.”

“That was always his love language.”

I laugh. It catches in my throat and turns into something wetter, and I press the back of my wrist against my eyes until it passes.

He is closer when I drop my hand away.

He doesn't touch me. His hands stay at his sides. But he's right there, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to keep looking at him, and I do keep looking at him, because apparently my body has stopped taking instructions from my brain.

His gaze drops to my mouth.

My pulse is everywhere. In my throat. My wrists. My fingertips.

All I'd have to do is lean in an inch. Maybe less.