Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“Daisy.”
I don’t turn around. I keep reaching for the file, my fingers brushing the spine, and I can feel him behind me, not touching, not close enough to touch, but close enough that the air between us has texture.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve been doing my job.”
“You haven’t met my eyes in days.”
I pull the file down and turn around and he’s closer than I calculated, close enough that the file in my arms is the only thing between his chest and mine, and his eyes are grey and intent and there isn’t anything performative in them, nothing charming, nothing practised. He is just here, in a file room, standing too close, and his face carries something I haven’t seen before.
“I offended you,” he says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“It means you felt something.”
The file room is small. The shelves press in on three sides. The fluorescent light hums above us and casts his face in that blue-white corporate glow that should make everyone unattractive but doesn’t, not him, not with those cheekbones, not with those eyes, and I’m furious at the fluorescent light and I’m furious at him and I’m furious at myself for noticing his cheekbones in the middle of a confrontation about my dignity.
“Stop,” I tell him.
“Stop what?”
“This. The coffee. The car. Standing in my file room telling me I felt something like that entitles you to anything. I’m not what you think I am, and the arrangement you offered me at that restaurant isn’t something I’ll ever accept, and if you can’t treat me as a colleague then I need you to request a different paralegal.”
I’m trembling. I can feel it in my arms and I grip the file tighter to hide it and I hold his eyes and I don’t blink and I am standing in a file room in Monaco telling a Bratva billionaire that I am not for sale, and I am terrified, and I am proud.
His expression doesn’t change. His eyes don’t leave mine. He is very still, and the stillness isn’t cold. It’s the stillness of a man who is hearing something he didn’t expect and is recalculating in real time.
Then he steps closer.
Not threatening. Not aggressive. One step, and the file between us compresses, and his face is above mine, and his mouth is close enough that I can feel his breath on my forehead, and his voice drops to something that barely carries.
“Make me.”
The file falls. I don’t catch it. It hits the floor and the tabs scatter and neither of us moves, and his mouth is a breath from mine and my back is against the filing cabinet and the metal is cold through my blouse and his chest is warm through his shirt and my hand comes up to push him away and lands against his heartbeat instead and I don’t push.
I don’t push.
His heart is fast under my palm. Faster than a man who is playing a game. Faster than a man who has the upper hand. I can feel each beat, clear and hard, and his eyes are on mine and they are not charming, they are not amused, they are stripped of every performance I’ve seen him give, and what’s underneath is raw and hungry and afraid, and he is afraid of me, I realise. He is afraid of a girl from Idaho with her hand on his chest in a file room.
He pulls back first.
One step. Then two. The air rushes in to fill the space he leaves and it’s cold, it’s so cold after the warmth of him, and he picks up the fallen file and stacks the scattered tabs and sets it on the shelf behind me and his hands are not trembling. Not quite.
“When you’re ready to stop pretending,” he tells me, and his voice is level and his eyes are not, “you know where to find me.”
He leaves.
The file room door closes behind him and I stand with my back against the cabinet and my hand still raised where his chest was and I can feel his heartbeat in my palm like a ghost, and the trembling I’ve been hiding reaches my knees and I let it take me down. I slide to the floor. I sit between the shelves with my legs pulled up and my forehead on my knees and I let the air come back.
He pulled back first.
He was the one who stopped.
And I don’t know what to do with the fact that the man who propositioned me at a restaurant, the man who offered me an apartment and an allowance and an arrangement, is also the man whose heart raced under my hand and who pulled away when I couldn’t, and both of those men live in the same grey eyes and I can’t tell which one is real.