Chapter 10 NICK
NICK
Beck has been talking for ten minutes, but I’m barely hearing him.
Seated in my office chair, my phone pressed to my ear, I’m just going through the motions.
My mind is at the other end of the hallway, with Avery.
I can’t stop thinking about the way her whole body recoiled when I slammed that whiskey glass down.
The way her shoulders curled in protectively, instinctive. Afraid.
I did that to her.
Self-disgust churns inside me as I half-listen to Beck’s status report on Rennick Media.
"The article’s been taken down everywhere now. Their legal team folded faster than expected. They’ve assured me a retraction is going live in the morning."
I grunt in response, too distracted to bother with words.
"Filings are in motion,” Beck continues. “The advertising freeze you wanted is in effect across all Rennick properties. We're also looking at their debt structure. Significant exposure there. If you want to move on acquisition, I can have a strategy ready for your review later this week."
Hearing all of this, I should feel something. Satisfaction, at least. Every item on my scorched-earth agenda is falling into place exactly like I wanted.
Instead, I keep seeing her face. I keep hearing her voice as she argued against all of this.
"There's something else," Beck says. "Their lawyers reached out an hour ago with a settlement offer. Reporter's termination, public apology, mid-six figures. It's a clean exit if you want one."
I stare unseeing at the wall of my home office, at one of Avery’s paintings that hangs across from my desk.
The piece is so classically her—soft, warm, confident.
Soothing colors with underlying threads of strength.
I never want to be responsible for dimming any of her spirit.
Christ, I’d rather be dead than live with that kind of regret.
Regret I feel now, knowing
"Nick?" Beck’s low voice drags me back to our mostly one-sided conversation. “Do you want me to go back to them with stronger demands? We’ve got them on their back foot here. They know you can destroy them and they’re eager to negotiate.”
“No.”
“No, you don’t want me to push for something more, or no, you don’t want to negotiate?”
I scrub my hand over my face and push a curse from between my clenched teeth. “Right now, I don’t give a shit about any of this. Let’s pick up again tomorrow at the office.”
"Understood." His voice shifts, careful now. "You all right?"
I scoff, shaking my head. The question is so far from anything I could answer honestly that it feels absurd. "I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow, Beck."
“Okay. If you need anything else, you know how to reach me.”
“Thanks.” I end the call and set the phone down on my desk.
Suddenly there's nothing left to do. No logistics to manage. No strategy to execute. Nothing between me and the silence that seems to hang over the entire penthouse.
I shove away from the desk and stand, but there's nowhere to go. Toward her or away from her, and I don't know which is worse.
Avery doesn’t understand what I'm trying to do. She thinks I'm being controlling, that this is about pride or dominance. I should have told her it was about fear. Not hers. Mine. But the words had been knotted in the back of my throat, and I couldn’t spit them out.
Not when she was showing true courage and strength today, willing to face the media storm over her past and the insinuations that her motives for being with me had anything to do with wanting to escape her old life.
What would she think of me if she knew I still live in fear that the shameful details of my childhood might end up in a headline like the one Rennick Media ran on her?
I’m supposed to be the strong one. The one who protects.
I failed Avery today, not only because I didn’t have measures in place to prevent what happened today, but also because I lashed out at her the way I did.
Fuck.
I walk to the window because I need to move, need to do something with the restless energy crawling under my skin. Manhattan spreads out before me, a sea of glittering lights and power. Up here I've always felt untouchable. In control of the variables that matter.
Tonight I don't feel in control of anything.
I made Avery flinch. The image keeps surfacing no matter how many times I push it down. I would never strike her. She knows that.
But her body didn't know it. Her body responded to the volatility she saw in me. The fear, no matter how small, that she didn’t quite trust what I was capable of in that moment.
I know that doubt. I used to feel it every time I looked at my father. His unpredictable, explosive temper. His alcoholic rages, which always seemed to find its target in me. I understand him better now that he’s dead. After reading the letter he wrote me, I’ve even managed to forgive him.
That doesn’t change the fact that deep down, my worst fear of all is that I could ever be anything like him. Or, God forbid, that I might eventually become him.
It kills something in me to think I let Avery see me that way.
I’m scared that I broke something between us tonight. Something I don't know how to fix.
I pivot away from the windows and head out of my office before I've consciously decided to move. My body knows where it's going. I feel pulled by the same gravity that's drawn me toward her since the first time I saw her.
The hallway is dark. My footsteps make no sound on the hand-loomed rug beneath me.
I don’t know what I’ll say. I only know that I need to see her. I want her. Wanting Avery is constant, a low burn that never fully banks, and right now it's sharper than usual—edged with something that feels too much like desperation.
I want to see her face, pull her into my arms. I want to bury my face in her hair and breathe her in. Hold her until everything that happened tonight dissolves between us the way it always has before. I simply… need her.
I reach our bedroom door and find it closed. The sight of that sealed panel halts me where I stand. My heart lurches into a heavier beat.
There’s no light on the other side of the door. Either she's asleep or she's lying there, awake, not wanting to see me. Both options sit like a weight atop my chest.
I reach for the handle, then stop.
If I go in there now, what happens? I apologize. I hold her in the dark and we pretend the wound is closed, and tomorrow morning we wake up and the same goddamn argument is sitting there waiting for us. She’ll want me to do things her way, and I know I have to do them mine.
There is no winning tonight, not for either of us.
And the last thing I want to do is continue the fight and risk widening the rift between us.
My hand drops to my side.
I make myself turn and walk away, even though it feels like I have to sever a part of myself to do it.