Chapter 16
Anna
"You shouldn’t be here."
He said it before I’d even lowered my hand. Jace Hunter was standing in the doorway in a dark sweater and bare feet, no glasses on, and after a week of empty offices and locked doors and silence, the sight hit me somewhere I wasn’t braced for.
His hair was longer than I’d seen it, curling past his ears, and there were shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
Without the glasses his eyes were different. Exposed. Gray and sharp and looking at me like I was a problem he’d specifically retreated to the mountains to avoid and here I was, dripping on his porch.
"The paparazzi." He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, blocking the entrance with his body. "If they find out you came here, it gets worse. For both of us. What are you doing here?"
"Are you hiding from the press or from me?" I asked straight to the point.
He didn’t answer. His face gave nothing. The rain was picking up behind me, fat drops hitting the wooden deck, and the wind was pulling at my wet jacket.
"You can’t be cruel enough to leave me out here in the cold," I shivered. "Can you?"
His throat moved as he swallowed, Adam’s apple dipping and rising, deciding my fate. Then, he stepped aside.
The cabin hit me in waves.
First the size of it, larger than I expected, all wood and glass, modern but warm in a way his office never was.
Then the cleanliness, every surface pristine, the air carrying that faint antiseptic note I’d learned to associate with him, but underneath it something else.
Wood smoke. Pine. Like the mountains had seeped into the walls and he hadn’t been able to keep them out.
Books lined an entire wall, floor to ceiling, and even from the doorway I could tell they were organized in some system I’d need a manual to decode. The kitchen was open and spotless. The floors were bare wood, clean enough that I felt guilty for the wet footprints my shoes were leaving.
I was shivering. He noticed before I said anything.
"There are towels in the bathroom. Second door on the left." He paused at the kitchen entrance without turning around. "I’ll make tea."
There was no warmth in his voice, but I nodded. I studied his broad shoulders for a second as he moved across the kitchen.
A week ago, this man kissed me like the world was ending. Now he couldn’t look me in the eye long enough to offer me a towel in person.
I found the bathroom. On the shelf beside the towels, a folded sweater.
His. I pulled it over my head because I was freezing.
It smelled like him, odorless, yet warm.
It was too big in the shoulders and too long in the sleeves, and I stood in his hallway wearing it and felt closer to him than I had in days and further away than ever.
I came back to the living room. He was in the kitchen, his back to me, and he didn’t turn around when he heard my footsteps. The cold wasn’t just the rain. It was him. Every movement, every word, every angle of his body said you shouldn’t be here.
I decided to look around a bit. Jace Hunter’s space.
The living room told me he read constantly.
History. Architecture. Philosophy. An entire shelf dedicated to film theory.
There was a blanket folded on the couch.
A Rubik’s cube sat on the side table, solved.
Another rested on the bookshelf, also solved.
A third was on the windowsill. I was starting to think the man bought them in bulk.
Down a short hallway, I found the piano room.
A grand, black and polished, its lid closed.
I ran my fingers along the surface and the wood was cool beneath my hand.
Sheet music sat on the stand, handwritten, the notes tight and precise.
I tried to picture him here. Those long fingers I'd watched pull on gloves and solve cubes and sign contracts, moving across the keys instead, playing something he'd written himself, alone in a cabin in the mountains with nobody to hear him.
Further down the hall, paintings. Originals.
Seascapes in deep blues and greens where the light hit the water at angles I would have spent an hour trying to capture with a lens.
A city scene at dusk. And a portrait of a little boy around six with a gap-toothed grin holding a toy airplane.
I stopped in front of each one. The seascapes were so layered I swore I could smell the salt air if I stood close enough.
Whoever painted them understood color the way I understood light.
I stood in front of the boy with the airplane for a long time. The gap-toothed grin. The eyes. Gray, even in paint. A version of Jace from before. Who painted it? It couldn't be him—the painting was too carefree, too alive and warm.
I kept walking. The hallway ended at a door left wide open, like he'd walked out mid-session and hadn't thought to close it behind him.
I stepped inside.
The room was small. Gray moonlight filtered through the skylight, softened by the rain. An easel faced the window. A workbench was covered in charcoal pencils and fixative spray, everything arranged with the meticulous order I’d come to expect from every space he touched.
I walked around the easel.
My legs stopped working.
It was me.
Charcoal on paper. Half-finished. My face, my jaw, my hair.
The exact way my curls fell when I tucked them behind my left ear.
He’d drawn the way the light came through, detailed and careful, each strand given individual attention.
But it was the expression that made me forget to breathe.
I recognized it. The elevator. The moment I was counting, my hand on his face, telling him to breathe.
He’d drawn me in that moment. The concern in my eyes.
The focus. The way my lips were slightly parted because I was mid-count.
I stared at it. The care in every line. The charcoal was heavy where my hair fell and light where the elevator light caught my cheekbone, and he’d spent time on my mouth.
More time than anything else. Like he’d been trying to get it right.
Like getting it right mattered more than the rest of the drawing combined.
I stood there and waited for the alarm. The instinct that said this is too much, this is obsessive, this is a man alone in a cabin drawing a woman who told him she wasn’t interested. I waited for the prickle at the back of my neck that said someone is watching you too closely and you need to leave.
The alarm didn’t come.
What came instead was warmth. Spreading through my chest, slow and dangerous.
"I can explain."
His voice came from behind me. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.
I turned around. He was in the doorway, two mugs in his hands, and he looked caught, panicked even.
"I was drawing to occupy my hands." His voice was tense, his accent thicker than I’d heard it. His eyes kept going from my face to the portrait and back. "It’s a coping mechanism. My therapist suggested creative expression as an alternative to the cube when I’m in a state of elevated…
" He stopped to take a breath. "I’m sorry. I know how this looks. I understand if you’re disturbed. I will get rid of it."
He set the mugs down on the workbench, came toward the easel, and reached for the drawing.
He was going to tear it off. I could see it in the way his hand moved, quick and decisive, and he was going to destroy it because he thought it frightened me.
"Wait… don’t!" I grabbed his wrist.
Thunder broke outside, loud enough to rattle the skylight, and we both flinched but neither of us let go. His wrist was warm under my fingers. Bare skin. No gloves. His pulse was racing.
"Don’t get rid of it." My voice came out fiercer than I expected. His eyes sliced back to mine. "I’m not disturbed. Don’t... destroy it."
His eyes dropped to my hand on his wrist. To my fingers wrapped around his bare skin. When he looked back up, his pupils were blown wide.
We were both breathing hard. The rain was hammering the glass above us and the gray light fell across the portrait and his face, catching the sharp line of his jaw, the dark hair across his forehead, the gray eyes looking at me with an intensity that made it hard to stand still.
He was beautiful. Not in any way I'd been prepared for.
Beautiful the way a storm is beautiful, the way something dangerous and wild looks when you get close enough to see the details.
The sweep of his eyelashes, dark against his skin.
The long line of his throat. His lips pressed together like he was holding back everything he wanted to say.
Something unguarded and almost fragile underneath all that composure, visible only because he didn't know I was looking.
"It’s beautiful," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"The… portrait. It’s beautiful."
He stared at me. "You’re not…" He searched for the word. "Disturbed?"
"If you apologize one more time for making something this good, I’m going to be offended on behalf of the portrait."
He looked at me, then down to where I was still gripping his wrist.
I let go and stepped back. The room felt bigger without the contact.
His gaze cut to mine. "When the rain stops, you should leave."
"We haven’t talked yet," I pressed.
"There’s nothing to talk about."
"There’s a lot of things to talk about. You disappeared for a week. Your schedule is a disaster. Miles is barely holding the office together. You need to come back. And we need to figure out how to work together without…" I gestured between us. "Without this."
"Without this." He repeated it slowly.
"Whatever this is."
"I know what this is, Anna. That’s precisely the problem."
I swallowed. His eyes followed the movement, lingering on my lips before finding my eyes again. He swallowed too. "I’ll return when I’m ready."
"When is ready?" I asked, breathless.
"When I can look at you without wanting things I shouldn’t want." He looked anywhere but at me. "Thanks for checking on me, but it’s not needed."
"I didn’t come here to make things harder," I said.
"You being here already makes everything harder." His voice was thicker now. "You made it clear, you’re kind, because that’s who you are, I was already coming to terms with that and you’re standing in my studio in my sweater and you understand exactly what that does."
"What does it do?"
"Don’t." The word came out sharp, his eyes harder. "Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to."
I held his gaze. "Maybe I need to hear you say it."
"I’ve said it. And you told me I was your boss and nothing more." He took a step toward me, then stopped himself. "So I came here. To stop wanting it. To stop feeling it. And you followed me."
"Yes, I followed you." I stepped closer. "Because you disappeared!" The words came out loud. "You left without a word. I sat at that desk for a week not knowing if you were okay or not."
He stared at me. "You were worried about me?"
My chest squeezed—the emotions playing across his usually rigid face. Confusion mixed with hope. Caution and wildness.
"Of course I was worried about you. What do you think I’m doing here, sightseeing?"
"If you’re just worried, I don’t need it. I don’t want your pity." The coldness was back in his voice.
"Pity?" I almost laughed. "You think I pity you? I left my best friend’s couch, borrowed her car, which she loves more than me by the way, drove through a storm that nearly killed me twice, and showed up on your porch looking like a drowned cat. That’s not pity. Pity sends a fruit basket."
He didn’t respond. His expression remained shuttered.
"So what’s the plan?" I shrugged. "Stay in the mountains until it goes away? Continue to ignore me? Build a second cabin further up the mountain in case this one isn’t remote enough?"
"If necessary." He pushed strands of hair from his face. "Look, Anna. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to want you without it consuming me."
He turned away from me slightly, his hand gripping the back of his neck.
"I don't know how to be near you without my brain turning you into a project it needs to solve. I study your arrival times. I drew your face from memory in charcoal because I couldn't sleep and your expression in the elevator wouldn't leave my head."
His hand dropped. He looked at me, and there was nothing guarded left in his face.
"That's not normal, Anna. None of this is normal for me." He exhaled heavily. "And I can't make it stop. I've tried."
Another breath. Slower this time, like he was pulling himself back together by force.
"You should go back. I'll return to the office. We'll sort this out like professionals."
"Professionals." I glanced at the portrait of my face on the easel, then down at the sweater I was wearing, his sweater, the one I'd taken from his bathroom without asking. "Sure. Very professional. This whole situation screams HR compliance."
Thunder rumbled outside.
The storm wouldn't stop anytime soon.