Chapter 18 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
It’s been three days after the subspace incident and I've developed a new routine that involves pretending I'm not looking for excuses to be near them.
The pretending is going badly. Tamsin has started giving me a look every time I get up from my desk that says she knows exactly where I'm headed, and I've burned through every plausible cover story for why the CEO's assistant needs to visit the twelfth floor six times in a single workday.
Yesterday I told her I was delivering interoffice mail and she pointed out that Hale Industries has a mail room.
I told her to mind her own business and she laughed at me.
The bruises on my hips have faded from purple to yellow-green, and Dominic has been careful with me in ways that make my chest hurt.
He's not distant. He still touches me, still pulls me against him on the couch after dinner, still calls me firefly in the voice that makes my toes curl.
But his hands land lighter than they used to, and he watches my face during sex with an attention that borders on clinical, checking for signs that I'm slipping under.
He hasn't used his Alpha bark once since that night.
Part of me misses the edge. The rest of me is grateful for the breathing room, and the fact that both things are true makes me want to scream into a pillow.
Dinner tonight is a minefield I don't see coming.
Richard is already at the head of the table when I arrive, a glass of whiskey in his hand that isn't his first. My mother sits to his left, performing the role of adoring wife with the precision of a surgeon, her laugh landing at exactly the right moments, her hand finding his arm when she wants to emphasize a point.
Neither Dominic or Amos has shown up yet.
"Mattaniah." Richard gestures to the chair on his right. "Sit."
I sit. The housekeeper brings out the first course and Richard's hand lands on my knee under the table before I've unfolded my napkin.
"You've been settling in nicely." He says it to the table at large, his voice pleasant, his thumb pressing into the inside of my knee. "Finding your rhythm at the office. Making friends with the staff."
"I'm trying to be useful, sir."
"You're succeeding." His hand slides two inches up my thigh. "Tamsin tells me you've been very... diligent. Running errands all over the building. Visiting various floors."
My mother's eyes flick to me across the table. She's heard the subtext. Her expression says handle it.
"I've been learning the systems." My voice stays steady through sheer force of will. "It's a large company. There's a lot to understand."
"There is." Richard's hand slides another inch. His pinky finger brushes the inseam of my pants. "I'm glad you're taking such initiative. It shows... dedication."
Amos appears in the doorway. His gaze sweeps the table, something flickering across his face before the mask slides back into place.
"Sorry I'm late." He takes the seat beside my mother, directly across from me. "Got caught up in the quarterly reports."
"Always working." Richard's hand squeezes my thigh once before withdrawing. The absence of his touch is almost worse than the presence of it, because now I'm waiting for it to return. "You could learn something from Amos, Mattaniah. He understands the value of dedication."
The meal passes in a blur of small talk and surveillance.
Richard's hand returns twice more, once brushing my knee when he reaches for the salt, once settling on my thigh during dessert and staying there for a full three minutes while he discusses golf with my mother.
Amos' jaw tightens across the table each time it happens, and each time I sit perfectly still and pretend I'm somewhere else.
When Richard finally pushes back from the table, I nearly collapse with relief.
"I have a meeting." He drains the last of his whiskey and adjusts his cuffs. "Don't wait up."
He pauses behind my chair on his way out. His hand lands on my shoulder and slides across to the other one in that slow proprietary drag I've come to dread, his mouth lowering to my ear.
"We'll continue your development tomorrow. I have ideas about how to best utilize your... talents."
He's gone before I can respond. The front door closes and the car pulls away. My mother excuses herself without looking at me, her heels clicking up the stairs, and I'm left at the table with Amos and the ghost of Richard's hand on my thigh.
"I need a minute," I manage, and I'm out of my chair and up the stairs before Amos can respond.
I lock my fixed bedroom door and press my back against the wood while I try to remember how to breathe.
Richard's cologne is still in my nose. His hand is still on my thigh even though he's been gone for five minutes, his thumb on the inside of my knee, his pinky brushing my inseam.
My mother watched it happen from across the table and did nothing.
I strip off my shirt because he ran his hand over my shoulders when he leaned close to my ear, then kick off my pants because his hand was on them. Standing in my underwear in the middle of my room I still feel dirty, still feel like something that belongs to him because he decided it does.
The closet door is already open. I don't remember deciding to move but I'm on my knees in the corner before my brain catches up with my body.
The pile is here, Dominic's jacket on the bottom, Amos' shirt folded on top, the scarf wound through both of them.
I added a t-shirt yesterday that Amos left in the laundry.
I added a pair of Dominic's socks the day before that, stolen from his gym bag when no one was looking.
I bury my face in the pile and breathe. Their combined scent hits my nervous system and cuts through the cologne still clinging to my sinuses. My shoulders drop. My jaw unclenches. The crawling sensation on my skin fades to a whisper as my lungs fill with something that isn't Richard.
I curl tighter around the pile, pulling Dominic's jacket over my shoulders, pressing Amos' shirt against my face. The fabric is soft from washing and it smells like him underneath the detergent.
But it's not enough. Their scent is here but they're not. The clothes hold the smell but not the warmth, not the weight of their arms or the pressure of their hands. My body knows the difference between borrowed comfort and the real thing.
"Just go find them," I mutter into the fabric. "Stop being pathetic and just go find them."
I pull on sweatpants and one of their t-shirts and slip out of my room. The hallway is empty. My mother's door is closed. Dominic's voice is a low murmur from somewhere on the second floor, still on his conference call.
That leaves Amos. I make it to the top of the stairs before he appears at the bottom, looking up at me with an expression that tells me he was already coming to find me.
"Niah." His voice is careful. "Are you okay?"
"No." The honesty surprises us both. "I'm not. I went to my room and I tried to... I have this pile of your clothes, and I thought it would help but it's not enough. I need..." My voice cracks. "I need to not smell like him. I need to smell like you."
Amos is up the stairs in three strides. His hands cup my face and his thumbs stroke my cheekbones, his scent wrapping around me warm and real in a way the clothes can never be.
"You're shaking," he says.
"I know."
"Dominic's on his conference call for at least another hour." He releases my face and takes my hand instead. "Come with me."
He leads me down the stairs and toward the kitchen.
I expect him to pull me into his arms, to kiss me, to do something that will overwrite the crawling sensation Richard left on my skin.
Instead, he releases my hand and crosses to the island counter where ingredients are spread across the surface in organized chaos.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"I started this before dinner," he admits, gesturing at the carnage.
"Thought I'd impress everyone with dessert.
Then Father started drinking and I abandoned ship.
I found a recipe for an apple galette and I thought, how hard can it be.
" He gestures at the disaster zone of unevenly hacked apple slices and a lump of dough that looks like it lost a fight. "The answer is apparently very hard."
The mundanity of it catches me off guard. I expected seduction. He's offering me... normalcy.
"You're going to lose a finger holding the knife like that." I cross the kitchen before the decision fully forms and take the knife from his hand. "You're using the flat of the blade instead of rocking through the cut."
"Nobody taught me to chop. I have a finance degree and a personal chef who quit last month." He steps back and watches me dice a apple in three clean strokes. "I knew you could cook but I didn't realize you were that fast."
"Two years of prep shifts will do that." I reach for the next apple and fall into the rhythm that my hands remember even though it's been weeks since I last held a knife. "I'm better with a knife than a mop."
"Clearly." Amos leans against the counter beside me, close enough that his scent fills the space between us. "Show me the technique. I refuse to be defeated by a tomato."
I hand him back the knife and position his fingers on the handle, adjusting his grip so the blade sits correctly against his knuckles. "Curl your fingers under on the guide hand. The flat of your knuckle leads, not your fingertips. Rock the blade, don't push it."
He tries. The result is marginally better than his previous attempt, and his third try produces something that actually resembles a dice. "Like that?"
"Better. Here, let me show you again." I take the knife back and settle into position at the cutting board. "Keep the tip anchored and let the weight of the blade do the work."
"Keep the tip anchored," he repeats, and then he's behind me.