18. Sloane
Sloane
Marcus is alone in his office when I walk in without knocking. He looks up from behind his desk, one hand still resting near his phone, the glow from the screens in front of him casting sharp lines across his face. For one second, neither of us says anything.
Then he stands. Not quickly, or defensively, but because I’m here. That almost breaks me before I’ve said a word.
“You posted the statement,” I say.
His expression doesn’t change. “Yes.”
“You didn’t run it through legal first.”
“No.”
“You didn’t soften your responsibility.”
“No.”
“You didn’t protect yourself.”
His gaze holds mine. “No.”
I close the door behind me carefully, because if I don’t do something controlled with my hands, I’m not sure what they’ll do instead.
The office is too quiet. Too polished. Too Marcus. Glass, dark wood, clean lines, the kind of expensive restraint that feels designed to make chaos ashamed of itself. But tonight, the room doesn’t feel controlled. It feels like it’s holding its breath around us.
“Why?” I ask.
Marcus steps out from behind his desk, then stops several feet away from me. Enough distance to be deliberate. Enough restraint to tell me he remembers every accusation I threw at him. I hate that it matters.
“Because it was true,” he says.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer that matters.”
“No.” My voice cracks slightly, and I hate that too. “No, Marcus. That is exactly what you do. You give me the clean answer. The controlled answer. The one that sounds like truth but still keeps everything underneath it locked away.”
Something flickers across his face. Not anger, but recognition.
I take another step into the room before I can talk myself out of it. “So I’m asking you again. Why did you do it?”
He is quiet for a long moment, long enough that I almost think he’ll redirect.
Then he says, “Because you were right.”
I don’t move.
Marcus looks down briefly, then back at me, and for once, there is no polished certainty in his expression, no boardroom composure. No strategy moving behind his eyes faster than anyone else can follow.
Just him. And that is somehow harder to face.
“I kept telling myself I was protecting you,” he says. “The company. The strategy. The people exposed by it. But somewhere in the middle of all that, I started making decisions around you instead of with you.”
My throat tightens.
“You did.”
“I know.”
“You made me feel like I was standing inside something you built and waiting to find out what part of it would collapse on me.”
His jaw tightens once, but he doesn’t interrupt. That makes it worse. Because part of me wants him to argue. Wants him to defend himself so I can keep being angry cleanly. Instead, he stands there and takes it.
“I know,” he says again, quieter this time.
A sharp breath leaves me. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I need you to understand something.” I step closer, my pulse beating too hard now. “The worst part wasn’t the leak. It wasn’t even the headlines. It was realizing that I had started trusting you right before everything proved why I shouldn’t.”
His expression changes then. A flash of pain, fast and controlled, but not fast enough.
Good. No. Not good. Nothing about this feels good anymore.
Marcus’s voice lowers. “I didn’t use you.”
“I know.”
The answer comes out before I can stop it. His eyes lock on mine.
I breathe in slowly, but it doesn’t steady me. “I know that now. Or I’m trying to. Adrian told me what happened in the boardroom. Dana showed me the statement. I saw the forensic summary. I know Evan was the breach. I know Julian was behind Apex.” My hands curl at my sides. “I know the facts.”
“But facts don’t fix what it felt like.”
“No.”
The word barely makes it past my throat.
Marcus nods once, and the restraint in him looks painful now. “Then I’m sorry.”
I look away immediately because those two words should not impact me more than every carefully constructed explanation he’s ever given me.
“I’m sorry for not listening sooner,” he continues.
“I’m sorry for deciding I knew where the line was when you were the one standing closest to the fallout.
And I’m sorry that when you told me what protection felt like to you, I still kept trying to prove mine was different instead of asking whether it felt different to you. ”
My eyes sting, and I blink away the tears. Absolutely not. I stare at the far window, at the city lights blurring slightly beyond the glass.
“Don’t do that,” I whisper.
“Do what?”
“Say exactly the right thing when I’m trying very hard to stay angry at you.”
For the first time all night, something shifts at the corner of his mouth, but it never quite becomes a smile. There’s too much sadness behind it for that.
“I’m not trying to take your anger from you.”
I look back at him.
“No?” I ask.
“No.”
“What are you trying to do?”
Marcus’s gaze holds mine, and the answer comes after a silence long enough to feel like the truth being dragged from somewhere deep.
“Earn the chance to stand near you again without making you feel trapped there.”
Everything inside me goes still. Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s too honest. Marcus Vale, who controls rooms and narratives and board members with the same infuriating certainty, is standing in front of me with nothing in his hands. No defense or plan. Not even a demand.
Just the truth.
And suddenly, I don’t know what to do with all the anger I carried in here. It doesn’t disappear. It doesn’t magically resolve because he said the right words and looked at me like the cost of them mattered. But it changes shape.
The sharpest edge of my anger softens into something far more dangerous. Not forgiveness. Not even peace. Something heavier than that.
Grief. Longing. Want.
“I hated you yesterday,” I admit quietly.
Marcus doesn’t flinch. “I know.”
I let out a slow breath, my pulse uneven now. “I wanted to.”
“I know.”
My throat tightens. “I’m not sure I actually did.”
For a second, Marcus says nothing at all. His chest rises slowly beneath the silence, like he’s holding himself perfectly still to avoid pushing this moment too hard in either direction. That restraint should make this easier. Instead, it only makes the space between us feel heavier.
The room feels different after that.
The space between us changes the way it always does when the truth gets too close to the surface and neither of us moves away fast enough.
Marcus notices, but this time he doesn't step closer or retreat. He simply waits, and somehow that almost undoes me.
“You’re not going to make the decision for both of us this time?” I ask.
His voice is rough when he answers. “No.”
My pulse slips once.
“Why?”
“Because you told me not to.”
I take one step toward him. His hands flex at his sides, but he stays still.
“Is that the only reason?”
His eyes darken. “No.”
The honesty moves through me like heat, and I stop close enough that I can see the tension locked in his jaw, close enough to feel the restraint in him like something physical.
“Tell me the other reason.”
“Sloane.”
“No.” My voice is soft now, but it doesn’t shake. “No more clean answers. No more strategy. No more deciding silence is safer.” I look up at him, heart pounding hard enough to make breathing difficult. “Tell me.”
For one long second, I think he won’t. Then the control finally cracks.
“Because if I touch you right now,” he says, voice low and strained, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop pretending this has ever been about strategy for me.”
The words go through me with terrifying precision. It’s the thing we have both known and refused to say. The thing waiting under every almost-kiss, every charged silence, every moment he stepped back, and every moment I hated him for it.
I move before fear can stop me. One step. Then another.
Marcus goes completely still when I reach him, but I don’t let him turn this into restraint again. I lift my hands and set them against his chest, feeling the hard, uneven beat of his heart beneath my palms.
He closes his eyes briefly, and something in the expression twists unexpectedly. As though the contact hurts him and helps him in equal measure. I don't know which possibility is more dangerous.
“I don’t want you to stop this time,” I whisper.
His eyes open, and everything in them changes.
“Be sure.”
Two words. Low, careful, and barely controlled.
I should think about the consequences. The company. The leak. The statement. The fact that nothing outside this room has stopped burning simply because we are standing too close inside it.
But for once, I am so tired of surviving every feeling by managing it first.
“I am.”
Marcus’s hand lifts slowly, giving me every chance to move away.
When his fingers touch my jaw, the gentleness of it almost breaks me. After all the restraint, all the fighting, all the brutal care disguised as control, his touch is careful in a way that makes my chest ache.
Then he kisses me. Not because anyone is watching. Not because either of us has something to prove. He kisses me because it's me. And because it's him.
The first touch of his mouth is restrained for maybe half a breath, and then something in both of us gives way at once.
I make a sound I don’t recognize, and Marcus’s other hand comes to my waist, pulling me closer with a roughness that feels less like taking and more like finally losing the fight he’s been waging against himself for weeks.
The kiss deepens fast, but I want more.
My fingers fist in his shirt, dragging him closer until there’s no professional distance left between us, no polished space, no strategy careful enough to survive the way his mouth moves over mine like he’s done pretending he can live without this.
Marcus groans against my lips, low and broken, and the sound burns through every last defense I have.
The difference is immediate.