31. Sophie #3
He adjusts the strap. Checks it. Then his thumb traces a slow circle on the inside of my ankle—one revolution, two—where the skin is thin and the pulse runs close to the surface, and I don’t know if it’s deliberate or unconscious but I can feel it everywhere.
In my ankle, in my calf, in the heat pooling at my center, in the breath I’m holding.
He’s on his knees and I’m above him. Our positions reversed from every interaction we’ve ever had—every conversation and argument where his height and his authority filled the room and I had to fight to hold my ground.
And he looks like a man who has never knelt for anyone in his life deciding that here, on the gravel, in front of me, is exactly where he belongs.
His green eyes are dark and steady, and it feels impossible to breathe.
I should say thank you. Get out of the car. Walk to the residential wing in the heels he buckled for me and close the door and be alone and safe and untouched.
My hand reaches for him before I realize what I’m doing and I touch his hair. My fingers slide into the dark strands at his temple. Just my hand in his hair and the feel of it, thick, soft, warm from his scalp, threading between my fingers.
I’m sorry about your mother, Max.
I can’t say it. But I can do this.
Max’s eyes close.
His lashes dark against his cheekbones, his lips parting on an exhale that sounds like it hurts. His whole body goes still under my hand, and then something in him gives. A loosening in his shoulders, a tilt of his head into my palm, like he’s leaning into it without meaning to.
And suddenly I’m aware of how close he is. His face tilted up toward mine, his mouth right there, and the tenderness of ten seconds ago is still in the air, but there’s a different tension underneath it now, heavy and making it very hard to think.
And then, as if he can feel it too, his hand tightens on my ankle.
Just slightly. And I can feel the restraint in it—the war between what he wants to do and what he’s allowing himself to do.
The strain running through his forearm, visible beneath the rolled cuff of his shirtsleeve.
His thumb pressed to my pulse point, monitoring exactly how fast my heart is going.
He could slide his hand up. Past my ankle.
Over my calf. Push the hem of the black dress higher.
I can feel the possibility of it in his grip, in the heat of his palm, in the way his fingers are angled upward like they know the direction they want to travel and are being held back by nothing but will.
He doesn’t.
I could lean down. Close the distance. Kiss him the way he kissed me in his office, except this time it would be my choice, my mouth finding his.
I don’t.
We stay like that. Three seconds. Five. An eternity compressed into the space between two heartbeats.
His hand on my ankle. My hand in his hair.
His eyes closed. My heart hammering so hard I’m certain he can feel it through my skin, through his thumb on my pulse point, a drum beat that’s spelling out everything I’m not saying.
Then Max opens his eyes and looks up at me. And slowly, he releases my ankle and slides his hand away, and the warmth disappears.
He stands, brushes the gravel from his knees, and offers me his hand.
I take it. He helps me out of the car, and then we’re standing face to face in the dark, my heels putting me three inches closer to his height, and the space between us is electric. I feel it in my skin and in the places where his hands just were and aren’t anymore.
“Goodnight, Sophie.” His voice is rough and barely held together.
“Goodnight, Max.”
Neither of us moves. We’re so close. One step and we’d be touching. One step and his mouth would be on mine and my hands would be back in his hair and the fragile, impossible restraint we’ve both been maintaining would shatter like glass.
I can see him thinking about it. His eyes drop to my lips—a fraction of a second, a flash of green landing on red—before he pulls them back up.
He steps back. One step. His jaw locked, his hands finding his pockets, his body retreating from mine with the precision of a man dismantling a bomb.
I turn and walk to the residential wing, and I can feel his eyes on me with every step, the weight of his gaze on my back like a hand I haven’t given him permission to place there.
I can feel the ghost of his thumb on the inside of my ankle like a brand.
I can feel the ache between my legs and the tightness in my chest and the unsteadiness in my knees that has nothing to do with the heels.
I reach the door and open it.
And just before I step through, I do something I never do.
I look back.
Max is standing by the car, watching me, hands in his pockets, still as stone. The moonlight cuts across his face, turning his features sharp and silver and devastating.
Our eyes meet across the dark.
And I think, there’s no going back from this.
I step through the door and pull it shut behind me. I lean against the wall in the dark of the corridor and press my hand to my chest, where my heart is beating so hard it hurts.