Chapter 13
Cove
Some time passed before things stopped feeling weird between us.
Not enough that I’d forgotten the whole thing, but enough that I stopped thinking about it every time he entered a room.
Mostly.
The first few days after the storm were… awkward.
There was no better word for it, and trust me, I looked for one. Awkward sounded too small for what it was, too high school, too we made eye contact after an embarrassing text got sent to the wrong person. This had been much bigger than that.
Still, awkward was the word that fit, because neither of us seemed to know what to do with the space it left behind.
The morning after, Tobias apologized again.
He’d asked me to come to his study after breakfast, which had already made my stomach sink because Tobias’s asking for a private conversation in that tone of voice made it sound like I was getting fired, not to mention the fact that he’d never once had me in there before.
It was like walking to the principal’s office in grade school, but a thousand times worse.
When I approached the study, I found the door open. I’d peered into the room and seen Tobias sitting down behind a large desk, glaring down at a laptop as the screen reflected against the lenses of his glasses.
He hadn’t looked tired, which felt unfair, because I’d barely slept after he left the guest room. I’d spent the rest of the night listening to thunder roll itself farther and farther away while staring at the locked door.
It didn’t seem like he’d noticed my presence, so for a minute, I stood still in the doorway, silently watching him as he continued glaring at his laptop.
It was different—a heck of a lot different—than what he’d done, of course, but I felt like I deserved to observe him during what he believed to be a private moment by himself after he’d seen me at my most vulnerable.
Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse.
Either way, I stayed there.
Tobias’s study suited him. The room was all dark wood, glass, and neatly organized belongings, with the ocean moving restlessly beyond the windows as if it were the only unruly thing allowed near him.
He sat behind the desk like he belonged at the center of it, so still that the movement of the water behind him seemed exaggerated by comparison.
His attention was fixed on the laptop screen.
There was a line between his brows, faint but visible, cutting through the otherwise flawless restraint of his expression.
It made him look less untouchable somehow.
Not softer exactly, but more real, as though whatever was on the screen had managed to reach through that impossible composure and leave a mark.
His beard was closely shaven, dark and polished along the sharp line of his jaw, as neat and perfect as it always was.
His hair was styled and pushed back from his forehead, but a few strands had shifted out of place, falling closer to his temple, and they caught the light with a subtle sheen that made me wonder what it would feel like.
Soft, probably.
He still hadn’t looked up.
His eyes portrayed pure focus, stripped of every social layer people usually wear over their attention. Absolute concentration.
I found myself wondering what he was seeing.
Not really what was on the laptop, because it was probably some spreadsheet, email, or an expensive business problem.
I wondered what he saw when he looked at anything like that.
Whether the world presented itself for him in patterns and risks and probable outcomes. Whether people turned into variables.
Whether I had.
I finally lifted my hand and knocked lightly against the doorframe.
Tobias looked up at once, and the force of his attention landing on me felt almost physical.
The line between his brows eased. His posture remained perfect, his face controlled, yet something in his eyes recalibrated the moment he recognized me standing there.
“Cove,” he said, and I convinced myself I hadn’t heard a hint of longing in his voice.
“You asked me to come by?” I said, even though we both knew he had.
“Yes.” He closed the laptop without looking away from me. “Come in. Please, sit.”
I took a seat in one of the chairs arranged in front of his desk, and twiddled my fingers, not yet totally comfortable making eye contact with him.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“You already apologized,” I murmured back.
“Insufficiently. I entered a private space without invitation. I did so while you were asleep, when you could not consent to my presence. My intention does not alter the fact that it was inappropriate.”
Hearing him say it that plainly helped. It also made it feel real in a way I hadn’t been fully ready for.
“Okay,” I said, because my mouth could not find anything more impressive.
“I will not do it again.”
I nodded.
My fingers were twisted together in front of me, thumbnail digging into the side of my index finger hard enough to hurt.
“I believe I misjudged the situation,” he added.
That made me look up.
“You were distressed. I recognized distress and responded as I would with something under my care. That response was…” His jaw tightened. “Incorrect.”
“I know you didn’t mean to scare me,” I said softly.
“But I did scare you.”
“Yeah.” The word came out quietly, but at least it came out.
For a moment, neither of us said anything, then Tobias glanced toward the open study door.
“Ben will speak with you as well.”
“Ben?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I am aware my presence may make it difficult for you to speak honestly.”
That one caught me off guard.
Because it was true.
And because I hadn’t expected him to know that.
Ben found me later in my office, carrying two coffees and wearing the kind of sympathetic expression that made me suspicious on instinct.
He set a coffee on my desk. “Thought you might need this.”
“I’m fine,” I told him.
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
I looked at the cup, then took it, grateful for the warmth it brought. “Thanks.”
Ben then dropped onto the sofa, sipping his coffee.
It was a few minutes before he said anything.
“He told me what happened.”
My face went hot, and I avoided Ben’s gaze by staring into my cup. “Yeah?”
“He was upset.”
That made me laugh once, dry and awkward. “He was upset?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t the one who woke up to his boss watching him sleep.”
“No,” Ben agreed. “He wasn’t. And he’s well aware that he fucked up.”
“If it had been anyone else…” I stopped, throat tightening around the rest of the sentence.
“You’d be gone,” Ben finished for me.
I nodded.
If literally anyone else had done what Tobias had the night before—billionaire or not, employer or not, gorgeous private aquarium or not—I would have run for the hills. Packed my bag, blocked the number, called whoever I needed to call, and never went near that cliffside house ever again.
That was the part I had been trying not to look at too closely.
Because I hadn’t left.
I had stayed.
Not because what he did was okay. It wasn’t. It had been invasive and frightening and so unbelievably strange that I still hadn’t fully processed it.
But because Tobias was Tobias.
Which was not a defense. It was barely an explanation.
“Well, for the record, I’m glad you did stay. We both are.”
And for those first few days afterward, Tobias gave me space.
He stayed mostly out of the aquarium wing unless I asked him something directly. He didn’t linger in my office. He didn’t appear at lunch unless Ben was there too. When we spoke, he kept more distance between us than usual.
It should have been comforting, and it was. Sorta.
But it also made me feel weirdly hollow.
Which was annoying, because I had no right to miss the intensity of someone who had just massively overstepped a boundary.
And yet, I still ended up wondering when he’d start coming by again to talk. And by talking, I mean me over-explaining things he already knew, while he stands there and nods along.
I was ridiculous.
That was the only reasonable explanation.
Still, once I noticed the hollow feeling, it became harder to ignore.
It wasn’t that I wanted him hovering. I didn’t—or I didn’t think I did.
Having space after what happened had been necessary, and a large part of me appreciated that he understood that enough to give it without making me beg for it.
But Tobias had a way of making his attention feel like weather.
At first, it had been overwhelming, too direct and too difficult to stand under for long. With time, I’d adjusted to it. I’d learned how to move beneath it.
And then, when he withdrew it, the whole house felt colder.
The first time I sought him out, I almost turned around three separate times.
I’d been working on the ghost shark’s feeding schedule, which was a legitimate reason to speak with him because her appetite had shifted with the new lighting gradient and I wanted to know whether he had noticed similar patterns before I started changing anything too dramatically.
That was the excuse, anyway.
The truth was that I missed having him beside me.
Which was embarrassing enough that I refused to phrase it that way even inside my own head.
I found him in the smaller observation room off the deepwater corridor, reviewing something on his phone while the low blue light of the tank moved over his face. He looked up the moment I appeared in the doorway, his expression tightening with a kind of restraint I had started to recognize.
He was trying not to do too much.
It made my heart ache inexplicably.
“Do you have a minute?” I asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Swallowing down my nerves, I stepped inside, clutching my tablet to my chest like a shield. “I wanted to ask about the ghost shark. Her feeding response has changed since we adjusted the lighting.”
His attention sharpened, but he did not move closer. “How has it changed?”