Chapter 10
chapter
ten
Thorne
The morning after is oddly quiet.
I half expect the world to look different, but of course it doesn’t. The sky is the same pale blue. My house is still immaculate. The coffee still tastes bitter.
Addison’s hair, though—her hair on my pillow looks like a promise.
She left early, murmuring something about deadlines, gathering her things with the nervous efficiency of someone pretending last night was a perfectly normal, educational experience. I’d pretended too. Offered her coffee, a smile, and a light quip about successful research outcomes.
And then she was gone.
Now I’m the idiot sitting at my desk, trying to convince myself I didn’t just change the trajectory of my life over the course of a single night.
I make it through three contracts, two emails, and one very confused call from our distributor before I decide I need to talk to someone. Unfortunately, the only someone available is Ford.
He’s in his office, feet on the desk, tossing a stress ball in the air when I walk in.
“Morning, Thorne. You look like you wrestled an existential crisis and lost.”
“Good to see you too.” I drop into the chair opposite him. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” he says, still tossing the ball. “What’s up?”
I hesitate. I can’t exactly lead with So, I may have just slept with the woman who thinks this is a research project about her virginity.
So I circle around it. “Hypothetically speaking, if a man… found himself in a situation where he may have become overly involved in, say, an extracurricular mentorship—”
Ford lowers the ball. “Mentorship?”
“Research partnership,” I amend. “Very academic.”
“Right. And this… academic partner… is a woman?”
“Presumably.”
He smirks. “You’re being weird, which means this is definitely about a woman. Who is she?”
“No one,” I say too quickly. “Just… someone who deserves better guidance than she’s likely to get.”
Ford leans back. “You’re worried you crossed a line.”
“I’m worried I might have drawn the line in the wrong place,” I admit. “And that moving it now would only make things worse.”
For once, Ford doesn’t laugh. “So what’s the actual problem, Thorne? You like her?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He grins. “You didn’t have to. You’ve got that look. The one that says you’re trying to talk yourself out of something you already did.”
I exhale, staring at the ceiling. “This was meant to be simple. It’s not.”
“Nothing worth having ever is,” he says. “You can keep pretending it’s theoretical, or you can admit it’s real and figure out what you want.”
I look at him, the words hitting harder than I’d like. “That’s uncharacteristically profound for a man who once sent an apology bouquet to a woman he ghosted.”
“Hey, growth,” he says, smirking. Then, more gently: “If she’s making you think like this, Thorne, maybe stop fighting it.”
I stand, needing distance before he says anything else insightful. I go and stand at the window. “I’ll… consider your unsolicited wisdom.”
I realize Ford’s right.
I’m not fighting Addison because she’s a complication.
I’m fighting her because she makes everything feel real.
And that terrifies the hell out of me.