14. Nolan #2
The reaction moved across his face in layers — recognition first, then a discomfort that lived below the social reflexes.
The last time we'd spoken was the birthday dinner. The toast. You don't know what's in this house. His eyes held that same unsteady quality now, the look of a man standing on a floor he no longer trusted.
"Reeves." He extended his hand. The grip was looser than the dinner. His smile didn't hold — it arrived, flickered, and died before it reached his eyes. "Working late?"
"Portfolio review."
"Ah." He looked at Hugh. Looked at me. His jaw worked. "Well. Don't let the old man keep you too long." The laugh was wrong. Thin. A performance staged for an audience of two. He clapped my shoulder and walked away.
Hugh watched him go. His hand found Rhys's shoulder as he passed — a touch that lasted exactly one second, the pressure ambiguous. Steadying or warning. Impossible to tell.
"He's been burning the candle," Hugh said. "The Meridian acquisition. I worry about him."
He turned back to me. The warm father. The concerned patriarch. The man who had just dismantled a junior executive without raising his voice and was now performing worry for the son he'd trained to carry secrets.
"Goodnight, Nolan. Don't work too hard."
I went to her because the day had cracked something open, and she was the only place it didn't bleed.
She opened the door in a loose silk top the color of champagne, her curls down, her feet bare on the hardwood.
The fabric draped across her collarbones, the neckline wide enough to show the line of her throat and the hollow beneath it.
She looked at my face, read whatever was written there, and didn't ask.
"Come in," she said.
She made coffee.
It was terrible — too much water, the grounds floating on the surface like sediment in a river. She handed me the mug. I took a sip and kept my expression flat.
She put on music — low and acoustic — and moved through her apartment barefoot, straightening a stack of books, watering the rosemary, pulling a blanket from the back of the couch, and folding it for no reason.
I watched her from the kitchen. My shoulder against the doorframe. The mug in my hand. She moved, touching things, adjusting, and making the space around her more alive by existing in it. The watching wasn't strategic.
She passed me on her way to the sink. I caught her waist. She stopped. My fingers pressed into the curve above her hip, the silk warm beneath my palm. She leaned back against the counter, and she was rewriting it with her body in the space.
My mouth found her neck. She tilted her head back.
My lips traced the line of her throat, the spot where her pulse jumped, the hollow between her collarbones where the champagne silk parted.
Her hands came up to my chest and worked the buttons of my shirt.
One by one. Slow. Her fingers brushing skin with each one she freed.
The coffee went cold on the counter. The music played to an empty kitchen because we weren't in it anymore.
Her bedroom. The paintings turned against the walls, the afternoon light replaced by the amber glow of a lamp she'd left on.
She pulled me down onto her bed and I went — willingly, gratefully, the weight of the day falling away with each layer of clothing she removed.
My shirt. Her silk top, pulled over her head, her curls falling across her bare shoulders.
My belt. Her hands on my waist, my stomach, the muscles clenching under her touch.
I needed this. Not strategically. Desperately. After Hugh's voice through the wall, after the junior executive's pale face, after "sometimes people need to understand the standard" and the metal taste it left on my tongue — I needed her hands on me and her mouth on mine.
She felt the desperation. Met it. Her legs wrapped around me, her heels pressing into the backs of my thighs, pulling me closer, deeper. Her pace matched mine. Her fingers raked across my hair. She held my face in both hands and forced my eyes to hers.
"Stay with me," she whispered.
I kissed her instead of answering.
Her breathing slowed against my chest. My hand moved through her hair, the curls separating and falling between my fingers. She traced patterns on my skin.
The lamp cast amber light across the ceiling. The paintings leaned against the walls, faces hidden, holding the private things she'd shown me and no one else.
I opened my mouth.
There's something I need to tell you about my sister.
The sentence was right there. Solid. Ready.
Ten words that would change everything — the vendetta, the plan, the reason I walked into her gallery, the reason I was lying in her bed.
Ten words that would give her the one thing I'd been withholding since the night she gave me her number with a sun emoji and told me not to wait three days.
The truth.
Nothing came out. I closed my mouth.
She looked up. Her chin on my chest. Her eyes soft, searching. "What?"
"Nothing."
She studied me. The crease appeared between her brows. Her eyes moved across my face. She was looking for the wall. The blank thing. The door that slammed shut every time the phone buzzed or the world pressed in.
She didn't find it. Because it wasn't there. What was there was worse — a man lying in the dark with his mouth full of truth and his jaw locked shut. Not because the wall was up. Because the wall was down, and he still couldn't speak.
"Whatever it is," she said quietly, "you can tell me when you're ready."
She kissed my chest. Settled back against me. Her breathing evened out within minutes. Her hand went slack on my ribs.
I didn't sleep. I lay in the dark with the woman who trusted me completely and the truth I couldn't give her and the gala invitation sitting in my inbox like a countdown to the end of everything I'd built and everything I was about to destroy.