Chapter 27 #2
“This is the exact thing I’m not allowed to want. I deal with rumors and optics for a living. I’ve watched women lose opportunities for less than a look. I’ve seen how fast a ‘professional lapse’ label sticks. And I’ve survived it once already.”
His eyes sharpen at that, but I barrel on before I can lose my nerve.
“If this becomes real—if anyone thinks I let the lines blur—I am the one who pays for it. Not you.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not asking you to risk your job. I’m not asking you to choose me over your career. I’m just trying to understand why you’re pretending that what happened tonight didn’t knock us both off our feet.”
I stare at the ground because looking at him might break me. “Because if I admit it meant something, I won’t be able to walk away. And I have to walk away. For my survival and everything I’ve built when no one thought I could.”
My voice shakes, the words barely hanging on. I know the second I lift my eyes, I’ll see every ounce of what we almost let ourselves have tonight. I’ll see the version of me I got to be for one stolen hour on that dance floor. The version I don’t get to keep.
“Please don’t make this harder.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I wish I could swallow them back down. That’s what makes me move. Before I can apologize or crumble, I reach past him and push open the metal service door.
Cold air hits us as we slip out the back entrance, the door swinging shut behind us. No cameras. No lights. No one to perform for. Just the truth settling between our bodies.
My heels click against the concrete, too sharp in the stillness.
Kyle keeps a careful distance, but not far enough that I can pretend he isn’t there.
His presence is a heat at my back, a gravity I have to fight with every step.
Fighting him feels like ripping the seams of something I didn’t know I’d stitched together.
He slows beside me, waiting, giving me the chance to say anything that isn’t this quiet, devastating retreat. If I open my mouth, the truth will pour out.
“We can’t… we can’t let tonight mean more than it does,” I force out, the words scraping.
“So that’s it?” Kyle exhales, like he’s trying to hold on to something slippery. “We just go back to trying—and failing—to pretend this means nothing to both of us?”
Instead of answering, I open the car door and slide inside.
He watches me with an expression so raw it makes my knees go weak, like he’s standing on the edge of something and I’m the only one who can pull him back.
But I can’t, not when wanting him feels like setting fire to the version of myself I’ve spent years fighting to become.
I finally manage, in a voice that barely exists, “Please, Kyle… just get in the car.”
He stands there for a heartbeat too long, the words carving something out of him I never meant to take.
His jaw flexes once, a tiny fracture in the control he’s been holding on to all night.
For one trembling second, I think he’s going to close the door and walk away, leaving me in the wreckage I made.
Instead, he lowers himself into the seat beside me, slow and deliberate, shutting the door with a soft click that feels louder than anything inside the gala.
The town car pulls away from the curb, the driver mercifully silent as the city slides past in a blur of neon and November dark.
Inside, the quiet is suffocating. I fold my hands in my lap because if I don’t anchor them somewhere, they’ll reach for him.
Kyle stares straight ahead, elbows braced on his knees.
In the dark reflection of the window, he looks wrecked in a way he’s trying so hard to hide.
After a long moment, he speaks, barely above a whisper. “You really believe that we can go back to pretending we mean nothing to each other?”
I look down, blinking hard. “I meant what I had to say.”
“That’s not the same thing, and you know it.” He shakes his head, letting out a breath that scrapes between us.
“How?” My voice is frayed. “I’m trying to protect myself.”
“How am I supposed to stop after tonight?” His voice cracks, furious and desperate at once. “After last night. After everything.”
He turns then, finally looking at me, and the devastation in his eyes slams into me so hard my breath stutters. I should look away, protect everything we’re risking just by sitting like this in the dark, but I don’t.
“Just tell me one thing,” he says, softer now, almost afraid to breathe wrong. “When you said it couldn’t mean anything… did you also mean it didn’t?”
My heart punches against my ribs because that’s what Kyle heard. That’s what he’s been thinking, that I said it meant nothing. I swallow, the truth burning up my throat like a match I can’t put out.
“Kyle…” I close my eyes because looking at him makes me reckless. “It doesn’t matter what I feel. What matters is what people will assume. What they’ll say about me. My entire career depends on perception and control.”
His inhale is sharp, like I just handed him something fragile he didn’t expect. Before he can speak, I force myself to finish. “You didn’t misread tonight.”
Hope flickers across his face and I turn to stare out the window, unable to look at him when I say the next pat. “But none of it can matter.”
“Why do you get to decide that?” he asks softly.
“Because the consequences fall on me, not you. I’m the one who gets torn apart online. I’m the one accused of sleeping my way into my job. I’m the one called manipulative for standing next to power. You get forgiven. I get fired.”
He doesn’t argue, and that hurts almost as much as everything else because he knows it’s true. When he finally speaks, it’s barely a breath. “It feels like you’re walking away from me.”
“I’m not walking away from you,” I whisper. “I’m walking away from a version of my life that could cost me the future I worked for.”
“And what about the future you want?” His voice is raw velvet, torn at the edges. “Does that not matter at all?”
It does. God, it does. Wanting him is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever felt. “I can’t afford to want anything I can’t keep,” I say, the words tearing out of me, “not even you.”
The sentence hangs between us like a fracture and a verdict. Kyle drags a hand over his face, leaning back against the seat, staring up like he needs the ceiling to hold him together. “So that’s it? We just sit here and pretend we didn’t break open in front of each other tonight?”
My chest caves so sharply I press a hand there, like I can hold the pieces still. “Please don’t make me say it again.”
He doesn’t answer, just turns his head toward the window, jaw tight, throat working like he’s swallowing glass.
The rest of the ride is unbearably full of everything we’re not saying. The car slows in front of my building, and the driver steps out to open the door. This is the last moment before I walk away from him again.
I reach for the handle, but his voice stops me.
“Alycia, if this is where you walk away… just know I’m not done.” His tone is quiet, steady, heartbreakingly sure. “I’m giving you space, but this is not goodbye.”
A tremor rolls through me so violently that I have to shut my eyes. I step out of the car before the truth can spill out.
The cold hits my bare shoulders like a reprimand. The door thunks shut behind me, sealing him inside that dim, quiet space where I left every version of the truth I was too afraid to say out loud.
My legs move before my brain catches up. One step, then another toward the glass doors of my building, the click of my heels too loud in the sleeping street. Neon from the corner bar washes the concrete in faded color, stretching my shadow into something long and thin and not quite mine.
I can feel him without turning around—the soft thud of the car door, then the sound of footsteps behind me. Not rushed or demanding, but close enough to guard the space, far enough not to crowd it. Kyle is walking me home without saying one word.
My fingers curl around the cool metal handle of the lobby door.
For one wild second, I almost look back.
If I do, I’ll take it all back. I’ll walk back to the car with him, climb into his life, and into a future I don’t get to have.
I yank the door open and slip inside before my resolve can disintegrate on the curb.
The quiet hits harder than the cold. The security guard is gone for the night.
The air smells faintly of lemon cleaner and old carpet—familiar, safe, suddenly suffocating.
My hands shake as I jab the elevator button harder than necessary.
Through the glass, I see his reflection—just a blur of broad shoulders and worry—has hand grasping the door tightly in his.
He must have caught it before it shut, lingering beneath the awning to make sure I made it safely inside.
When he sees me reach the elevator, he nods once and turns away, heading through the doors and toward the stairwell near the entrance. The door swings shut behind him just as the elevator arrives with a soft ding.
“I did the right thing,” I whisper as I step inside, like saying it out loud might convince my body to believe it.
I press my floor and rest my forehead on the cool metal of the elevator doors for the span of a breath that wobbles in and out of my lungs.
My mascara is probably smearing against the stainless steel, one more mess to clean up later.
My eyes focus on the numbers, watching them glow one by one as I rise away from the version of myself who let him hold her hand in a ballroom like it was the safest place in the world.
That girl was reckless and open in ways I can’t afford to be.
The doors slide open to my floor. The hallway stretches ahead in muted light—cream walls, gray carpet, the low hum of someone’s TV bleeding through a door. Normal. Safe. A life I clawed my way into.