6. Chapter 6
Maddie
Iwalked into the service corridor like a woman carrying something breakable and dangerous in both hands, the thing threatening to shatter was somewhere under my ribs.
Fluorescent light flattened everything it touched—bare concrete walls, black scuffs on the rubber floor, the industrial metal shelving shoved against one side—and still I could see only purple light on champagne silk, his hand in another woman’s hair, and the slow drag of his mouth up a throat that had never once had to ask whether it belonged in his world.
I did not run.
That mattered to me for reasons I couldn’t have explained without sounding pathetic. But it mattered. My pace remained even. My chin stayed level.
Behind the walls, Obsidian went on breathing.
Bass seeped through concrete in a low pulse.
Somebody laughed somewhere farther back near the prep station.
Ice clattered in a service sink. The ordinary sounds of shift work kept happening with a kind of insult built into them, as if the whole building had looked straight at my private humiliation and shrugged.
Fine.
I could shrug too.
Only my body had not yet gotten the memo.
My lungs felt too tight. My face felt hot and cold in turns.
Every few steps the image came back with fresh precision, refusing to blur the way decent memories of ugly things ought to.
The woman had been elegant in that bloodless, expensive way certain women managed—tall, silk-sheathed, neck long as a swan’s, hair pulled into that sleek blonde ponytail he’d wrapped his fist around like he had every right in the world.
French, probably. I didn’t know why my brain landed there except that everything about her had said old money, old manners, old Europe.
The sort of woman a man like Nikolay would not have to explain to his bloodline.
The sort of woman no one would ever look at and think mechanic. Waitress. Texas.
The sort of woman a prince would choose when no one was forcing his hand.
That part should not have hurt. Not after the way he had treated me.
Not after every cool look and every sharpened word and every single second he had spent acting like wanting me would be a personal failure of taste.
I ought to have felt vindicated. There, Maddie, see?
You were right. He didn’t want you. He wanted sleek and aristocratic and vampire-pale and draped in silk under club lights.
Instead, what I felt was worse.
I felt stupid.
Stupid because after he came to my room—after he stood there among my books like maybe some crack had finally opened in all that polished contempt—I had let one dangerous little thought live in me for a few hours.
Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe he wasn’t only what he’d shown me. Maybe he had actually seen me.
Well.
There was my answer, with his mouth on another woman’s throat.
His footsteps hit the corridor behind me before I reached the next turn.
Nobody else in this building moved like that.
Obsidian was full of predators, but Nikolay carried his size differently from the others.
Controlled. Heavy in a way that never stomped and never hurried, and still made the floor seem to acknowledge him.
I knew that stride already. God help me, I knew it too well.
I stopped.
Didn’t spin fast. Didn’t flinch. I just stopped walking, turned in the ugly white light, and lifted one hand between us, palm out.
“Don’t.”
He had been close enough I saw the word hit him. His mouth had already started to open. His face was set too tight, the scar by his eye pulled thin, his whole body carrying that rigid, contained strain he seemed to mistake for composure.
“Maddie—”
“Seriously, don’t.”
My voice came out low and even, exactly the way I wanted it. No shake in it. No tears. No strain. If he wanted a scene, he was going to have to perform both parts himself.
He stopped a few feet away.
Under the fluorescent lights, he looked wrong somehow.
Too formal for the corridor. Too big. Too beautiful, if I were being honest enough to hate myself for it.
His dark shirt fit him like sin with a tailor, and his hair was still perfectly neat, as if that hand hadn’t been buried in another woman’s ponytail five minutes ago.
The orderliness of him made me want to break something.
He took one step forward. “You saw—”
“I did.” I shifted. “And I should probably thank you.”
That checked him harder than the raised palm had.
I smiled without warmth. “No, really. Thank you. Because for a little while today, after you came to my room and stood there looking like maybe you’d finally realized I was a human being, I started to think I had you wrong.”
His jaw flexed.
I kept going before he could interrupt, because if I gave him room he would fill it with some careful sentence I did not want, and I was too close to wounded to survive courtesy from him.
“That was my mistake. I understand now.” I tipped my head a little. “Fully. No ambiguity left. Which is honestly a relief.”
“Maddie, listen to me.”
“No.”
That one came out flat as a blade. I saw him feel it anyway.
“You do not need to explain yourself to me,” I said. “And you sure as hell do not need to spare my feelings. I don’t have any feelings about this.”
A lie, obviously. A bad one. But I said it clean, and sometimes that counted for enough.
Something moved in his expression then. Not belief.
Not exactly. More like pain that had missed its proper door and shown up in the wrong place.
I did not trust it. Not after what I had just seen.
Not after weeks of him making his own discomfort my problem and then staring at me like I was the one who’d created the mess.
“I mean it,” I said. “You clearly want anyone but me. Message received. Loud and clear. So thank you for removing every last shred of doubt.”
“That is not what—”
I laughed once. It sounded terrible in the corridor. “Please don’t insult both of us.”
His mouth shut.
Good.
I looked at him and saw exactly what I expected to see: a man caught.
A man who had not expected me to be there.
A man who would’ve preferred his little demonstration remain unseen and was now standing under fluorescent lights being forced to account for it.
That hard set in his shoulders, that muscle working at his jaw, the tightness around his eyes—I knew embarrassment when I saw it.
I knew inconvenience. Men had a way of turning them into offense when you witnessed something they wanted hidden.
The hurt in me got very calm.
“Whatever this thing is,” I said, making a small gesture between us with my hand, “consider it finished.”
His eyes sharpened. “There is nothing finished.”
I stared at him for a second. “See, that right there? That’s exactly why I’m making this easy for you.”
I shifted my feet again. I wanted him to see how steady I was. I wanted it enough to make it true.
“You go live your life,” I said. “I’ll go live mine. You don’t owe me an explanation, an apology, a lecture, or some polished version of events where I’m supposed to pretend I misunderstood what I saw. I didn’t.”
“Maddie.” My name in his mouth was rougher now, lower. “You are misunderstanding.”
“No, I am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Something in me nearly broke at the force of how badly I wanted to believe that. I killed it on sight.
I took one small step back instead. “You had your hand in a woman’s hair and your mouth on her throat.”
His nostrils flared. “It was not—”
“It was exactly what it looked like.”
“It was not about her.”
The words landed strange between us, sharp enough to make my pulse stumble. For one stupid, dangerous second, my body reacted before my pride could stop it. Then sense returned, and I wanted to slap myself for the weakness.
I folded my arms around myself. “That may be the least flattering thing you could possibly say to her, but it doesn’t improve your case with me.”
His expression did something pained and furious at once.
Too bad.
I lifted one shoulder. “Look, I get it. I’m not what you want.
I think we established that pretty thoroughly already, but in case there was any lingering confusion, tonight really put a nice clean edge on it.
” My voice stayed maddeningly even, and I was proud of that enough to cling to it.
“So I am telling you plainly: I am done being yanked around by whatever crisis of conscience you’ve got going on. ”
“I have not been yanking you around.”
That almost made me smile for real.
“No?” I asked softly. “Then what would you call it?”
He had no answer fast enough to save himself with.
There was a whole library’s worth of hurt sitting under my breastbone by then, but I refused to hand him any of it raw. If he got anything from me tonight, it would be dignity and the sharp side of my mouth. He had earned nothing softer.
I nodded once, as if we had concluded a business matter.
“Right. So here’s the good news. I’m not going to make this hard for you.
Forget about it. Forget about me. Forget whatever weirdness has been crackling in the air every time we get near each other.
I am happy to call it a mutual lapse in judgment and move on. ”
“Maddie.”
The way he said my name that time should have done something to me. It did. I hated that. It grated on my nerves low and frayed, like he was holding on to the last thread of a rope he had already let burn through his hands.
I made myself colder.
“You don’t have to look like that,” I said. “I promise I’m not about to cry in your hallway.”
His face changed at that—not softer, exactly, but struck. I read it as guilt and hated him for making me kind enough to notice.
“I am not—”
“Uncomfortable?” I supplied. “Embarrassed? Regretting your timing?” I shook my head. “It’s fine. I said it’s fine.”
“It is not fine.”
“Well, it is for me.”
Another lie. Better delivered.