Chapter 13 #3
"Because you are the only thing I’ve ever wanted that I can't turn into a task.
" The words scrape out of me like something being pulled through a space too small for it.
"And the wanting has not stopped because you told me to leave.
It has not stopped because you were right to tell me to leave.
It got worse. Every day I stayed away, it got worse.
And when Priest called this morning and told me someone was coming for you, the wanting and the fury became the same thing and I stopped being able to tell them apart. "
She pulls my mouth back to hers. The kiss this time is slower and more brutal, a deliberate taking that has none of the curiosity of the first time or the tenderness of the second.
This is the third time, and the third time is built on wreckage.
Her teeth find my lip again. My hands grip hard enough to bruise. The counter digs into her thighs.
My hand slides under the sweatshirt and finds bare skin. Nothing else. The discovery rearranges every priority I walked in here with, and I pull her closer, my mouth on her neck, her jaw, the hollow below her ear where I can feel her heartbeat against my lips.
Her hand comes up and lands flat on my chest.
The pressure is firm.
I stop.
Neither of us moves.
Her breathing is ragged. Her hand is still flat on my chest, and I can feel the warmth of her palm through my shirt. That warmth tells me everything her words are about to refuse.
"No," she says.
The word is quiet. The word is absolute.
I step back. The distance that opens between us is less than a foot, and the foot holds more weight than the argument that preceded it.
She stays on the counter. The sweatshirt is still rucked up where my hand pushed it.
She doesn't fix it. She sits there with my blood on her lip and her hand still raised in the space where my chest was, and her expression isn't rejection.
It is the face of a woman making a choice that is costing her something she won't let me see the full price of.
"I want you to hear what I'm about to say." Her voice is low and controlled and the control is taking everything she has. "I want you. I’ve wanted you every day since I told you to leave. The wanting has not stopped and it isn’t going to stop and I’m done pretending that my body does not remember every single thing yours did to it. "
She pauses. The silence is deliberate.
"But wanting you isn’t the same as trusting you.
And I’ve spent every day since you left becoming someone who does not hand over access to a man who has not earned it back.
" Her eyes hold mine. "You managed me. You lied to me.
You made decisions about my safety and my information and my life without my consent, and the fact that you did it to protect me does not change the shape of what you did.
Arthur protects me too. Arthur also decides what I can handle. "
"I'm not Arthur."
"Then stop acting like him." She slides off the counter.
Her bare feet hit the hardwood. "Earn my trust back.
Not with a crisis. Not with containment.
Not by showing up when something goes wrong and proving you're good at fixing things.
I already know you're good at fixing things.
What I don't know is whether you can stand next to me and let me fix them myself. "
The redirect tries to fire. It reaches for the operational framing, the tactical response, the pivot to next steps and threat assessment.
The redirect finds nothing to grab. The woman in front of me just stripped every professional wrapper off the conversation and left me standing in her kitchen with nothing between us except the truth of what she said.
The silence stretches. She lets it.
"The people who leaked the documents are still in the field," I say. "The containment bought time. It didn't buy safety."
"I know." She crosses her arms. "I was handling this before you showed up. I will handle it after you're gone."
The dismissal is clean and final, delivered without cruelty but without mercy. Pure Meagan.
I grab my jacket off the kitchen floor. The legal pad on the counter has been pushed to the side. The laptop screen still shows the FinanceWire piece.
She waits at the door barefoot, shoulders squared, and the space between us holds the weight of everything that almost happened and everything she chose to refuse.
"Kincaid." Her voice catches me at the threshold. I turn. Her expression has not softened. If anything, the composure has hardened into something that looks like the early stages of armor being rebuilt from inside.
"When you figure out how to be honest without a crisis forcing it out of you, you know where I live."
I step through the door. She closes it behind me, and the deadbolt engages with the solid sound of hardware I chose specifically because it would hold against a forced entry.
I stand in the hallway and let the quiet settle.
She told me to earn it. She told me how. She told me where she'd be when I figured it out.
A woman who wanted me gone forever wouldn't have left me an opening... and that's all I need.