8. Talia
Talia
“Before we start, we need rules.”
Declan looks up from the laptop open on his desk, one eyebrow lifting in a way that should not be as familiar to me as it is.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“It’s eleven-thirty.”
“Then I admire your commitment to delayed warmth.”
I close the door to his office behind me, because this conversation requires privacy, even if every instinct I have objects to being alone with him in a room that still smells faintly of coffee, expensive leather, and him.
The office is too much like Declan. Warm where it should be intimidating.
Elegant without feeling sterile. Books on one wall, a conference table near the windows, a desk that looks used instead of staged for a magazine spread.
There is a navy jacket thrown over the back of one chair and a half-finished cup of coffee near a stack of integration notes.
Sunlight cuts across the floor in long, bright lines, and the city moves below the windows as if the rest of the world has not developed a personal interest in complicating my life.
I remain standing beside the conference table. Sitting would imply this is a meeting, and it isn't.
Declan notices, of course. His gaze moves from the chair across from him to me, then back again, and his mouth softens into the beginning of a smile that he wisely does not let fully form.
“Rules,” he says.
“Yes.”
“For the project or for me?”
“That depends on how difficult you plan to be.”
“Historically?”
“Declan.”
The humor fades, not entirely, but enough. That’s something I am learning about him now. He lets charm arrive first because charm is easier than honesty. But when the moment requires something real, he becomes quieter. More focused.
More dangerous, because I know now that the quiet is not emptiness. It’s everything he has not decided whether to say.
He leans back in his chair. “All right. Tell me the rules.”
I grip the folder in my hand a little tighter before setting it on the edge of his desk between us. The distance should feel safer than it does.
“First, the task force remains professional at all times.”
“Reasonable.”
“No personal conversations during work sessions.”
His expression changes by a fraction. “We agreed to that.”
“You agreed to not force personal conversations during work sessions. I am clarifying the boundary.”
“Of course you are.”
The words carry a mild edge. Not sharp enough to cut, but sharp enough to remind me that agreement does not mean acceptance. I ignore it.
“Second, Flynn’s life remains private.”
Declan goes still. Not dramatically and not in a way anyone else might notice if they were here. But I notice, because the last week has made me fluent in the small changes he thinks he hides.
“My son,” he says quietly, “is not a footnote.”
The words hit low in my chest, where the guilt already lives.
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You said his life remains private.”
“Yes.”
“From me?”
“No.” I force the word out carefully, because this is where the ground becomes dangerous. “From Crossridge. From Ashcroft. From anyone who might think a six-year-old child is an interesting piece of leverage.”
His jaw tightens, and for a second, I see the argument forming. The hurt. The old accusation. The instinct to remind me that I made privacy a priority of Flynn’s entire life without giving Declan a vote. Then he swallows it.
“All right,” he says.
The answer comes too easily. That should reassure me.
“Declan.”
“What?”
“I need you to understand what I’m saying.”
“I do understand.”
“No, you hear me. That’s not the same thing.”
His eyes lift to mine, and the room seems to narrow around the look he gives me.
Not angry. Not exactly. But tired in a way that makes him look less like the man who walks into rooms and bends them around his mood, and more like a man who has not slept well since a toy plane skittered across a café floor.
“I understand that Flynn’s privacy matters,” he says. “I understand that Julian looking for pressure points makes this more dangerous than either of us would like. And I understand that every time I say my son, you hear a threat even when I don’t mean it as one.”
My throat tightens.
“I don’t hear it as a threat.”
“You hear it as something that could become one.”
I look away first. That should bother me more than it does.
A week ago, I had spent years believing distance had kept my life steady. Now Declan Ward is sitting four feet away from me, naming my fears with irritating precision, and part of me wants to be angry with him for understanding so much after knowing so little.
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
Silence stretches between us. Outside his office, a phone rings. Someone speaks softly near Carl’s desk. The ordinary sounds of Crossridge continue on the other side of the door, which somehow makes the quiet inside the room feel more intimate than I want it to.
Declan rises, and my spine straightens automatically. The reaction is small, instinctive, and entirely impossible to hide from a man who seems determined to notice everything.
Something painful crosses his face before he smooths it away.
“I’m not coming closer,” he says.
The fact that he understands why he needs to say it almost undoes me.
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Liar.”
The word is soft. Almost gentle. It’s worse than if it had been cruel.
I look back at him. “Third rule.”
His mouth curves faintly. “There are more?”
“Yes.”
“Of course there are.”
“You do not contact Flynn directly.”
Whatever faint trace of humor remained disappears.
“No.”
I expected resistance. I still hate the cold flash of panic that moves through me when I hear it.
“No?” I repeat.
“No,” he says, and there is iron beneath the word now.
“I will agree to privacy. I will agree not to use work to force conversations you aren’t ready to have.
I will agree not to turn Flynn into gossip, leverage, or a complication for either of our companies.
But I am not agreeing to be permanently managed out of his life by a list of rules written entirely by you. ”
My hands curl into fists before I can stop them.
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I am protecting him.”
“So am I.”
The words strike harder than they should.
So am I.
He says them as if he has the right, and he does. I hate this. That is the truth I have been walking around since the moment he looked at Flynn and saw himself staring back.
I breathe in slowly. “You met him two days ago.”
“I found out about him two days ago. There’s a difference.”
My mouth closes. Score one for the billionaire with emotional damage and irritatingly precise language. He steps away from his desk but stops near the window, keeping distance between us. I hate that I notice. I hate more that I appreciate it.
“I am not asking to show up at his school,” he says. “I am not asking to knock on your door tonight and rearrange his bedtime routine. I’m not asking you to introduce me as anything.”
The word anything cracks slightly at the edges, and my chest tightens.
“I’m asking you not to make decisions about what I’m allowed to become to him before I’ve had a chance to prove who I am now.”
His voice is controlled, but control is not the same as calm.
I can hear the strain beneath it, the effort it costs him not to push harder.
And for the first time, I see the fear underneath his anger.
He’s not only afraid of what he missed; he’s afraid I will make sure he keeps missing it. The realization lands quietly.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit.
He stills. It's not much of a confession, but it feels enormous leaving my mouth.
“I know how to manage schedules,” I continue. “I know how to build contingencies and keep Flynn steady. I know how to answer his questions in ways that don’t hurt him. But I don’t know how to take six years of his life and suddenly make space for a man he doesn’t know.”
Declan's expression changes. Not with victory or even relief, but with something quieter that unsettles me far more than either of those things would have.
“You don’t have to know today,” he says.
I want that to make me feel better, and it almost does. Then I remember what drew me to him in the first place and nearly broke my heart afterward: Declan has always had a way of making impossible things feel simple.
“That sounds reasonable,” I say.
“It is reasonable.”
“That’s what worries me.”
His mouth moves, almost a smile, but he stops himself. “I’m trying here, Talia.”
“I know.”
The answer surprises both of us. Because I do know, but it doesn’t erase the rest. I look down at the folder on the desk, the rules I wrote in crisp bullet points last night while pretending control could be achieved through formatting.
Professional boundaries. Privacy. No direct contact without mutual agreement. No unscheduled visits. No discussing paternity with anyone until Flynn's emotional readiness is assessed.
I had typed every line with steady hands. Reading them now, I can see what they really are. A plan, yes. But also a wall.
Declan looks at the folder too.
“Did you print copies?”
“Yes.”
“Efficient.”
“Necessary.”
“Your favorite defense.”
I lift my eyes. “And yours is humor.”
“Usually.”
“Is it working?”
“No.”
The honesty disarms me. It would be easier if he were charming. Easier if he teased too much, pushed too hard, made himself into the version of Declan I could argue with cleanly.
Instead, he stands across the room with his hands in his pockets, sunlight cutting across one shoulder, looking nothing like the man I left in that hotel room and far too much like the man I should have called six weeks later.
I hate that thought, and I hate that it has become harder to hate him.
“Fourth rule,” I say, because the alternative is silence, and silence feels dangerous.
His brows lift. “I was hoping we were finished.”
“You don’t make promises to Flynn you can’t keep.”
That sobers him completely. “I won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No.” My voice sharpens before I can stop it. “You know what you intend. That’s not the same thing.”