15. Talia #2
The call ends with promises to regroup later, but by then my hands are cold, and my head is too clear. Somewhere behind me, Sloane is walking Marcus through the legal response while Graham says my name, but I'm already moving.
“Talia,” Sloane calls.
I don’t stop.
The boardroom is two corridors away from Marcus's office, tucked into the executive wing behind a set of frosted glass doors that have witnessed more difficult conversations than I care to imagine.
I don't storm there, not at first. I walk.
Calmly. Deliberately. The same measured stride that has carried me through client crises, impossible deadlines, and six years of mornings when there was no choice but to keep going because Flynn still needed breakfast.
Inside the boardroom, Declan is at the far end of the table with Adrian and two board members I’ve only met once. Sloane has followed me. I feel her behind me before she says anything.
“Talia,” she says softly. “Give me two minutes.”
I almost do, then I hear one of the board members through the partially open door.
“We need to consider whether Ms. Wynn’s continued visibility creates additional exposure.”
The sentence is polished, reasonable, and carefully measured. Under any other circumstances, I might even have agreed with it. Instead, I push the door open, and every head in the room turns toward me.
Declan is the first to stand. His face shifts the moment he sees me, surprise cutting through whatever argument had been happening before I walked in.
"Talia."
I hate the relief I feel hearing my name in Declan's voice.
"Additional exposure?" I ask.
The board member who spoke has the good sense to look uncomfortable. Adrian sets his coffee down slowly, his expression unreadable.
"Talia," one of the directors begins, "this discussion wasn't—"
"About me?" I finish. "Interesting. Because it sounded exactly like it was."
For a heartbeat, no one speaks.
Then footsteps approach from the hallway. Marcus appears in the doorway, Sloane just behind him. His gaze takes in the room in a single sweep before settling on me.
"Everyone out."
No one argues. That’s the thing about Marcus. He rarely raises his voice, and he almost never repeats himself. He doesn't have to.
The board members gather their papers in silence. Adrian studies me for a moment longer before picking up his coffee and following them into the hall. Sloane waits outside the open door, quietly directing the last of the board members toward the elevators before pulling the door closed behind them.
The room falls silent, and Declan doesn't move toward me.
Smart man.
“I just saw the memo,” he says.
“Congratulations.”
His jaw tightens. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend I’m on the other side of this.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Aren’t you?”
“No.”
"My firm's answering questions because of me. The partners are scrambling to protect the merger, and my son's school photo is online beside a forged memo that makes it look as though I sold my integrity to protect your family secrets."
“I know.”
“You know?” My voice rises despite every attempt to control it. “Do you? Because from where I’m standing, everyone keeps using words like exposure and optics and response strategy, and somehow my life has become a problem Crossridge needs to manage.”
His expression changes, but I’m too furious to make room for whatever pain crosses his face.
“I’m trying to fix it,” he says.
Something inside me gives way. Maybe it's because he means every word. Maybe it's because part of me wants to believe he can fix this. Or maybe it's because I'm so tired of everyone assuming the solution to my life belongs in someone else's hands.
“Maybe I don’t want to be fixed.”
The words hang between us, heavy enough to steal the air from the room. Declan goes completely still, and only then do I realize my hands are trembling. Not violently, but enough that I curl them into fists before he can notice.
His voice, when it comes, is careful. “I don’t think you’re broken.”
“No. You just think this can be solved if you find the right person to blame, the right statement to issue, the right strategy to contain the damage.”
“I think someone is attacking you.”
“I know someone is attacking me.”
“Then let me help.”
The anger shifts then, becoming something hotter and far more dangerous because beneath it is everything I don’t want to admit.
The airplane on my kitchen table. Flynn’s smile.
Declan’s unsigned gift. His hand at my wrist in the hallway the other day.
The way he keeps showing up carefully, respectfully, almost tenderly, until resisting him feels less like protecting myself and more like tearing open the same wound every day.
“You don’t get it,” I say, but my voice is quieter now.
“Then tell me.”
“You’re the reason they can hurt me like this.”
He absorbs that without flinching, and I almost wish he would.
“You made me the scandal, Declan.”
His eyes hold mine, and the look in them is not anger. It’s devastation.
“I’m trying to fix it.”
His voice is softer this time, and it catches me off guard. It's too close to the man who quietly left an airplane kit on my porch without asking for thanks, without asking for anything at all.
“Maybe I don’t want to be fixed,” I say again.
This time, it doesn’t sound like fury. It sounds like the truth I’m most afraid of.
Because if I let him fix this, if I let him stand beside me, if I let myself believe he can be part of the life I built instead of the thing that threatens it, then I’ll have to admit the problem was never only the scandal.
It was how badly I wanted him there before the world forced the question.
Declan takes one step closer, then stops himself. The restraint hurts more than if he had crossed the room.
“Talia.”
My name in his mouth almost undoes me.
Outside the boardroom, someone’s phone begins ringing.
Beyond the glass and steel and careful corporate silence, cameras wait downstairs for another piece of me to turn into content.
I wipe at my cheek before I can tell whether the tear has fallen.
Then I turn and walk out before he can see the rest.