Chapter 8 #2
I straightened slightly out of my slouch and fixed him with a steady look. “What’s going on, Stellan?”
“Nothing.” Too sharp, too quick.
“You’re a poor liar.”
He shot me a humorless smile. “That’s not what you thought the first time we met.”
Okay, well, ouch. But also, this wasn’t him. He wasn’t blasé about his past. If anything, he carried it like a mark of shame. So what the hell was this? Was he trying to push me away? Sure felt like it.
I breathed through the sting and held his gaze. “But it wasn’t all lies then, was it? You said so yourself.”
“Maybe it was,” he said, but his eyes didn’t sell it.
For a moment, I let the room settle around me—traces of him scattered all over, from a small stack of books on the nightstand to a collection of photos on the wall, different sizes and shapes behind seamless glass, neatly arranged by someone who had an instinctive eye for it. Three guesses as to who.
I let my attention return to him and slowly shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”
Something soft and strange pulled on his mouth, then his expression smoothed back out into a blank mask. “How absolutely nice for you.”
“Stop being an asshole.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” I paused. “Come on, I know you’ve got a better stinger.”
He stayed silent, glaring down at the book in his lap. Okay.
I pushed off the wall and took a step closer—careful not to crowd him, but too close for him to fully ignore me.
“Look,” I said, quieter now, ribs squeezing tight.
“I can take a hint, okay? But from yesterday to this feels like whiplash. Like something happened. I need you to give me something here.”
His chin tipped up as if about to feed me some polished line of bullshit. Then he stopped, blinked. And let his shoulders drop. “Yeah,” he said softly, “maybe. But I can’t. And I don’t want to lie.”
Honest, finally. It carved right through whatever irritation I’d gathered.
My chest loosened by a fraction. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, rubbing a thumb along the edge of the book. Tired eyes, curls messy like he’d stepped out of the shower and hadn’t bothered with them after.
“Seriously, Stellan.” I took another half step toward him. “Is there something I should know?”
He blew out a breath and finally shut the book, gaze lifting to mine. “Remember how I said I wasn’t working alone?” he asked. “When I set you up.”
It wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d steeled myself for some version of changed my mind, sorry, it’s too much. My stomach swooped with a strange blend of relief and nausea. “I do.”
“Well.” He swallowed and didn’t look away. “They saw me with you. Yesterday.”
So… fuck. Right, okay. Information first. Then plan.
Slowly, carefully, I sat down on the very edge of the bed. The mattress gave slightly under me, and a stupid part of me flashed to how I was in Stellan’s room, on his bed, how the carefully sorted compartments of my life were starting to collapse into each other. I inhaled through the dizzy spell.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I can’t.” He held himself as if he was hurting down to the bone. “I signed things—NDA, all of that. They reminded me of exactly what I signed.”
“They’ll never know you told me.” It came out like a promise, my voice too low and serious for this sunlit, colorful space.
He seemed to hesitate, half a foot across some kind of mental threshold.
“Hey.” I leaned in just a little. “You’re not the only one who can keep secrets, all right? Look at me. Look at my whole fucking life. So let’s figure this out together.”
“Walking away would be smarter,” he told me. Only he didn’t move, didn’t truly seem to believe the words himself. Who was he trying to protect—himself? Or me?
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “But if this were still just the thing we agreed on in my apartment, I wouldn’t be here.”
He went still at that, eyes on me.
“And I think you know it,” I said, quieter, while my heart beat a little too hard behind my ribs. “Come on, Stellan. What do they want?”
With a deep breath, he twisted to reach for his phone on the nightstand. He unlocked it, pulled something up, and handed it over.
An email.
Corporate language, cool as ice, that reminded Stellan of confidentiality obligations, of a prior breach in conduct, of how they had the means to make him suffer, all draped in legal terms. An agency that dealt in shades of gray, clearly. And there, half-buried in the whole big pile of garbage:
You already compromised your position once over him. Do not repeat that error by maintaining further contact.
He’d… compromised his position? Over someone.
Me?
“I’d tried to stop it,” that’s what he’d said. “I don’t work for them anymore.”
Air hissed thin into my lungs. I looked up at him. “What does that mean—you compromised your position?”
He looked at me, tired and a little raw. “That I pushed back.”
“Against what?”
“Handing over those pictures of you. They’d already sent them, and I told them it wasn’t right.” He inhaled. “Got fired over it.”
Wow. That—shit. Something in me snapped loose.
Because it fit. It fit. All of it, slotting straight into place like a puzzle I’d been building in pieces: Chicago and the way he’d pulled back when I got recognized, how he’d claimed to have tried, how he’d quit or maybe gotten fired, how none of it was a lie. Not at all.
God. He really had tried.
The fight went out of me in one hard rush, like a breath punched from my lungs. Christ. I’d come here half-braced to be left, and he’d been carrying this instead.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, too quiet.
“I told you what I could.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that seemed more helpless than indifferent, gaze sliding away. “Anyway, I doubt you’d have believed me.”
Maybe. But now I did.
“I believe you.” I let the phone drop to the bed and leaned forward, waiting until he met my eyes. “They’re not the only ones with means, you know? I have connections, too. Ways.”
I did—nothing fully formed, hardly even the outline of a plan with my brain buzzing like an anthill, but if they thought Stellan was easy pickings? Think again.
He gave a small shake of his head. “Maybe not. But they might still have evidence.”
I frowned. “Against you?”
“No.” He said it like something obvious, like I’d been slightly silly to even ask. “Against you.”
That—oh. A foster kid who’d grown up protecting his own, and suddenly, I was part of that. Not… Not like a claim. Not like family, romance, love. Just… in his inner circle. Someone he would fight for.
And maybe he was right, maybe he had a point, maybe they’d kept copies even if Talia had signed a document that promised full erasure. But that would still be true in ten minutes. Stellan, here in front of me, felt more urgent. Eyes more green than blue in this light, hair an unplanned mess.
God. I hadn’t lost him yet.
“Can I kiss you?” I asked.
Warmth flashed over his face, mouth parting on a breath. “That’s not a solution.”
“No.” I reached out, fingers against the curve of his jaw. “Solutions are for later. I just want…”
I didn’t finish. Didn’t have to, because the way he leaned into my touch felt like an answer.
I got both knees onto the bed, pushed into his space, and kissed him.
Hot, immediate—relief flaring sharp, a finally I’d carried in the marrow of my bones since those stolen seconds outside the fitting room.
Catharsis, too, maybe, after an ugly moment of thinking I’d lost this earlier than I’d known to expect.
Stellan made a small noise into my mouth, then grabbed the front of my sweater and pulled me closer. The book thumped off the bed. Good riddance.
I got a hand behind his head, tangled my fingers in his sun-warmed hair while he shoved at the back of my sweater. “Matt,” he said against my mouth, and I broke our kiss just long enough to drag his tee over his head. He yanked at mine, clumsy, and then we were shirtless and kissing again.
Fragile.
The word hooked a single claw into my skin—fragile. Like this could vanish if I stopped touching him, if I paused to think. So I didn’t. Shoved him back into the pillow and kissed a wet path down his throat, over his collarbone, my hands framing his ribs. He hissed a breath. “Matt.”
“Is that a question?” I asked, and his laugh came out a little hoarse.
“More like a complaint.”
“Why?” I pressed a grin against his stomach, then got his jeans open and halfway down his thighs while he shifted under me. “You got a problem with my name?”
He raised his head a little, just enough to look at me. “Not if you put your mouth where your hands are.”
I bit my cheek against another grin. “I don’t generally take orders.”
His smile flashed sweet like sugar. “Please?”
“That’s more like it.” I got a hand around his cock, heavy already.
He stifled something that might have been praise or a curse, and I kissed the inside of his thigh, up, until my nose brushed his dick.
I turned my head. A few licks, enough to feel him jerk and taste a hint of salt on my tongue.
Not bad. Kind of sexy, and I wasn’t sure if it was the idea in general or him and the way he watched me, hot and focused.
My head buzzed with it, like the high after a goal, the moment too full, too immediate. Like something inside me might crack.
So I curled my tongue around the tip, then pulled back for a long, serious nod at his cock. “I’ll be back.”
“What the—” Stellan’s words, half-laughing, cut off when I moved back up his body and kissed him hard enough to shut him up.
“Sorry,” I muttered against his mouth. “I want to. But not today, when it’s already like… After all this. You know?”
Gibberish. But maybe Stellan got it, because he scratched light fingers through the short hair at the nape of my neck. “Yeah, no. Plus…” He nipped at my lower lip. “My brother’s outside.”
Right.
“Do you trust him?” I asked, and Stellan went briefly serious, voice heavy.
“With my life.”
That was the vibe I’d sensed.