Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
He was pretending.
And the pretending was worse than the closed door. Because the closed door at least acknowledged that something had happened. This silence meant nothing happened. Nothing has changed. You are still my ward and I am still your guardian and this morning is like every other morning.
Fine. He wanted to erase last night. She'd make that impossible.
"Morning." She kept her voice light.
"Good morning."
Two words. Eyes still on the tablet. Voice perfectly level.
She went to the coffee machine. Biscuit padded after her and collapsed in his usual spot by the kitchen island, the one he'd claimed two years ago and apparently still considered his, and the solid thump of his body hitting the floor was the loudest sound in the room.
"He remembers his spot." She glanced at Biscuit. "That's sweet."
Nothing.
"I bet you didn't even move his bowl."
He swiped the tablet screen. "I had no reason to."
Four words. Progress.
She poured her coffee. Added too much milk, the same drowning ratio she'd used since she was sixteen, the same one that had made him shake his head once over his laptop and tell her, without glancing up: That isn't coffee anymore, Mia, that's a warm glass of milk that saw coffee from across the room. She'd laughed so hard she'd spilled it on his desk, and he'd sighed, and she'd mopped it up with her sleeve, and his mouth had twitched, and she'd spent the next three hours replaying that twitch in her head.
She brought her mug to the dining table and sat down across from him.
His eyes lifted. Finally.
And there it was. The crack behind the composure. She'd been chasing that fracture since she was sixteen, that half-second where the mask slipped and the man underneath the control was visible, and he wasn't calm, and he wasn't indifferent, and the air between them wasn't the same air.
He killed it. He was Alexei Almazov, and killing feelings was his second language.
"I've arranged a meeting with Artem." His voice was clipped, professional. "Regarding the rehabilitation program. If you're serious about the gap year—"
"I'm serious about a lot of things."
She held his gaze. She hadn't meant it to come out loaded, pointed, a shot fired across the breakfast table, but her mouth had always been faster than her brain, and the tightening at the corners of his eyes told her the bullet had hit.
"The program operates out of a clinic adjacent to Ace Royale," he continued, treating her words like they hadn't been spoken. "You'd be working with addictions counselors. The hours are structured. You'd report to Dr. Vasquez."
"Great."
"Artem will explain the confidentiality requirements."
"Sounds good."
"And you'll need to sign a—"
"Alexei."
He stopped.
She set her mug down. Her hands weren't shaking, which surprised her, because her pulse was hammering so hard she could feel it in her wrists.
"Are we going to talk about it?"
His expression didn't change. "About what?"
And the about what hit her like a slap, because it was so perfectly delivered, so flawlessly calibrated to sound like genuine confusion, that if she hadn't been there last night, if she hadn't felt his mouth on hers and his hands in her hair and his heart hammering through his chest, she might have believed it.
"You know what."
"I don't."
"You kissed me."
The words dropped into the room like a grenade. Biscuit's ears perked up. The coffee machine hummed. Somewhere outside, a gull screamed.
His face was stone. "I think you're remembering incorrectly."
Mia's temper, which she'd been holding on a very short leash since she walked in, snapped.
"I'm remembering incorrectly?" She stood up. The chair scraped the marble. "You had your hands on my face. You put your fingers in my hair. You kissed me until neither of us could breathe, and then you told me it shouldn't have happened and you walked away, and now you're sitting here with your tablet and your suit telling me I'm remembering incorrectly?"
"Sit down, Mia."
"No."
"Sit. Down."
"Make me."
The air cracked.
He stood up. Not fast. Alexei never moved fast. He moved without hurry, and speed was irrelevant, and he was around the table and in front of her before she had time to take a full inhale. Close enough that she could smell the cologne. Close enough that the memory of last night slammed into her so hard her knees almost buckled.
"You are eighteen years old." His voice was a wound held together with wire. "I am your guardian. I have been responsible for you since you were sixteen. Your father asked me to protect you, and I gave him my word, and I won't—"
"My father asked you to take care of me," she corrected, and her voice was shaking now, because the anger had burned through the bravado and what was underneath was the raw thing, the real thing, the thing she'd carried for two years across a continent. "He didn't ask you to pretend I don't exist. He didn't ask you to send me to a school I didn't choose so you could avoid me for two years. And he didn't ask you to kiss me like that and then act like it was nothing."