“I should go,” she said.
“Eliza-”
“Don’t,” she said, not unkindly. “Let’s just… get through tomorrow.”
She left without looking back.
I spent the next hour staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, replaying every second in reverse. The violence of it, the need. The way she’d looked at me when she came, like maybe, for half a second, she’d let me in.
My phone buzzed, I expected another panicked update from the Singapore team, or a bland status report from one of the fixers. Instead, it was a photo, taken from our office, showing the two of us together on her desk. Below it, a single line of text:
You’re not as subtle as you think, Valor.
My heart stopped, then hammered harder. Someone knew.
Not just about the logs, or the pending disaster in my pipeline. Someone knew about her.
I scrolled back through the photo, zooming in until the pixels blurred. It was me, pinning her to her desk, obviously. I’d built my life on reading between the lines. This was a threat.
I thought of Eliza, alone in her room, the locked door between us. I wanted to tell her, warn her, but I knew she’d never forgive me for implying she couldn’t take care of herself.
I closed my eyes and listened for footsteps in the hall, expecting trouble from any direction. But the hotel was silent, and for the first time since college, I felt something very much like fear.
Not for myself. For her.
It was a strange thing, to realize you’d failed to protect someone you’d promised yourself not to hurt.
And that it might be too late.
Chapter Seventeen
Eliza
The universe had a sick sense of humor. I wanted him, but I also knew I was being stupid to keep doing this.
So when I woke up the next morning, I swore to myself that there would be no more sex with Gabriel.
There was a knock at Gabriel’s door and I considered peeking in. But a moment later, he spoke to me through the door. “I ordered in breakfast.”
I was rewriting our last twenty-four hours in my head, layering in things I wished I’d said, things I wished he’d said, positions I wished we’d tried. Instead, I opened the door and joined him. The spread was impressive, and he offered me an omelet that looked and smelled amazing.
If he noticed the way I watched his hands, he didn’t say. But he noticed. Gabriel never missed anything.
He finally turned, giving me the full weight of that predator gaze as he took a drink of orange juice. "You’re not actually updating projections," he said, low and matter-of-fact."You’ve run the numbers five times already. What are you stalling on?"
I took a bite, buying time. "Just because you can do math in your head doesn’t mean the rest of us are robots. Some of us enjoy double-checking before we risk our jobs on a decimal point."
"Some of us don’t have to," he shot back, but softer. Like he was inviting me to take the bait.
I wanted to ignore him, but I also wanted to peel off his shirt with my teeth and make him beg. Complicated.
"You’re in a mood," I said, affecting total boredom. "Can’t tell if it’s brooding or self-satisfied."
"Both. I’m brooding about being self-satisfied." His lips curved, almost imperceptible, like he was daring me to keep playing. "You haven’t said a word about last night, Eliza."
He pronounced it with the faintest sibilant, the way my mother did when she was angry with me. "Why would I?" I asked, enjoying the fluffy egg and the flavor of tomatoes and avocado.
He didn’t move, just waited. The air between us turned viscous. I felt my pulse in my teeth.