“I know that!” The frustration cracked through, louder now, sharper. “That’s exactly the problem!”
“Is it?” The question wasn’t challenging. It was… curious.
“Yes,” I spit out. “It is. Because if this becomes something real?—”
Too late.
The words were already there.
His eyes sharpened. A fire flashing against the pale blue of his gaze.
“If it becomes real,” he repeated.
My pulse slammed. “I didn’t say?—”
“You did.”
My skin pricked, panic flickering just under the surface as I shook my head, backing up half a step like distance might give me room to recover. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then say what you meant.”
I opened my mouth. Because the truth was sitting right there, pressing up against everything I’d built to keep it contained. But I didn’t have a clean version of it. Didn’t have a way to spin it into something safe.
“If this is real,” I forced out finally, the words stripped down in a way that made my stomach twist, “I lose control of everything.”
Ugly.
Unpolished.
Real.
“And if it isn’t,” he growled, “I walk.”
The words hit with harsh impact. Immediate. Solid.
I blinked, thrown off balance in a way I hadn’t anticipated, my breath catching as the weight of that settled in.
“You don’t get to decide that this means something because it’s easy.”
“It’s not easier,” I snapped, the words coming faster now, sharper, my control slipping in ways I couldn’t stop. “This is the opposite of easy. This is everything I can’t afford. My job, my reputation—if this gets out, if this turns into something people can point at and say I didn’t earn my place?—”
“It already is.” The interruption cut clean.
I froze.
“They already say it,” he continued, quieter now, but no less certain. “They already think it.”
My throat tightened. “That’s not?—”
“It is.”
I shook my head, backing away another step, the pressure building too fast, too much. “This could destroy both of us,” I groaned.
“You’re scared.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t judgment.
“Of course I’m scared,” I shot back, the words breaking loose before I could stop them. “I just slept with the one person I’m supposed to be managing professionally. The one person whose entire career I’m supposed to be protecting. The one person who could take everything I’ve built and turn it into a joke if this goes wrong—in public, no less. With our boss in the next room.”
“I wouldn’t.”