Page 108 of Never After Us
Or things I shouldn’t want and I don’t need.
So I talk to myself to calm down and try so fucking hard to piece together my usual cheery personality, but today it’s hard to make it happen.Not when my insides feel scraped open by ink written decades ago.I shake my head abruptly and head back into the penthouse.
New plan, I’m just going to ignore him.
I grab my raincoat, Mila’s umbrella, her jacket.By the time I step into the hallway, Alec is already there—wearing a sweater, holding his umbrella, like he knew exactly when I’d step out.
“Sorry,” he says quietly.
“For what?”I frown because it makes no sense coming from him of all people.
Alec didn’t do anything.I’m the one who, after all the time we spent together, got attached to something close to a ...it doesn’t matter anymore, really.
“Yesterday.I didn’t come back to help you or ...”He exhales, shoulders lifting slightly as the elevator doors slide open.“I was at Reznors’ place.”
“Reznor?Edgar’s place?”I ask before I can stop myself.My fatal flaw made me do it: curiosity.
“Yeah, his and and his partners’,” he answers.“Barret needed help and I ...”
“You ...?”I push, because I can sense the part of the sentence he’s trying to avoid.
“I was dealing with a lot,” he finishes, voice low.The elevator closes behind us, soft and final.“And it was shitty not to come back or at least let you know where I was.”
The honesty punches me in a way I’m unprepared for—unexpected, careful, disarming.I look away so he can’t see how it reaches places I don’t let anyone touch.
“It’s fine.We’re just?—”
“No.”He steps inside the elevator and faces me fully.“It’s not fine, and I know it.We’re becoming friends ...maybe more, and if I want to be part of your life—and Mila’s—I need to be mindful.”
Something shifts in the air.A quiet pull, like a current sliding beneath the surface.My body reacts before my brain can argue—leaning in, drawn forward, searching for a warmth I should not crave, but I’ve missed.
My breath slips out unevenly.His words settle somewhere deep.My palm tingles with the urge to reach for him, touch him, feel the truth of him under my hand.
His eyes drop to my mouth for a beat—just one, brief but unmistakable—before he lifts them again, as though he caught himself mid-thought and pulled back with effort.
Heat crawls up my neck.
My pulse trips into something unsteady and alive.
He’s too close—close enough that his presence slides through me without a single touch, close enough that my pulse stumbles in a way I don’t have the training or emotional stability to hide.
“Alec ...”I breathe, barely a sound, barely a sentence.I don’t know what I’m trying to say—but he hears everything anyway.
His breath drifts across my cheek like he’s standing at the exact distance where another inch would pull us into ...I try not to think about it, but his mouth is near mine, near enough that I can see the faint curve at the corner of his lip, near enough that my thoughts scatter and gather again in a way that feels dangerously bold.
For a suspended second, I imagine it.
Closing the gap.
Feeling his hand at my waist.
Letting myself fall into him, into heat and certainty and a kiss that might reset my pulse.
The elevator hums around us, a low vibration under my shoes, but it’s nothing compared to the current sliding between us when his gaze drops slowly to my mouth.His eyes lift again, and what I see there steals the air right out of my lungs.
There’s heat.
Not wild or careless.Controlled.Intent.A wanting he tries to blink away but can’t, no matter how disciplined he pretends to be.There’s something intentional in the tension along his jaw, in the faint exhale that slips out of him, in the way his eyes linger on my mouth for a beat he doesn’t allow himself to shorten—like he’s memorizing it for a moment he won’t let himself take.
