Page 97 of Sin

“Okay.”

That one word hurts more than if he argued. Okay.

Like he’s agreeing.

Like he’s letting me go.

He closes the passenger door softly. Then he hands me my laptop bag. Our fingers brush around the strap. A tiny touch. Pathetic, really. Still, it makes my breath catch.

His does too.

We both pretend it doesn’t.

“I’ll see you at the office,” he says.

I nod. “At the office.”

For one terrible second, we stand there in the rain like two people waiting for the other to make the wrong choice first. Then I turn. Every step toward the L feels like tearing skin. I don’t look back. Not once. Because if I did, and he was still watching me, I might run straight back to him.

The office is its own kind of torture. Amsterdam followed us home. I feel it in every hallway, every email, every professional sentence that lands wrong because my brain remembers his mouth saying my name against my skin. By nine, I’ve answered twelve emails and retained absolutely none of them. By eleven, I’ve changed my mind about ending things approximately forty-seven times. By noon, I see Sin across the conference room during the board recap, and my entire body goes still.

He’s Mason again. Expression calm and unreadable as he talks through international retailer interest, presentation results, projected launch timelines, and next steps for the Sins line. No one would look at him and see the man who spent Sunday in my kitchen washing dishes with his shirt half-buttoned. No one would know he knows the sound I make when I’m trying to stay quiet. No one would know he kissed the inside of my wrist this morning before putting his ring back on.

No one but me.

He doesn’t look at me during the meeting. After the meeting, he walks out with Tate and two board members. I stay behind to gather my notes. Really, I stay behind so he can’t see that I’m crying.

The rest of the day crawls. Sin stays away. Completely. No emails that aren’t copied to three other people. No passing comments. No sudden appearances in my doorway. No looking for me in the lab. He gives me exactly what I asked for.

It’s awful.

By four-thirty, I am so restless I reorganize an entire drawer of product samples by color and then hate myself for it. By five, the office begins to empty.

Opal leaves at five-fifteen with one last concerned look over her shoulder.

“Go home,” she tells me. “You look like hell.”

The floor goes quiet in stages. Phones stop ringing. Doors close. Voices fade. The rain keeps tapping against the windows, the same dull rhythm that has followed me all day. I stay at my desk, pretending to review post-show analytics. Really, I’m staring at the same spreadsheet and thinking about Sin saying okay in the rain. Letting me go. Respecting the line I drew.

At six-thirty, there’s a knock on my office door. My heart stops. Then starts too fast. I know who it is before I look up.

“Come in,” I say.

Sin opens the door and steps inside. He closes it behind him.

Then locks it.

The sound clicks through the room like a trigger and my entire body goes hot.

“Don’t,” I say.

He turns to face me. His suit jacket is gone. His sleeves are rolled up. His tie is loose. He looks like he has spent the entire day holding himself together with both hands and is finally done pretending he can.

“Don’t what?” he asks.

“Lock my door.”

“It’s already locked.”