12. THE WORDS WE DON'T SAY

The business deal with Mr. Hargrove had been finalized and he had left a while ago.

Since he had left, Alaric had rewritten the exact same paragraph of an email over three times and had still not managed to send it. Selene noticed it before she understood what she was noticing.

It was the little things. The slight rise in his voice when he spoke. The pen tapping against the desk in a rhythm that had nothing to do with actual thought.  The way he kept glancing at the door like he was expecting someone, or dreading.

He’s doing that thing again, Nyx noticed. Is he ever okay, even if it’s just for a day? Should we intervene?

Selene hesitated at her desk for a long moment, weighing the risk of getting her head bitten off against the small, stubborn part of her that hated seeing him like this. She picked up one of his coffee mugs on her desk and made a fresh cup before she’d fully decided to do it.

She knocked twice—even though the door was ajar—out of habit and without waiting for a response from him, she walked in. He didn’t look up.

“You didn’t drink the first one,” she said, setting the new mug down on the right side of the desk, the way she always did, picking up the cold one to dispose of.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Well, you don’t seem to have made much progress despite being busy. Want me to help?”

That got his attention. He looked up at her, something sharp flickering behind his eyes — the beginning of the kind of response that would have sent her scurrying out of the room a few weeks ago. Her words sounded like she didn’t believe he could do it.

She held his gaze instead of dropping it, and watched the sharpness fade almost as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by something closer to exhaustion.

This is very bold of you. Nyx said, impressed. He looks like he’s about to bite your head off.

“Miss Hart, I do not have the time to entertain you,” Alaric said, bluntly.

“I noticed,” Selene replied, not moving an inch.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “That was your cue to leave.”

“I know.” Still, she stayed, arms loosely crossed, waiting him out the way she’d learned to wait out her grandmother when Hattie was being stubborn about her medication.

Alaric exhaled, long and slow, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders — not all of it, but enough that she noticed.

“My father visited today,” he said finally, like the words had been sitting on his chest for a long time, waiting to be let out.

“I gathered that much.” She kept her voice light, careful not to press too hard or come off as nosy. “Family stuff?”

“Something like that.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “He wants me to announce an engagement. Soon. There’s an event in three weeks, and apparently that’s the deadline for me to figure out my entire life. Or have it figured out for me in this case.” He added.

Nyx’s tone had gone sharp with interest. I’m surprised that he’s telling you.

Selene filed that thought away too, along with the small, unreasonable flicker of something in her chest at the word engagement.

“Isn’t it your decision at the end of the day though? I mean, you’re still the CEO after all,” Selene said carefully.

“It stopped being my decision a long time ago. Or it was never mine to begin with. I haven’t decided which.” He said it flatly, like it didn’t bother him, though the tightness around his eyes said otherwise. “My father has a way of making things sound like a choice right up until you realize they never were.”

Selene thought of Hattie, of the years spent quietly rearranging her entire life around someone else’s needs without ever once being asked if she minded. It wasn’t the same thing — not even close, she was fairly sure his father wasn’t dying of anything — but something about the shape of it felt familiar enough to ache a little.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “just because everyone expects something from you doesn’t mean you owe it to them. You’re still your own person at the end of the day.”

Alaric stared at her for a short moment, a flash of something undecipherable crossed his face.

“That’s a very simple way to put a complicated problem, Miss Hart,” he said softly.

“Well, what can I say? I’m told I have a gift for stating the obvious.” Selene joked, a small smile tugged at her mouth. “Comes with the job description, I think.”

Something in his expression changed, just slightly—not quite a smile, but close enough.

 Nyx made an audible sound of surprise somewhere in the back of Selene’s mind. Did he just almost laugh? Write this down. Someone alert the board.

“You should go finish your reports,” Alaric said, though there was no real heat behind it anymore.

“I was just leaving,” Selene replied, already halfway to the door, and she didn’t see the way his eyes followed her the whole way out.

Flynn found Alaric still at his desk thirty minutes later, staring at his monitor with the particular blankness of a man who had stopped seeing whatever was in front of him.

“You look like you survived something,” Flynn said, dropping into the chair across from him without invitation.

“I did. It’s called being your CEO for another day.”

“Cute.” Flynn didn’t push further on that — he’d caught enough of the tension radiating off Alaric earlier to guess roughly what the visit had been about, and some conversations weren’t worth having twice in one day.

“Where have you been? Hargrove came, and Selene had to deal with him alone.”

“I’m sure she handled it fine,” Flynn said, dodging the question.

“By the way, did you get any information about the file?” Alaric asked.

Flynn kept his expression carefully neutral, the same practiced ease he’d used with Corwin earlier, except this time it cost him more to hold. “Nothing solid yet. Records from before the orphanage are just gone. Could be a filing error from twenty years ago. Could be nothing.”

It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t everything.

“Keep digging.”

“Already on it,” Flynn said, and let the subject drop before Alaric could ask a follow-up question he wasn’t ready to answer.

On his way out, he passed Selene’s desk and found her still working. “Rough day?” he asked, leaning against the edge of her desk the way he always did.

“You have no idea.” She glanced up, offering him a tired smile anyway. “Your best friend nearly bit my head off, then didn’t.”

“Sounds exactly like him.” Flynn studied her for a beat too long, the easy grin slipping just slightly before he caught it and put it back. “You’re good for him, you know. Whether he says so or not.”

Selene blinked, caught off guard. “That’s oddly sincere for you.”

“Don’t get used to it.” He pushed off the desk before she could ask him anything else, throwing a wave over his shoulder as he went, already dreading the report he still had to write.

By the time Selene got home, the sky had gone the deep orange-purple of early evening, and Hattie was exactly where she always was—parked in front of the television with a bowl of crackers within arm’s reach, despite Selene’s constant worries about her health.

“I’m guessing you had a good day,” Hattie said, her eyebrows furrowed a bit in suspicion.

“Huh?”

“You’re smiling,” Hattie said, as Selene took off her coat and placed it on the coat rack by the door.

“I’m not!”

“You are. I’ve raised you long enough to know the difference between your regular face and this face.” Hattie finally turned, eyes narrowing with interest. “So, good day at work?”

“It was fine.” Selene busied herself taking off her shoes, aware of exactly how unconvincing that sounded.

“Fine doesn’t put that particular look on a person’s face, especially not yours.” Hattie patted the seat beside her, and Selene, against her better judgment, sat.

“He just — he actually talked to me today. About real stuff. Not work stuff.” The words came out before she’d fully decided to say them, and once they started, they kept going. “He’s under all this pressure from his family, and he never talks about anything personal, ever, and today he just — did.”

“Okay,” Hattie said, confused, stretching out her words a bit. “And this matters because?”

“Well… I don’t know, okay?”

“Hmm,” Hattie said, in the particular tone that meant she was filing something away.

“It’s not a big deal,” Selene added quickly, though she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

“Didn’t say it was.” Hattie reached for a cracker, chewing thoughtfully, her eyes lingering on Selene a beat too long before she spoke again. “You’ve mentioned this boss of yours more in the last three weeks than you’ve mentioned anyone in these past few years.”

“He’s interesting.”

“Mm.” Hattie’s gaze flicked, briefly, to the necklace resting at the base of Selene’s throat — the one she’d worn every single day since Selene could remember, the one Hattie had insisted, more than once, should never come off.

 Something flickered behind her grandmother’s eyes, there and gone so quickly that Selene nearly missed it.

“You’re doing the thing,” Selene said.

“What thing.”

“The thing where you start worrying and go quiet, staring at me like I’m about to combust.”

“I do not stare.” Hattie reached for the remote, changing the subject with the practiced ease of a woman who’d had decades of experience deflecting exactly the questions she didn’t want asked. “You look tired. Go eat something.”

Selene let it go, too tired to push, and made her way to the kitchen, Nyx unusually quiet in the back of her mind the whole way there.

That was weird, right? She thought, once she was alone by the stove, stirring a pot of something that barely qualified as dinner. The staring thing.

Grandma’s always weird about that necklace, Nyx offered, though even she sounded slightly less certain than usual. Old people superstition, probably.

Selene reached up, fingers brushing absently against the small, worn pendant at her throat — something she’d done a thousand times without thinking, an old, automatic gesture.

This time, for reasons she couldn’t explain, a faint shiver ran down her spine, sharp and sudden, like the air in the room had shifted without warning.

She went still, spoon frozen halfway to the pot, waiting for the feeling to pass.

It didn’t, not quite. Something in her chest — low, unfamiliar, almost like a pulse that wasn’t quite her own — stirred once, and settled.

Nyx? She thought, quieter than usual.

There was a pause, long enough to feel strange.

“I felt that too,” Nyx admitted, sounding almost as uncertain as Selene felt.

Neither of them said anything else about it. Selene finished stirring the pot, dished it out onto a plate, and did her best to ignore the faint, persistent hum still sitting somewhere beneath her skin, quiet but undeniably there.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

🎧 SPEAK UP! Okay, what do you think is really going on with Selene’s necklace? 👀😭

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🔮 PREDICTION: Do you think Alaric will actually go through with the engagement? 👀

🎤 RANDOM QUESTION: What’s one thing you cannot go a day without doing? 😂

Thank you for reading! ❤️ See you in the next chapter! 🔥