One night with my untouchable CEO(6)

ADRIAN

For three days, I kept my distance from Isabella Hart.

I stopped inventing reasons to summon her, reviewed her work without nitpicking every detail, and started collecting my own coffee, although the first cup tasted like something brewed in a hospital basement. It was a small price to pay for respecting the boundary I had crossed.

Isabella seemed confused by my sudden change in behaviour, but she didn’t ask questions, and I wasn’t ready to explain myself until I could prove that my apology meant something.

On Thursday evening, I was still in my office long after most of the staff had left, trying to finish a report before an important meeting the following morning. I had removed my jacket and loosened my tie when Marcus returned to collect a folder he had forgotten.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, approaching my desk. “I didn’t realise you were still here.”

He placed the folder beside me, but when I reached for it, his hand brushed mine.

My body reacted before I could think.

I shoved my chair backward, sending it crashing against the cabinet, and stumbled away from the desk while my breath caught painfully in my throat. The room seemed to shrink around me, and suddenly I wasn’t in my office anymore. I was somewhere else, trapped in a memory I had spent years trying to bury.

“Mr. Blackwood?” Marcus asked, alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“Get out!”

He froze, but when he stepped forward, I recoiled so sharply that my back struck the wall.

“I said get out!”

Marcus left immediately, closing the door behind him, and I slid down against the wall as my hands began to shake. I pressed my palms against my knees and tried to breathe, but every breath felt too shallow, and the familiar terror refused to loosen its grip.

I hated how easily my body betrayed me. I could control a boardroom full of executives, negotiate contracts worth millions, and make people twice my age reconsider their decisions with a single look, yet one unexpected touch could leave me struggling to breathe.

A quiet knock sounded at the door.

“Adrian? It’s Isabella.”

“Go home.”

The door opened a few inches, but she didn’t come inside.

“I can do that,” she said. “Would you prefer privacy, or would you like some company?”

I couldn’t answer immediately.

She waited without pushing the door open or demanding an explanation, and that small act of patience unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.

“Company,” I finally managed.

She entered slowly, closed the door behind her, and stopped several feet away from me.

“Do you want me to sit here?”

I nodded toward the chair opposite the wall, and she sat down without trying to approach me.

For several minutes, neither of us spoke. She didn’t ask what had happened or tell me to calm down, and eventually my breathing began to settle.

“I don’t like people touching me,” I said at last.

“I noticed.”

I glanced at her, expecting a joke, but her expression was gentle without being pitying.

“It’s not just that I dislike it,” I continued. “Sometimes, when someone touches me unexpectedly, I feel as though I’m back in a place where I have no control over what happens to me.”

She remained quiet, giving me room to decide how much I could bear to say.

“When I was a child, there was an adult my family trusted. Someone who was supposed to protect me, but instead, he repeatedly crossed boundaries I didn’t understand how to defend. I knew I was uncomfortable, and I knew I wanted him to stop, but he made me feel as though I was the one doing something wrong.”

My throat tightened, and I looked down at my hands.

“When I finally tried telling my family, they dismissed me. They said I had misunderstood, that I was being dramatic, and that I shouldn’t destroy a family’s reputation over something I couldn’t explain properly. I was told to stay quiet and behave normally around him.”

Isabella’s expression changed, but she didn’t interrupt.

“I learned that telling the truth wouldn’t protect me. It would only make everyone uncomfortable, so I stopped talking about it.”

I swallowed hard before continuing.

“Years later, someone I loved betrayed me, and it confirmed everything I had already begun to believe about trust. I decided that if I controlled every situation, every conversation, and every person who came close, nobody would ever have the power to hurt me again.”

I gave a humourless laugh.

“Apparently, I was wrong.”

ISABELLA

I wanted to reach for Adrian, but I remembered the way he had recoiled when Marcus touched him, so I stayed where I was.

I wasn’t going to turn his vulnerability into permission to cross a boundary, no matter how badly I wanted to reassure him.

“I’m sorry you went through that,” I said. “You were a child, Adrian. You deserved to be protected, and what happened to you wasn’t your fault.”

His gaze lifted to mine, and I continued before he could blame himself again.

“You shouldn’t have had to fight an adult to make them respect your boundaries, and you shouldn’t have had to convince your family that you deserved to feel safe.”

He looked away, his jaw tightening as he struggled with the words.

“I should have fought harder.”

“No. The responsibility belonged to the adult who hurt you, and your family should have listened when you asked for help.”

Silence settled between us, but I didn’t rush to fill it.

“I’ve never told anyone the whole story,” he admitted eventually.

“Thank you for trusting me with it.”

“I don’t know why I can tell you.”

“Maybe because I haven’t tried to force you to tell me anything.”

He considered that before looking down at his hands.

“Your presence doesn’t make me feel trapped the way other people’s presence does,” he confessed. “When you touch me, I don’t immediately feel as though I need to escape.”

I thought about the elevator, the way he had gone rigid when a stranger bumped into him, and how he had allowed me to steady him without pulling away. I also remembered the kiss he had stolen from me and the apology that followed, because understanding his pain didn’t mean pretending he hadn’t hurt me too.

“I’m glad you feel safe with me,” I said. “But I can’t be the only place where you feel that way.”

His expression tightened, but he listened.

“I can support you, and I can listen when you need someone to talk to, but I can’t undo what happened to you. You deserve help that doesn’t depend on whether I’m standing beside you, and you’ll have to decide when you’re ready to work through everything you’ve been carrying.”

“I wasn’t asking you to fix me.”

“I know. I just don’t want either of us to confuse love with responsibility for another person’s healing.”

He fell quiet, absorbing my words, and I wondered how often anyone had spoken to him without either fearing him or trying to please him.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.

“You don’t have to figure it all out tonight.”

I glanced at the clock and realised how late it had become. Adrian looked exhausted, although the tension in his shoulders had eased, and I knew I should leave him to rest.

Before standing, I hesitated.

“Would you like me to hold your hand?”

His eyes dropped to mine.

I kept my hand between us, offering without reaching for him, and waited while he considered the question. He stared at my palm as though the choice itself frightened him, but eventually he shifted closer and placed his hand in mine.

His fingers were cool, and his grip was tentative, so I curled my fingers around his gently and let him decide how much contact he wanted.

Neither of us spoke for a while.

I didn’t promise that everything would be all right, and I didn’t tell him that I would never hurt him. Those promises were too easy to make and too difficult to guarantee. Instead, I sat beside him and held his hand until his breathing settled completely.

When I finally stood to leave, Adrian’s fingers tightened around mine.

“Isabella?”

I turned back.

He looked down at our joined hands, then up at me, his expression caught somewhere between fear and a question he didn’t know how to ask.

“Will you come back tomorrow?”

The question was so quiet that it almost broke my heart.

I gave his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Adrian.”

As I walked toward the door, his voice stopped me again.

“There’s something else you should know.”

I turned around, and the look on his face made me pause.

“Every time you touch me, I want to believe that I’m getting better,” he said. “But I’m terrified that one day you’ll leave, and I’ll discover that you’re the only person who can make me feel this way.”

I stared at him, my heart aching at the vulnerability in his voice.

“Then we need to make sure you never have to depend on me to feel safe,” I told him. “Because I want you to choose me, Adrian, not need me to survive.”

He said nothing, but his eyes followed me all the way to the door.

As I stepped into the corridor, I realised that the most dangerous thing about Adrian Blackwood wasn’t his temper, his money, or the power he wielded over everyone around him.

It was the possibility that I might fall in love with the man hiding beneath all that armour, and that one day, he might be brave enough to let me see all of him.