CHAPTER 10: THE LINE I WON'T CROSS

I found him in his office before nine, before anyone else had unlocked their desks, because if I waited I'd lose my nerve.

"Can we talk?"

Henry looked up from his laptop. Whatever he saw on my face made him close it, slow and deliberate, and sit back.

"Of course."

I closed the door behind me. My hands were cold, and I pressed them together so he wouldn't see them shake.

"Last night," I started. "With Eric. What you said..."

"I meant it."

"I know you did. That's the problem."

He didn't flinch. He never flinched, which was somehow more unsettling than if he had.

"I'm not a prize," I said. "I'm not something you and your brother get to fight over like it's some kind of competition. I won't be that."

"I never said you were a prize."

"You basically told him I was yours to decide about."

"I told him he doesn't get a say in your life anymore. That's different."

"Is it?" My voice rose before I reined it in. "Because from where I was standing, it sounded like two men deciding who gets custody of me."

Something shifted in his face. Not denial. Consideration, like he was actually turning the accusation over and checking if it fit.

"That's fair," he said finally.

I hadn't expected that. "What?"

"You're right. It sounded that way. I wasn't thinking about how it landed on you, I was thinking about Eric." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "That's on me."

"So you agree."

"I agree I handled it badly." His eyes lifted to mine, steady. "I don't agree that I don't care what happens to you. Those are different things too."

My throat tightened. I hated how easily he could do that, take the ground out from under an argument I'd rehearsed in the mirror.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I need you to hear this clearly. Whatever happened between us, whatever almost happened last night, it stops. I won't be caught between you and Eric. I won't be the thing this family fights over."

"Understood."

"I mean it, Henry."

"I believe you."

He said it simply, no argument, no softening smile, and somehow that was worse than if he'd pushed back. I'd braced for a fight and gotten agreement instead, and I didn't know what to do with the deflation of it.

"Good," I said, because I had to say something. "Good. Then we understand each other."

"We do."

I left before the silence could turn into something else.

My hand was on the door when his voice stopped me.

"Roseline."

I didn't turn around. "What."

"For what it's worth," he said, quiet now, none of the boardroom left in it, "I don't think you're something to be won. I think you're the only person in this entire building who's actually honest with me."

My fingers tightened on the handle. I didn't trust my voice enough to answer, so I just walked out, and let the door click shut behind me like a period at the end of a sentence I wasn't ready to finish.

It didn't stay quiet for long. By noon, another escalation memo had landed on my desk, this time from the Caldwell account, the same account Dennis had tried to pin on me two weeks earlier, now circling back with a vengeance. Executive oversight required. H. Kingsley to attend.

Of course.

"You've got to be joking," I muttered at my screen.

"What?" Mia leaned over.

"Nothing." I closed the email too fast.

She gave me a look, the kind that meant she'd circle back to it later, and thankfully let it go for now.

The meeting ran until eight. Henry sat two seats down the table all evening, professional, measured, not once looking at me longer than the conversation required. I should have been relieved. Instead I spent half the meeting cataloguing every time he didn't look at me, which felt like its own kind of madness.

Once, just once, his pen stilled mid sentence, and his eyes flicked up, found mine, and dropped away again before anyone else could notice. It lasted less than a second. I counted it anyway.

I told myself it didn't matter.

I told myself that twice, which probably meant it did.

"You're quiet," Sophie said afterward, falling into step beside me as we left the conference room.

Sophie Lane had been at the company almost as long as I had, two desks down from mine, the kind of coworker who remembered your coffee order and your mother's name and never once made you feel stupid for forgetting hers. Sweet in a way that sometimes bordered on fragile, like she needed people to need her back. Her voice was soft, careful, the way it always was.

"I'm tired."

"You've been tired a lot lately." She tilted her head, studying me in that gentle, searching way she had. "And pale. Are you sleeping?"

"Not really."

"Is it Eric?"

"It's a lot of things."

"You can talk to me, you know." She touched my arm, light, reassuring. "Whatever's going on. I won't tell anyone."

"It's really nothing, Sophie."

"Okay." She held up both hands, backing off, though her eyes lingered a beat too long on my face. "I just hate seeing you like this. You used to tell me everything."

"Things change."

"Clearly." Her smile flickered, there and gone. "I just don't want you to feel like you have to carry it alone. Whatever it is."

Something in her tone snagged at me, too eager maybe, or maybe I was just exhausted and looking for reasons to be suspicious of everyone. I shook it off.

"I know," I said. "Thanks, Soph."

"You just seem... different lately. Distracted." She smiled, small and warm. "I worry about you."

"I'm fine. Really."

I wasn't sure I believed it myself.

***

I walked into the staff meeting running on four hours of sleep and a coffee I hadn't finished. The conference room smelled like printer toner and the faint sweetness of pastries nobody had touched. I sat, pulled out my notepad, and tried to focus on the quarterly numbers scrolling across the screen.

Halfway through, the smell hit me.

Someone's bagel, cream cheese, something faintly burnt from the coffee station. My stomach rolled, hard and sudden, a wave of nausea that climbed up my throat before I could brace for it.

I swallowed. Hard. Pressed a hand flat against my stomach beneath the table.

It passed. Mostly.

Then it came back, worse, sweat prickling along my hairline despite the air conditioning. I gripped the edge of the table and focused on breathing slow and even, counting the seconds the way you do when you're trying not to be sick in a room full of forty people.

It's the coffee. It's exhaustion. It's stress.

I'd felt sick before. Nerves did that. Eric did that. Henry definitely did that.

But this felt different, thicker somehow, a heaviness low in my stomach that had nothing to do with nerves.

I went still.

My mind started counting without permission, flipping backward through days I'd been too busy to track. The bar. The hotel room. Weeks blurring into other weeks, weeks I hadn't paid attention to because I'd had a breakup to survive and a boss to avoid and a brother circling both of us like a storm.

I counted again, slower this time, certain I'd made a mistake.

I hadn't.

My pen slipped from my fingers and clattered against the table, loud in the sudden ringing silence inside my own head.