TABOO (A DEAL WITH THE SHADOW ALPHA) のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 91 - チャプター 100

ADDISON"But then," he agreed. "I saw an interview. You were talking about your brand, your design process. I don't even remember what you said. I remember watching it and feeling something I had never felt before and not knowing what to do with it." He looked at his hands. "I started looking for you after that. I wasn't even sure what I was looking for. I knew you might be my mate but I wasn't certain, I had no frame of reference, I had nothing to compare it to. I just knew I was being pulled toward you in a way I couldn't account for." He met my eyes. "And then the elevator."The elevator. The first time we had been in the same physical space, that specific charged silence, the way he had looked at me like I was something he had been expecting to find and had resigned himself to never actually finding."You knew then," I said."The moment the doors opened," he said. "Yes."I sat with that for a moment. The timeline of it. The shape of it from his side, which I had never had before.

ADDISONThree weeks.It had been three weeks since the whole kidnapping incident and I was back at work, which was either a sign of impressive resilience or deeply questionable decision making, depending on who you asked. Jules thought it was the second one. My therapist, who I had finally, after years of resistance, agreed to see twice a week, had a more measured opinion about it that I was choosing to interpret as agreement with me.The work helped. That was the honest truth of it. .I was okay. Better than okay, on most days.The fear hadn't disappeared entirely. I wasn't going to pretend it had. There were still moments, usually at night, usually when I was tired and my guard was down, where something would flash across my memory and my chest would tighten and I would have to sit with it for a minute before it passed. I was working on that. That was what twice-a-week therapy was for, even if I was being somewhat creative with the details I shared.My ex has a complicated past a

ADDISONMy mother called at six. I didn’t expect it, we hadn’t spoken at all since the big fight and I didn’t tell her anything about what happened. A part of me still couldn't imagine what her reaction could be, whether she would actually comfort me or she would just take Feign’s side like always and say that I provoked him, that’s why he did that. That was the thing about her, I could never know what she might think or do and it scared me for the longest part of my life and honestly, it still scared me so much now. I was in the car on the way home, the city moving past the windows in the early evening, the particular golden-grey light of autumn in New York turning everything slightly cinematic. I looked at the name on the screen for a full five seconds before I answered."Mum.""Addison." Her voice was exactly what it always was — composed and measured and carrying within its composure the complete blueprint of every expectation she had ever had of me. "You've been difficult to rea

ADDISONI looked at him.He was looking straight ahead, at the path, his profile lit from the side by the warm lights. He said it the way he said things that mattered. He looked so gorgeous tonight, at this point I couldn’t even blame myself for not knowing what he was, he could easily fool anyone with a face like that. "You've said that before," I said."I know." He glanced at me. "I'll probably keep saying it.""You don't have to keep—""I want to," he said simply. "Every time I think about what I could have lost because I was too afraid to just tell you the truth, I want to say it again." He looked back at the path. "So I'm going to keep saying it until it stops feeling necessary."I looked at him for a moment. At the side of his face and the set of his jaw and the very slight tension in his shoulders that was the only sign of how much he meant what he'd just said."Okay," I said softly. "You're welcome."The first drop hit my nose about ten seconds later.I looked up.The sky, wh

ADDISON.Something in his expression shifted. That careful containment cracked open at the edges and what was underneath it was — a lot. Everything he had been keeping measured and patient and deliberately restrained for three weeks, looking at me now without any of the usual management over it.His hands tightened at my waist.And then he closed the distance between us and his mouth found mine and it was nothing like the careful, restrained version of him I had been living with. It was something else entirely — certain and consuming, his hands pulling me against him with a decisiveness that left absolutely no room for ambiguity about what this was and where it was going, and I went up onto my toes and kissed him back with three weeks of patience finally, completely, gratefully spent.He walked me backward without breaking the kiss and I let him, my hands in the front of his shirt, and somewhere between the living room and the bedroom the lamp in the hallway was the last light either