Page 46 of Her Filthy Cold Billionaire Boss

Good for him. He needed someone.

I ducked into the library, closed the door behind me, and braced my forehead against the cold glass of the window. My hands trembled, and not from anger.

I thought about the attic, about Eden’s hand in mine. I thought about the way she’d looked at me over breakfast, no fear, no shame, just absolute certainty. I thought about the way my own voice had sounded, broken, raw, desperate for her.

I realized I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I realized I might be allowed, for once, not to be alone.

I wanted to go to her room. The urge was physical, animal. I could already taste the sleep-warmth of her skin, the rasp of her voice in my ear, the wild, impossible possibility of waking up next to her.

I fought it. I made myself stay put.

Instead, I wrote her a note, short, awkward, scrawled on the back of a library index card.

If you need me, you know where to find me.

I left it in her favorite book, second shelf from the top, left of the window seat, where I knew she’d find it in the morning when she did her wake up reading sessions.

Then I went to bed, and for the first time in years, I dreamed of something other than the past.

I dreamed of her.

And I didn’t dream of how she was going to react when she learned the truth.

Chapter Eleven

Eden

I didn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Gareth, standing in the dark at the end of my bed, in the moonlit garden below my balcony, in the wolf painting that had started to look less like a threat and more like a sad story I was beginning to grasp.

I tried counting breaths, then sheep, then the infinite things I wanted and would never have, and still my mind circled back to him, every single time.

And I woke up exactly how I'd fallen asleep, wearing yesterday's clothes, head pounding, lips still throbbing from memory.

My phone was dead, but my heart had been running on backup power for years. I plugged it in, checked my schedule, and tried to pretend that I could do a whole day without seeing him.

By 7:30, I gave up and hunted him down. It wasn't as hard as it should have been.

I just asked the staff if they'd seen Mr. Wolfe, and they didn't even bother to hide their smirks. When I finally caught up to him, he was on the landing outside the attic, a cardboard box under one arm and a look on his face like he'd just been bitten by a particularly literate ghost.

He looked at me like I'd materialized from his own fever dream, and for a second I let myself believe that maybe I had.

"Do you ever sleep?" I asked, hugging my arms tight so he wouldn't see how much they shook.

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he shifted the box to his other side and inspected me, head to toe, the way a jeweler looks at a flawed stone. "I was going through archives. I wanted to see if there were any records of-" He broke off, eyes narrowing. "Why are you here?"

Because you are. Because every cell in my body is a GPS tracker, and you've turned my biology into your own private north star after vague comments in the right direction by staff.

I shrugged. "I forgot to charge my phone, and I worried you might have texted me.” It was a half-truth and it sounded plausible, and I needed an excuse.

He stared at me for a second longer, then relented. "Fine. Walk with me."

We went down the back stairs, the kind that creaked on every step and made you feel like a mouse in a maze. I followed him, two paces behind, until we reached the study. He unlocked it with a key from his pocket, then stood aside and let me in first.

The room was colder than I'd remembered, all blue light and dark wood. Books everywhere, but none of them looked like they'd been opened in the last decade. A cleverly hidden bar that had the top-shelf liquor I’d never tasted before him, not that I was ever much of a drinker. He set the box on the desk, turned, and walked over to lock the door behind us.

My mouth went dry. This was not a casual meeting. This was not even in the ballpark of casual.

He didn't sit. No, he leaned against the desk, arms crossed, gaze fixed on me with surgical precision. For a minute I thought he was going to yell, or maybe throw the box, but instead he just waited, like he was daring me to make the first move.