"I've arranged a meeting with Artem." His voice was clipped, professional. "Regarding the rehabilitation program. If you're serious about the gap year—"
"I'm serious about a lot of things."
She held his gaze. She hadn't meant it to come out loaded, pointed, a shot fired across the breakfast table, but her mouth had always been faster than her brain, and the tightening at the corners of his eyes told her the bullet had hit.
"The program operates out of a clinic adjacent to Ace Royale," he continued, treating her words like they hadn't been spoken. "You'd be working with addictions counselors. The hours are structured. You'd report to Dr. Vasquez."
"Great."
"Artem will explain the confidentiality requirements."
"Sounds good."
"And you'll need to sign a—"
"Alexei."
He stopped.
She set her mug down. Her hands weren't shaking, which surprised her, because her pulse was hammering so hard she could feel it in her wrists.
"Are we going to talk about it?"
His expression didn't change. "About what?"
And the about what hit her like a slap, because it was so perfectly delivered, so flawlessly calibrated to sound like genuine confusion, that if she hadn't been there last night, if she hadn't felt his mouth on hers and his hands in her hair and his heart hammering through his chest, she might have believed it.
"You know what."
"I don't."
"You kissed me."
The words dropped into the room like a grenade. Biscuit's ears perked up. The coffee machine hummed. Somewhere outside, a gull screamed.
His face was stone. "I think you're remembering incorrectly."
Mia's temper, which she'd been holding on a very short leash since she walked in, snapped.
"I'm remembering incorrectly?" She stood up. The chair scraped the marble. "You had your hands on my face. You put your fingers in my hair. You kissed me until neither of us could breathe, and then you told me it shouldn't have happened and you walked away, and now you're sitting here with your tablet and your suit telling me I'm remembering incorrectly?"
"Sit down, Mia."
"No."
"Sit. Down."
"Make me."
The air cracked.
He stood up. Not fast. Alexei never moved fast. He moved without hurry, and speed was irrelevant, and he was around the table and in front of her before she had time to take a full inhale. Close enough that she could smell the cologne. Close enough that the memory of last night slammed into her so hard her knees almost buckled.
"You are eighteen years old." His voice was a wound held together with wire. "I am your guardian. I have been responsible for you since you were sixteen. Your father asked me to protect you, and I gave him my word, and I won't—"
"My father asked you to take care of me," she corrected, and her voice was shaking now, because the anger had burned through the bravado and what was underneath was the raw thing, the real thing, the thing she'd carried for two years across a continent. "He didn't ask you to pretend I don't exist. He didn't ask you to send me to a school I didn't choose so you could avoid me for two years. And he didn't ask you to kiss me like that and then act like it was nothing."
Something moved behind his eyes. Something that carried the weight of pain.
