Thorne said nothing but kept his body between her and the man.
The journalist gave her nothing concrete to refuse. No pressure, no pushiness, no angle she could identify and bat away. Just a reasonable ask from a reasonable man in a reasonable tone.
Her defenses came up anyway. It was reflex. Ten years of David Sterling and the endless parade of people who wanted something from her voice had wired her threat detection to trigger on courtesy as fast as aggression.
But in front of her, something else was happening.
Thorne had gone still.
It wasn’t his usual stillness. Not the controlled, watchful quiet she'd been studying for weeks. This was different. This was the stillness from the stage floor. His body had locked into something that made the air between them drop several degrees, and frost was forming at the edge of his collar that hadn't been there thirty seconds ago, delicate and white against the dark uniform, spreading in slow spirals toward his jaw.
He was staring at the journalist, and his whole body was aimed at him.
The protectiveness rolling off him in the frigid air landed low in her belly.
She kept her face perfectly composed and smiled at the journalist. “I’d be glad to. Have your people reach out to the venue contact to schedule a meeting.”
“Thank you, Miss Calloway. Again, sorry to bother you like this.”
Gavin Hale smiled at her again and nodded at Thorne once more before he walked off into the snow.
Thorne did not relax. His cold stayed sharp, his jaw stayed tight, the frost at his collar did not recede. They finished the walk in silence.
At her door, she turned to say goodnight.
He was closer than she'd expected.
Close enough that she could see the frost still tracing its faint pattern at his collar, crystal-white against his pale skin. Close enough that the cold coming off him raised the fine hairs on her arms through her coat. Close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to find his face, and when she did, his eyes were not ice blue. They were darker. Deeper. That storm-cloud navy she'd only seen once before when he'd brushed the tear from her cheek.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Her breath stopped.
He leaned in. A fraction. A degree. The distance between them halved without either of them taking a step, his cold and her warmth meeting in the narrow space and creating something that prickled across her lips and the bridge of her nose, and the skin of her throat. His eyes were on her mouth, and she could smell him. Peppermint and frost and that mineral-clean coldness lying underneath. Her lips parted without her permission, and she felt herselflean.
He was going to kiss her. And she was going to let him.
She wanted it. There was only his mouth, inches from hers, and the cold that would taste like peppermint.
She watched his discipline catch up with him.
It happened in his eyes first. The dark blue flashed back to pale. The want gathered and locked away.
He straightened. Took a step back. He put distance between them with the same deliberate care he put into everything: the sweeps, the comms, the formal sentences, the careful words that came next.
"Goodnight, Miss Calloway."
He turned and walked into the snow. His dark uniform disappeared into the white in seconds.
She closed her door.
Her lips were still tingling where his breath had landed and his mouth hadn't, and the absence of the kiss sat in her chest with nowhere to go.
She pressed her forehead against the door and closed her eyes.
She'd been performing the not-knowing all season. Her body was done.
She wanted him.
