“You mean the café?”
“I mean environments I can’t account for,” I say, and I hate that I sound like I’m explaining a security plan instead of talking to a woman I can’t stop thinking about. “I don’t trust people.”
I can almost see her expression. Chin lifted, eyes narrowed, filing my words away like evidence.
“You don’t know what people are capable of,” I add.
She laughs once, not amused. “Sebastian, I’m a grown woman who has taken care of my father after my mother’s death. A college student studying behavioral psychology. I know exactly what people are capable of.”
That’s true.
And still, my body doesn’t care. My instincts don’t care. My brain doesn’t care.
The image of her smiling at Aaron behind the counter keeps flashing in my mind like a warning sign.
“You’re too open,” I say before I can stop myself.
There’s silence for a few beats.
Then a humorless laugh comes through the line. “Wow.”
Regret cuts through me like a blade. “I didn’t mean?—”
“You did,” she says, voice steady, but there’s something in it now. A small fracture. A shift in the foundation. “You mean exactly what you just said.”
I stand up. I don’t know why. Like moving will fix it. Like pacing will undo my words. “Ivy.”
“I’m not an idiot, Sebastian.”
“You assume people are harmless,” I hear myself say,doubling down like an idiot. Like a man who can’t stand being wrong even when he knows he is.
Another beat of silence.
I pinch the bridge of my nose.I’m fucking up. Bad.
When she speaks again, the calm is gone. She doesn’t yell, but her tone is sharp. “You don’t get to rewrite my instincts because yours are louder.”
My chest tightens.
“I didn’t ask you to protect me,” she continues. “I didn’t ask you to come in and—” Her breath catches. She steadies it. “I chose you. Don’t punish me for that.”
The words land and something in me goes dead quiet.
Because I realize—too late—what I’ve done.
I’m not treating the world like a risk. I’m treating her like one.
I stop pacing.
My office door is closed and locked out of habit. A line between me and everything else.
My mind flashes—without warning—to a different door. A different house. A different kind of silence.
Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that comes after something breaks. The kind that never fully lifts again.
I don’t think of my father at first.
I think of the lock on my bedroom door.
