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“What do you see?” he asks again, his breath hot against my ear.
“What do you mean?”
“When you look at yourself in the mirror every day. What do you see?”
I don’t know how to tell him that I don’t look at myself in the mirror, that this is the first time I’ve done so beyond a cursory hair or makeup check in months.
“I see you,” I finally tell him after long seconds have passed us by.
“That’s a cop-out answer.”
It is, but also it isn’t. Because I do see him—from the moment I first walked into this office and he told me that I was getting my job back, I haven’t been able to see anything—anyone—but him. “It’s also the truth.”
He studies me in the mirror, his eyes running over my face, my body, trying to catch and hold my own gaze. But I won’t let him do it, won’t lock eyes with him now when I’m already so vulnerable that it hurts just to stand here with him. Hurts just to breathe.
“Do you want to know what I see??
? he asks.
Yes. God, yes. “No.” I turn then, push past him. And try to figure out where my shoes ended up. “I need to get to work.”
“I checked the schedule. You’re not working today.”
“Christina asked me to cover for her.”
“Well, they’re just going to have to find someone else to cover for her.”
“Oh, really?” I turn to him, eyebrow raised inquiringly. “And why is that?”
“Because you’re going home.”
“No. I’m not.”
“You’re dead on your feet, you’re obviously upset—”
“That didn’t stop you from fucking me.”
His teeth snap together and he stares at me, jaw clenched, for long seconds. “No, it didn’t. And maybe that’s on me. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make the same mistake twice. You’re in no condition to work.”
“You know, I think it’s interesting that the rich get to make that distinction. You’re in good enough shape to work. You’re not in good enough shape to work. For regular people, those lines don’t exist. You work because you have to.”
“Playing the you’re-rich-so-you-just-don’t-understand card isn’t going to work on me, Aria. I know a hell of a lot about regular people trying to make ends meet under extraordinary circumstances. I do what I can to make things easier for them, too, whenever I can. But you aren’t just some random person to me. You’re the woman I’m fall—”
He breaks off in the middle of the sentence, in the middle of the word. But it’s still enough to have my heart stuttering and my stomach dropping to my toes. We’ve only known each other three days. Albeit, they’ve been a pretty intense three days, but still it’s only been three days since I walked into his office and he thanked me for hitting that whale in the balls with my drink tray. He can’t possibly be falling in anything with me in three days. Just like I can’t possibly be falling for him. Not yet.
Not now.
“Look, I can’t stand here arguing for much longer. I still have to get downstairs and get changed. My shift starts in less than fifteen minutes.”
“You’re not listening to me. You aren’t working—”
“No, Sebastian. You’re not listening to me. I am working, because I said I would work. Because I’m perfectly capable of working. And because, damn it, I want to work tonight. So stop trying to give me special treatment—it won’t go well for either of us—and get the hell off my back about this. Okay?”
“And if I said it wasn’t okay with me?” he asks, one brow raised inquiringly.
“Then I’d tell you to suck it up and I’d go to work anyway.”
“It seems like that whole diatribe you just gave was you essentially telling me to suck it up.”
