Chapter Thirteen
Ryan whipped his head up, coming to a halt a few feet from his car. Tension sprang through his spine to yank his shoulders back.
“What?” he snapped at Trevor, who rested against the door of Ryan’s car.
Trevor’s brow hitched up in an irritating display of starched question. He didn’t shift from his lax position, hands tucked into his pants pockets, one foot lazily crossed over the other.
Ryan spread his stance, arms crossing in preparation for the apparent smackdown he no doubt deserved. Guilt ate at him, and he hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot. Hell, it’d started before he’d stepped from the boardroom. Brie’s display of strength hadn’t concealed her hurt.
“What was that?” Trevor asked, his gaze lifting to the building behind Ryan.
“A scene.” The snarky response was all he had.
“Right.” Trevor straightened, stepping away from the car with a casual stride. Envy reared up to snip at Ryan. He’d tried his entire life to present that exact image without success. “Care to try that again?”
Not a chance in hell. He was done with Brie. There was no way he could repeat tonight.
“What do you want to know?” he countered. Trevor was digging, and Ryan wasn’t in the mood for guessing games. Not when half of him was still focused on the building looming behind him. Was Brie okay? Was Jacob taking care of her properly?
Would they be coming out soon?
The muscles hitched tighter through his shoulders and knotted in his stomach. Chitchat was a skill he’d never acquired and had no interest in taking up, especially now.
Trevor took another step closer, eyes narrowing with that predatory focus he unleashed with precision. Ryan braced but refused to look away.
“That wasn’t just a scene. Not for you.”
Fucking hell. The man could be absolutely infuriating...and deadly accurate. Rage seethed in his chest when it’d do no good. Fighting back only resulted in a harder counterattack. Yet another lesson beaten into him from childhood.
A gust of wind blew in to sweep over Ryan’s nape and ruffle Trevor’s hair, which was more gray than brown. The nip of chill did little to diminish the clammy sweat that clung to his back.
“It was a scene,” he restated, calm warning in his voice. “I don’t grill you about Danielle.” He let that stand. There was no need to expand.
Trevor’s glare frosted over in less than a blink. The friendly charm switched to stony anger without a muscle moving. “Tread carefully.”
His counter warning was sent with dual meaning Ryan didn’t miss. Trevor strode away then, his pace clipped.
Ryan tracked his departure for a long moment before he jerked around to get into his car. A pile of nervous energy buzzed over his skin as he sped out of the parking lot, headed toward the highway. Every bit of peace he’d found in Brie’s arms had been erased the second he’d pulled out of her.
The moment when he’d fully accepted just how fucked he was.
And now?
There was nothing.
He wouldn’t go back to her even if she did make another appearance in the Boardroom. The risk was too high. He’d lost himself and that wasn’t acceptable.
He’d worked too fucking hard to let this derail everything he’d achieved.
He cruised onto the highway, heading back to the city on autopilot. The line of taillights gave him focus when it seemed he’d lost his own.
His conscience slipped out somewhere between San Mateo and South San Francisco to add another layer to the guilt nibbling away at him. Going back to the Boardroom, knowing she’d be there, had been a deliberate action.
And she had no idea that he was her superior.
He was a fucking lawyer. He understood every consequence his actions could rain down if she ever found out. The Boardroom NDA only stretched so far. He should know. He’d created it years ago and enforced it now.
And all of that was just a distraction from the true source of his conflict.
For the first time in his life, he’d met a woman he couldn’t forget. His ex-wife hadn’t even held that distinction.
They’d both gone into the union with expectations. His to check off the married box and hers to change him into a more feeling person—or so he’d discovered when she’d packed her bags and walked out. An event that hadn’t fazed him and had proven he really was an emotionless bastard. And nothing had changed since then.
Relationships were tangled with traps. Nasty, often blind, sinkholes that dared a person to believe in false truths. That stronghold of conviction worked its way in to support the teachings beaten into him when he’d had no understanding that things could be different. And it was too late now.
He’d walked away from his parents the second he’d turned eighteen. His brains had gotten him out of the stench, and they’d laid out the path to get him a corner office in the most respected law firm in the city.
He wasn’t the silent kid in the corner anymore. The one with high-water pants and hair buzzed to his scalp under the shaky hand of an inebriated mother. But in so many ways he was still that roughed-up kid made stronger by the hours spent locked in a dark closet.
His parents hadn’t defeated him no matter how hard they’d tried. But they’d taught him well. Emotional attachments only led to pain, and he refused to place that hurt on anyone. Especially someone as passionate as Brie.