Chapter 48: TWO DAYS

NOVA'S POV

I stood there reading the card twice, his handwriting neat across it, those three lines sitting there like they were supposed to undo everything that had happened in that restaurant.

Do you think I care if I hurt you?

I tucked the card back between the flower stems and turned to the reception girl who was watching me with wide eyes. "Trash all of this."

She blinked at me like she wasn't sure she had heard correctly.

"The whole arrangement." I kept my voice flat. "All of it."

"O...okay ma." She reached for the flowers carefully as I turned and walked back to the elevator.

I got back to my office and stood in the middle of it for a moment without sitting down. The room felt too quiet. My wrist was still faintly sore under my sleeve, not painful anymore, just present, just there every time I moved my arm a certain way.

I picked up my phone and dialed Callum's number before I had fully decided to.

It rang twice.

"Nova." His voice came through even and alert, like he had been expecting a call, just not necessarily from me.

"Can I come to your office?" I kept my voice as steady as I could manage.

A short pause. "Come now."

I put my phone in my pocket and went.

\---

I stood outside his office door for longer than I should have.

Through the glass wall I could see him at his desk, head down, pen moving across a document. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He looked like a man who had been at it since before sunrise and had no intention of stopping.

I knocked twice before I could talk myself out of it.

He looked up and something moved across his face before he put it away, already sliding his papers to the side. "Come in."

I pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind me. I stood there for a moment, suddenly unsure of how to begin any of what I had come here to say.

He gestured toward the chair across from his desk without a word and I sat down, putting my bag on my lap and holding onto the strap with both hands.

He didn't ask what was wrong. Didn't make it awkward. He just folded his hands on the desk and waited with that particular stillness of his that used to make me nervous and now just made me feel like I could breathe properly for the first time all day.

"I don't actually know where to start." I kept my eyes on the window behind him.

"Then start anywhere." He picked his pen back up and set it down again, like he had picked it out of habit and then remembered he wasn't actually going to use it.

I pulled my left sleeve up slowly and put my arm on the edge of his desk.

The redness had faded but it was still there, sitting on the inside of my wrist, a faint shadow of what it had looked like two nights ago.

Callum looked at it and his entire body went very still.

Not the controlled stillness he usually carried around like a second skin. Something different. Something that had edges to it.

"Matthias." He didn't frame it as a question. His eyes moved from my wrist up to my face.

"At the restaurant." I pulled my sleeve back down. "I told him he was hurting me and he—" I stopped, pressing my fingers into the bag strap. "He said he didn't care."

The muscle in Callum's jaw moved once.

He stood up from his desk and walked to the window, standing with his back to me and both hands in his pockets. I watched his shoulders and the rigid line of his spine and the way he was working very hard to keep everything locked down.

"How long ago?" His voice came out low and careful from where he stood.

"Four days."

He turned around slowly and looked at me. "Four days, Nova."

"I know." I held his gaze without flinching. "Elias put ice on it that night. I just—" I stopped again. "I kept telling myself it was one moment. That it wouldn't happen again."

"And now?" He came back to the desk and stood behind it, both palms flat on the surface, leaning forward slightly.

"And now he sent flowers to the office with a card that said sorry and I threw them in the bin and came here instead." I let out a slow breath. "I don't know what that means exactly. I just know I needed to tell someone who wasn't going to—"

"React badly?" He straightened up and looked at me steadily.

"React at all, maybe." I met his eyes. "I just needed somewhere to put it."

He was quiet for a long moment, looking at me with that expression I had spent years trying to decode and had never quite managed.

Then he walked around the desk and crouched down in front of my chair so we were at eye level and reached out and pushed my sleeve back up by himself, looking at my wrist properly in the light.

His thumb moved across the faded mark so carefully it barely counted as a touch.

"You should have come to me the night it happened." His voice was very quiet.

"I know." My throat felt tight.

He pushed my sleeve back down gently and stood up. He walked back around the desk and sat down and was quiet for another moment, something working behind his eyes that he wasn't putting into words yet.

"I need you to keep seeing him," he said finally.

I stared at him. "What?"

"Not forever." He held my gaze steadily. "Just a little longer. There are things we are looking into about Matthias Hale and I need time to confirm them before we move." He paused. "Can you do that? Keep things normal with him until I tell you otherwise?"

I sat with that for a moment.

"How long?" I asked carefully.

"Two days." He picked his pen up again and looked at me over the desk. "Can you give me two days?"

I looked at him. Looked at the folder at the corner of his desk with Matthias Hale's company name on the tab, thick and well worn, like it had been sitting there for a long time.

"Two days," I agreed, standing up and pulling my bag onto my shoulder.

"Nova." His voice caught me at the door, low and even. "My door is always open. Whatever time. Whatever the reason."

I didn't turn around because if I looked at his face right then I was going to say something I wasn't ready for yet.

"I know," I answered, and walked out.

I got back to my office and sat at my desk and stared at my screen without reading a word on it.

My phone buzzed.

Matthias: Thinking about you. Dinner tonight? I know a new place you would love.

I stared at the message for a long moment, my thumb hovering.

Then I typed back with completely steady hands. "Tonight works. Send me the address." I hit send and put the phone face down on the desk.

Two days. I could last two days.

What I couldn't stop turning over in my mind was why that folder on Callum's desk with Matthias Hale's name on it looked like it had been sitting there for a lot longer than two days.