CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
ADAM'S POV

I had read the same line on the same slide four times and still couldn't tell you what it said.

Something about tensile strength and corrosion rates.

My eyes were on the screen, my body was in the chair, and every other part of me was still standing in Athena's room with a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates going soft in my hands while she told me, gently but without a single crack in it… No.

I felt stupid. Not the polite kind of stupid you laugh off later, the kind that sits low in your chest and won't leave.

I'd built the whole idea up in my head before I ever said it out loud to her. Blake's coronation, my invitation, her on my arm walking into a room full of people who'd spent months treating her like something fragile and pitiable. I'd pictured it clean. I'd pictured her proving to every single one of them that she was still standing, still breathing, still exactly as much of a person as she'd always been, matrix or not.

And if I was being fully honest with myself, somewhere underneath the noble version of that plan was a much simpler one. I wanted to walk in with her beside me and let the whole room see it. Let them see that I wasn't ashamed of what she was. That I was, if anything, proud.

It had seemed like such a good idea at eleven o'clock last night.

"It would be fun." I'd told her, which in hindsight was possibly the single worst sentence I could have chosen.

"No."

"You wouldn't have to talk to anyone you don't want to."

"No."

"I could keep you by the door the entire night if that made it easier."

"No, Adam."

Every angle I came at it from, every reasonable, generous, thoughtful version of the offer I could construct, ran straight into the same wall.

I hadn't pushed after the fourth no. I wasn't in the business of pushing people who'd already had enough taken from them without their consent. But I'd left her house with the flowers still sitting untouched on her dresser and a knot in my stomach I hadn't been able to shake since.

"Mr. Leann?" came Amber's voice, sharp enough to cut through whatever fog I'd been sitting in.

I blinked. Six faces around the conference table were looking at me, which meant I'd missed however long it had been since someone last asked me a direct question.

"Sorry. Go over that again?"

The head of procurement, a wiry man named Callix who took his job more seriously than most Alphas took their pack, cleared his throat and started over. "The aluminum packaging. We're proposing it replace the cobalt coating on all outbound food shipments starting next quarter."

Right. The meeting I was supposed to be running.

Cobalt had been our standard protective layer for years, effective against contamination but expensive to source and, according to the report currently sitting untouched in front of me, increasingly difficult to import at the volumes we needed. Aluminum was cheaper, lighter, and by every metric on that page just as safe for wolves to be around. It should have been an easy call. It should have taken me ten minutes to approve.

"What's the timeline on supplier transition?" I asked, and even I could hear how flat my voice came out.

Callix answered. I nodded in what I hoped were the right places. Somewhere in the middle of his explanation about coating thickness, my mind had drifted straight back to Athena's face when she'd said no the fourth time, not annoyed, not even particularly upset, just tired in a way that made me feel like I'd been the one adding to a weight she was already carrying.

I hadn't even considered that maybe she didn't want to be flaunted. That maybe being proof of concept for anyone, even for someone who loved her, was its own kind of exhausting.

Something connected under the table, sharp and precise, right against my shin.

I nearly knocked my water glass over.

Amber didn't look at me when she did it. She kept her eyes on Callix, pen moving across her notepad like nothing had happened, and only the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth gave away that the kick had been entirely intentional.

"You were about to sign off on doubling our aluminum order without reading the cost projection…" she murmured, low enough that only I would catch it. "I'd rather you did that on purpose."

I sat up straighter and actually read the number this time. It was a good deal. I approved it properly, with my full attention for exactly as long as the topic required, and then let my mind wander straight back to Athena the second the meeting moved on to something else.

By the time the day ended, I had every intention of driving to the Ravies house.

I got as far as sitting in the car with the engine idling before I talked myself out of it.

What would I even say?

Sorry for asking.

Sorry for pushing an idea I'd already decided was a good one before I ever thought to ask if it was a good idea for you?

Showing up again so soon after a rejection that clean felt like it would look like I was trying to wear her down through persistence, and that wasn't who I wanted to be to her. Not after everything.

So instead, I sent a text.

Hope your day went well? I won't be able to make it over tonight.

Then I drove home.

.

.

.

.

The house was quiet except for the sound of nails against hardwood the second my key turned in the lock.

I had picked up Tom from Annalise’s room not too long ago and he went barreling into the room with the kind of unrestrained joy only a dog who has no idea what a bad day is can manage.

It was somewhere in the middle of watching him run, that the stupidity of the entire evening finally landed properly.

I'd left her alone. On the one night she'd had to say no to me for the first time, a real no, not a hesitant maybe, and I'd responded by disappearing entirely, and dressed it up as respecting her space when really it looked exactly like what it was.

Sulking. Making my disappointment visible by its absence.

She'd probably read it that way too.

I stood up so fast that Tom let out a confused bark and I paced the length of the kitchen twice, phone in my hand, calling myself an idiot under my breath in three different phrasings before I finally stopped pacing, sat down at the counter, and pulled up her contact.

It rang twice before she picked up.