Chapter 48: Chapter Forty-Nine

**POV Mads**

There she was, the metal doors open, and the feeling that nothing I was about to see could interest me blinded me. My eyes drifted from the glowing screen of my tablet to that face as if in some kind of connection, a motor need directly linked to my subconscious. Although I saw the same features, the same smooth, soft skin, the same intense brown eyes, the same fleshy, well-drawn mouth, the chiseled cheeks, and the bone structure that made her face oval and delicate, although all this was still there, her face seemed changed, and as her greatest observer and admirer, I noticed. I guessed that my attention was entirely on her because her face was flushed, her eyes widening in excitement before my gaze. Maybe I didn't know how to express my feelings beyond a frown that made my face hurt. Maybe that made me more severe than I should have been. Maybe I liked her too much.

Her slightly reddened irises indicated emotion, her dry lips looked as if they had been mercilessly bitten, her shoulders slumped, her cheeks rosy as she stared down at me in surprise. Her height was a constant test of my sanity. Even when she was facing me from a few meters below, her gaze would rise and she would stare at me as if she was above me all the time, but not in this case. Her discomfort at seeing me there was clear, and it became a fact as the elevator doors closed and the male figure stood right behind her like a second shadow. Was I the first? Adrien pushed one of the buttons that suggested the upper floors, and I assumed our destination would be his office. "I'll teach you how to enjoy a good meal..." My son's words still hung in the air, and I heard a kind of intimacy in them that my body fiercely rejected.

I clenched the tablet in my hands in a failed attempt to control myself, my mind struggling to see this and other situations in a less suspicious, less spiteful way, one that revealed less of my intentions, my anger. I felt like I was standing on a scale that was balancing itself, but at that moment was leaning toward the almost winning side. I couldn't help but wonder: what would Adrien think of all this? What would he say about his father being interested in a younger girl he was also interested in? He hated me, and it showed in the way he looked at me, in the way he always changed when he saw me, suddenly less smiling, suddenly a man acting like a man. It had been hard to get used to his maturity, and while my paternal mind fought against it, the boy himself had done much to prove himself a grown man. I had compassion for him, a strong feeling of withdrawn and strange love that made me realize my mistakes in his upbringing, and in his process of growing up. But Adrien wanted to be seen as the man he was, separate from the blood, separate from the name that bound us together.

So be it.

Then I wouldn't have to polish off my anger, my silent jealousy, my instinctive annoyance at his interest in this woman.

Adrien adjusted his jacket, his eyes on mine, as if he suddenly ignored the fact that Dakota was there, small between us. God, he was really into this, wasn't he? We were, we were. I raised my chin as if in automatic response, the silence accentuating our gazes, he was testing me. He was testing me with irony and defiance in his eyes, I wasn't going to buy it, I wasn't going to satisfy his desire to see me vulnerable and uncomfortable. I decided, with great difficulty, to ignore the fact that she was there, the wonderful fact that our bodies were almost pressed together. Fuck, I could smell the vanilla coming from her, her breathing and her chin pointing up. I was pretty sure those eyes were begging me for something, and that could easily be my downfall right there. I take a step back and mentally curse myself.

"You know the policy we have regarding intimate interactions during work hours." I look at Dakota for a few seconds and it's enough to... damn it. Adrien bares his teeth but doesn't smile, and I try to focus my gaze on him, watching that irony and hatred face to face. His shoulder pressed against the metal wall, young and forcefully charismatic. When did he become that? Since when didn't I really look at him to notice? Did I create him that way?

"We know very well that no one obeys it." Of course, especially me.

"I don't think your girlfriend... likes to hear you talk like that." I say, the words leaving my throat in a knot, there is indifference in them, coldness masked by jealousy and insane desire. I don't look away, but I know Dakota is fidgeting uncomfortably. I know, love, I know... it hurts me too.

"I don't think she likes it when you suggest she's that kind of woman, boss." His tone is natural, but I sense the bitterness hidden in it. I blink and spend a few seconds with my eyes closed. I had indirectly suggested it, and the knowledge that I could easily give in to my impulses makes me feel miserable. Miserable like a man she didn't deserve, who she couldn't see when I revealed myself, in moments like this. Silence was enough for me, there was nothing to say but to swallow the triumph of my son. The pain was double, for him and her.

"Don't talk about me as if I weren't here." Never. Maybe the fact that I knew exactly that she was there made me control myself with such rationality. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, I wanted to press my lips hard against hers, I wanted to get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness with my mouth and my hands. I looked at the man with the black hair, perhaps one of the few things we have in common except for his jaw and the narrow curve of his nose, and I wanted, God how I wanted... as a man, not as a father, to push him to the mirror, to hold the back of his head and press his face against his reflection, to make him weak before himself. But no, the equation was long, and the man in front of me was part of it.

Dakota took a deep breath and I saw her look between me and Adrien. It was shameful for her to witness this, to see me treat my son so coldly, and for him to return the favor. Her judgment suddenly consumed me, and with good reason.

"I don't need any snacks, I'm fine." She looks at me and this time I do too, I see unshed tears in her eyes and I feel like the worst man to ever walk the earth. My body was shaking and my desire to pull her was unbearable. The elevator doors open to the lobby where more people are waiting to board. "Adrien, Mr. Moser..." She steps out, her silhouette moving away from me as if I were the worst company for her, and I was. Adrien isolates herself in the corner of the elevator, the people seeming like mere shadows that have blocked my view of Dakota. I feel that look on my face, his look is indecipherable, maybe sarcasm, maybe anger, maybe amusement, or a mixture of all of it. I only feel a pain in my chest that accompanies me as the doors close, and I know that I lost her that day. My greatest fear was that I wouldn't hold on, that I would be who I didn't want to be again, and that I would lose her more than once.