THE MORNING AFTER, the weight of last night's unfinished conversation still clung to Mailah like fog.
She replayed every moment on a loop—the way the words had tumbled out of her mouth before she could catch them, the way Grayson's gaze had sharpened, unreadable, when she'd suggested they attend the Ashford Anniversary together.
And then the way he hadn't answered.
Instead, he'd told her it was late, brushed his thumb once across her wrist as if that small gesture could erase the gravity of her question, and said, "We should go to bed."
No argument, no sharp refusal—just that.
She hadn't dared push, not with the wall he'd quietly raised in his voice.
He'd extinguished the fire in the room with the ease of someone who had been quelling unwanted sparks for centuries.
And now, sitting at her desk she had claimed in one corner of the office, Mailah wanted to bite her tongue until it bled.
