Page 66 of Her Impossible Boss's Baby

And also caused him the most unrest. The most pain.

She came into his office that day at three thirty in the afternoon. And he was stunned by her beauty. All over again.

Because everything was May twenty-fourth, over and over again. Because everything was her, trapped in the golden light of the sun. Because everything was them.

And he supposed it would always be that way. But he wondered if he had the capacity to make it something more than what it was now. To make it all the things that needed to be.

“Do you miss Milan?”

“No.” She didn’t look confused, and she did not ask follow-up questions. She just went about her business in his office as if it was hers. He supposed she knew where everything was in it. Knew it just as well as she knew him. Which was well.

“If you could go back, would you, though?”

She shook her head. “No. I had actually somewhat decided that I wasn’t entirely happy with the job. It’s difficult to go to any other job after you’ve been doing the work that we’ve been doing. Especially when I see the strides that you’re making. It isn’t that there isn’t validity in something like fashion. Of course there is. I really do believe that beauty and art make life worth living. But you make living possible. For so many people. And that work just feels so essential. It’s difficult to leave it behind.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

This office was sacred. Their working relationship was sacred. It was a rule. And yet, suddenly things did not feel neat inside of him. They felt like too much. Too big. And the gall of her saying she loved him sounded inside him over and over again.

He was overcome by it. Overwhelmed by it. He could hear nothing else.

And this was the thing he would always have a hard time explaining to other people.

Sometimes the noise inside of him was so great that the noise on the outside added to it was unbearable. That what was soft to them was overwhelming to him. That what felt like a breeze to them could become daggers beneath his skin, because the world within him was so overwhelming, so insistent, and he did not know how to share it with another person. Didn’t know how to let anyone else know.

And he had tried with her. He was still trying.

But the way that he could most effectively communicate was through touch.

Not in the office. It was against the rules.

And then he found he could not hold himself back. She lived with him. Shared his bed with him. He had upended his routines for her. His life. And it somehow still didn’t feel like enough. The unfairness of it all weighed down on him. Heavy and insistent and intense.

He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, and he pulled her in for a kiss.

She gasped. Shock, but not displeasure. He knew her well enough to know that. He could trust that.

That, somewhere deep within him became a rallying cry.

He kissed her, and suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter quite so much that everything was everything. That everything was overwhelmed. That everything was foreign.

Because she wasn’t.

She was just the right amount. Just the perfect thing to take him out of his own head, and ground him in his body in a way that felt real. In a way that felt right.

So he kissed her, because it was the only thing that could quiet this noise inside of him.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back, and even though he hadn’t said anything she seemed to understand. That he needed her. That he needed to demolish this last wall.

The sacred space of work.

Rules. What were any of his rules?

What did they mean? He didn’t even know anymore.

He had lived his life by them, and they had only gotten him so far.

Yes, he had made all of these advancements in medicine. He had been part of so many wonderful things, but as a human being, as a man, he did not feel as if he understood anything new. Anything real.

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