Page 61 of The Rules
The city pulsed beyond the glass, distant and indifferent.
For a second—just a second—he let himself be still.
The sound of someone laughing in the hallway filtered through the door. His gaze snagged on the blinking cursor at the edge of an unfinished email.
He reached for his coffee—lukewarm now—and took a sip without tasting it.
Normalcy. Routine. A desk. A screen. A chair.
None of it helped.
The question was still there. And it was louder in the silence.
At the meeting she rolling her arm, she tries to ease the stiffness—only now realizing how much she’s revealing.
But Ben saw it. And that bruise? He hadn't forgotten.
He closed the distance between them, not too close—just enough.
"Everything okay?" he asked, his voice casual, unreadable.
Katherine reacted, her brows knitting together, not alarmed but wary. Her control clicked in instantly.
"What?" she replied, her tone guarded but controlled.
Ben gestured nonchalantly, playing the part perfectly, his body loose.
"You keep stretching. Get injured?" The words were casual—but his gaze wasn’t.
Her response was everything. And it came fast. Too fast.
A flicker of hesitation, awareness, before she smoothed her face like nothing happened.
"I bumped into something," She said, her tone too casual, too easy.
Ben didn't move, didn't blink. His voice dipped—just a touch. Just enough to press.
"Must have been a hell of a bump."
The pause was damning. She held it. Then tried to deflect—shoulders rolling, lips curving into a sharp smirk.
“Aw. Didn’t know you cared, Sinclair.” Her tone mocked, but her eyes didn’t quite follow. A crack in her armor—not big, but real.
Ben gave her his best poker face, a smirk right back—casual, dismissive. A front.
"I don't," he said—low, taunting.
Ben reached his office and dropped hard into reality.
The second the door clicked shut behind him, the mask slipped.
He collapsed into his chair, elbows on the desk, fingers pressing against his temples like he could force the thought out of his head by sheer will.
This doesn't make sense. It can't. It shouldn't. Katherine is impossible. Blondie is fantasy. They don't overlap. They shouldn't overlap.
But the evidence stacked itself. The shift in her body language. The way she looked at him—like she knew. Like she was already calculating her countermove before he even made his play.
He exhaled, sharp and frustrated. His fingers tapped out an anxious, impatient rhythm against his desk.
