Page 26 of Before the Summer He Found Her

I run a hand through her hair. “Oh, how I know it,” I breathe, getting caught up with the way her presence makes me quiver. I’m entranced by her. Mesmerized.

As I continue to caress her, tracing my fingers along her hairline, her eyes flutter closed. I’m still wrestling with all of this—Channah of the past, our connection, my position as her boss.Allof it. Yet somehow, all those things temporarily escape me now, and all I can focus on is that there’s a beautiful woman in my arms, and it feels as if, given the chance, we could one day grow into something magical. Even if that chance isn’t meant to be.

“Tell me something you don’t tell people at work,” I murmur, her hair like silk against my fingertips.

“I like to roller skate,” she says, and we each smirk.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I mean, just for fun,” she murmurs, her eyes remaining shut. “I’m not a figure skater or anything.”

“And that is something you don’t tell people at work?”

She lets out a soft chuckle. “It isn’t a secret or anything, but I don’t really talk to people at work, you know? Outside of ourStar Trekand sci-fi memes in the team group chat, I never get into anything that makes me, well, me. It feels too personal, somehow.”

“I know what you mean. It’s uncomfortable. Even sharing the superficial things. Even if I wasn’t the manager. It’s hard for me, too. I’m not a sharing type of person.”

“We have that in common.”

Past Channah enters my mind. The darkness in her eyes. The pain emanating through her heart. I’m starting to understand her a little more clearly, and perhaps her hesitance to talk to Ghost Tom, some stranger, about her life. Something burned her long before the boyfriend she spoke of from the past. Something burned her like something burned me.

Which then prompts the lightbulb to go off in my head.

“What made you trust Tom?” I ask. “With only nine visits total. Why him?”

She’s silent for a moment. Eventually, through a breath that catches in her throat, she says, “He told me his deepest secret.”

I swallow, a lump forming in my throat. I know exactly what secret she’s referring to. My body tenses as I try to process this information, the hurt from that time of my life still raw even when I hardly think of it.

How am I supposed to tell Channah—no, Past Channah—when I don’t even let myself think of this moment in my life? For some reason, it’s this realization of what I must do that wakes me up. I’m in bed right now with Channah.

Channah. My fuckingsubordinate.

Andsheis going to be the one person in this world who learns about my ugly past.

The idea of this terrifies me, and anxiety begins to rise from my gut and all the way up through my throat cavity. Channah Abrams will know my life.

And I can’t handle that.

We shouldn’t be here now like this. I’ve just taken an already complicated situation and somehow complicated it even more. In the morning, I need to walk out of here and never see her again like this, the way I initially intended. I need to keep things professional between us. Extra professional.

This woman will know my ugly past.

Even if she doesn’t realize it’sme.

“Are you alright?” Channah asks.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I lie. “Everything is alright.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EZRA

At the end of the site walk the next day, when we’re alone again, Channah peers around the basement. She reaches for my hand and pulls me toward her, guiding us to the side of the networking cabinet housing our equipment. In one fluid movement, she jerks me toward her.

Without hesitation, I cup her face in my hands, drawing her lips to mine, losing my mind one more time. And forgetting the reality of our circumstances. We share a slow, passionate kiss that lasts for a long time. One that neither of us wants to break. For the last couple of hours, we’ve shared tense looks before each of us cast our heads away. We’ve kept an incredible amount of distance from one another, standing with our other colleagues and hardly saying a word to the other. Channah has kicked ass, handling herself professionally with the field techs and their manager. While I’ve been crumbling on the inside, terrified of what we shared the other night.

In short, what’s happening is exactly what shouldn’t be happening. And only proves to me how foolish I was yesterday.

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