"Are you hiding from me because of what happened in my office?" I'm not dancing around this. We're going to deal with it.
"No." She turns her head so she's looking away from me. "Not exactly."
"Explain it to me, exactly."
"It was…" She looks at me pleadingly, like I have the words she doesn't.
"Amazing."
She nods. "But after…"
"What happened after?"
"Everything was more. Usually being around you, it quiets all the noise, but at the hospital…" Her eyes fill with moisture.
I want to kill something, but that's not going to fix this. "I left you alone at the hospital."
"You should have been able to," she says like she's ashamed. "I wanted to support you, wanted you to know you weren't alone."
"I knew that."
"Because your mom was there. Your men."
"Becauseyouwere there, my Anna."
"I was useless. You had to leave because of me."
"You think I would have stayed longer?" I ask, trying to understand the root of what has my girl upset. I can't fix what I don't know is broken.
"Wouldn't you?"
"No. I'd talked to my sister. I planned to leave when I came into the waiting room to get you."
"Oh. I thought you left because I was losing it."
"If I'd known you were losing it, I would have left earlier."
"I didn't want you to," she says, agitated.
I shrug. "I didn't." Why was she still upset? "If being around me makes you feel better, why haven't you come back to the office?"
"I need to get used to not being around you."
"The hell you do." She is going nowhere.
"You'll get tired of me and then it'll be worse than it ever was. You're my boss. I can't be clingy with you. No one wants someone clinging to them all the time."
The fuck.
"Emotions are not my thing." Before Anna.
Now, I'm feeling too much sometimes, which is annoying. Not annoying enough to let Anna go though.
She nods. "Shea told me."
"I feel things with you."
"What things?"