Free Web NovelChapter 7: The Morning After
James’s POV
He made it to breakfast.
That was about the best thing he could say about it.
He’d been up since four, which he knew because he’d watched the clock move from three fifty-eight to four and then given up on sleeping entirely. He’d showered again, which made twice in twelve hours, and put on clean clothes, and told himself on the walk downstairs that the previous night was a closed file. It had happened, it was done, and he was moving forward.
He sat at the head of the table and opened the report Marcus had left for him and stared at it.
She came through the pass-through at six forty-three with the first serving dishes. He knew the exact time because he’d looked at his watch two minutes before and was already aware of her footsteps in the kitchen, the specific rhythm of them that he apparently now had memorized without meaning to.
She set the dishes on the buffet without looking at the table. Her hair was down, still slightly damp at the ends. She was wearing the green dress.
He looked back at his report.
She moved back through the pass-through. He heard the kitchen sounds resume, quiet and efficient. Three of the warriors were already at the table, talking about the morning training rotation, and one of them made a joke and the others laughed, and James stared at the same paragraph he’d been staring at for four minutes and read none of it.
She came back out with the orange juice. Set it on the table. Poured his glass first, the way she always did, without being asked, without looking at him directly. He could smell her from where he was sitting.
The soap. And underneath the soap, that other thing, warm and entirely hers.
His hand tightened on the report.
She went back to the kitchen. He put the report face down on the table and picked up his coffee and looked at the wall and thought, with the grim clarity of a man who has just been thoroughly honest with himself, that he was in serious trouble.
By the time she came out to clear the breakfast service, the table had mostly emptied. Two warriors lingered over their coffee. James was still there, which he shouldn’t have been, he had a full morning, but his legs hadn’t gotten the message yet.
She came around the table collecting plates, quiet and focused, and got to the warrior on his left, who said something to her that James didn’t fully catch because the blood in his ears was doing something unhelpful. She answered without stopping her work, short and polite, and moved on.
When she reached James’s end he kept his eyes on the table.
She reached across to collect the serving dish near his left, and for approximately two seconds she was close enough that the sleeve of her dress was in his peripheral vision and he could smell her clearly, no grease, no kitchen smoke, just that clean warm scent, and every muscle in his body pulled tight.
She moved on.
He sat there for another thirty seconds after she went back through the pass-through. Then he stood up, picked up his report, and walked to his office with the controlled pace of a man who was absolutely fine and needed no one to ask him how he was doing.
He lasted four hours before he went to the laundry room.
He didn’t plan it.
He was walking past the laundry room on his way back from the east wing and the door was ajar and the small pile of items on the sorting shelf was right there, and he recognized the fabric before he registered that he was stopping.
It was one of her shirts. One of Rosie’s shirts. Plain grey cotton, washed soft, folded small. fгeewebnovёl.com
He stood there in the hallway for a moment.
Then he picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket and kept walking.
He told himself he wasn’t sure why he’d done it. That was a lie. He knew exactly why. He’d been sitting at his desk all morning with that breakfast scent still in his head, slowly losing its edges, and the idea of it fading completely had produced a specific kind of panic that he refused to name properly.
He put the shirt in his desk drawer and closed it and did not open it again for two hours.
When he finally did, he just sat there with it in his hands for a while.
His wolf didn’t say anything. It didn’t need to.
