Page 62 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I swallow, trying to clear my mind. The warmth climbs my throat anyway.

“Sophie?” Celine tilts her head, studying me. “You’ve gone pink, dear. Too warm?”

“The room,” I say. “It’s stuffy in here.”

Lucy, delighted to have a fresh subject, launches into the saga of the third-floor air conditioning, and I nod in the right places and taste none of my lunch and think, against my will, about a man I have no business thinking about at all.

CHAPTER 18

Finn

Idon’t know at which point I reached my limit.

Maybe it was the day when she walked into the marketing wing in that lavender blouse buttoned all the way up to her throat, looking like butter wouldn’t melt, and I had to sit in my office for twenty minutes staring at a spreadsheet I wasn’t reading until my pulse returned to normal.

Maybe it was when I passed her desk and she didn’t look up. Didn’t acknowledge me at all, just kept typing, her dark hair falling like a curtain between us, and I couldn’t decide if I was annoyed or embarrassed by how much I noticed.

But no. I think I know exactly when it happened.

It was Thursday morning, not long after she arrived.

Sophie walks through the glass doors of the marketing wing with a coffee in one hand, and she’s wearing a cream dress.

It’s not revealing, like at all. The neckline sits just below her collarbone, the sleeves reach her elbows, the hem falls below her knees. Some would probably even call it conservative.

But that color.

Against her skin, smooth and impossibly soft-looking, the cream fabric creates an illusion. A trick of the light, maybe. A trick of my increasingly unhinged mind, more likely. But the pale fabric blurs the boundary between cloth and flesh, and my brain short-circuits trying to figure out where one ends and the other begins.

She looks like she’s wrapped in nothing but candlelight.

I grip the edge of my desk so hard my knuckles ache.

Look away. Look away, you fucking idiot.

I don’t look away.

She crosses the floor to her desk, setting down her coffee, shrugging her bag off her shoulder. The movement makes the dress shift against her body, the fabric catching on the curve of her hip for just a second before falling smooth again.

My mouth goes dry.

And then Celine appears at her side, saying something I can’t hear through the glass, and Sophie turns to her and smiles. It’s wide and easy, and a second later she’s laughing, head tipped back slightly, one hand pressed to her sternum. She looks happy and carefree and so real.

Except none of it is real. She’s playing a part, the same way she played a part at the gala, the same way she plays every part, effortless, without a trace of the woman underneath.

Stop it. Stop pretending. Stop being this person who doesn’t exist. For once in your fucking life, just be honest.

I don’t move. I sit at my desk, my jaw locked tight, and watch her through the glass like a man watching a fire he can’t put out.

I’ve been trying to ignore her since she arrived. It seemed like the only viable strategy. If I don’t acknowledge her existence beyond the bare minimum of professional courtesy, eventually whatever this is will burn itself out.

That was the theory, anyway.

In practice, ignoring Sophie is like trying to ignore a splinter lodged under your skin. The more you try not to think about it, the more you feel it. A nagging pressure that builds and builds until it’s all you can focus on.

I catch myself tracking her movements through the office. Noting when she arrives, when she leaves, who she talks to, how long she spends at each desk. I notice when she changes her hair. Down on Monday, half-up on Tuesday, that devastating ponytail on Wednesday that exposed the line of her neck and made me want to press my mouth to the spot where her pulse beats.

I notice when she laughs, and with whom. When she frowns at her computer screen, her brow furrowing in concentration. When she bites her lower lip while reading something, her teeth pressing into that soft pink flesh.