Chapter 78

Amelia

It started after another strategy session, both of us lingering in his office while the building slowly emptied. I stood near the window, arms crossed tightly, watching dusk bleed into the pine forest below. Richard sat at the edge of his desk, tie loosened, eyes on the floor.

"We have to stop," he said finally, so quietly it took me a second to register it.

I turned to face him. "Stop what?"

"This." He gestured vaguely between us. "All of it. The sneaking around. The pretending it’s just physical. It’s not working. And it’s getting dangerous."

I didn’t answer right away. The words hung between us like smoke.

"You think we’re being watched?" I asked.

"I know we are," he replied, voice tight. "Tasha’s suspicious. Nathan’s too smart. Jenny—don’t even get me started."

"So what then? We just walk away? Like this doesn’t matter?"

He looked up, jaw clenched. "It does matter. That’s the problem. It matters too much. And we can’t afford to let it cost us everything."

I hated how much sense he made. I hated that I agreed.

"You’re right," I said finally, the words scraping my throat. "We’ve been reckless. And it’s not like we’re getting what we want out of this. We’re just—hurting each other."

He nodded once, slow. "It was supposed to be simple. Just physical."

"We were never simple," I whispered.

There was a long silence, full of things neither of us would say. Then I walked out. I didn’t look back.

I went home and sat on the edge of my bed in the same clothes I’d worn all day. My heels were still on, my bag still over my shoulder. I stared at the corner where the wall met the floor, trying to will myself into being someone who could let go, who could walk away. But all I could feel was everything I hadn’t said, building pressure behind my ribs.

Twenty-three minutes passed.

I stood up, grabbed my keys without thinking, and walked out the door.

The walk to his estate felt like falling backward through a dream. Familiar roads blurred around me. My feet steady on the road, but inside, I was fraying.

When he opened his door, he was barefoot and wrapped in a towel, hair still damp from the shower, steam curling out from the hallway behind him. There wasn’t a flicker of surprise in his expression. No hesitation. No pretense. He just looked at me like he’d been waiting. Like he’d known I would come.

He didn’t ask why. I didn’t explain. The moment the door shut behind me, he pulled me into him. We kissed like we were starving.

The hallway was too narrow, too sharp-edged, but it didn’t matter. We barely made it to the bathroom. The shower was still damp from earlier, condensation clinging to the glass. I fumbled with the buttons on his shirt while he yanked down the zipper of my skirt. Our clothes hit the floor in uneven piles. His mouth found my throat and I gasped, back colliding with the cold tile as he lifted me.

The water hadn’t even fully heated up again before he was inside me. My legs wrapped around his waist, hands braced against his slick shoulders. He held me like he’d break if he let go. His thrusts were erratic, messy, more need than rhythm. I dug my nails into his back, buried my face in his neck.

“Tell me you need this,” he whispered against my jaw, voice low and wrecked.

“I do,” I said, panting. “I need you. I always do.”

He groaned, thrust harder, and I cried out, my entire body winding tighter. The steam filled the space around us, blurring everything. We kissed between gasps, clutching each other like we could disappear inside the contact.

My orgasm hit fast, sharp and sudden. I clenched around him, choking on a gasp. He came with a growl, biting down against my shoulder, arms locking tight around me like he’d never let go.

Afterward, I perched on the bathroom counter, wrapped in one of his towels. My hair dripped onto the tile as I sipped from a glass of water he handed me. He stood across from me, quiet, watching me with something unreadable in his eyes. He kissed my temple softly, like an apology, like he meant something he wouldn’t say aloud.

I went to his bedroom to find something to sleep in. He’d already pulled out one of his old t-shirts, the kind that hung to mid-thigh on me. I was halfway into it when I spotted the glass in the trash.

A wine glass. Lipstick smeared across the rim. Pale pink. Not mine.

I froze, my breath catching in my throat. My hand stayed on the hem of the shirt.

I stared at it. Stared until the room blurred. Then looked away.

He didn’t explain. I didn’t ask. I didn’t have the right to. But that night, as he curled around me in bed, his arm slung over my waist like nothing had changed, I didn’t sleep. My eyes stayed open in the dark, watching the slow shift of headlights against the wall. I could still taste his mouth. Still hear the things he hadn’t said.

I left before dawn. Dressed in silence. Crept barefoot across his hardwood floors, gathered my clothes, and stepped into my heels like I was preparing for battle. I didn’t check the mirror.

When I stepped outside, the sky was just beginning to pale. Cool air hit my face like a slap. I crossed the gravel drive to my car, opened the door, and looked back on instinct.

He was standing in the window, arms crossed, watching me.

Later that morning, HQ felt like a war zone. Phones rang constantly, printers jammed, and tension simmered in every corner. I was at my desk, adjusting the layout of a press deck, when word came down: Richard had been called into a council subcommittee session. Something about misuse of resources, canvassing team costs, data center expenses.

He was gone before I got a chance to see him.

I hadn’t even sat down before the press inbox lit up like a fire alarm. Volunteers. Dozens of them. Complaints pouring in. Someone had leaked an internal spreadsheet to a public press contact list, names, addresses, phone numbers, emergency contacts. Every bit of sensitive information we’d promised to protect.

I stared at the screen, heart in my throat.

Adam arrived within seconds, the scent of smugness preceding him.

“That wasn’t your batch, was it?” he asked casually. “You were still on that rotation last week.”

I shut the laptop lid calmly. “Only when I’m the one logging in and sending it. Which I wasn’t.”

He shrugged. “Just making conversation. Stress does weird things to people.”

My smile didn’t touch my eyes. “If you’re insinuating something, you should be smart enough to back it up with data.”

He smirked. “Of course.”

He walked off, but the damage was done. Eyes slid away when I looked around. Conversations stopped when I entered rooms. People who used to ask for my input now avoided direct questions. At the debrief, no one sat beside me.

I stayed composed. Kept my notes organized. Nodded in the right places.

After the meeting, I passed Nathan in the hallway. He didn’t say a word, just slipped a folded piece of paper into my palm as we crossed paths.

I opened it in the stairwell.

Internal access logs. Compare timestamps. Two days ago. Quietly.

A USB drive was clipped to the bottom. My pulse spiked.

That night, I waited until the office cleared out. The building fell quiet one light at a time. I made myself a cup of stale coffee, just to stay sharp. Then I slipped into the server room.

The air was cold, humming with static. I logged in and opened the logs, heart pounding. The files Nathan gave me were clean and specific. My credentials had been used. My account accessed things I hadn’t touched. Someone was ghosting me from the inside.

I didn’t hear the door open. But I felt the change in the air.

Richard stepped beside me, silent. He looked at the screen without speaking. The flickering monitor lit the hard lines of his face.

We worked.

And somehow, that felt more intimate than anything else we’d done all week.