Page 41 of Bearly Out Loud

Dojin locked the screen. Nari was watching him with sharp, assessing eyes that missed nothing—she’d been watching him like that since the first table read, and it still sent a current through his spine every single time.

“Reo?”

“Reo.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing relevant.”

“Your ears are red. He said something relevant.”

His ears were, in fact, red. A bear shifter who could face down an elder council and a corporate rival without flinching, and a five-foot-six voice actress made his ears turn colors. His mother would be thrilled. His mother could never, under any circumstances, find out about this.

“We’re not talking about this yet.” Her voice was steady. Her hands weren’t. “What happened in this hallway. We’re not unpacking it tonight.”

“Okay.”

“We work on the same project. There are professional considerations.”

“There are.”

“And there are other things happening—things I’m not ready to—” She stopped herself. He watched the words reorganize behind her eyes, watched her choose precision over impulse. “Things that need sorting before this gets more complicated.”

She’s investigating the property. The questions about Voidborn’s origins. The late nights in the studio. She’s uncovered a thread, or she’s pulling at one, and she doesn’t trust me enough yet to say what.

The realization landed with a weight that registered as a warning rather than a threat. Not danger. Uncertainty. She was standing in front of him with swollen lips and careful words and a secret she was carrying alone, and every instinct he possessed screamed to ask. To press. To fix whatever she was holding that made her eyes go careful in the middle of a conversation that should have been nothing but heat.

He didn’t press. He never pressed. He waited.

“Take the time you need.”

Her shoulders dropped—a fraction, a release she probably didn’t realize was visible. “You’re being extremely reasonable for a man whose shirt I wrecked.”

He glanced down. She had, in fact, wrecked his shirt. One button dangling by a thread, the collar stretched out of shape, fabric wrinkled where her fists had gripped. The vibration deepened—the one he refused to name—at the visible evidence that she’d grabbed him hard enough to leave marks on his clothing.

“It’s a good look.”

“Designer shirts with structural damage?”

“Evidence that you find me worth grabbing.”

Her mouth opened. Closed. She pointed at him. “That was good. That was annoyingly good. I’m furious.”

“You’re smiling.”

He walked her to her car. The parking structure under the studio was cold and concrete and lit by the gray-green glow of industrial fluorescents, and she walked close enough that their arms brushed with every other step. Not holding hands. Not linking arms. Brushing—the physical equivalent of a sentence left unfinished.

At her car, she turned. Looked up at him. The overhead light caught the line of her jaw, the dark sweep of her lashes, the mouth he could still taste. His jacket was back on both shoulders. She pulled the collar up. Breathed in.

“I’m keeping the jacket.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not giving it back because of—” She gestured vaguely at the hallway above them. “That. I was keeping it before that. The jacket predates the hallway incident.”

“The hallway incident.”

“Working title. Don’t read into it.”