Page 163 of Reckless Obsession

The expectation.

I have spent too much of my life learning that good things have an expiration date. That if I hold them too tightly, they rot in my hands. That happiness is not something men like me get to keep; it is something we borrow before the cost arrives.

But Maksim has always had a way of making my rules feel temporary.

It’s been three days since the morning when Dante’s name lit up a phone screen that wasn’t mine to look at. Three days since my hands found Maksim’s throat and any pretense of composure I still had left the building entirely, letting jealousy make decisions I had no business making.

We settled it that same morning, but settled doesn’t mean gone. I know men like Dante. Patient, persistent, the kind who mistake absence for opportunity rather than an answer. He’ll try again. I’d put money on it before I’d put money on anything in this city.

“Don’t look so concerned,” Grace says, misreading my silence. “I like you this way.”

I lift a brow. “You like me less miserable.”

“I like that you seem less alone.”

The words settle heavier than I expect.

Grace straightens, sensing she has pressed as far as she should. “Your meeting with Ms. Oslo is in an hour. Do you want me to hold your calls until then?”

“Yes.”

She turns for the door, then stops with her hand on the frame.

“Whatever has you in this mood,” she says, “keep it.”

I watch her leave.

For a long moment, I sit alone behind my desk, the city spread out beneath the windows and a stack of urgent work waiting to be handled.

My quiet peace doesn’t last because the intercom buzzes twenty minutes later.

Grace’s voice comes through, measured but cautious. “Mr. Sinclair? Jake Wesley is here.”

My hand stills over the file I have opened.

“I told him you weren’t seeing anyone this morning,” she adds. “He’s been persistent.”

Of course he has.

Jake has never understood the meaning of no when it inconveniences him. He hears it, acknowledges it, then treats it as the opening move in a negotiation he has already decided he will win.

“Let him in,” I tell Grace.

There's a brief pause on the other end. “Are you sure?”

“No,” I say. “But let him in anyway.”

“Yes, Mr. Sinclair.”

I end the call and sit back in my chair.

For the next few minutes, I do what I have trained myself to do whenever Jake threatens to drag the past into my present: I arrange my face into neutrality.

Jake walks in as though the office still belongs to both of us. He takes the chair opposite my desk before I offer it.

Then crosses one leg over the other, settling in with the ease of someone who believes every place he enters will eventually make room for him.

I don’t give him the satisfaction of a greeting.