Page 35 of Charmed by the Obsessive Boss

"You'll want to sit."

"I've been standing for sixteen years. I'll manage."

"All right." I stand up myself, because I can't say it sitting down, and put the foil on the crate. My hands feel enormous. "It started as sport."

Her face doesn't move.

"You've heard the facts. You heard me say them to people who could fire me, so I won't recite them. What you haven't heard is the part that matters: I forgot the bet by the end of the dye house, and I didn't tell you because I was afraid."

"You didn't tell me."

"No."

"You had three chances."

"I had four." I make myself keep looking at her. "On the dock. In the storeroom. On your porch when I told you about the lock and left out the rest. And this morning, in bed, when I decided to tell you before breakfast and then made breakfast instead." I breathe. "I want to be exact about this because I think you'll know if I'm not. I wasn't going to tell you after because it was convenient. I was going to tell you after because I wanted one more hour of you not looking at me the way you looked at me in that kitchen."

The vat murmurs behind her. A drop falls from a hank and hisses on the concrete.

"That's the whole thing," I say. "That's the worst of it. I was a coward for an hour and it cost me everything, and you were right to send me out of your house."

She's quiet for a long time.

"You didn't text," she says.

"You told me to go."

"I know." She looks down at her hands, at the blue that's soaked into the lines of her knuckles. "I kept waiting. I put my phone in the bread box. Danny would have sent forty messages. Roses. A voice memo." Her mouth twists. "You sent nothing. I didn't know what to do with it."

"I almost did. I stood on your sidewalk drafting an apology in phases, with a timeline." I laugh, not happily. "Step one, flowers. Step two, patience. I heard myself and stopped. It was a restructuring plan for your heart."

Something flickers in her face.

"I should say something else too," I say, "and I'd like you to hear it all the way through. I'm obsessed with you."

A beat. Then, dryly, "I'd noticed."

"I know what that sounds like. I know what it sounds like coming from a man who spent Friday morning calling you a challenge. I want to be exact about this too. I count things when I'm frightened. I counted your freckles. I memorized your tea. I canceled a flight in a stairwell and built a revised proposal in a single Sunday with your handwriting on the first slide. I don't know how to want something a little." My voice isn't steady. "I'd rather you hear it from me than discover it when I'm standing in your hedges. So I'd like you to set the rules, Rosey. Whatever they are. I'll keep every one."

She looks at me for a long moment, the steam moves around her, and I see the exact point at which she decides.

"Ask me," she says. "Don't decide for me."

I wait.

"That's the rule. That's all of it." She uncrosses her arms. "You decided I couldn't take the bet. You decided I'd be better off hearing it after eggs. You've been deciding what I can take since the first morning, in a room full of people, with a smile." She lifts her chin. "I can take it. I've taken worse. I've taken a funeral and a gas station receipt and nine years of being told I'm too much. I don't need you to manage what I feel."

"Understood."

"And when I say go, you go. You did." She swallows. "That's the only reason I'm standing here. I've never in my life watched a man do what I asked him to do, with his hands shaking, and not make me pay for it."

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done."

"I know. I watched your hand." A pause. "I owe you something too."

"You don't."

"I do. I heard half a call and ran. Charlotte reminded me this afternoon that I make her hear the whole apology, even when she's furious, and I didn't give you the same." Her voice cracks and she runs over it. "I'm sorry I didn't let you finish."