Violet’s POV
I slide into Zachary's car and the air between us immediately becomes something solid, something I could reach out and touch if I was brave enough.
The leather seat is cool against my thighs, and I'm hyperaware of every inch of space separating us—twelve inches, to be exact, that might as well be a canyon or a thread, depending on which one of us gives in first.
He starts the engine but doesn't shift into drive. Just sits there with both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead like the windshield holds answers neither of us want to find.
"There are cameras everywhere," he says finally, his voice carrying that careful, measured quality I've started to recognize as armor. "Parking garage. Building entrance. Lobby."
I turn to look at him. He keeps his eyes forward.
"I need you to understand something, Violet." The professionalism in his tone is so deliberate it's almost painful. "I won't flirt with you here. I won't touch you. I won't do anything that could be misinterpreted or recorded or used against either of us."
The warning is meant to reassure me. To establish boundaries. To make me feel safe.
It lands completely differently.
Because I don't want protection from his attraction—I want confirmation of it. I want him to stop being so goddamn appropriate and just admit that this thing between us isn't something either of us can logic away.
The realization that he's trying so hard to be the responsible adult makes me want to be completely irresponsible, and the tension of that contradiction hums through my body like a live wire.
"Okay," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
"I can take you home." He finally looks at me, and there's something careful in his expression. "We can talk while I drive. If you want."
If I want. Like there's a version of this where I say no and walk away.
"I want to."
He pulls out of the parking lot, and I watch his hand on the wheel—just one hand, casual and confident, while the other rests on his thigh. Everything about him looks controlled, but I'm starting to understand that control is just another word for restraint.
"I need to be honest with you," he starts, and I brace myself because honesty is usually code for rejection. "I'm not looking for a relationship. My career has to come first right now—I'm establishing myself here, building credibility, and I can't afford complications."
"I'm a complication," I say, not as a question.
"You're nineteen." He says it gently, but the words still sting. "I'm thirty-five. You're still figuring out who you are, what you want from your life. And this—" He gestures between us without taking his eyes off the road. "This would be complicated in ways neither of us needs."
Every word is rational. Reasonable. Exactly what someone in his position should say.
I listen to him dismantle the possibility between us with legal precision, each argument sound and sensible and completely fucking devastating.
And then I deploy my one undeniable truth.
"University starts in less than in a little over a month."
His hand tightens on the wheel. Small movement. Seismic shift.
"After that, I'm going on campus full-time. You'll be at the office doing your job, managing Adison's empire, and I'll be managing law and whatever else as long as my mom is still willing to pay for it." I turn to look at him even though he won't look at me. "We won't see each other."
The statement hangs in the car like an expiration date.
Like permission.
Like a way out of all those rational reasons he just listed.
I watch something shift in his expression—the careful mask slipping just enough that I can see what's underneath. Calculation giving way to want. Professional distance losing ground to something raw and hungry and human.
"My place is ten minutes from here," he says, and his voice is different now. Lower. Less controlled.
Victory and terror flood through me in equal measure.
Because now there's no pretending this isn't happening. No more professional boundaries. No more careful conversations about age differences and career implications.
Just this: two people who want each other, and four weeks that suddenly feel like both forever and not nearly enough time.
"Okay," I say again, and this time my voice isn't steady at all.
He makes turns that definitely aren't toward Adison’s apartment, and I watch the city blur past—Manhattan giving way to a quieter residential street I've never been to. My heart is hammering so hard I'm certain he can hear it, and every nerve ending in my body feels electrified.
This is happening.
This is actually happening.
"Violet." My name sounds different in his voice—rough around the edges, less rehearsed. "If you change your mind—"
"I won't."
"If you do," he continues, pulling up to a building with clean lines and understated elegance, "just say so. Any time. I need you to know that."
He kills the engine, and suddenly the silence is deafening.
We sit there, neither of us moving, the weight of what we're about to do settling between us like gravity.
"I know," I tell him, and I do. Whatever else Zachary Cooper might be, he's not the kind of man who would push. Who would take it without asking. "I'm here because I want to be."
He finally looks at me fully, and the heat in his gaze nearly undoes me right there in the front seat of his very professional, very corporate car.
"Come with me," he says.
He gets out, and I follow, my legs unsteady as I walk toward the building entrance. This is reckless. This is probably a mistake. This is definitely going to complicate everything.
But I'm done being the girl who plays it safe. Done being managed and protected and shielded from my own choices.
Zachary unlocks his door, and I step inside, crossing a threshold I know I can't uncross.
And I don't want to.