Preston's threats echo through my skull as I climb the stairs, each word a nail driven deeper into the coffin of my composure. The engagement ring burns against my finger where I shoved it back on—a reflex, a shield, a cowardly retreat into the safety of appearances.
I need to tell Jaxson what just happened. Need to explain why I'm still wearing the diamond that should be at the bottom of the Charles River. Need him to understand that Preston's blackmail changes everything and nothing all at once.
The study door stands slightly ajar, and I push it open without knocking because we are past the pretense that boundaries exist between us after what we did last night.
The scene inside stops me cold.
A woman perches on the edge of my father's desk, her legs crossed at the ankle, her posture radiating the particular confidence of someone who knows exactly how beautiful she is. Dark hair cascades past her shoulders in waves that catch the morning light, and her fitted black dress hugs curves that would make a Renaissance painter weep with inspiration.
She's handing Jaxson a thick manila folder, her fingers brushing his as the documents transfer between them, and the intimacy of the gesture makes my stomach clench with jealousy.
"This should be everything you need." Her accent carries traces of somewhere Mediterranean, somewhere exotic, somewhere that is not Boston. "It took longer than expected to compile, but the details are thorough."
"Thank you, Elena." Jaxson's voice holds warmth I didn't hear during our confrontation with Preston, warmth that makes the jealousy in my gut twist into full-blown territorial rage. "I appreciate you making the trip personally instead of sending a courier. It couldn't have been easy to get away."
"For you? Always." She rises from the desk with fluid grace, and before I can process what's happening, she leans in and presses her lips to his cheek. The kiss lingers two seconds too long, her hand resting on his shoulder, and my fingernails dig into my palms hard enough to leave crescents.
She turns toward the door and notices me for the first time. Her smile is polite, professional, and carries the particular smugness of a woman who knows she's won a competition I didn't realize I'd entered.
"You must be Harper." She glides past me, leaving a trail of expensive perfume in her wake. "Jaxson has told me so much about you."
The door clicks shut behind her, and the silence that follows feels like a held breath waiting to be released.
Jaxson sets the folder on the desk without looking at its contents, his attention fixed on me. His eyes drop to my left hand, to the ring that glints accusingly in the morning light, and his expression shutters into something cold and distant.
"I see you found your way back to Preston's jewelry." His voice carries none of the tenderness from last night, none of the reverence with which he whispered my name while moving inside me. "That didn't take long. What was it, fifteen minutes between leaving my bed and putting his ring back on your finger?"
"Jaxson, listen to me, there's context you don't understand, and if you would just let me explain what happened downstairs before you start making assumptions about—"
"Context?" He laughs, and the sound holds no humor, only bitter accusation. "You ran back to him like I meant nothing. Like I was just a warm body you used to remember what real fucking feels like before crawling back to your sexless arrangement with that walking pension plan."
The accusation cuts through defenses I haven't had time to rebuild. My throat tightens around words I should say—Preston is blackmailing me, he's threatening to destroy everything, I had no choice—but the image of Elena's lips on his cheek burns behind my eyes, mixing with exhaustion and hurt until all that emerges is defensive fury.
"Who was that woman, Jaxson? Your Italian contact who makes personal house calls at eight in the morning?"
"Don't change the subject." He moves closer, and the proximity that electrified me last night now feels suffocating. "We're not talking about Elena. We're talking about you standing in my doorway wearing another man's ring twelve hours after I made you come so hard you forgot your own name."
"Well, maybe last night was a mistake." The words escape before I can stop them, sharp and defensive and designed to wound before he can wound me further. "Maybe I got caught up in the moment and made a decision I regret, and maybe we should both pretend it never happened."
His jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "A mistake."
"People make mistakes all the time, Jaxson. They sleep with the wrong person, they say things they don't mean, they confuse proximity with passion and wake up wondering what the hell they were thinking." I force my voice to remain steady despite the tremor building in my chest. "It doesn't have to mean anything beyond two people who have unresolved history making a poor choice during a moment of weakness."
"A poor choice." He repeats my words like he's cataloguing them for future ammunition. "That's what last night was to you? A poor choice made during a moment of weakness?"
The hurt in his voice nearly breaks my resolve. I want to tell him the truth—that I've never felt more alive than I did in his arms and the thought of returning to my beige existence with Preston makes me want to scream until my throat bleeds.
But Elena's perfume still hangs in the air, and the folder on the desk reminds me that Jaxson has an entire life I know nothing about, full of beautiful women who make house calls and kiss his cheek like they own him.
"Maybe you did mean nothing." My voice emerges flat, empty, convincing even to my own ears. "Maybe I just needed to get you out of my system, and now that I have, we can go back to being the estranged step-siblings we've always been."
The transformation in his face is immediate and terrifying. Warmth drains away like water through a sieve, leaving behind carved granite and cold fury. His eyes darken to midnight, the same shade they turned seven years ago when he pressed me against that wall and whispered the cruelest things he could think of.
"Get out."
Two words. Delivered with the devastation of a bomb.
"Jaxson, I didn't mean—"
"I said get out." His hand sweeps across the desk in a violent arc, sending the folder Elena brought flying toward the floor. "Get out of this study, get out of my sight, and get out of my goddamn head before I do something we'll both regret."
Tears blur my vision as I stumble toward the door, my feet moving on autopilot while my heart shatters into pieces too small to ever reassemble. I don't look back.
I just run, the way I've always run, leaving destruction in my wake and wondering if this time the damage is finally beyond repair.