“Zara.” Locke’s voice is low, close, roughened with something that I don’t have the strength to identify. “Oh, baby.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because humiliation rises faster than reason, because even now some part of me thinks that I should be able to manage this with more dignity than I am. “I don’t want to cry in front of you.”
“None of that,” he says, getting to his feet. “You’re not the one who should be sorry about a single f*****g thing.”
And then he lifts me, he actually lifts me. Out of my chair, away from the table, away from the papers and the screen and the terrible neatness of all those damning numbers, as though I weigh nothing.
A broken laugh escapes me through the tears, helpless and mortifying, and then he sits on the leather sofa, with me tucked sideways across his la
