Gustave Mackenzie's POV
Watching her cry stirred something in me I hadn't felt in years. It wasn't pity, no. It was more visceral, more primal. An instinct I thought was extinct, buried beneath layers of formality and calculated distance: the brutal desire to protect her.
She didn't answer me. She simply wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and that small door she had begun to open—the door to her vulnerability, to her pain—she slammed shut.
I watched her rebuild her wall in real time, brick by brick, with every blink.
"I think I should go," she exclaimed, sitting up with a rigidity she hadn't possessed just moments before. She walked toward the bedroom door.
I nodded, my voice unsteady on my own.
"Thank you for your help," she added from the doorway, not quite looking at
