I pressed my fingers against his hand for three seconds and then walked away and spent the next twenty minutes discussing Halcyon Group's early infrastructure investments with a man whose name I already forgotten because all I could think about was the way Roman had said my name.
Just that. Just “Claire.” Like it meant something specific. Like he'd been holding it and finally put it down.
I needed to be more careful.
The problem was that being careful stopped feeling like protection and started feeling like deprivation, and I wasn't sure when that had happened.
The car ride back was quiet in a different way than our quiet usually was. Most silences with Roman had a shape to them — comfortable, purposeful, two people who didn't need noise to fill space. This one had weight. The three se
