Chapter 8
720 Words
CHAPTER EIGHT:
WHEN SHE FINALLY CALLED
The words followed her long after she left the gala.
Because it’s you I want.
She heard them in the quiet of her room. In the mirror when she washed her face. In the hollow space of her chest where anger had lived for years, guarding her from disappointment.
She told herself it was nothing.
Men said things all the time. Pretty words. Dangerous ones.
But he hadn’t said it softly. He hadn’t said it to seduce her. He had said it like a confession, like something torn out of him before pride could stop it.
And that scared her more than desire ever had.
For days, she stayed away from places where she might be seen. Turned down clients. Ignored calls. She walked longer routes, volunteered more hours, exhausted herself physically so she wouldn’t think.
But thinking was relentless.
No one had ever chased her without wanting to own her.
No one had ever defended her without expecting silence in return.
No one had ever looked at her like she was enough, past, scars, and all.
At night, she imagined what it would feel like to stop running.
The thought made her chest ache.
He didn’t call her.
That surprised her.
He gave her space, not out of indifference, but restraint. The hardest kind. He threw himself into work again, but his heart wasn’t in it.
He waited, knowing if this was real, she had to choose it too.
His Assistant told him to let it go.
“This is not you sir,” Drey said bluntly. “You’re risking everything for a woman who doesn’t even know what she wants.”
Maybe that was true.
But he knew what he wanted.
And for once in his life, that was enough.
Three weeks after the gala, his phone rang late at night.
Unknown number.
He answered immediately.
“Hello?”
Her breath came through first, unsteady, like she’d been pacing before dialing.
“Do you still mean what you said?” she asked quietly.
His chest tightened. “Yes.”
Silence.
“I don’t know how to start again,” she admitted.
“I don’t know how to be… normal.”
“You don’t have to be,” he replied. “Just be here.”
She swallowed. “I need a job.”
Not money. Not shelter. Not escape.
Dignity.
He didn’t hesitate. “Come tomorrow. I’ll make room.”
Her first day as his secretary felt unreal.
Clean clothes. A desk. Her name printed neatly on a badge. People greeting her without knowing anything about her past.
She was nervous, stiff, afraid of making mistakes, but he never hovered, never patronized. When she doubted herself, Greyson simply said,
“You’re doing fine.”
At lunch, their eyes met across the room, and something unspoken passed between them, hope, fragile and terrifying.
They went for business functions together, met different calibres of people. She started feeling his world returning to her again.
At a business function weeks later, the illusion cracked.
Whispers followed her. Laughter too sharp to be innocent. One of his associates leaned too close, eyes cruel with recognition.
“I know you,” he said. “From somewhere… intimate.”
Her face burned.
Before she could respond, he stepped in front of her, voice calm but lethal.
“Whatever you think you know,” he said, “ends here.”
The room went quiet.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t explain.
He simply chose her.
She excused herself soon after, Shame clawed its way back, loud and familiar.
That night, he found her sitting on the edge of her bed, arms wrapped around herself.
“I’m trying,” she whispered.
“But maybe you were wrong. Maybe I really am too broken.”
He knelt in front of her, taking her hands gently.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You don’t have to disappear anymore.”
Her lips trembled. “Why are you doing this?”
His answer was immediate. Steady. Certain.
“Because I want you to stop being a shadow of yourself, I want you to be you, not who you were.”
She leaned forward then, forehead against his shoulder, and for the first time,
She let herself believe she might be worth wanting.
- Writer
