Page 6

6

M onday morning crashes into my life like a wrecking ball.

I drag myself into work running on fumes, my body sluggish, my brain foggy, my nerves already frayed before I even walk through the door. The entire weekend had been a blur of sleepless nights and fevered what-ifs, my mind constantly replaying the moments in the generator room with Sterling—the nearness of him, the weight of his voice, the quiet, terrifying promises laced between his words.

And now, after two days of imagining what could have happened if we hadn't been interrupted, I was paying the price.

Big time.

"Problems with the Rivas brothers," Marina announces the moment I step inside, her expression grim. "Both of them insisting on the same time slot this morning, despite being scheduled separately. Sterling's handling it, but he's not happy."

Of course not.

"Great," I mutter, dropping my bag at my desk. "What do you need me to do?"

"Reschedule Mr. Taurus and Dr. Bennett to accommodate the Rivas situation," she says, already tossing a stack of papers at me. "And call the supply company. They delivered the wrong formula yesterday, and Sterling is furious."

A facility full of irritable minotaurs and an already furious Sterling. Exactly the environment my shredded nerves needed.

I dive into the scheduling system, fingers fumbling over the keys, trying—desperately—to focus. The phone rings nonstop: clients upset about reschedules, suppliers trying to cover their asses, Helena barking for updates from the back office.

By ten o'clock, my head is pounding, my vision blurring around the edges. Three mistakes already—minor ones, but enough for Marina to quietly correct them and shoot me a warning glance every time.

"Pull it together," she mutters under her breath after I enter the wrong room number for the third time. "Sterling's already in a mood. Don't give him more reasons."

"I know," I say, rubbing my temples hard enough to leave marks. "Sorry. Didn't sleep well." Again.

Her look says it all: This is becoming a problem. I don't even try to argue.

Before she can say anything else, Sterling strides out of the client lounge, tension rolling off him in waves. Even from across the room, I can tell—he's pissed. Every line of his body radiates it. The younger Rivas brother trails after him, subdued and sheepish.

"Ms. Michaels," Sterling says, his voice tight and clipped, "please ensure Mr. Rivas is assigned to Room Three, not Room Five as originally noted."

"Of course, sir," Marina says smoothly.

"And Mr. Honeyworth," Sterling's gaze cuts to me, sharp as a blade, "status update on the supply correction?"

I scramble for the papers on my desk, knocking a few to the floor in my haste. "They're sending a courier with the correct formula. Should arrive by noon. I've also rescheduled?—"

"The courier details," Sterling interrupts, holding out his hand.

I fumble faster, rifling through the scattered documents. I know I printed it out. I know I did.

"I—I just had it..." My voice sounds small, panicked.

Sterling's nostrils flare—just slightly, but enough to make my stomach twist.

"This is a simple request, Mr. Honeyworth."

"I know, sir. I'm sorry." My fingers shake as I paw through the mess. "I'll email it to you right now."

"See that you do," he says, voice clipped. "And ensure the laboratory is ready for Dr. Kim's arrival at two. She'll need to test the replacement formula immediately."

"Yes, sir."

I yank open the email program, attach the document without double-checking—just wanting the interaction to end, to fix this before I dig myself in deeper.

I click send. And the second the email whooshes out of the outbox, a sick realization slams into me. I attached the wrong file. Not the courier details. No. I attached a draft of my weekly report—a draft with personal notes scribbled all over the margins.

Notes about Sterling. Notes about his movements through the facility. Notes about which rooms he used. Patterns I'd tracked obsessively without even realizing how bad it had gotten.

My heart seizes.

"Wait—" I croak aloud, already knowing it's too late. Sterling's phone pings. He glances at the screen. His expression doesn't change.

"Thank you, Mr. Honeyworth," he says calmly. "I'll review this immediately."

And then he turns on his heel and strides toward his office, the doors swinging shut behind him with a finality that hits like a gunshot.

I sit frozen, blood draining from my face, my body locked in place by pure, overwhelming panic.

"What just happened?" Marina asks, noticing the look on my face. "You look like you're about to pass out."

"I..." I swallow thickly. "I sent the wrong attachment."

"So?" she shrugs. "Just resend the right one with an apology. Happens all the time."

No. Not this time.

Not when the document I sent reads like a stalker's manifesto.

Not when it spells out, in horrifying detail, exactly how much time I've spent watching him. Hands shaking, I resend the correct courier file with a brief apology: My apologies for the incorrect attachment. Please disregard the previous document.

The reply comes back almost instantly.

Four words.

See me in my office. Now.

My heart punches into my throat. I rise mechanically, every movement slow and clumsy, my legs barely holding me up. Marina gives me a curious glance but says nothing as I cross the reception area. I knock once on Sterling's door, my knuckles hitting the wood with a soft, trembling tap.

There's no hesitation.

"Enter."

I step inside, shutting the door behind me with a soft, final click. Sterling stands behind his desk, massive hands braced against the wood, his tablet glowing ominously in front of him. His expression is unreadable.

"Mr. Honeyworth," he says, voice dangerously calm. "Would you care to explain this?"

He turns the tablet toward me.

Highlighted on the screen are my worst mistakes, my ugliest confessions:

SJ typically uses Room 8 after closing (6:15–6:45)

No security cameras in hallway outside collection rooms

Cleaning crew comes later Tuesdays and Thursdays – opportunity?

Mortification slams into me, hot and choking. There's no defense. No possible innocent explanation.

"Sir, I can explain?—"

"Please do," Sterling says, setting the tablet down with almost surgical precision. His gaze pierces straight through me. "Because these notes read like surveillance. Planning. Deliberate attempts to observe me without my knowledge or consent."

"They're not—" I start, but the words collapse on my tongue. There's no salvaging this. No point lying when the truth is written in my own damn handwriting.

"I'm sorry," I say instead, voice shaking.

Sterling's amber eyes narrow, the faintest crack in his control bleeding through.

"Sorry you wrote them?" he asks, voice low and razor-sharp. "Or sorry I saw them?"

The question punches the breath from my lungs.

"I..." I falter. "Both, I suppose."

For a long, harrowing moment, Sterling just stares at me. The room feels like it's holding its breath. Waiting. Then—something shifts behind his eyes. Something darker. More dangerous.

"I want honesty, Mr. Honeyworth," he says, the command in his voice absolute. "Now."

And something inside me—something brittle and exhausted—shatters.

"Fine," I say, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "Yes. I've been watching you. Timing my work to stay late when you use the collection rooms. Finding reasons to pass by Room 8 after hours."

The dam bursts. I can't hold it back anymore. I don't even try.

"Because I can't stop thinking about you. About what you look like when you're not hiding behind suits and schedules. About the sounds you make when you lose control. About what it would feel like to be the one to make you lose it."

Sterling's eyes widen slightly, the barest flare of his nostrils betraying his reaction.

"Every night," I whisper, barely able to get the words out, "I go home and imagine it. You catching me. You dragging me into that room and?—"

I break off, but it's too late. The truth is already bleeding between us, raw and irretrievable.

"So yes," I finish, voice hoarse. "I've been tracking you. Watching you. And yes—" my voice cracks on the word, "I'm sorry you found out. Because now you'll fire me. And I'll never get to see if reality is even half as devastating as my fantasies."

Silence crashes down.

Sterling doesn't move. Doesn't speak.

The only sign he's even alive is the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest. When he finally does speak, his voice is rougher, barely leashed.

"You understand," he says, each word deliberate, "that what you're describing constitutes harassment. A violation of privacy. Grounds for immediate termination."

"I know." I meet his gaze without flinching, because there's nothing left to lose.

Sterling moves from behind the desk, and instinctively—stupidly—I take a step back.

He stops a few feet away, towering over me but making no move to close the distance.

"You're a talented employee," he says after a beat. "Your understanding of our operations is impressive. Your potential is significant."

He sounds almost... disappointed.

"And yet," he adds, voice cutting deeper, "this situation complicates everything."

I stand there, hands curled into fists at my sides, waiting for the hammer to fall.

"I should fire you," Sterling says, and the words feel like the final blow.

I nod once, numb.

"But," he continues, voice low and measured, "I am willing to consider this a first offense. A serious lapse in judgment—one that will not be repeated."

Hope flickers in my chest so violently it almost hurts. "You're not firing me?"

"Not today." His gaze pins me in place. "But understand this, Mr. Honeyworth: there will be no second chances."

He steps closer, just enough to make the air between us spark and burn.

"If I discover any further attempts to observe me," he says, "any tracking of my movements, any breach of professional boundaries—you're gone. No references. No recommendations."

"Understood," I whisper, dizzy with relief and shame and something darker twisting in my gut.

"Additionally," Sterling says, his tone brooking no argument, "you will delete all personal notes regarding my habits. You will remain in public work areas during scheduled hours only—unless specifically instructed otherwise by myself or Helena. And you will maintain strictly professional behavior at all times."

"I will," I breathe.

He studies me for a long, unbearable moment. His amber eyes don't waver.

"I'm not unaware," he says finally, "of the... challenges interspecies attraction can present. Particularly in a workplace like ours."

The admission punches the air from my lungs.

Challenges. Attraction. My whole body goes still.

"But," Sterling continues, voice tightening, "I am in a position of authority over you. That dynamic cannot be ignored. Regardless of... mutual interest that might exist under different circumstances."

Mutual interest. The words sink into my skin like branding irons.

"I understand," I say, my voice shaking.

Sterling nods, a single sharp movement, as if locking the words into place. "Good."

He steps back, putting deliberate space between us, the fragile thread stretched tight but not broken. "You may return to your duties," he says, his voice all business again.

"Yes, sir." I turn to leave, heart pounding so hard it drowns out the hum of the office lights.

But just as I reach the door, Sterling's voice stops me.

"And Mr. Honeyworth?" I glance back over my shoulder.

"I suggest," he says, his mouth curling into something not quite a smile, "that you find healthier outlets for your curiosity about minotaur anatomy."

There's an undertone buried beneath the professionalism— something almost like regret. Or temptation.

"I'll look into that," I manage, not trusting myself to meet his gaze.

I escape his office, the door clicking shut behind me. I should feel humiliated. Ashamed. Terrified. Instead, I feel alive. Because somehow—despite everything—I still have my job. And more dangerously than that, Sterling Johnson just admitted there's something he wants, too.

* * *

The next few days pass with a quiet, suffocating kind of torture.

Sterling and I move around each other like magnets forced into opposite poles—always aware, always repelling, never touching. When we have to interact, our conversations are brief and strictly business, stripped bare of any unnecessary words. No more private meetings in his office. No more lingering updates at my desk. Everything flows through Marina now or appears neatly in his inbox, as if distance alone could cleanse the dangerous thing we almost unleashed.

Yet even in the silence, something simmers. Sometimes, when I look up from my work, I find his gaze lingering on me, thoughtful and unguarded. Sometimes our paths cross too closely in a hallway, and the air between us tightens to the point of snapping. Once, we both reached for the same file in the storage room. Our fingers brushed, and Sterling recoiled like he'd been burned, his nostrils flaring, a low, barely audible sound escaping him before he turned sharply away.

The whole facility feels the shift. It's in the way conversations falter when we're in the same room, the way Marina glances between us with a new, wary sort of curiosity. Helena, blunt as ever, hands me a clipboard mid-inventory and asks, "What happened between you and the boss? The air crackles every time you breathe the same oxygen."

"Nothing," I lie, flipping through the supply list with forced focus. "Just a misunderstanding. Paperwork."

She snorts, clearly unconvinced. "Must've been some kind of paperwork. He's been wound tighter than a spring since Monday."

I don't argue, because there's nothing I could say that wouldn't make it worse. And besides, her words only confirm what I've already felt slithering under my skin for days—Sterling is just as affected as I am.

By Friday, the tension has twisted itself into something unbearable. Every second in the same building feels like walking a knife's edge, my body hyperaware of every shift of his weight, every flicker of his scent drifting down the corridors.

There are moments—small ones, stupid ones—where I think about quitting. Walking away from this internship, this impossible, unraveling thing between us, before it destroys both of us completely. But the idea of never seeing him again, of cutting him out like a clean surgical wound and pretending it never happened, makes my stomach turn violently. I can't do it. I'm too far gone.

So instead, I double down on professionalism. I clock in exactly on time, clock out exactly when my shift ends. I triple-check every report. I move through the building like a ghost—silent, polished, unobtrusive. If Sterling notices, he shows no sign. He doesn't comment, doesn't correct, doesn't commend. He just watches me, sometimes too closely, sometimes not at all, as if unsure whether to pull me back or let me keep drifting out of reach.

Friday night, as I'm slipping my jacket on, I glance back over my shoulder, almost against my will. Through the sliver of his office door left ajar, I see him—sitting at his desk, staring blankly at the wood grain beneath his hands, his massive shoulders tense, his hands clenched into fists.

The sight guts me in a way I'm not ready to admit. I want to go to him. I want to fix it. I want—stupidly, selfishly—for things to go back to the way they almost were, in the dark, dangerous space between wrong choices and what we might have had.

But I force myself to turn away. The line has been drawn. The boundaries made clear. Whatever Sterling and I could have been ended the moment I confessed.

Still, as I drive home through the wet streets, the windshield wipers beating a frantic rhythm, I can't stop thinking about two words— mutual interest —and how they had hung in the air between us like an unfinished sentence.

Maybe if things were different. Maybe if I hadn't crossed every boundary first. Maybe if wanting didn't come with so many consequences. But wanting doesn't listen to reason. It gnaws at me the entire way home, a hunger with no safe place to go.

The mistake wasn't confessing.

The mistake was falling for someone I was never allowed to touch—and knowing now, with gutting certainty, that he wanted to touch me back.