Page 173 of Nine Months to Bear

They don’t respond. Rude of them, honestly.

I last another ten minutes before I crack. My fingers are typing before my brain catches up.Hey. Hope everything’s okay.

I stare at the message, then delete it. Too needy.Contracts from Mass Gen came through. Pretty dense reading.

Delete. Too businesslike.

Thinking about you.

Definitely delete. Burn it with fire, actually.

“Screw it,” I say to the empty office. “I’m going to go see him.”

I grab my purse and keys. The clinic can survive without me for an hour. The emails will still be there when I get back.

And I need to see him. Not because I’m clingy or needy or any of those things I swore I’d never be. But because this morning changed everything, and I need to know if he feels it, too. If walking out that door was as hard for him as watching him go was for me.

The drive to Safonov Holdings is easy but slow. I spend the entire time telling myself this is a bad idea. He’s working. He’s busy. He’s dealing with dangerous people doing dangerous things.

But I’m already in the parking garage, already walking through the lobby, already pressing the elevator button for his floor.

Mikayla looks up when I enter. Her expression doesn’t change—it never does—but something shifts in her eyes.

“Dr. Aster. We weren’t expecting you.”

“Is he in?”

She shakes her head. “Mr. Safonov is still out with Mr. Vasiliev.”

“Oh.” My stomach sinks a little. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.”

Of course not. Mikayla probably knows exactly where he is and what he’s doing, but she’s not about to share that information with me.

“I can… Well, never mind. It’s fine; I’ll just come back later.”

“You’re welcome to wait in his office.” She gestures toward the heavy wooden door. “He shouldn’t be much longer.”

I hesitate. Waiting feels uber clingy. But I’m already here, looking desperate, so what’s another degree of pathetic?

“Thanks.”

I step inside. His office smells like him, which is a nice sort of consolation prize for the time being. I close the door behind me and lean against it for a second.

The last time I was in here, we had sex on his desk. The memory makes my face heat up. God, we really have no self-control around each other.

I wander around the space, trailing my fingers along the bookshelf. Business texts, some Russian titles I can’t read, a few classics. Nothing surprising.

His desk is immaculate. Not a paper out of place. A trio of golden pens lined up perfectly parallel to each other. Even his computer monitor is positioned at an exact right angle to the desk edge.

“Control freak,” I mutter, but I’m smiling.

I drop into his leather chair. It’s ridiculously comfortable. The view’s nice, too. From here, I can see the whole city spread out through his floor-to-ceiling windows. All that power and possibility. This is Stefan’s vista every day—looking down on everything, controlling it all from up here.

I spin in the chair like a kid, then feel stupid and stop. My hand lands on the desk drawer handle. I shouldn’t snoop. It’s invasive and wrong and…

I pull it open.