Page 13 of The Lies Of Omission (Without Limits #3)

Thalia’s gaze flicked between us, sharp and accusing. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her look was a warning wrapped in steel: Whatever this is—kill it, or survive it. There is no middle ground.

I left before I did something catastrophic.

Again.

By Saturday, I was unraveling.

The guilt was louder than ever—louder than my father’s voicemails, louder than the tight schedule and managerial duties I kept hiding behind. Louder than Timothy’s passive-aggressive remarks and the endless parade of expectations.

I had kissed someone who worked for me. Someone I had power over. Someone I could hurt without even meaning to.

That I was hurting.

That should have been enough to bury me. But it didn’t, because beneath the shame and panic, something darker pulsed. I didn’t regret it.

Not the first kiss. Not the second.

I didn’t regret tasting him—I regretted stopping.

I regretted not swiping the desk clear and bending him over it. Regretted not licking the sweat off his collarbone and mapping out the sin-soaked lines of his body until I knew them better than my own. I was too far gone. I knew it.

“Fancy seeing you here…” His voice ghosted behind me, smooth as silk, as I stared at my reflection in my office window.

A sharp exhale escaped my throat. I didn’t turn around to face him. I couldn’t. My legs were locked, my chest was heaving.

“What are you doing here?” I managed, though my voice came out raw.

The door shut behind him with a soft click. But it may as well have been a gunshot. The air tightened. The walls felt closer. He stepped nearer, slow and deliberate. I could feel the heat of him already.

“You looked pale.” He paused as he assessed me. “Wanted to check you were still breathing.”

“My health is no concern of yours.”

“Isn’t it?” His voice dipped, flirtation laced with something more dangerous—something tender and real that I didn’t know how to face.

“No.”

“I could make you feel better,” he murmured, closer now. My eyes fluttered shut, then sprung open as he continued. “Really get your blood pumping. Melt some of that ice you wear like armor.”

His smirk lit his face like a match, and still, I couldn’t look directly at him. If I did, I’d fall to my knees. I’d beg .

“I… you?—”

“Theo.”

I flinched like he’d struck me. Like we’d been acting out every fantasy that played on repeat through my mind.

The office door banged open, and Timothy strode in, smug and seething. His eyes darted between us, landing like poison on Sinclair. “What are you doing here?” he snapped.

My hands balled into fists at my sides. My teeth clamped down on the inside of my cheek. It took everything in me not to tell him to get the fuck out.

Sinclair cleared his throat. “Just seeing if our manager —” he dragged the word out like honey over a knife “—needed anything before I went on break.”

Timothy scoffed. “You?”

Sin didn’t flinch. He just smiled. “Oh, I’m very good at my job, Timothy. Thorough. I like to make sure everyone leaves… satisfied.”

Timothy flushed dark red, it crawled up his neck, rising to his hairline. “Well?”

Sinclair turned to me. Something defiant gleamed in his eyes, but there was something else too. I couldn’t name it without crumbling.

“I… I’ll have a latte,” I forced the words through my teeth. “Thank you, Sinclair.”

He smiled again. Soft. Knowing. “My pleasure,” he purred.

As he stepped out, he sent me a wink that knocked the last of the air from my lungs. The door clicked shut behind him. I stood frozen in my office, chest heaving, hands shaking, completely undone.

And still—I wanted to chase him. Even if it destroyed me.

Timothy groaned on about people overstepping their position and how nobody showed him the respect he deserved. His voice was like an insect buzzing around my head, driving me insane.

My fists clenched and unclenched. My chest felt hollow. My whole body buzzed like it had short-circuited. I was shaking not from fear or desire. From something deeper—older—buried so far inside me, I’d pretended for years it didn’t exist.

But the thing about pretending? It always cracks. The truth you’ve buried always comes out.

My knees buckled. I collapsed into the chair behind my desk, breathing hard, like I’d run a mile with no air.

The knock of a belt buckle against leather. The thunder of footsteps on marble floors.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The voice didn’t come from the hallway. It came from the past. From my father.

The air turned cold.

I was fifteen again. Back in my room at the summer estate. The window open, a warm breeze made the curtain billow. The boy from the stables—Daniel—was half a second away from kissing me when the door slammed open with the force of an explosion.

My father filled the frame, rage clinging to him like smoke. His eyes landed on our proximity. My flushed face. One of Daniel’s hands was still touching my wrist, the other buried in my curls.

The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.

It was deadly.

“Out.” His voice was ice. Daniel bolted without a word. Didn’t look back. I heard the gate shut an hour later as his truck rumbled down the drive and never saw him again.

My father turned to me, jaw rigid. His lips curled like my very existence disgusted him.

“Are you a fucking deviant?” he snapped. “Do you have any idea what people would say if they saw that?”

I tried to speak. To say it wasn’t what he thought.

But it was.

And we both knew it.

“You think the world’s going to bend for you? That your name will save you from the consequences of being... this?” His mouth twisted like he couldn’t even say the word. “Weak.”

My voice cracked when I whispered, “I’m not weak.”

He grabbed my jaw hard enough to bruise. Leaned in close, venom spilling from his breath.

“You are nothing without this family. Without me. You want to throw that away for some... filthy whim?”

He shoved me back so hard I hit the dresser. Felt the edge dig into my ribs. I cried out as pain bloomed under my skin. He didn’t care.

“You will fix yourself,” he spat. “You will bury this, or I will bury you.”

The next day, it hit me that Daniel was gone. The following week, I was sent to Saint Augustine’s for “reputation repair.” By the end of the year, I’d learned how to lie so well even I believed it.

My breaths came in jagged bursts. The sound of Timothy’s voice pulled me from the memory. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, like I could scrub the memory out with pressure alone.

But the words stuck.

Bury this.

Or I’ll bury you.

I had. I’d done exactly what was expected of me. I’d buried it all. And now it was clawing its way back up, dragging Sinclair’s voice with it like a lifeline and a death sentence.

I leaned forward and choked on a sound that was almost a sob but caught in my throat like glass.

He kissed me and I kissed him back. Not because I was weak but because I had never been free. For those stolen moments, I’d felt like Icarus soaring too close to the sun.

All I wanted to do was burn.

But I was afraid of what would happen to me when I fell. But maybe to finally be free I had to fall and end it all.