The small, cornered, devastated quality of those two words — the full collapse of the boardroom register, arriving not with drama but with the flat, quiet surrender of a woman who had run out of architecture to hide behind.
His grip on her wrist loosened.
Not releasing. Loosening — the deliberate, warm quality of it, giving her the sensation of choice while holding the context of the answer.
She looked at him. The red handprint still sitting on his cheek — vivid, mapping the exact shape of her palm, blooming at the cheekbone and spreading in the way of skin that receives something precise and keeps the record of it. She had put it there. The mark was hers.
Something moved in her chest that she declined to name.
"Just—" Her voice broke. Rebuilt. "Just be gentle on me."
