Michael Hudson was drawn away from the blueprint spread across his desk by the gentle hum of his phone. Half-expecting another ping about work, he rubbed his eyes. However, his heart skipped a beat upon seeing the sender.
Parker, Heather.
Since their engagement's messy conclusion, they hadn't spoken for months. Michael cautiously and curiously opened the message.
Take caution. He's not finished yet. He is observing.
No, hello. No background. It was only those few words that made him uneasy.
He read the message again as he gazed at the screen. The first thing that came to mind was Edward Reed, the name that had begun to circle his life once more like a vulture. Whispers had been heard. rumors. The anonymous message that caused him and Lorna to become estranged. And now this.
Tension coiling in his chest, Michael stood. He walked across the room to his office window, where the skyline glittered like a falsehood too lovely to be true.
Heather had never revealed her secrets. The threat was real if she was alerting him now.
He paced as he dialed her number. No response. Directly to voicemail.
He ran a hand through his hair and threw the phone onto his desk. He kept hearing the same name: Edward.
But as he worked through the puzzle of Heather's cryptic message, a heavier, more intimate burden started to weigh on him.
Lorna.
So much had been said at her apartment that night. Numerous hidden facts have been revealed. Her eyes were haunted when she mentioned Mason. The weight of the things she had previously kept hidden caused her voice to crack. And him, sitting there, recognizing the extent of her scars and how unprepared he felt to bear them.
He felt a poisonous sting of guilt.
She needed a reliable companion. Someone who wouldn't flee when things became difficult or crack under duress. But, given that he was barely able to control his own chaos, he wasn't certain he was that man.
Instead of healing wounded hearts, he had been trained to run boardrooms.
In his mind, the sound of her suffering was mixed with Edward's shadow, Heather's caution, and his own anxiety that perhaps—just possibly—he didn't know how to properly love someone.
His chest began to hurt more and more.
With his head in his hands and his elbows resting against the desk, Michael took a seat again. What began as a message turned into a mirror that made him face what he had been trying so hard to avoid.
He desired to be Lorna's refuge. He aspired to deserve her honesty.
But what if he still had too much internal damage?
As his phone lay silent and the city buzzed beneath him, the thought lingered in his mind long into the night, the brittle hope of something new blending with the caution of his past.
And for the first time in years, Michael Hudson was genuinely terrified of losing the one woman who had witnessed the man behind the mask, not of failing in his business endeavors.