Chapter 78
Chapter 78
Kaeleen’s POV
The sleek, minimalist design of my office usually brought me a sense of calm and control. Today, it felt like a cage. The silence was too loud, the clean lines too stark. Every tick of the expensive clock on the wall was a tiny hammer blow against my already frayed nerves. I couldn’t focus. The quarterly budget reports on my desk might as well have been written in a dead language. My mind was miles away, back at the house, in a newly renovated room in the basement.
For the tenth time in as many minutes, I picked up my phone, staring at the blank screen as if my sheer willpower could conjure a message into existence. Nothing. Not a word from Lila. Nothing as simple as a hey, from Astrid.
Hours. It had been hours since Lila was supposed to have shown her the studio. My carefully constructed plan, which had seemed so brilliant and thoughtful in the dead of night, now felt like a mistake. A miscalculation.
’What were you thinking?’Ryker, my wolf, paced restlessly in the back of my mind, his own anxiety mirroring mine.
"Now it’s my fault? I didn’t see you telling me this was a bad idea when I started." I argued but he ignored me.
’A whole studio? After she just started to trust you again? You might as well have handed her a lead weight and told her to fly. You’ve scared her. You’ve pushed too hard, you idiot.’
He was right though. I was an idiot. The memory of the panic in her eyes after our kiss was seared into my brain. I had spent the last two days meticulously rebuilding the fragile bridge between us, one quiet breakfast, one shared laugh at a time. And then, in a grand, sweeping gesture, I drove a bulldozer right over it.
Perhaps the studio didn’t feel like a gift to her but a weight of expectations. Fuck!
Unable to sit still any longer, I shot out of my chair and began to pace, my phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip. I stalked out of my office, not even registering where I was going until I found myself standing in the middle of Alex’s office.