Chapter 12
Tell Me the Rest
I go directly to his office. He's on the phone with someone, but he sees me coming through the glass walls and he ends the call immediately. Like whatever was being discussed isn't more important than me.
"Tell me the rest," I say. I don't sit. I don't soften the demand with politeness or courtesy. I just stand there and demand that he tell me everything he's still holding back.
He's quiet for a long moment. The silence fills the office like a presence. Then he nods slowly, accepting the demand, accepting that I've crossed some threshold and I'm not coming back from it.
He stands and he closes his office door. The sound of it closing is a threshold. I'm crossing into something that I can't come back from. I'm demanding information that I'm not sure I'm ready to receive. But I need it. I need to understand the full scope of his obsession.
I'm done being protected from the truth. I'm done being managed and controlled and given partial information like I'm a child who can't handle full knowledge. I want to know what he's been orchestrating. I want to understand the architecture of this trap I've walked into.
"Sit," he says, and for the first time since I've known him, his voice has something other than perfect control in it. There's a note of resignation. Like he's known this moment was coming and he's been bracing for it, preparing himself for the moment when I demand everything.
I sit.
He doesn't go back behind his desk. He pulls a chair close — not across from me, not the professional distance he always keeps — and sits so near that I can see the exact line where his jaw tightens. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and for a long moment he just looks at me. Like he's calculating something he can't calculate. Like he's trying to figure out which version of the truth I can survive.
His hand comes to rest on the arm of my chair. Not on me. Just there. Three inches from my wrist.
Neither of us moves.
Somewhere in the building below us, an elevator chimes.