Burning Rancor 18+

Three

I stumbled out of the glass-walled conference room, my shoulders slumped under the heavy weight of a dozen judgmental stares. My legs felt like lead, and the -inch heels I was forced to wear dug like knives into my aching feet. The throbbing in my stitched-up hand was perfectly synchronized with the violent hammering inside my skull. I needed to sit down. Just for a minute. Just to stop the world from spinning.

I made my way toward the emergency exit stairs. It was a trick I’d learned over the last two years: the executive planning meetings always ran long, sometimes for hours, and the stairwell was the only place in the entire building where I could escape the eyes of the corporate world.

But the moment my foot touched the first concrete step, the rigid, Pavlovian habit of being an employee in this office tugged at me. Fear - deep, irrational, and completely hardwired into my brain- warned me that if Mason walked out and found me missing from his cabin, the consequences would be severe.

Begrudgingly, I turned around and forced my feet to drag me back to his private office.

When I pushed the heavy door open, the room was beautifully, blissfully empty. The silence was loud, a stark contrast to the roaring in my ears. I was supposed to stand in my designated corner. I was supposed to wait like a statue until my master returned to deliver his next blow. But my body simply refused. The blood loss from the night before, the lack of sleep, and the lingering trauma from my mother’s assault the previous evening had drained my battery to absolute zero.

Instead of walking over to my corner, I crossed the room and laid down on the plush leather couch.

Just for a few minutes, I promised myself. Just until the dizziness passes.

Those few minutes turned into a black hole. Without realizing it, my eyes slid shut, and I snoozed off entirely. My brain completely shut down, plunging me into a deep, dreamless sleep. I didn't remember passing out for the entire remaining working hours. The corporate world outside the door vanished, and for a short while, I was completely safe from the pain.

It wasn't until the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows had turned completely dark that I groggily opened my eyes.

The cabin was dimly lit, shadows stretching across the modern furniture. I blinked through the haze, my vision adjusting slowly. The very first thing my eyes fell on was Mason. He was sitting at his desk, entirely still, holding the silver frame he always keeps next to his laptop.

It was his and Eclipse’s wedding picture.

In the soft glow of his desk lamp, I could see his expression. It was a look of raw, profound longing. He was staring at the image of his ex-wife like she was a ghost he desperately wanted to touch. I remembered him talking about that photo when I first joined the company, back when things were normal. He had told me, with a rare, genuine smile, that it was the absolute best moment of his entire life. It was so incredibly obvious how much in love he had been with his wife. How much he still was.

I lowered my eyes, pulling my gaze away from his private grief. My head felt like a heavy, hazy mix of sadness, regret, and a crushing sense of guilt.

If only.

The words echoed in my mind like a cruel mantra. If only I could make it all better. Because of me, a beautiful, loving relationship had been completely destroyed. And now, Mason was trapping himself in this dark room, punishing himself day after day for a mistake he never actually made, with a woman he didn't want.

If only I could turn back time. If I could just go back to that fateful afternoon, I would never have cowered from my mother. I would have stood my ground. I would rather have faced her terrifying wrath, her fists, and the dark room, than to have drugged Mason and tried to fool her. I had tried to protect myself, but all I had done was drag an innocent man into my personal hell.

“You have a fever,” I suddenly heard Mason’s voice slice through the quiet room. It sounded incredibly far away, like he was speaking to me from underwater.

“It seems so,” I replied. At least, I tried to. But I am pretty sure it came out as nothing more than a weak, unintelligible mumble. Before I could even see his reaction, the shadows in the room expanded, and the entire world turned pitch-black once again.

I don’t remember how long I slept after that. Time lost all meaning.

The next time I woke up, I was still lying on the same leather couch, but everything felt different. There was a heavy, incredibly warm blanket draped securely over my shoulders, tucked in around my sides. On the coffee table right next to my head, a small glass of water and a couple of pill blisters were waiting.

Slowly, without moving my head to keep the room from tilting, I looked over at Mason. He was buried deep into his work, his fingers flying across his keyboard, completely oblivious to the fact that I had finally opened my eyes. He was frowning heavily, staring intently at something on his laptop screen with a sharp, concentrated glare.

I held my breath, instinctively making myself as small and still as I humanly could. I snuggled deeper into the plush blanket, completely unwilling to get out of the intoxicating warmth so soon. My body felt weak, but the cozy layers felt like a shield against the rest of the world.

Mason didn't notice a thing. I stayed completely hidden in the bundle, moving so sneakily and quietly that a tiny, ridiculous spark of pride flared in my chest. For just a little longer, I could pretend I was invisible.

~•~

Mason’s POV.

When the final budget meeting wrapped up, my blood was practically boiling. I marched back down the executive hallway and threw open the doors to my cabin, fully ready to let off some serious steam on the villain of my life. She had been late, she looked like a disaster, and she had embarrassed me in front of my primary planning team.

But when I walked in, I didn't find her standing in her corner, looking miserable. Instead, I found her dozing off peacefully on my leather couch.

*How dare she!* I seethed, my jaw clenching so hard it ached.

The absolute nerve of this girl. I stormed over to the couch, the heels of my shoes digging angrily into the carpet.

“Get up,” I growled, clenching my fists at my sides.

She didn’t move. Not even a flinch.

I threw my head back, letting out a frustrated groan. “I said, get the hell up, Ava.”

Yet again, absolute silence. She remained completely unmovable, her face pale against the dark leather. For a split second, a cold, violent wave of panic hit me square in the chest. What if she died in my cabin just to frame me?

My heart absolutely sank into my stomach. If she kicked the bucket right here, in my private office, after I had publicly reamed her out this morning, the media would have a field day. I would be dragged through the mud, my company would ruinous, and everything I built would vanish.

Frantic, I looked around my desk for something to touch her with. Because god forbid, I would rather lose my own hand than ever actually lay a finger on her. I found a heavy metal pen on my desk, walked back over, and used the tip to poke her shoulder.

The second the pen nudged her, her limp body rolled completely face-forward, her torso sliding off the edge of the cushions, almost crashing directly onto the hard floor.

I nearly had a heart attack right then and there from sheer terror.

Giving into survival instinct, I abandoned my rule and quickly caught her before she could hit the ground, grabbing her by the arms and unceremoniously throwing her back onto the couch. But the exact moment my bare hands brushed against her skin, it felt like I had touched a scorching engine block.

She was burning up. Seriously burning.

My brows furrowed deeply as I stared down at her. A normal human being's temperature shouldn't be anywhere near that high.

Panicking for my own legal safety, I rushed into my private bathroom, grabbed a hand towel, and doused it under the faucet with freezing cold water. I ran back out and practically threw the wet towel onto her forehead. I wasn't doing her a favor because I suddenly cared about her well-being- absolutely not. I did it because I refused to be the next front-page headline as her killer.

To save my own ass, I called my private doctor immediately, demanding he get up to the executive floor within ten minutes.

As expected, the diagnosis wasn't good. The doctor took her temperature, his face turning incredibly grave. He told me her fever was dangerously high, and that if I had found her even an hour later, her organs would have started failing. She literally could have died right here on my couch. The doctor pumped her with an intravenous fever reducer, handed me a bottle of heavy-duty meds, and gave me a strict instruction: “You need to stay by her side and keep wiping her down with cold water to bring the fever down manually, or she won’t make it through the night.”

It was a total nightmare. I was stuck awake until the early hours of the morning, playing nurse to my worst enemy. But looking at the situation logically, I really had no choice. It was either spend my night wiping down Ava, or spend the next twenty years wiping my own ass in a prison after the inmates were done f*****g me. I chose the first option.

She was completely out cold for two whole days. It was baffling. How could anyone even get that sick, that fast? It made no sense, and the sheer inconvenience of it irritated me to no end.

And when she finally did gain a sliver of consciousness on the third evening, she instantly managed to annoy me.

She started moving around on the cushions, rustling the heavy blanket I had put over her. She was being way too loud, and the constant shifting gave me an absolute headache. I frowned deeply, staring at her from my laptop screen.

Why couldn't she just move like a freaking normal person instead of squirming around like a toad?

After causing a brief bit of a nuance, her eyes rolled back, and she was out cold again, snoring softly. Only after she went back to sleep was I finally able to take a proper breath.

“Tsk. She is nothing but trouble,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head in disgust as I threw myself back into my paperwork, trying to drown out the sound of her breathing.

~•~