For a long, heart-stopping moment, neither of us moved.
William stood framed by the dim light of the hallway, looking like a man who had finally run out of places to hide.
The Ice King hadn't just melted, he had been shattered. I could see the tremor in his hands, the way his chest rose and fell in a shallow, exhausted rhythm. He looked at me with an intensity that made my skin hum—a look that was raw, starving, and stripped of every corporate defense he owned.
I stepped back, wordlessly inviting him in.
The click of the door closing behind him felt final, a heavy bolt sliding into place that locked the rest of the world out. The board, Julian's ambitions, the blinding flashes of the paparazzi, and the crushing weight of the Torres legacy—it all felt a million miles away the moment he crossed my threshold.
