Thomas had faced boardrooms full of billionaires, contracts laced with lawsuits, and starlets with tempers sharp enough to burn studios to the ground. But none of it compared to the quiet storm that was Anna.
He watched her now from the corner of the rehearsal room, barefoot, hair tied in a messy twist, sleeves pushed up as she sat at the piano. Her fingers danced over the keys with ease, coaxing melodies from memory and muscle. She wasn't even trying. She never did. Her talent was something that just… existed.
Like her smile. Like her grace.
Like the ache he carried every time she entered a room.
She glanced up and caught him staring.
"Something wrong with the chord?" she teased gently, fingers still moving.
He cleared his throat, shifting where he stood. "No. You're perfect. It's perfect."
She tilted her head slightly, as if hearing something else behind the words. Something softer. Quieter.
Thomas looked away first.
She didn't press.
But she felt it—he knew she did.
That was the problem. She was starting to notice.
It was in the way her smile lingered a beat longer when they locked eyes. In the way she asked him how he was with sincerity, not politeness. In the way she started waiting for him to walk beside her, not behind.
God, she was dangerous. Not because of her fame or beauty, but because she saw through him. Through the carefully constructed walls, the polished image, the decades of restraint he wore like armor.
She saw the man underneath.
And that terrified him.
He couldn't afford to want her.
She was rebuilding her life. Raising a son. Singing herself back into the world.
And he was just… the man who'd found her. The man who'd given her a name because she couldn't remember her own. The man who had no right to ask for more.
Yet sometimes, when he passed by her dressing room and heard Bryce giggling inside, or when Anna laughed mid-interview and turned instinctively to him like he was home—
He let himself imagine it.
Just for a moment.
That he could reach for her.
That she might reach back.
Anna felt it too.
She just didn't know what to do with it.
Thomas had always been there, quietly orbiting her life like a second sun. He never pushed. Never overstepped. He was steady, constant, protective, everything she never realized she needed until she had it.
Until she caught him watching her with that look again.
Soft. Guarded. Like she was something fragile he'd never let himself hold.
She'd known love before.
But this… whatever this was… it was different. Quieter. Deeper. And yet somehow… unfinished.
She told herself not to think about it. Not to dwell.
But when Bryce ran up to him, arms outstretched, and Thomas bent down with a softness he never showed the world—
Something twisted in her chest.
Something she wasn't ready to name.
Not yet.
Because naming it would make it real.
And she wasn't sure either of them were ready for that.