I made it to the office, and just when I was thinking I'd have a nice quiet day to deal with paperwork or interoffice drama, the topic of more of my conversations lately than he might have ever been when we were actually married walked in. Fuck.

"Why are you eyeing the stapler again?" He took a seat across from my desk, since we'd found what we were looking for he didn't need Billy's - fuck me, I nearly forgot Billy for a moment. Christ. "Is my head in danger, or yours?" The smirk he wore created a disturbance in my stomach that I refuse to describe as butterflies - what was I ten?

"Depends," my lips seemed incapable of not mirroring his. His eyebrow raised in query for what it depended on and I considered leaving him hanging, but fuck it, why not? "On what brought you in here."

Leaning forward, he scrutinized me in a way that felt both annoying and intimate. "You," he answered with the same blunt honesty I knew him for. Feeling the stomach disturbance kick it up a few notches, I waited. "How are you?"

I blew out a breath and had to force myself to not glance at the fucking stapler. Was my face a fucking billboard of every shitty thing that had happened lately? "I'm -"

"You aren't fine, so don't try it." He hadn't sat back and his eyes were locked on mine. "So how. Are. You?"

Sitting back in my own chair and letting my head fall back, I took a few beats to stare at the ceiling and think about how I was. "Fucking miserable," it slipped out, but it was the fucking truth. "Miserable, confused, and -"

And then there his face was, obscuring the ceiling and forcing me to focus on him and not every damn thing that was so fucked up. "And you're gonna be fucking fine," his hand was cupping my cheek and then he was leaning closer -

"Homelander came to my house yesterday," that stopped him dead in his tracks and gave me a small sliver of breathing room, even if his hand didn't drop and he didn't move back.

"That's a fucking dinger of a cock block you're running with, Veronica." His eyes were inspecting mine, looking for the lie and when he saw nothing he closed them. "Fuck." Stepping back, his hand was running down his face as he took in what I just fucking unloaded. "Wait," he looked down at me where I'd sat up like a normal person and I could see it - the fucking fear. "How did he get past all those protections Butcher put in?"

I didn't have a moment to contemplate how he knew that Billy put shit in, not when I knew that his clearance was higher than mine, which meant he had access to more surveillance than me.

"I have no fucking clue," and that's when I gave up and my forehead met my desk while I took inventory of just how fucking screwed up my life was. "And that's not the worst part -"

He was silent, but I knew he heard me since my mouth wasn't fucking muffled by my head splat on the desk. He was waiting for more.

"He wants me," it felt so fucking disgusting to even admit to that the words came out hushed.

"Wants you for what?" His tone wasn't as quiet as mine, and it was clipped. Ut oh, someone poked a bear.

Turning my head, I glanced over to see him staring at me with so much irritation that it radiated off of him. "What do you think?"

In that moment, I was extremely happy that Joe knew what Temp V's long term side effects were because I swear to fuck he would have happily taken it just so he could do what Billy was so obsessed with doing - "Not a fucking chance," he growled and then he was at the door, a hot look back to where I'd managed to prop my chin up so I could follow his exit. "Not on my goddamn watch." And then he walked out the door with a slam that made the windows rattle.