Chapter 11: Almost an Embrace
1518 Words
“PineLive’s new location has been finalized.”
Noah Price placed the folder on Callum Rhodes’s desk with both hands, not because the document was heavy, but because experience had taught him that anything placed casually on Callum’s desk somehow looked like a crime.
“Preliminary capital integration is done,” Noah continued. “The original creator management team is stable for now. As for operations and PR, we’ll need someone from the group to oversee the move. Should I assign Director Lewis?”
Callum did not look up from the contract he was reviewing. “Tell Lewis to keep the current marketing and public relations teams intact. No layoffs from those two departments until the first-quarter review after relocation. Everything else can be reorganized as needed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rhodes Group will provide funding and temporary staff support. Give him authority to move people quickly.”
Noah nodded. “Understood.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait.”
Noah froze with one hand already on the door handle.
Callum had opened the relocation file.
For a moment, he only looked at the map clipped to the first page. The new PineLive headquarters was circled in red, occupying several floors in a recently renovated commercial building near South Finch Avenue.
Noah watched the expression on his boss’s face change by perhaps half a millimeter.
For Callum Rhodes, that was practically a confession shouted from a rooftop.
“Don’t assign Lewis,” Callum said.
Noah blinked. “Sir?”
“I’ll oversee PineLive personally.”
Noah’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then opened again because apparently he had never valued his own survival. “Personally?”
Callum looked up.
Noah immediately remembered all the reasons he enjoyed being employed and straightened. “I’ll adjust the internal notice.”
“Good.”
Noah retreated from the office with the file still on the desk and his curiosity screaming in his throat.
The door shut.
For several seconds, Callum remained still.
Then he looked back at the map.
South Finch Avenue.
The same building as Dawnlight Counseling Center.
The company had chosen the address because the lease was favorable, the floors were already wired for broadcasting equipment, the transport access was clean, and the neighborhood was quiet enough for recording but close enough to the central business district to look respectable to investors.
All perfectly reasonable.
All defensible.
None of which explained why he had changed the executive assignment himself.
Callum lowered the pen in his hand.
The tip hit the white desk pad too hard. A blot of black ink spread beneath it.
He looked at it.
Then he leaned back and pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose.
Unbelievable.
He was thirty-one years old, responsible for thousands of employees, multiple subsidiaries, and enough capital movement to make bankers sweat, and he had just taken over a streaming platform relocation because the upstairs tenant was Avery Collins’s counseling center.
Noah was going to have opinions.
Callum’s mouth tightened.
Noah could keep them to himself if he liked living.
By nine that morning, Dawnlight Counseling Center had turned into a florist’s cart.
Avery stepped through the glass door and was immediately handed a rose and a small box of chocolates by the administrative assistant, who wore a pink sweater and the satisfied expression of a woman determined to make everyone else festive.
“Happy Love Day,” she said.
Avery looked at the rose.
Then the chocolates.
Then at the reception desk, where a vase had already been stuffed with at least two dozen extra flowers.
“Is that a real holiday now?”
“It is if the restaurants, jewelers, and couples of Westbridge say it is.”
Avery smiled despite herself. “Fair.”
Love Day had started years ago as a ridiculous marketing campaign: flowers, discounted hotel suites, dinner packages, proposals on digital billboards, drone shows over the river. Somehow it had become a citywide excuse for couples to behave dramatically in public and single people to complain loudly about being exploited by capitalism.
Dawnlight had embraced the complaint portion with enthusiasm.
By midmorning, nearly every woman in the office had a rose sitting in a water cup. Someone had taped a paper heart to the break room door. A tray of chocolate had been raided before ten.
“Evan,” one of the junior counselors called across the office, “since the city has decided love is mandatory today, shouldn’t management compensate the emotionally abandoned?”
Evan Mercer looked up from his tablet. “Emotionally abandoned?”
“Single,” another colleague clarified. “Overworked. Under-romanced. Possibly starving.”
“That’s a serious condition,” a third said. “Dinner may be required.”
Laughter spread through the open workspace.
Avery sat at her desk with her rose laid beside her keyboard, reviewing notes from Nina’s case. She had seen the girl twice more. Nina still had not spoken, but yesterday, when Avery shifted in the chair, Nina had not flinched.
Slow was still movement.
Across the room, Evan’s gaze moved briefly toward Avery.
She noticed and pretended not to.
Evan was handsome in a clean, approachable way—warm eyes, calm smile, sleeves rolled up during case meetings. He had been a senior from her graduate program, recommended by the same professor who had sent her to Dawnlight. He ran the center with the focus of someone who cared about the work more than the money, which was why Avery had stayed despite the lower pay and impossible schedule.
A year ago, she might have complained about the long hours.
Now she liked it here.
The team was young, kind, and occasionally ridiculous. There was gossip, but not cruelty. Competition, but not poison. People stayed late because the work mattered, then argued about which new restaurant to try afterward.
Evan glanced at his watch, then closed the tablet.
“All right,” he said. “Finish urgent notes by five. No one stays late tonight. Dinner at six. My treat.”
The office erupted.
“Management has a heart!”
“Evan Mercer saves Love Day!”
“Does this mean you’re not secretly going on a date?”
Evan smiled with saintly patience. “If I were, I wouldn’t be taking all of you to dinner.”
“That’s exactly what a man hiding a date would say.”
More laughter.
Avery lowered her head, but her smile lingered.
By six, Callum was walking through an unfinished construction site three floors below Dawnlight.
The temporary partitions were still up. Plastic sheeting covered half the floor. The air smelled of dust, paint, and new wiring. A PineLive relocation manager hurried beside him, visibly horrified that the head of Rhodes Group had come before the space was ready.
“Mr. Rhodes, if we’d known you were coming personally, we would have arranged—”
“A staged visit?” Callum asked.
The manager stopped speaking.
“Continue.”
“Yes. Of course.” The man cleared his throat. “This floor will be operations and creator management. The old PineLive team requested a few open collaboration zones, so we adjusted the layout. The creator studios are upstairs, along with the guest reception rooms. Acoustic treatment is already installed in most of them.”
Callum walked past a row of half-built glass offices.
“Timeline?”
“The old lease expires next week. We’ll begin moving people in stages. Studios first, then marketing, then operations.”
“Creator contracts?”
“Stable for now. A few mid-tier streamers are waiting to see if Rhodes Group changes revenue shares.”
“We won’t for the first six months.”
The manager looked relieved. “That will help.”
Callum stopped near a set of elevators. “What’s above us?”
The manager checked his notes even though Callum suspected he knew very well. “The floor above is Dawnlight Counseling Center. Private practice. Quiet. Good tenant. We considered that a benefit for recording quality.”
“And below?”
“Vacant. We planned to lease it as storage and archive space if the budget is approved.”
“Approve it.”
“Yes, Mr. Rhodes.”
Callum looked toward the elevators. “I’ll look around upstairs.”
“Of course. I can take you—”
“No need.”
The manager wisely accepted the dismissal.
Callum stepped into the elevator alone.
The doors closed.
He looked at his reflection in the metal panel.
After a moment, he straightened his cuffs.
Then, with the faintest frown, adjusted the collar of his shirt.
The elevator chimed.
The doors opened onto a quiet reception area with white walls, warm wood floors, and a gold-lettered logo mounted behind the front desk.
Dawnlight Counseling Center.
The lights were mostly off.
No receptionist. No voices. No movement beyond the glass partition.
Callum stood there for a moment.
Then he looked at his watch.
Six eighteen.
Of course.
People with normal lives left work.
He exhaled, almost inaudibly.
For a man who prided himself on timing, that had been poorly done.
- Writer
