Bound By Contract

Signed

Nadia POV

"The party of the first part agrees to enter into a legal union," the lawyer read, "for a period not to exceed twelve calendar months."

I kept my eyes on the page in front of me and my hands flat on the table and told myself this was just a contract. People signed contracts every day. Contracts were straightforward, logical, and binding, which was actually more than could be said for most of the relationships I had watched fall apart around me over the years.

I was still telling myself that when Gerald cleared his throat and slid the signature copies across the table.

One to me. One to Ethan.

Connor Reid had shaken my hand when I arrived and introduced himself with the easy warmth of someone who understood that his job occasionally required him to pretend unusual situations were ordinary. He sat two seats down from Ethan now and was doing an admirable job of looking like this was a routine Tuesday.

I looked at the signature line.

Then I picked up the pen and signed before I could spend another second thinking about it.

Ethan signed without looking up.

Gerald collected both copies, shook our hands, and left the room with the quiet efficiency of a man who had learned not to linger. Connor said something low to Ethan and followed him out.

Then it was just us.

Ethan slid his copy into a folder. I put mine in my bag. We stood on opposite sides of the table and nobody said congratulations, which I appreciated more than I could explain.

"The moving team will coordinate with you directly," he said.

"Fine."

"Saturday work?"

"Saturday works."

He nodded. I nodded. He picked up his folder and walked out and I stood in the empty room alone for exactly thirty seconds before I made myself leave too.

Saturday came the way inevitable things did. Faster than I was ready for it.

Grace met me at the elevator when it opened onto the penthouse floor. She was composed and efficient and showed me through the space with the practiced warmth of someone who knew her job occasionally required treating unusual situations as ordinary. Two people in one day who had mastered that particular skill. I was starting to feel like I was the only one who hadn't.

She showed me my wing, the shared kitchen, the living area, the terrace along the south side. She told me Ethan kept his own schedule and generally came in late. She asked if I needed anything else. I told her I was fine.

I carried my own boxes to my room.

When she left I stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked at my things stacked against the wall and thought about the fact that three weeks ago I had been running the operations of a company that no longer existed and now I was standing in a stranger's apartment with twelve months ahead of me and no real map for any of it.

I unpacked what I needed and left the rest.

Later I ended up in the kitchen because I needed something to do with my hands. I made tea and stood at the counter and looked out at the city through the floor to ceiling windows and told myself again that this was survivable. Twelve months. I had done harder things.

I was halfway through the tea when I heard the elevator.

Ethan came in still in his jacket, keys in one hand, phone in the other. He stopped when he saw me. Just briefly, half a second, the way you stopped when you expected a room to be empty and it wasn't.

I kept both hands around my mug and looked at him.

"Grace showed you everything?" he asked.

"Yes."

He moved to the other side of the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He stood at the counter and drank it and said nothing. I said nothing. The kitchen was large enough that we weren't close but it was still one room and the silence between us had a texture to it I hadn't worked out yet.

"There's an event Tuesday," he said. "A dinner. My team needs us there together."

"You could have texted that."

He looked at me. "I could have."

He didn't explain why he hadn't. He finished his water and set the glass down and looked around the kitchen for a moment. At the unfamiliar mug in my hands. The box still sitting by the counter I hadn't moved yet. The small evidence of another person in a space that had been his alone until today.

He didn't say anything about any of it.

"There's food in the fridge," he said, moving toward the corridor. "Grace stocks it weekly. Help yourself."

"I wasn't planning to starve."

He stopped at the edge of the kitchen. Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. That same almost-smile from the conference room, barely there, gone before I could confirm it.

"No," he said. "I don't imagine you were."

He walked out.

I stood in the kitchen alone and listened to the quiet settle back in. I finished my tea, washed the mug, put it away. Went to bed.

I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about Tuesday. About standing next to him in a room full of people who would look at us and see something real. I thought about what my face would have to do and what my hands would have to remember and how long a dinner could possibly last.

Then I thought about what he had said in the conference room three weeks ago, the thing he still hadn't answered. What he actually wanted from all of this. I had signed the contract without knowing. I had moved into his apartment without knowing. I was lying in his penthouse in the dark without knowing.

I picked up my phone and opened Sylvia's name.

Three words. She replied in under a minute.

"Did you ask?"

I stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then I typed back.

"He told me to ask again after I signed the contract."

The three dots appeared immediately. Then her reply landed and I read it twice and felt something shift in my chest that I wasn't ready to name yet.

"So ask him, Nadia. What are you actually afraid he's going to say?”