Episode 6
1233 Words
The sound of the rain lingered in her ears long after the message had ended.
Clara lay on her back, phone on her chest, the room dim but for the streetlight cutting through her window blinds. She hadn't moved since the noise stopped. Her heart was pounding in her ears, too loudly for such a still night. It wasn't fair, the way his voice wrapped itself around her brain like that. The way it made her forget to breathe.
There were no words in the message. Only the soft, steady drum of rain against something tin. A roof maybe, an old shed, maybe something he'd imagined entirely. But it was personal. Too much detail to be random.
She hadn't expected that it would move her. And yet, her whole body was unsettled in its wake.
It was a reminder. Of his presence. His silence. His power over her mood with something as subtle as background sound.
Clara shoved the phone off her chest and held it in both hands, gazing at the screen. His recent message was still there, unassuming and soft. It was not even a confession. It was just… nearness. And that was worse.
She opened the keyboard and wrote: “I listened three times.”
Then deleted it.
Wrote again: “Are you in Vermont?”
Deleted that as well.
Her thumb hovered. She needed to say something. Anything. But she was feeling vulnerable. Too open. Like if she wrote the wrong sentence, he'd disappear.
In the end, she wrote just: “Thank you.”
Simple. Safe. A little cowardly.
She pressed send and laid down the phone.
But she didn't sleep.
Not immediately.
Her mind continued to orbit how he'd spoken those words "Maybe I was thinking about you." How he'd painted her mouth without ever having laid eyes on it. How he hadn't needed a picture to make her feel visible.
It was the sort of attention she wasn't sure how to hold. And now it was beginning to weigh more than she'd intended.
She was awakened the next morning by the faint sound of a cough in the hallway and a slice of light piercing straight across her pillow.
Clara rolled over and blinked into her pillowcase, vaguely feeling time passing too quickly.
Her phone buzzed.
She reached over, heart already pounding.
One message.
Not from him.
A meeting reminder only. NovaReign HQ. New mockup presentation. 9:30 AM.
Her spine tightened.
She sat up gradually, her head still wrapped in half-remembered dreams and leftover warmth from the night before. She did her routine—shower, coffee, toast. Her hands worked, but her brain didn't. Not fully.
As she pulled on a dark green shirt and tucked it into high-waisted black trousers, her phone buzzed again.
Her hand hovered over it.
But it wasn't him.
A Slack notification from the second client. She muted it and checked the app. Nothing from (Reed_Art).
The silence now felt intentional.
She came out of her room just as Savannah was digging through the pantry in a tank top and satin shorts.
"Meeting?" Savannah said, toast in mouth.
"Yeah."
"Hair looks good. Trying to seduce a product manager?"
Clara grabbed her coat. "Something like that."
"Text me if you need me to fake an emergency and pull you out."
"Thanks for the offer."
"Or," Savannah said, accompanying her to the door, "if you happen to find some brooding tech billionaire with daddy issues, bring him home. Preferably rich. Damaged. Hot."
Clara rolled her eyes. "You just described every CEO in this city."
Savannah winked. "Precisely."
The city felt exposed beneath the overcast sky, all blurred in gray and damp from a drizzle that hadn't quite turned to rain.
By the time Clara stepped into the lobby of the NovaReign building, she'd gone through her presentation in her head three times. It didn't matter. She still felt off-balance.
The receptionist barely looked up as she cleared security.
Elevator to the 32nd floor.
Her reflection in the elevator glass didn't say much—calm, and focused—but inside, her mind seethed.
Damien Reynolds.
He hadn't texted back since the meeting. Hadn't commented directly back on the updates. Just issued orders through internal notes and feedback channels. Cool. Distant. Professional.
Which convinced her all the more he was hiding something.
Or worse—wasn't hiding it very well.
He was already in the conference room when she arrived.
Black shirt, sleeves rolled up just enough to show a subtle tattoo on his forearm. His eyes rose when she entered, then went back to his tablet. He didn't speak. Just indicated the chair across from him.
She sat, set her laptop down, pushed her heartbeat into something resembling a rhythm.
"Walk me through your changes," he said.
His voice was the same. Smooth. Controlled. Warm marble.
Clara cleared her throat and plunged into the wireframes. New button positions. Hierarchy revised. She pointed out transitions, explained the reasoning for an animation delay to increase user response confidence.
He nodded at the right spots.
Never interrupted.
Yet she could feel it—the way his eyes remained not on the screen, but on her mouth when she talked. The way he leaned in a bit when she touched the edge of the tablet. The way his hands rested still on the table, but twitched once when she laughed at her own flawed prototype.
It was as though their bodies had agreed upon something neither would say out loud.
When she finished, he waited.
Then said, "You think like a user. Not just a designer."
"That's kind of the point," she said.
His mouth tweaked slightly, something between interest and amusement.
She went so far as to ask, "Do you ever test the interface yourself?"
He tapped the screen once. "Every version. Every time."
That figured. He was the kind of man who liked to know how everything worked—who didn't leave results to chance.
Clara leaned back in her seat, the space between them tightening. She needed to get out of there. This room. This space that scent of clean surfaces and power.
She began to close her laptop.
But he spoke, low, "You look tired."
Her fingers paused.
"A bit," she said. "Tough night."
He tilted his head to one side, studying her. "Poor sleep?"
She met his eyes. "Weird dreams."
A moment elapsed.
His eyes dropped to her wrist—for a second—before his eyes recaptured her face.
"What about?"
Her heart stuttered. "Nothing in particular."
"Are you sure?"
No one in this room knew what he was doing. There was no one to bear witness against it. But she could feel it. His voice, his posture, the intensity of his focus—it wasn't business.
It was personal.
She stood up before her brain could betray her.
"I should go. I have edits to finish."
He didn't try to stop her. Just nodded once, slowly. Like he already knew she wasn't going to say what she was going to.
"Same time next week?" he said.
Clara nodded.
He didn't say goodbye.
She didn't look back.
She got three blocks before she opened up her phone and checked the app.
No new messages.
She almost didn't write.
But her fingers typed anyway.
“Where did you go?”
She stared at the message. Then typed again.
“I’ve missed your voice.”
- Writer
