Chapter 6 - The Things I Never Said
706 Words
Daniel’s POV
The door closes, soft but final, and the silence that follows feels louder than anything else in the room.
She’s gone.
Again.
I sink back into my chair, I feel completely anxious. The blurred lights reflecting off the window—sharp, scattered, just like my thoughts.
You were the reason I started this, I told her. I meant every word. I just didn’t tell her the rest.
I didn’t tell her that every time I wrote a line of code for Extra, I imagined her sitting beside me, translating life into meaning. That every slogan, every version of this company was just me trying to reach her across the years.
I didn’t tell her that I kept her notebook. The one with the coffee stains and the French phrases scribbled in the margins.
And I didn’t tell her how much it destroyed me to see her standing here again, looking at me like I was both everything she remembered and nothing she recognized.
---
When she asked about the motto, I could see it hit her—the realization, the recognition.
She still had that look, the same one she used to get when she was translating something complicated.
I’d spent years perfecting that motto, but not because it was catchy or marketable. It was because it was ours.
Beyond Ordinary. Beyond Borders.
Four words that held everything we were.
Everything I lost.
---
She asked me why I built this company, and I told her the truth: because she left.
But what I didn’t say is that I didn’t build it out of anger. I built it out of love that had nowhere else to go.
After she left, I kept coding, kept dreaming, kept pretending that success would quiet the noise she left behind. And for a while, it did.
Until tonight.
Because seeing her again, hearing her voice tremble when she said my name. It undid every bit of control I thought I’d built over the years.
And now, all I can think about is the way her eyes looked when she said, “Then maybe it’s time we finish what we started.”
Those words shouldn’t have meant anything. But they did. They still do.
---
I stand, restless, walking to the glass wall overlooking the city. My reflection stares back at me: the CEO, the man who has everything. But beneath that, I see the boy who once believed love could last through anything.
I press a hand against the cool glass.
“Why now?” I whisper to no one. “Why come back now?”
Maybe she’s here for the job. Maybe it’s just coincidence.
But some part of me doesn’t believe in coincidence anymore. Not when she’s sitting just a few floors below me. Not when she’s still the heartbeat behind every dream I’ve ever chased.
---
My phone buzzes on the desk. A message from Miles, my co-founder:
All set for the Paris expansion pitch tomorrow. Should we add Lana to the core presentation team? She’s fluent, after all.
I stare at the text.
Paris.
Of course it’s Paris. The city that took her from me, the city that shaped her. The city that’s about to bring us face-to-face with everything we’ve avoided saying.
I type back one word:
Yes.
Then I set the phone down and let out a shaky breath.
She said some things are worth the risk. Maybe she’s right.
---
I walk over to my desk and open the bottom drawer.
The old notebook is still there, worn and fragile. I flip to the last page, the one she’d written on the night before she left:
One day, when all the words I say run out, I hope you’ll still understand me. —L.
I run my fingers over the faded ink, and for a second, I can almost feel her beside me again, whispering translations into the quiet.
“Lana,” I murmur into the stillness, “I understood you then. I still do.”
The city hums, the world moving on, but I stay standing there, staring at everything I built, at everything I never stopped loving.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe it is time to finish what we started.
- Writer
