Alexa didn’t sleep much that night.
The event replayed in fragments—the brush of his hands, the sound of his voice lowered just for her, the way the invitation had settled between them like a promise neither had fully claimed.
She hated how easily her body remembered him.
Morning came anyway.
Classes, meetings, schedules. The life she had built in New York demanded presence, and she gave it willingly. By the afternoon, she was seated in a glass-walled conference room overlooking the city, laptop open, focus sharp.
“Your analysis was solid,” a voice said beside her.
She looked up.
Ethan Miller smiled—easy, confident, the kind of man who knew his value and didn’t need to announce it. Mid-thirties, venture capital, recently divorced, and entirely uninterested in subtlety.
“Thank you,”
