CHAPTER SIX
1018 Words
Forty-Two Floors Up
— AMARA'S POV —
I tell myself I'm going back for the counter-proposal.
That's the story. The counter-proposal arrived at eleven PM on a Friday, forty pages of Meridian's legal language that I need to read before Monday, and my Brooklyn apartment has thin walls and a neighbor who plays music on weekends, and the penthouse is quiet, and this is entirely professional.
That's what I tell myself at eleven-fifteen.
At eleven-twenty-seven I text him.
"Are you awake? Counter-proposal came in. I have questions."
He responds in thirty seconds.
"Come up."
Not: where are you. Not: I can send a car. Not: it's almost midnight.
Come up.
Like he was waiting.
Like the door was already open.
I put on my coat.
* * *
— DAMIEN'S POV —
She's at my door at eleven forty-one.
Still in her work clothes from the day. Coat thrown over them. The Meridian counter-proposal in one hand like a reason. Her hair slightly less perfect than it is at the office.
She is the best thing I've seen in longer than I want to calculate.
"Counter-proposal, she says, holding it up."
As if I don't know she texted me at eleven-twenty-seven on a Friday night. As if this has anything to do with Meridian.
"Come in."
She comes in. She sets her coat on the chair where my jacket always goes — I don't think she notices — and opens the file on my kitchen counter with the quick efficiency of someone establishing territory.
"Page thirty-one. The liability cap. They're trying to limit exposure on the IP gap. If we accept this and the chain unravels post-close—"
"They walk away clean, I say."
"Exactly. Strike it entirely."
"Agreed."
She looks up. She wasn't expecting agreement that fast. She was expecting a fight, the kind of professional negotiation that keeps the evening safely in the acquisition and nowhere else.
"That's it?"
"That's it. You were right."
Something shifts in her posture.
"You're making this difficult, she says quietly."
"What am I making difficult?"
"Maintaining professional distance. When you say things like "you were right.""
I look at her across the counter.
"I've been trying to decide whether that's a reason to stop or keep going."
"And what did you decide?"
I come around the counter.
She doesn't move back.
She tilts her chin up instead.
"I decided the counter-proposal is handled. What would you like to talk about instead?"
* * *
— AMARA'S POV —
He's close.
Too close for the counter-proposal.
The right distance for something that has been building since a conference room on a Tuesday morning when I walked in and he was already looking.
"Damien."
"Yes."
"I came here for the counter-proposal."
"I know."
"I need you to know that."
"I know that too, he says. And I need you to know that if you walk out of here right now and we go back to the acquisition and the professional distance, I won't say another word about any of it. Your choice. Entirely."
The kitchen is very quiet.
I look at him.
The careful stillness. The eyes that don't look away. The man who told me the truth about wanting me and then kept his word about not acting on it for five days.
Five days of him keeping his word.
Five days of me pretending I didn't want him to break it.
"Stop being so patient, I say."
Something breaks open in his expression.
His hands come up — both of them, slow — and cup my face, and he looks at me for one more second like he is making absolutely certain, and then he kisses me.
Not soft.
Not tentative.
The kiss of a man who has been waiting and has just, with my full permission, stopped.
* * *
— DAMIEN'S POV —
She kisses me back.
That's the thing I wasn't prepared for — not her, not this, but the specific way she commits to it. No hesitation once she decides. No half-measures. She grabs my shirt and pulls and I walk her backward and she comes without hesitation and the counter-proposal slides off the counter and neither of us notices.
I stop at the bedroom door.
"Still not stopping?"
"If you ask me that one more time, she says, I will make a professional decision and go back to Brooklyn."
I push the door open.
* * *
— AMARA'S POV —
He takes his time.
That is the most devastating thing he could have done.
I expected urgency. The edge of something finally released. Instead he is methodical, attentive, refusing to rush, and every time I think I know where this is going he redirects and finds something new, and I stop being someone who thinks entirely.
No acquisition.
No ninety days.
No rules.
Just him.
His hands.
His voice, low, saying my name in a way that makes it sound like something claimed.
"Look at me."
I open my eyes.
He's above me, close, his face completely open in a way I have never seen it. The stillness — that specific, careful, controlled stillness I have been cataloguing since the conference room — is entirely gone.
I hold his gaze.
I fall.
I don't try to land.
* * *
After.
The city glows through the windows. The same city as before. Indifferent.
His hand is warm on my stomach. His breath is slow against my hair.
I could analyze this. I could build a structure around what just happened and classify it and decide what it means for the days left on the contract.
I don't.
For the first time in a very long time, I let something be without turning it into something manageable.
"You're thinking, he says. Quiet. Like he knows."
"No, I say."
"No?"
"For the first time in a very long time."
He's quiet.
"Good, he says finally. Stay like that."
I stay.
The counter-proposal is on the kitchen floor.
Neither of us mentions it.
I don't go back to Brooklyn.
* * *
End of Chapter Six
- Writer
