CHAPTER FIVE
1384 Words
The Rule She Broke
— AMARA'S POV —
Thursday I avoid him.
Not obviously. I'm at my desk by eight. I answer every request through Marcus. I send three memos before noon. I eat lunch at my desk and take the long way to the printer and do everything a person who is completely fine would do.
I just don't go to his office.
I don't walk past it.
I don't let myself be in any room that requires me to see his face and remember the look on it when he said: several things.
Marcus appears in my doorway at two.
"Mr. Voss would like to know if you're free at three."
"For what?"
"He didn't say."
Of course he didn't.
"Tell him yes."
I look back at my screen.
I spend the next hour pretending I'm not counting down.
* * *
— DAMIEN'S POV —
She's been avoiding me all day.
I know because I notice everything she does, which is a development I find simultaneously inconvenient and completely unsurprising. The long route to the printer. The lunch at her desk. The three memos that were all exactly what I needed and delivered through Marcus instead of in person.
She's building distance.
Methodically. The way she does everything.
I respect it.
I also sent Marcus to ask if she was free at three, because I respect it and I'm not going to pretend I don't want to close it.
At three she walks into my office and there is a woman in the chair across from my desk.
I watch Amara see her.
I watch the specific thing that happens in her face before she manages to neutralize it.
It is a very small thing.
It is also the most useful information I've received all week.
* * *
— AMARA'S POV —
The woman is beautiful.
That's the first thing I notice and the thing I immediately tell myself I did not notice. Tall. Blonde. The particular confidence of someone who has never once questioned whether she belongs in a room. Her hand rests on Damien's desk with the ease of familiarity. She laughs at something and he is — not cold, exactly. Easier than he is with me. Like he's known her long enough to drop certain things.
I keep my face professional.
"Amara, Damien says. This is Sophia Reeves. Board member."
"Ms. Delacroix, Sophia says. She has an assessing look. Intelligent. I've heard about you."
"I wasn't aware there was anything to hear."
"Damien mentioned you found the IP gap."
She glances at him. Something in that glance that I don't have enough context for.
"He doesn't mention people, she says pleasantly. Which makes you interesting."
I look at Damien.
He's watching the exchange with his arms crossed and his expression doing the thing it does when he's choosing not to show something.
"Shall we start? I say."
* * *
After the briefing Sophia leaves for another floor and Damien and I are alone in the corridor.
"Who is she?"
He looks at me.
"I told you. Board member."
"That's not what I'm asking."
A pause.
"We were together. Three years ago. It ended."
"Amicably?"
"Reasonably."
"And she's on your board."
"She's an excellent board member. I don't let personal history affect professional judgment."
I look at him.
He looks back.
"Why did it end?"
He's quiet for a moment. The specific quiet of a man deciding how much truth this conversation requires.
"Because I couldn't give her what she needed. And I knew it and waited too long to say so."
It is the most honest thing he has said to me that isn't about work.
I don't know what to do with it.
"I'll have the restructuring demand to you by four."
"Thank you, Amara."
I walk away.
I don't let myself think about the way he said my name just then.
Softer than usual.
Like it cost him something.
* * *
— DAMIEN'S POV —
She asked about Sophia.
I know what that means. I know because I asked myself the same thing when I saw her face in the doorway — the half-second before she managed it, the thing that crossed her expression that I was not supposed to see.
She asked. She tried to cover it. She failed.
I find I am unreasonably pleased about all three of those things.
She delivers the restructuring demand at three fifty-eight.
It is, as everything she produces is, exactly right. Better than right. She's softened the language in clause four in a way that makes it more likely to be accepted without giving up anything material, and I would have fought her on it except that she's correct and I know it before I finish the page.
"Sit, I say."
"I have to get back to—"
"Sit."
She sits.
I read. She waits. The late afternoon light comes through the windows and turns everything amber and I am aware, with a precision that is professional in origin and something else in practice, of exactly how much distance exists between where I am standing and where she is.
Two feet. Maybe less.
"You argued with me. About the clause."
"I was right."
"You're often right."
"I know. That's what makes it interesting when I am."
She says it without blinking. The particular confidence of someone who has earned the right to say it.
I come around the desk.
She tracks my movement with the specific attention of someone who has decided to be careful and is finding it increasingly difficult.
I stop at the corner. Close. Not inappropriately so. But the distance between us is a choice I have made.
"The Dubai tower, she says. Like she needs something to say. You said eighteen months."
"Yes."
"You said you're not done with several things."
I look at her.
"Yes."
"Am I one of them?"
The room goes completely still.
She asked it.
I don't think she meant to. I watch the realization cross her face a half-second after the words are out — that she has just handed me something, named something, stepped over a line she'd been maintaining for four days.
I could deflect. I could make it professional. I could give her the version that lets us both pretend the line is still intact.
"Yes, I say. You are."
* * *
— AMARA'S POV —
I asked.
I can't believe I asked.
Four days of careful distance, four days of taking the long route and eating at my desk and building every wall I know how to build, and then I sit down in his office at three fifty-eight and ask him directly if I am one of the things he's not finished with.
And he says yes.
Just yes.
No hedge. No qualification. No version of it that leaves either of us a way out.
I stand up.
"Damien."
"I'm not going to touch you, he says. Quiet. Even. I'm not going to do anything you haven't asked for. But I should be honest with you about something."
"All right."
"I want things I don't always pursue. What I want and what I'll do are two different questions. You have my word I'll only ever answer the second one."
The room is very quiet.
I look at him. At his face, the careful want in it, the promise he is keeping in real time even as he makes it.
"Thank you, I say finally. For telling me."
"Go draft the restructuring demand."
"I already sent it to you."
"Then go do whatever comes next, he says. I'll be here."
I leave.
I make it to my office. I sit at my desk. I look at the legal pad on the left side where I always put it and the coffee cup that was there when I arrived this morning.
I think about a man who told me the truth about wanting me and in the same breath promised he wouldn't act on it without my permission.
I think about how that is simultaneously the most respectful and the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to me.
I think: the rules I made are already broken.
I just haven't admitted it yet.
* * *
End of Chapter Five
- Writer
