Chapter 17: What You Already Know
1266 Words
Something felt off long before she came to him.
Bobby could not have said exactly when it began—only that, at some point in the middle of the afternoon, the rhythm of the day shifted in a way that did not quite belong. The Sales floor moved as it always did, voices rising and falling in practiced urgency, footsteps crossing paths without pause, conversations beginning before others had ended. Nothing in it was unusual.
And yet, he noticed.
Perhaps because he had grown used to noticing her. Not deliberately, not in any way he would have admitted even to himself, but enough to recognize the absence of something he could not immediately define. It was not that Athena was gone. She was there. Moving, working, speaking as she always did.
But something in her had withdrawn by half a step.
It was subtle. Anyone else might have missed it.
He did not.
He did not go looking for her. He had never needed to.
When the knock came at his door, he already knew.
“Come in,” he said, without lifting his eyes from the file in front of him.
There was no urgency in his voice, no anticipation. Just the same calm control he carried into everything. But the moment she spoke, that control sharpened into awareness.
“Busy?”
He looked up then.
“Not for you.”
It was the first and only moment he allowed himself to take her in fully—and what he saw fixed his attention immediately, narrowing it to the details that mattered.
The watch was still on her wrist.
The cap was in her hand.
Nothing else held his focus quite as firmly.
She stepped forward and placed the cap on his desk with a care that felt deliberate, as though the act itself required a certain measure of attention. Then, after a brief pause, she removed the watch.
She did not do it quickly.
There was no hesitation either.
Only a kind of quiet precision, as if the way she removed it mattered more than the act itself.
He watched that more closely than he intended to.
When she set it down beside the cap, the space between them settled into silence.
“I thought I should,” she said.
He leaned back slightly in his chair, though he made no move to reach for either item. His gaze rested on them for a moment before returning to her.
“Why?”
She did not avoid the question.
“My boyfriend is coming.”
The words landed without force, but they carried their own weight.
Bobby did not react immediately. There was no visible shift in his expression, no break in the composure he had maintained from the start. He only asked, evenly, “When?”
“Next week.”
A pause followed, brief but not empty.
“He’s staying,” she added. “For a week… maybe more.”
Something in him adjusted then—not abruptly, not in a way that could be easily named, but enough to settle into something more defined.
“And that changes things?” he asked.
“It should.”
The answer came too quickly.
He let out a slow breath, his gaze dropping once more to the watch resting between them.
“You kept it this long.”
She did not respond.
“You wore it.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
That drew his eyes back to hers.
“That’s not true.”
His voice remained calm, but there was something beneath it now—something steadier, less willing to yield.
“You knew it mattered.”
She held his gaze, and in that moment, her silence was answer enough.
“I didn’t mean for things to—”
“Don’t.”
He cut her off, not sharply, but with a firmness that left no room for continuation.
“Don’t make it sound like it just happened.”
Because it had not. Not in the way she was trying to frame it.
“You came here,” he continued, his voice measured, controlled. “You stayed. You didn’t walk away.”
“And neither did you, Carrero.”
That, at least, was true.
He stood then, slowly, closing the distance between them with deliberate intent. There was no urgency in the movement, no aggression—only certainty.
“Then don’t pretend this is one-sided.”
His voice lowered, not in volume, but in weight.
“It’s not.”
She did not step back. Did not move at all. But something in her expression shifted, just enough for him to see it.
“I have a life back there,” she said quietly.
He did not dismiss it.
But he did not accept it as an answer either.
“And what is this?” he asked.
There was no hesitation in the question, no attempt to soften it.
Because whatever this was, it had already moved past anything that could be dismissed as nothing.
“You look for me,” he said. “You stay when you don’t have to. You answer every message.”
Each word was placed carefully, deliberately, as though he had considered them long before saying them aloud.
“You want me as much as I want you.”
The truth of it did not echo. It did not need to.
It settled between them with a quiet finality that neither of them could ignore.
She did not deny it.
That was the part that mattered.
“This isn’t simple,” she said after a moment, her voice steadier now.
“I didn’t say it was.”
A brief silence followed.
“Then what are you saying?”
He held her gaze, unyielding.
“I’m saying give it a chance.”
The words came quieter this time, but no less certain.
“Give us a chance.”
It was not a suggestion.
It was not a possibility.
It was a choice, laid plainly between them.
She looked away first, only for a moment, before meeting his gaze again.
“I need to talk to him,” she said.
There was no evasion in it. Only honesty.
“He’s staying for a while. I can’t just—”
“I know.”
And he did.
But he did not step back.
“Then talk to him,” he said.
A pause followed, brief but significant.
“But don’t pretend you don’t already know.”
Because she did.
He could see it as clearly as anything else.
What held her there was not uncertainty about him.
It was everything that came with choosing him.
When she left, the door closed behind her with a soft, unremarkable sound.
The room settled into stillness.
Bobby remained where he was for a moment, his gaze dropping once more to the desk.
The watch.
The cap.
Returned.
And yet, nothing about what had passed between them felt undone.
He stepped forward, reaching for the watch at last.
It rested easily in his hand, familiar in a way that surprised him.
For a moment, he said nothing, allowed no thought to take full form.
Then, slowly, the clarity he had been holding at a distance settled into place.
This was not timing.
Not proximity.
Not something that would fade once circumstance changed.
It had already moved beyond that.
He exhaled quietly, the faintest shift in his composure.
“You knew it mattered,” he had said.
The words returned to him, quieter now.
He did too.
And that was the part he could no longer set aside.
- Writer
