BOUND BY ONE NIGHT

Chapter 14

Alex’s POV

I’d been through crises before, corporate crashes, billion-dollar deals hanging by a thread, stockholders ready to tear down everything I’d built. But this one felt different. This one felt like drowning. I stood in front of the conference room windows, eyes fixed on the skyline, the city lights looking dimmer than usual. Behind me, voices argued, worried, frantic, my top executives trying to solve a problem that Lavender Brooks would’ve solved in minutes.

The merger documentation was a maze schedules, tender offers, legal conflict points. Lavender had organized every detail of it. She had been the one to build the system everyone else relied on. She had been the order in my chaos. And I had let her walk out.

Actually no, I had driven her away. I slammed a hand against the glass. Heads snapped up. A silence fell like a curtain. “This is pointless,” I said, voice low but cutting. “We’re running in circles. I’m wasting time here.”

One of them, Jason from finance, cleared his throat nervously. “If… If Lavender were here” I turned sharply. Everyone fell silent again. That name, the one they had never dared speak around me, hovered like smoke in the air. I grabbed my jacket. “This meeting is over.”

“But Mr. Robinson”

“I’ll handle it.” They knew better than to follow me. I searched for her like a man possessed. I drove through the city with no destination except find her screaming in my skull. I called every number HR had given me disconnected. I checked the old address in her file, she had already moved. My chest tightened.

She really meant to disappear. By the time I found the tiny nondescript building in a quieter suburb, the address I got from a slip of information, it was dark out. She was standing outside with a small bag of groceries, looking tired, paler than I remembered.

My heart lurched like it forgot how to beat.

“Lavender.” Her entire body froze. She didn’t turn around immediately. She just closed her eyes, like she had prayed this moment would never come. Then slowly, she faced me.

“Mr. Robinson.” Her voice was soft, but it cut me sharper than any boardroom betrayal. So formal, so distant.

“Why did you leave?” I asked. Too direct, too raw. She swallowed. “I gave my resignation letter. HR informed you.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” She hugged the grocery bag closer, like a shield. “Everything was becoming… complicated.” There it was. The understatement of a lifetime. I stepped closer. She stepped back.

“That night ” I began.

“Don’t,” she whispered. The word hit me harder than a punch. She looked anywhere but at me, my shoes, the pavement, the flickering light above us, anything to avoid my eyes.

“Lavender, I need your help,” I said, breath uneven. She blinked, surprised then wary.

“What?”

“There’s a merger crisis. You were the one who structured the legal coordination. I can’t… no one can navigate it the way you can.”

There it was, finally admitting I needed her. She let out a shaky laugh, humourless, pained.

“So now you need me.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it? I was always needed. Until I became inconvenient.” The accusation wasn’t loud.

It didn’t need to be. I exhaled hard. My pride screamed at me to leave, but something deeper buried the pride.

“Lavender, please.” Her eyes shot up, shocked, because I didn’t ask. I never asked,

I commanded. Hearing please from me meant something was breaking.

“Alex…” The way she said my name, hesitant, trembling, nearly undid me.

“I can’t go back,” she said, voice cracking. “I can’t stand in that office while everyone looks at me like I’m a rumour. A mistake. I can’t face Cassandra’s smirk. I can’t pretend nothing happened.”

“And what if I don’t want to pretend?” It came out harsher, more desperate than intended. She stared at me, really looked, for the first time since that night.

“What do you want from me?” she whispered, everything. To breathe when you’re near, to forget myself in your voice, to lose this ache in my chest every time I close my eyes and see you in that bed. But I couldn’t say that, I didn’t even know how to say that.

So I said the only thing I could speak without falling apart, “I want you to come back. Help me fix this deal. Please.” She pressed her lips together, torn.

“I quit for a reason,” she said quietly.

“And I came here for a reason,” I countered. “You think I do this for any employee?”

Her breath hitched. Emotions flickered across her face, confusion, pain, something dangerously close to longing. And God, I felt it too. She looked away first. “Temporary. Just for the merger paperwork. After that… I’m gone.”

Temporary, the word sliced something inside me wide open. But I nodded, because begging for more would make me selfish. And right now, I couldn’t afford to lose her again.

“Fine. Temporary.” She didn’t smile, she just exhaled like her lungs finally remembered their function.

“When do we start?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll send a car.” Her brows lowered. “No. I’ll come on my own.”

Always independent, always stronger than she believed.

“Alright,” I agreed quietly.

She stepped toward her door, fumbling with the keys hands shaking. I saw it now the exhaustion, the heartbreak, the fear she tried to hide. I spoke before she went inside.

“Lavender… I’m glad I found you.” She paused. Her shoulders tightened like holding back tears. But she didn’t turn around.

“Goodnight, sir,” she whispered.

Sir, A wall as tall as the one I’d built around myself for years, now turned against me. And she disappeared into the apartment without looking back. I stood there long after the light in her window flicked off. Tomorrow she would return to my world. But tonight, I realized the painful truth,

Without Lavender Brooks, that world was already starting to fall apart.