Chapter 12 — The Man in the Lift
1758 Words
Théo's POV
Lyon, France — Maison Moreau
Two months into Lyon's winter and life had settled back into its particular rhythm.
Wake up. Coffee. Office. Numbers. Home. Sleep.
Repeat.
The team leader was still furious with me in the specific low grade way of someone who had decided to make displeasure a permanent atmosphere rather than a temporary response. He found reasons. Small ones. A report submitted three minutes late. A formatting inconsistency in a spreadsheet. The particular creative dedication of someone who had committed to being difficult and intended to see it through.
I had decided to find it manageable.
Mostly.
The Marchand report had been delivered on time — two days, no help, exactly as demanded — and whatever satisfaction the team leader had hoped to deny me by assigning it had been quietly removed by the fact that I had simply done it. Without complaint. Without asking for extensions.
Work I understood. Work had rules. Deliverables. Clear parameters for success and failure that didn't shift depending on how you felt or what you were carrying or what had happened eight months ago in a Bangkok club that you had spent every day since trying not to think about.
Don't.
I opened the next file.
The days had developed their own texture.
Morning coffee at my desk before anyone else arrived. The quiet before the office filled — my favorite twenty minutes of the working day. Then the gradual arrival of colleagues, the low hum of keyboards, the particular energy of a floor full of people doing the same thing they did yesterday and would do tomorrow.
Noah came by at lunch most days. We ate at the small café two streets over that had terrible coffee and excellent sandwiches and a corner table that had somehow become ours over three years of habit.
He had not brought up Thailand again since that morning on my couch with the croissants.
He was giving me time.
I was using it to pretend I didn't need any.
The other thing I carried — quieter, more persistent — was the one I had stopped naming directly even in my own head.
What if he finds me.
It arrived at random. In the middle of a spreadsheet. On the train home. At 3AM when sleep had decided to be unavailable. The thought arriving not dramatically but with the particular consistency of something that had decided to become background noise rather than a single moment of panic.
Eight months.
Nothing had happened. No one had appeared. No evidence that anyone was looking had surfaced in any form.
You're fine, Noah had said — not about this specifically, about everything generally, in the way Noah said things that managed to be about everything at once. You're fine Théo. Stop waiting for something bad to happen.
I was working on it.
My phone buzzed at exactly 9AM.
I had just sat down. Coffee untouched. Jacket still on. The office barely half full around me — early arrivals moving quietly through the floor with the particular energy of people who had not yet fully committed to the day.
Manager: Come to my office. Now.
I stared at the message.
The manager. Not the team leader. Two levels above the daily low grade warfare of my immediate working life — the kind of summons that meant either something significant had happened or something significant was about to and either way I was apparently involved.
I ran through everything immediately. Every report. Every submission. Every number I had checked twice because the team leader was looking for reasons and I had decided not to give him any.
Nothing obviously wrong.
Which meant nothing obviously comforting.
I put my coffee down untouched.
Picked up my jacket.
And went.
The lift was at the end of the corridor.
I walked quickly — mind already running through every possible reason for a 9AM manager summons, none of them particularly reassuring — and pressed the button for the fourth floor without paying particular attention to anything around me.
The doors opened.
I stepped in.
And stopped.
The lift was not empty.
A man stood against the far wall — tall, completely still, watching the doors close with the particular calm of someone who had nowhere to be and found the concept of urgency mildly interesting rather than relatable.
My brain registered several things simultaneously and in entirely the wrong order.
Light blue shirt. Perfectly fitted — the kind of fit that wasn't accidental, that suggested someone had made deliberate decisions about every centimeter of fabric. Formal trousers dark and precise. Hair set with the kind of effortless perfection that implied either an unreasonable amount of natural cooperation from the universe or a very good stylist who had been threatened into excellence.
A jaw that had clearly been architected with structural ambitions far beyond what was strictly necessary.
And eyes.
Grey.
Not flat grey. Not cold grey. The kind of grey that had depth — like weather about to change. Like something happening behind the surface that the surface wasn't showing.
He was—
Wow.
The thought arrived completely uninvited and entirely accurate and I had approximately zero ability to stop it.
I faced forward.
Pressed the button for the fourth floor.
Adjusted my bag strap.
Stared at the lift doors with the focused commitment of someone extracting vital information from a completely blank surface.
Don't look again.
I looked again.
He was still watching the doors. Or — not watching them exactly. Present in the way that certain people were present. Like the air in the room had quietly reorganized itself around him without being asked and was now simply — his.
Light blue shirt. The color did something specific to those grey eyes — brought out a coolness that was simultaneously detached and attentive. Like he was aware of everything and reacting to nothing.
That jaw.
Théo.
Stop.
I faced forward again.
The lift hummed quietly around us.
Then he moved.
Not dramatically. Not suddenly. Just — a single slow deliberate step away from the wall. Into the space between us that had felt manageable approximately four seconds ago and no longer did.
He stopped close enough that I could —
His cologne arrived before anything else. Something warm underneath something clean — the kind of scent that moved differently from everything else in the air. Slower. More deliberate. Like it knew exactly where it was going.
I kept my eyes forward.
He looked down at me.
"I know." His voice was quiet. Almost pleasant. The kind of pleasant that had absolutely nothing casual about it.
I said nothing.
"That I'm handsome." He finished.
I opened my mouth.
"But it's a bad habit." He continued. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world and had decided to spend some of it here. "Looking at someone without their permission."
"I wasn't—" My voice came out slightly less steady than I would have preferred and I made a note to be deeply disappointed in myself about that later. "I was looking at — behind you. There's something on the wall. I was reading—"
He turned.
Slowly.
Looked at the completely blank lift wall behind him with the focused attention of someone taking the suggestion seriously.
Turned back.
Those grey eyes — calm, certain, faintly amused in a way that didn't quite reach his mouth but lived very clearly everywhere else.
"The wall." He said.
"Yes."
"You were reading the wall."
"I was—" I straightened slightly. "Yes."
He looked at me for a moment.
Said nothing.
Which was somehow considerably worse than anything he could have said.
The lift slowed.
Fourth floor.
The doors opened and I walked out without looking back — quickly, directly, with the specific purposeful energy of someone who had decided that immediate physical distance was the only reasonable response to the last ninety seconds of their life.
I found the bathroom at the end of the corridor.
Went straight to the sink.
Cold tap. Full pressure. Splashed water on my face without ceremony — once, twice, three times — until the heat in my cheeks had retreated to something that could pass as normal in decent lighting and my reflection looked less like a person who had just been comprehensively caught staring and more like a functioning adult who had their life reasonably together.
I gripped the edge of the sink.
Looked at myself.
What are you doing.
Seriously. What was that. I worked in a building full of attractive people. I had been in lifts with attractive people. I had never once stood in a lift staring at a stranger like he was — like he was the answer to a question I hadn't known I was asking—
Stop.
He was just a person.
A very — structurally unreasonable person with grey eyes and a jaw that probably had its own insurance policy and a cologne that had absolutely no right to smell like—
STOP.
I turned the tap off.
Straightened up.
Looked at my reflection with the gravity the situation required.
You have a meeting, I told myself. With your manager. Right now. Which you are currently late for because you are standing in a bathroom talking to yourself about a stranger's jaw.
Pull yourself together.
You will never see him again.
I picked up my bag.
Walked out.
Knocked on the manager's door.
"Come in."
I opened it.
The manager looked up from his desk with the particular expression of someone who had been waiting and had opinions about how long that had taken.
And in the chair across from him —
Light blue shirt.
Grey eyes.
That jaw.
Looking at me with the specific expression of someone who had been expecting exactly this and found it exactly as interesting as he had anticipated.
I stood in the doorway.
He looked at me.
The corner of his mouth moved.
Just slightly.
"Bad habit," those grey eyes said without saying anything at all.
The manager gestured to the empty chair beside him.
"Théo." He said. "Come in. I'd like you to meet our new intern."
I didn't move for a full three seconds.
Intern.
He was going to be my intern.
The man in the light blue shirt with the unreasonable jaw and the grey eyes that were currently doing something deeply inconvenient to my ability to function —
Was going to sit at the desk beside mine.
Every day.
Indefinitely.
Of course he was.
- Writer
