Chapter Ten - Just Lunch
1144 Words
I have never been nervous about lunch before.
Lunch is just a meal.
Lunch is food in the middle of the day.
Except when it is on the forty-second floor.
With him.
Then it is apparently the most terrifying thing I have ever agreed to.
* * *
I change my outfit twice.
This is ridiculous. I am at work. I have a work outfit. It is the outfit I arrived in.
I change it anyway. I had a spare blouse in my desk drawer — don't ask — and I am wearing it now and trying to look like a woman who did not just change her blouse in the bathroom on the twenty-second floor because she is having lunch with her CEO.
"You changed your top," Oliver says, the moment I sit down.
"I spilled something."
"You didn't spill anything. I've been watching."
"Oliver."
"You look great," he says simply. "The blue suits you. Go."
I go.
* * *
The forty-second floor is quiet as always.
But today it smells like food.
Good food. The kind that comes from somewhere that has a name and a waiting list, not a cafeteria.
Damien is at his desk when I push open the glass door. He stands — he always stands when I come in, I have noticed this, every single time — and something about the way he looks at me makes me forget for a moment that I was nervous.
He just looks — glad.
Simply, openly glad.
Like I am the best thing that has walked through that door all day.
"You came," he says.
"I said I would."
"I know." A pause. "I wasn't sure if you'd change your mind."
"I don't change my mind," I say. "Once I decide something, I decide it."
Something warm moves through his expression. "I know that too."
He has set up lunch on the low table by the window — not at his desk, not formal, just two chairs and food and the city spread out below us like something that belongs to us both.
We sit.
We eat.
And we talk.
* * *
Not about work.
That is the extraordinary thing.
For two hours, we do not talk about work once.
We talk about Cameroon — he asks, genuinely curious, and I tell him about Buea, about the mountain, about the way the city sounds different there. About growing up bilingual, switching between English and French mid-sentence like breathing.
He listens like I am saying something worth remembering.
"And Silverpine?" he asks, carefully.
"The forest was beautiful," I say honestly. "That part I miss. Running at night through pine trees in the dark, the whole pack moving together—" I pause. "I miss that part."
"Just that part?"
"Just that part," I confirm.
He nods. He doesn't push.
I ask about him.
He is quiet for a moment — like people are when they are not used to being asked.
"I built this company because I wanted something that was entirely mine," he says finally. "My pack expected me to stay. To lead. To do what Alphas do." He looks at the city. "I decided I could lead differently."
"A company instead of a pack."
"A company instead of a pack," he agrees. "Same instincts. Different application."
"Do you miss it?" I ask. "The pack life?"
He thinks about it honestly. "I miss the simplicity of it," he says. "The clarity. Pack bonds are — direct. You know exactly where you stand."
He looks at me when he says it.
I know exactly what he means.
We both know exactly what he means.
"Damien—"
"I'm not rushing you," he says immediately. "I meant what I said. I'm not asking for anything."
"I know," I say. "That's — that's actually the problem."
He goes very still.
"I spent three years building walls," I say slowly. "Good walls. Strong walls. The kind that kept everything out that needed keeping out."
"I know," he says quietly.
"And you have spent ten days being so — careful. So patient. So completely and deliberately not pushing—" I stop. Take a breath. "It turns out that is considerably harder to defend against than someone who pushes."
A beat of silence.
"Maya," he says. Very quietly.
"I'm not there yet," I say. "I need you to know that. I'm not — I can't just—"
"I know," he says. "You don't have to be anywhere yet."
"But I'm getting there," I say. "I think. Slowly."
He looks at me for a long moment.
And then Damien Voss — the most controlled man I have ever met, the man who built an empire on discipline and precision, who has spent thirty-four years managing every variable in his life — smiles.
Not the small, careful smile he uses in meetings.
A real one.
Full and warm and completely unguarded.
Like someone just told him the thing he has been waiting to hear.
"Slowly is fine," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."
I look at him.
At this man who got his shoulder wet in the rain and left coffee on my desk and told me the truth about Lucas immediately and has never once, in ten days, made me feel like anything less than exactly who I am.
My wolf is quiet.
Content, for the first time in three years.
Just — still. And warm. And home.
"Good," I say.
And I smile back.
* * *
I go back downstairs at two-fifteen.
Oliver looks up the second I walk in.
He takes one look at my face.
"Oh," he says softly. "Oh, Maya."
"Don't," I say.
"I'm not saying anything."
"Good."
"I'm just—" He presses his lips together. "I'm really glad you pressed the wrong button."
I sit down at my desk.
I open my laptop.
I am smiling so hard that it is genuinely difficult to look professional.
"Me too," I say.
Me too.
Some things, I think, are worth being slow about.
Worth being careful about.
Worth building properly, the way you build anything that matters — brick
By brick, day by day, without rushing the foundation just because you are
Impatient to see the finished thing.
I pressed the wrong button eleven days ago.
I ended up on the right floor.
Maybe that is all a fresh start ever really is — not a perfect plan, but
a wrong turn that takes you somewhere better than where you were going.
I sit at my desk on the twenty-second floor of Voss Tower.
I open my laptop.
I smile at my screen like a woman who has decided, quietly and precisely.
And entirely on her own terms, she is exactly where she is supposed to be
to be.
For the first time in three years, I believe it.
- Writer
