He was holding me, and I wanted him to keep holding me.
I wanted to stay here, pressed against his chest, letting him tell me I was alright until I believed it.
The wanting scared me more than the fall had.
He didn't let go until I was steady, and even then his hand lingered at my elbow—warm and grounding, a silent question rather than an assumption.
My face was burning. My whole body was burning, caught somewhere between mortification and something far more dangerous. The shameful urge to step back into his arms and stay there. To let someone hold me up for once. To surrender to the warmth of his presence and stop fighting the gravity that seemed to pull me toward him.
I couldn't do this. I needed to leave immediately.
"I'm sorry," I managed, my voice strangled. "I don't usually—this isn't—I should go."
The words came out in fragments, broken and inadequate. I expected irritation. Dismissal. The polite condescension I'd learned to anticipate when I failed at being normal, when my brain misfired in public and made me look foolish.
Instead, Maksim reached into his jacket.
His movements were calm, unhurried. He produced a business card—cream-colored, thick stock, the kind of quality you felt before you saw—and held it out toward me.
Not pushing it into my hand. Offering it. Letting me choose whether to take it.
"Think about my proposal," he said. His voice had returned to something more professional, though I could still hear the warmth underneath. "No pressure, no timeline. My contact information is there. Call or email when you're ready to discuss further."
I stared at the card, unable to make my hand reach for it.
"And Auralia—"
The way he said my name. Like it mattered. Like I mattered.
"—the lighting in here is a crime against gallery design, and that platform shouldn't be in a walkway. You have nothing to apologize for."
Something cracked open in my chest.
It was such an elegant reframe. Such a careful, deliberate kindness. He was giving me an out that had nothing to do with my brain misfiring, nothing to do with sensory overwhelm or social failure or any of the ways I constantly disappointed myself. The gallery was poorly designed. The platform was in the wrong place. My stumble was architecture's fault, not mine.
He couldn't know how much I needed to hear that. Couldn't know how rare it was for someone to look at my awkwardness and find a way to make it not my fault.
Or maybe he could. Maybe he saw more than I wanted him to see.
Gratitude flooded through me, and underneath it, a wanting so sharp it frightened me. I wanted to stay. I wanted to hear what else he had to say. I wanted to know what his hands would feel like if they weren't just steadying me, if they were touching me with intent.
I took the card.
The paper was smooth against my fingertips. His name was printed in elegant serif font: MAKSIM BESHAROV. Below it, a phone number and email address. Nothing else. No title, no company logo, no explanation of what he did.
I couldn't say goodbye. Didn't have the words left. So I just turned and walked as fast as I could without actually running, past the leather chairs and through the viewing room door and down the too-long hallway.
The receptionist said something as I passed—probably a farewell, probably professional pleasantries—but I didn't hear it.I didn't hear anything except the blood pounding in my ears and the echo of his voice saying my name.
Through the glass doors. Out onto the street.
The noise of Chelsea traffic crashed over me like a wave—car horns, construction, the rumble of a delivery truck, a dozen conversations from pedestrians on their phones. Too loud, all of it, but at least it was real. At least it wasn't the pressurized silence of that gallery.
I didn't stop walking until I was three blocks away.
I found a brick wall and leaned against it, pressing my back into the solid reality of stone and mortar. My legs were shaking. My hands were trembling. Maksim Besharov's business card was clutched in my fingers like a talisman, and I couldn't stop thinking about the weight of his arm around my waist.
The way he'd caught me without hesitation. The way he'd held me without agenda. The way he'd saidI've got youlike it was the simplest thing in the world, like catching me was something he'd been prepared to do all along.
