"Orla." Her name tastes like prayer, like plea, like everything I want and desperately can't have, shouldn't have, can't let myself reach for no matter how much every instinct screams to close this space between us. "You cannot throw away everything you built for?—"
"For what? For you?" She steps closer, those shoes swinging from her grip, rain plastering her shirt to her skin, her hair, that perfect sharp bob, now a disheveled mess framing her face. "Watch me. I already told the CEO exactly where he could shove his policy manual."
That stops me cold. Stops my retreat, stops my breath, stops everything except the thundering of my heart against my ribs.
"You didn't."
"Direct quote was actually 'I respectfully resign, effective immediately, and furthermore, your corporate fraternization policy is archaic, discriminatory, and I'll be filing a formal complaint with the labor board.'" She smiles, sharp and fierce. "Then I may have thrown my employee badge at his head."
"Orla."
"I'm not done." Another step. "I also told him that Thraka was the best hire this company ever made, that his conflict resolution strategies, while unconventional, reduced departmental disputes by forty-three percent, and that firing him was the stupidest business decision since New Coke."
"You did statistics?"
"I always do statistics." She's close now, close enough to touch. "I spent the last hour running projections. Know what I found?"
I shake my head, not trusting my voice.
"Every scenario where you leave, where we don't try this, where I stay in that office and pretend my heart isn't walking out the door in a suit three sizes too small, every single one ends with me miserable. Efficient, professionally successful, completelyoptimized for corporate advancement." Her voice cracks. "And absolutely fucking miserable."
"Language, Little Manager."
"Don't 'Little Manager' me right now." But she's smiling through tears, through rain. "I'm trying to make a grand gesture here. Trying to do the big romantic speech where I chase you down and tell you that nothing matters without you. That I'd rather file unemployment paperwork than spend another day in that building without hearing you try to challenge the printer to single combat. That you made me laugh for the first time in years with a dead rat, and I think I started falling for you right then, and I definitely finished falling when you pinned me against that shed wall and?—"
I drop my box.
The cardboard hits pavement, contents spilling. Dead rat rolls into a puddle. Stapler clatters against concrete. Coffee mug shatters, ceramic shards mixing with rain.
Don't care.
I close the area between us, cup her face in my hands, tilt her head up. She's so small compared to me, so fragile, but she's the strongest person I know. Strong enough to chase me into the rain. Strong enough to throw away everything safe and planned for something wild and uncertain.
Strong enough to choose me.
"You are insane," I whisper, thumbs brushing along her sharp jawline, feeling the delicate bone structure beneath rain-slicked skin.
"Probably." She grips my wrists with surprising strength, fingers digging in like she's afraid I might disappear if she lets go. "But I'm your kind of insane. The kind that brings a battle-axe to a board meeting. The kind that thinks challenging a printer to single combat is a reasonable conflict resolution strategy."
"We have no jobs, Orla." The reality of it settles over me, but it feels less like a burden and more like freedom.
"We'll get new ones." Her voice is steady, certain. "Ones where they don't punish us for being happy. Where I don't have to pretend I don't want to climb you like a tree during quarterly reviews."
"No plan."
"We'll make one. Together." Her smile turns wicked, that sharp corporate edge now aimed at the world instead of at me. "I'm very good at plans. And you're very good at creative problem-solving. We'll be unstoppable."
"The CEO will blacklist us." I trace the line of her cheekbone, still marveling that she's here, that she chose this. "Make sure neither of us works in this industry again."
"Let him try. I know where all the bodies are buried. Metaphorically speaking." She pauses, and something dark and satisfied flickers across her expression. "Mostly metaphorically. I have six years of documentation on every labor violation, every creative accounting decision, every inappropriate comment he's ever made. He blacklists us, I forward it all to the Department of Labor."
I laugh, the sound torn from my chest, raw and real, echoing off the wet pavement and rain-dark buildings. "You are going to regret this."
"Maybe. But I'd regret not trying more." She rises on her toes, pulls me down. "Now kiss me before I remember I'm standing barefoot in the rain having a breakdown in public."
Our lips meet, and the world narrows to this. To her mouth, warm despite the cold rain. To her hands fisting in my soaked jacket. To the way she melts against me, all that rigid control dissolving, leaving only the woman underneath. Soft and fierce and mine.
Mine.
