He looks up.
His face is still. Not a man performing neutrality — a man who has decided to give me nothing, and knows exactly what that costs me. I've seen what lives behind that stillness when the control slips; this morning it's a wall, smooth and unbroken, and my chest registers the lack of a crack in it like a door shutting.
"You're welcome," he says. Courteous. The voice he uses in meetings.
I nod once. Stand. "I'll just get my things."
"Sit down, Jana."
I stop. He's still at the table, laptop closed now, watching me.
"Excuse me?"
"I said sit down." He closes the laptop. "Do you think you'll just walk away that easy?"
The heat starts behind my sternum. "The contract ended at midnight. I received payment. The terms were—"
"Two weeks," he says. "Not thirteen days and a morning. We still have today." His eyes hold mine. "You leave when I tell you to leave. I haven't decided it's time for that yet."
"You don't get to—"
"Let's negotiate." He says it like the most reasonable thing in the world, already reaching for his coffee.
I stare at him. "Negotiate."
"You want to leave. I want you to stay. There's a price for that gap — there always is." He takes a sip. "Name it. More money. Whatever number makes this easier."
"It's not about the money." The words come out harder than I intend.
His jaw shifts. A brief, controlled adjustment. "It was, two weeks ago."
That lands accurately and he knows it. It was, and the fact that it isn't anymore is the entire problem, and he's pressing on it with the precision of a man who's catalogued every tender spot. My jaw tightens. "That was different."
"How?" Not combative — genuinely asking, or performing the inquiry well enough that the difference stops mattering. "You had a need. I had a means. You're a businessperson, Jana. You understand commodity and demand." He sets his cup down. "You have what I want. I'm prepared to pay for it."
"And what's that." Not a question. A dare.
"Your time," he says. "Your company." A beat. "A continuation of our arrangement."
I give a short, humorless breath. "So. Sex."
He arches one brow — just barely, the small movement that contains multitudes.Among other things, yes, and you know that, and you're pretending you don't, which we both find slightly tedious.
"What do youactuallywant?" The wordactuallycarries everything I can't say directly —tell me the truth, just once, without the transaction scaffolding around it.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then: "I want our relationship to continue."
Relationship.My breath adjusts. "Do we have a relationship?"
A muscle moves in his jaw. "Ourarrangement," he says — the word a correction, a retreat into ground that costs him less. "I want it to continue."
And there it is, right there — the wordarrangementsliding in whererelationshipjust was, costing him nothing, and the gap between those two words is exactly the size of the thing I cannot stay for. My hands find the back of the chair.
"I'm not available," I say, the air quotes around the word nearly audible, "for an arrangement." I push back from the chair. "I appreciate everything. I do. But I'm going to get my bag."
"Jana."
"Rafail."
