The fluorescent lights hummed overhead as the door shut behind me, and for a second I just stood there, staring at my reflection like I was trying to recognize the person in front of me.
My face looked normal.
Which felt incorrect.
I stepped into one of the stalls and locked the door behind me, then sat down on the closed lid and pressed my hands over my eyes.
I wasn’t even sure why I was crying.
Nothing Mark had said was cruel.
Nothing he’d told me was truly unfair.
It had all made sense.
My throat burned anyway, and before I could stop it, my chin quivered, and my breathing hitched in a way I couldn’t quite control.
I stayed like that for a minute.
Maybe two.
Just sitting there in a locked stall in the middle of a workday, trying very hard not to make any noise while everything I’d been pretending not to think about for the last month finally caught up with me all at once.
I had really thought I was going to stay here.
Not forever.
Just—
Longer.
Long enough to build something.
Long enough to belong somewhere.
I scrubbed clumsily at my face with the heel of my hand before the tears could get properly out of control.
This wasn’t the end of anything.
If anything—
My chest tightened again, but this time for a completely different reason.
If anything, I was ridiculously lucky.
Because somehow, for reasons I still didn’t fully understand, Tobias Kelly wanted me.
Out of everyone he could have hired.
Out of all the people with more experience, better resumes, longer careers, and actual credentials beyond a training placement and a degree that still felt new in my hands—
He’d picked me.
He’d listened to me.
He’d asked me to stay.
I wiped carefully under my eyes again and took a slow breath, letting it out through my nose.
