Like I wasn’t gob-smacked by the fact that Cole, too, isgorgeous. A little leaner than Nico and Dane, but just as tall. Dane is always dressed in a suit, and Nico always looks ready to purchase a beach property, but Cole is… different. My internet stalking has told me that he’s roughly the same age as Nico and Dane, but helooksyounger. Maybe it’s the fact that he doesn’t have the same imposing figure as Dane, or the same effortless charm as Nico.
Cole is the least intimidating of the three, even as I instantly realized just how smart he is. He’s more relaxed and somehow more effortless at the same time. Right now, he’s wearing a deepgreen crewneck sweater over a white T-shirt, jeans, and white sneakers.
When we get back to the executive floor, he immediately goes into his office, and I go back to my work. But talking to him, being around him—it causes the same problem I experience around Dane, and even Nico when he’s here.
I just can’t focus.
After another hour of trying—and failing—to get all my tasks taken care of, I decide to call it a night. Besides, if I’m not home soon, Aunt Ruby is going to figure out I’ve been gone, and she's going to flip if she finds out that I’ve been at the office. She thinks working on the weekend is a sin, and I’m not in the mood to sit through one of her impassioned lectures aboutliving life to the fullest.
But when I hold my access card to the scanner outside of the elevator to go downstairs, nothing happens. Nobeep, no little flashing green light. I wait for a moment, frown, and try it again.
Once more… nothing.
I stand in front of the elevator for a long moment, thinking of the intense focus on Cole’s face, when I finally suck in a breath and force myself to walk back through the lobby, past my desk, and to the door leading into Cole’s office.
He’s at his desk, scratching something out on paper, and it takes a moment for his gaze to flit to mine after I knock on the door frame.
“Hey.” Why am I so nervous to talk to him? It feels like sacrilege to interrupt his work. “Sorry—I think—my key card isn’t working.”
His brow wrinkles, then relaxes, and he’s rising from his seat, reaching into his pocket for his own key card. Mine is white, but Dane, Nico, and Cole all have sleeker, black cards.
But when Cole holds his black card to the sensor, nothing happens.
“Try the stairs,” he says. It’s different from when Dane tells me to do something—less commanding. Cole saystry the stairslike it’s something obvious, like we’re thinking the same thing. Like another person might sayhave a nice day.
I turn, walking down the short hallway and to the stairs. I’m as much a fan of getting a little extra exercise as the next person, but I’ve never even thought of taking these stairs—we’re nearly forty floors up.
When I press my card to the scanner, it once again does nothing.
“Oh,” I whisper, and when I turn around, Cole is watching from the end of the hallway. “That’s not good—is it?”
“Don’t start any fires,” he says, and I’m not quite sure if it’s meant to be a joke or not.
“We’re trapped?” I ask, and when he nods, I let out a breathy, exasperated, “Not again.”
Cole tilts his head toward the elevator. “This has happened before?”
“No…” I close my eyes, tryingnotto think about climbing into Dane’s lap on the plane at this particular moment. “Never mind.”
I trot back down the hallway as Cole crouches down, reaching into his pocket to pull out a multi-tool of some sort.
In awe, I watch as he jimmies a flat head into the scanner and pops it right off the wall, staring scrutinizingly at the workings inside. It’s all wires and chips—about as familiar to me as all the veins and chambers of the human heart.
“You might want to sit down,” he says, simply, after a second of staring at it. “This is going to take a minute.”
“…and he’salwaysbeen like that?”
Cole nods, popping his tool into his mouth before switching to his laptop, which is balanced on a trash can and plugged into the little pad beside the elevator by several wires.
At first, we’d sat quietly, but I was fidgeting, finding the silence hard to handle. The lights had long gone out, and through the door to the stairs, I could see a red bulb flashing.
Dread and exhaustion were slowly creeping up on me, leaving me with a low-grade sense of fear in my stomach. So, instead of staying quiet like Cole probably would prefer, I started chattering to him like a circus monkey.
And, to my surprise, he’s been answering.
“Yes,” he says, around the tool, glancing at me briefly before typing several lines of code into his computer, hittingenter, and setting it down again as more lines appear on the screen. “Dane was like that, even back in college.”
“It’s wild to me that you’ve been friends for that long.” Cole’s brow twitches at the wordfriends, and I think about what Dane said. Not friends—platonic soul mates. “How did you meet in college?”
