She snorted. “At least civilization will have perfectly aligned centerpieces when it goes down.”
When the door shut behind her, the quiet hit harder than I expected.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. For a moment, the weight of everything pressed down—expectations, deadlines, promises I’d made to kids who believed in me. My heart ached with a mix of pride and exhaustion.
I rubbed my temples and whispered to the empty room, “Just make it through the week.”
The printer beeped again, spitting out another sheet. I stared at it, then laughed softly to myself.
Maybe that was all survival really was—one jammed page at a time.
The door creaked open, breaking the hum of the printer and the clatter of my typing. I looked up just in time to see Beckett leaning against the doorframe, still in his training gear—sweat-damp hair, T-shirt clinging to his chest, that infuriatingly calm smirk already in place.
“You’re still here,” he said, voice low and teasing, like he’d caught me doing something illegal.
I didn’t even bother looking up from my screen. “So are you.”
“Fair,” he said, stepping into the room. “Coach kicked us out early. You, on the other hand, look like you’ve fought a paper monster and lost.”
I exhaled a half-laugh. “I think the paper monster won hours ago.”
He glanced around, taking in the chaos—half-empty coffee cups, stacks of boxes labeled donor gifts, ribbons draped over the back of chairs, and one very tired Naomi pretending to be alive across the room.
“You two need security guards or something?” he asked.
Naomi groaned without lifting her head. “We need sleep. Which I plan on achieving immediately. You have fun supervising her, Beckett.”
“Wait—Naomi,” I started, but she was already gathering her things.
“Don’t wait up,” she said with a grin that was far too knowing for someone half-asleep. “Maybe he can get you that takeout, huh?”
The door closed behind her, leaving the faint smell of her vanilla latte and a silence that suddenly felt too loud.
Beckett crossed the room slowly, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning the cluttered tables like he was trying to figure out how one person could possibly generate this much chaos.
“So this is where the magic happens,” he said.
“If by magic you mean spreadsheets and panic attacks, then yes,” I replied.
He chuckled, that low, easy sound that somehow managed to irritate and calm me at the same time.
“You don’t have to stay this late,” he said, leaning a hip against my desk. “You’ve got, what, a dozen people helping with this event?”
I looked up at him, tired but stubborn. “They helped. Past tense. The rest is my problem.”
He frowned slightly. “You always do that—act like the weight of the world’s yours to carry.”
“It’s my foundation, Beckett. It kind of is.”
He tilted his head. “Still doesn’t mean you have to break yourself doing it.”
Something in the way he said it—quiet, steady—made me pause. I tried to look away, focus on the glowing spreadsheet on my screen, but my vision blurred from exhaustion.
“I’ll rest when the gala’s over,” I said finally.
He studied me for a beat longer, then sighed. “You said that last week.”
“I meant it last week,” I muttered.
