He laughed again, softer this time. “You’re impossible.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “You would know.”
For a moment, the silence that followed wasn’t heavy—it was something else. Familiar. Warm. Like the noise in my head had quieted for the first time all day.
He looked at me, and I hated how easily he could see through me, like the exhaustion, the stress, the act of keeping it together weren’t enough to hide behind. And then he crossed the room slowly, scanning the chaos like he was walking into a disaster zone. I didn’t even bother pretending it wasn’t one—papers everywhere, floral foam on the floor, and a printer that had decided to retire halfway through the name tags.
“You always do this,” he said, stopping at my desk. His tone was half amused, half exasperated. “Try to build Rome by yourself.”
I didn’t look up from my laptop. “Rome didn’t have donors with dietary restrictions.”
That got a laugh out of him—low, genuine. “You ever ask for help?”
I arched a brow at him. “I just did. You brought sarcasm instead.”
He grinned, the corner of his mouth tilting up like he was proud of himself. “Sarcasm’s free. Manual labor costs.”
“Lucky for me, I’m broke,” I said dryly.
Before I could tell him to leave, he reached for a clipboard and started flipping through it like he actually knew what he was looking at. “All right, where do you want these centerpieces? And don’t say ‘on the tables’ because I might take that too literally.”
I blinked, caught completely off guard. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
He shrugged, already lifting one of the boxes like it weighed nothing. “Good thing I’m bad at rules.”
I leaned back in my chair, arms crossed. “Beckett?—”
“Relax, princess,” he said, using that nickname he knew drove me crazy. “I’m just stacking boxes. Not rewriting your spreadsheets.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
I opened my mouth, ready to snap back with something clever, but the words got tangled somewhere between my throat and the knot forming in my chest. The truth was, I didn’t know what the point was. Maybe it was the way he looked at me—steady, unbothered, like all the chaos in this room didn’t scare him off.
He set the box down and wiped his hands on his shorts, glancing at me over his shoulder. “You ever stop to think maybe you don’t have to do everything alone?”
“I don’t have time to stop,” I muttered, focusing too hard on aligning my papers.
He smiled—small, knowing. “You just proved my point.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, to tell him I didn’t need saving. But watching him move around the office, stacking boxes with this casual ease, something inside me loosened just a little.
The hum of the fluorescent lights faded into background noise. His quiet presence filled the space where panic usually lived.
“Why are you even doing this?” I asked finally. “Don’t you have practice or fans to sign things for?”
He looked up at me, grin softening. “Maybe I just like seeing you stop frowning for five seconds.”
That earned him a glare I didn’t really mean. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But you’re smiling.”
I wasn’t. Not really. But I felt it—a small curve threatening to give me away.
He turned back to the boxes like nothing happened, but I could feel the shift in the air, the unspoken warmth beneath the teasing.
For a while, we worked in the kind of silence that didn’t need to be filled. The office hummed with faint noises—the buzz of the overhead lights, the rhythmic snip of scissors, the soft rip of tape as Beckett hung banners across the far wall. I sat at my desk, sorting through name tags in neat little stacks, pretending I didn’t notice how easily he’d slipped into the space beside me.
