Landen was already turning back to his papers, posture settling into that same easy focus. The connection switched off. Adriel was on the outside again.
Of course he was. The attention had been professional. The warmth, practiced. The way he'd saidAdriel, low, unhurried, like the name was worth taking time over, was just good management. A man very good at making people feel seen without actually seeing them.
That was what Adriel told himself as he made his escape, fumbling slightly with the heavy door before slipping out into the corridor, his heart still pounding, face still burning.
He leaned against the wall just out of sight of the office door and pressed a trembling hand to his chest.
His heart was a frantic, caged thing. He could feel the pulse in his throat, at his wrists, a wild staccato that wouldn't slow. His hands shook; a fine, visible tremor he couldn't stop no matter how hard he tried.
Stop it,he told himself, pushing off the wall.Don't be an idiot.
He found his desk, a neat modern workstation with a monitor, a phone, and a breathtaking view of the skyline that mirrored Landen's, albeit from a more humble angle. He sank into the chair and powered on the computer.
But as the login prompt glowed, waiting for his credentials, his mind was not on passwords or procedures.
It was replaying, on a loop, the sound of Landen's voice. The calm, steady baritone explaining a plot hole. The thoughtful hum following one of Adriel's hesitant suggestions. The way he'd saidAdriel, like it was a word he didn't mind saying. Like it belonged in his mouth.
Adriel took a shaky breath and forced his fingers to the keyboard.
The rational part of his brain insisted this was just first-day nerves. The overwhelming rush of a new job, a new boss, a new world. It would fade. He would find his rhythm, become invisible in the machinery of the office, and Landen Waters would become just another powerful, distant figure at the end of the hall. Someone he nodded to in passing. Someone whose approval he sought in quarterly reviews, not across a desk in the slanted morning light.
Just nerves,he told himself.Just novelty.
But beneath the logic, beneath the armor of every sensible thought he'd spent years honing, a quieter truth hummed.
Something had shifted.
He didn't understand its shape. Didn't dare look at it directly. Only knew that the axis of his world had tilted, just a degree, and nothing felt entirely stable anymore.
Chapter 3
Adriel
By Thursday, Adriel had developed a system.
It wasn't sophisticated. It wasn't something he was proud of. But it was functional, and functional was what he needed.
The system was this: he kept his eyes on his work. He answered questions when asked, delivered his notes on time, saidgood morningto the people in his pod andthank youto the woman who refilled the coffee station andexcuse mewhen he needed to pass someone in the corridor. He did his job, and he did it well, and he did not, under any circumstances, let his attention drift to the office at the end of the west corridor.
He was managing it.Mostly.
The problem was that Landen Waters was not a man who stayed contained to the end of the west corridor. He moved through the floor with a loose, unhurried authority that managed to be everywhere at once; a conversation at the copy station, a brief stop at the editorial pod, a low-voiced exchange with Miriam. He didn't announce himself. The room just knew he was in it.
And Adriel's body, traitorous and apparently incapable of learning, knew too.
He'd become mortifyingly attuned to the sound of Landen's voice. Not the words, he was rarely close enough for words, just the register of it. That low, unhurried baritone, smooth as a good bourbon, carrying authority in every syllable without ever needing to raise itself.
He heard it through the office wall when the door was cracked. He heard it at the far end of the floor and felt it land somewhere at the base of his sternum before he'd consciously registered where it was coming from.
It was embarrassing.
He was a professional. He had a degree. He had opinions about narrative structure and a reader's report due by end of day and absolutely no business developing what amounted to a Pavlovian response to his employer's voice 2 weeks into his employment.
He'd said as much to Jenna the night before, in considerably less eloquent terms, face pressed into the sofa cushion.
She'd told him, in the no-nonsense voice she'd been deploying since first grade, that he was being dramatic and should drink some water.
He was drinking water. It wasn't helping.
