Chapter 2 The Proposition

Khalia

Control is an illusion, but it is an illusion I maintain at all costs.

By 7:30 PM, the offices of Salvador & Associates had emptied out, leaving only the soft hum of the air conditioning and the rhythmic clicking of my mouse.

I had spent the last three hours staring at Atasha’s landscape overlays, aggressively redrafting the northern retaining wall.

Every line I drew felt like an argument. Every calculation was an attempt to prove that I didn't care that she was back.

My head was pounding.

Giving up on the file, I grabbed my trench coat and laptop bag and took the elevator down to the High Street pavement.

The crisp September air over Bonifacio Global City usually cleared my mind, but tonight, the neon signs of the shops just blurred into an irritating haze.

I needed caffeine to survive the drive back to my condo.

I stepped into Elephant Grounds, a relatively quiet café tucked away from the main strip.

The scent of roasted espresso and damp rain temporarily grounded me.

I ordered an iced Americano, waited by the pick-up counter, and turned around—only to freeze.

Sitting at a small corner table, half-hidden by a large monstera plant, was Atasha.

She had shed her emerald blazer, revealing a black silk camisole.

Her hair was thrown into a messy, distracted bun held together by a stray wooden pencil.

She was fiercely typing on her laptop, a half-eaten waffle and a cup of matcha latte sitting forgotten beside her.

My immediate instinct was to turn on my heel and walk out.

But just as I shifted my weight, she looked up.

Our eyes locked.

The air in the café instantly grew heavy.

There was no escaping it this time; running away would look like a confession of weakness.

I took a deep breath, gripped my iced coffee like a shield, and walked over to her table.

"Is this seat taken?"

Atasha blinked, clearly startled, before her expression smoothed out into that familiar, guarded mask.

"It's a free country, Ms. Salvador. Sit if you want."

I pulled out the industrial metal chair, the screech of its legs against the concrete floor sounding uncomfortably loud.

I sat down, crossed my legs, and kept my posture impeccably straight.

"We need to talk about earlier," I said, cutting straight through the pleasantries.

"The friction in the boardroom was unacceptable. It was unprofessional."

Atasha closed her laptop with a sharp snap.

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, her dark eyes flashing.

"Unprofessional? Khali, you shot down every single one of my points before I could even finish my sentences. You weren't reviewing my design. You were attacking it."

"Your design threatened the structural integrity of the plaza," I said, my voice dropping to a low, intense whisper so the baristas wouldn't overhear.

"I look at the math, Tasha. I don't look at feelings."

"That’s your problem!" Atasha shot back, her voice tight with a two-year-old hurt that had nothing to do with architecture.

"You treat everything like an engineering problem. You can't just calculate away the fact that we didn't speak for two years after... after what happened."

The mention of the prologue hung between us like a physical entity. The silence that followed was agonizing.

"That night was a mistake," I said flatly, though my heart was hammering against my ribs.

"We agreed to pretend it never happened. You wrote the note."

Atasha let out a dry, bitter laugh, shaking her head as she looked away toward the window.

"I wrote the note because when I woke up, you were already gone, Khali. You fled your own apartment at five in the morning just to avoid looking at me. What was I supposed to do? Wait around for you to analyze our friendship into a corner?"

Before I could answer—before I could tell her that I hadn't fled out of regret, but out of absolute, terrifying panic because I had realized I wanted to keep her in my bed forever—my phone buzzed violently on the table.

It was a group chat notification.

From Bea, our mutual friend from our college days at UP Diliman.

Bea: Hey power duo! Just got word from the upper management that the joint venture is official! Mandatory celebratory dinner tonight at Wildflour Uptown. 8:30 PM. No excuses, we are already at the table ordering drinks! 🥂

Atasha’s phone buzzed a second later. She looked down at the screen, then up at me, the anger in her eyes morphing into a look of sheer dread.

"We can't go to this looking like we want to murder each other," Atasha murmured, rubbing her temples. "Bea will dissect us alive within five minutes."

"Then we put on an act," I said, gathering my things and standing up. "For the sake of the project. We pretend we are exactly what we were before."

"And what exactly were we, Khali?" she asked, her voice quiet, almost fragile.

I looked down at her, forcing my face to remain an unreadable slate of stone. "Friends. Just friends."

Atasha

"Just friends" is the biggest lie Khalia Salvador has ever told herself.

Forty minutes later, the atmosphere inside Wildflour Uptown was loud, buzzing, and completely claustrophobic.

The restaurant was packed with the usual corporate crowd, but our table felt like the epicenter of a localized storm system.

Bea and Mark, our friends who had watched us grow from broke architecture students into functioning adults, were already three cocktails deep.

They had practically pulled us into the booth, forcing Khalia and me to sit right next to each other on the plush leather banquette.

Our shoulders were touching. Every time Khalia breathed, the subtle scent of her cedarwood perfume invaded my space, making it impossible to concentrate on anything Bea was saying.

"So," Bea said, her eyes darting between the two of us over the rim of her margarita glass.

"The legendary Salvador-Clemente partnership is finally happening. But why do you two look like you’re waiting for a funeral instead of celebrating a multi-million-peso city contract?"

"We're just tired, Bea," I lied smoothly, picking up my glass of white wine and taking a long sip. "It's been a long day of reconciling the master plans."

"A long day of arguing, you mean," Mark chuckled, cutting into a steak. "Come on, Tasha. We know how you get about your green spaces, and we know Khali would rather build a concrete bunker than plant a flower. Did she already try to pave over your urban canopy?"

"We had some initial technical adjustments to iron out," Khalia stated, her voice smooth, formal, and utterly devoid of warmth. She hadn't touched her food.

Her posture was so rigid she looked like she belonged in a museum exhibit. "But Ms. Clemente and I are entirely aligned on the project goals."

Ms. Clemente.

Bea paused, her fork hovering in mid-air. She looked at Khalia, then at me, her eyebrows knitting together in suspicion. "Since when do you call her Ms. Clemente, Khali? You guys have known each other since you were nineteen. You used to literally eat off the same plate when we were studying for the board exams."

The air at the table turned toxic in a split second. I felt Khalia’s thigh tense against mine under the table.

"We are in a professional setting now, Bea," Khalia said coldly. "It’s important to maintain boundaries."

"Boundaries?" Bea laughed, but there was a sharp edge to it now. "You guys didn't talk for two entire years. Atasha goes to Singapore, Khali buries herself in work, and neither of you will tell us why you stopped hanging out. Now you're back in the same room and you're acting like strangers who met at a networking event. What the hell actually happened between you two?"

Mark stopped chewing. The background noise of the restaurant seemed to fade away, leaving only the sound of my own erratic heartbeat.

I panicked.

I couldn't let Bea dig any deeper.

If she found out that the reason we drifted apart was that I had used my best friend as an emotional rebound, and that my best friend had turned out to be the most devastatingly addictive thing I'd ever experienced, it would ruin everything.

Without thinking, I reached under the table, found Khalia’s hand resting on her knee, and laced my fingers through hers.

Khalia flinched, a subtle tremor running through her entire body.

But she didn't pull away.

Instead, after a tense, agonizing heartbeat, her long fingers tightened around mine, her grip almost painfully tight, anchoring me.

"Nothing happened, Bea," I said, forcing a bright, relaxed smile onto my face as I looked across the table, while beneath the wood, Khalia’s palm was burning into mine.

"We just got busy. You know how the industry is. But we’re totally fine. See? Totally aligned."

Bea stared at us for a long, calculating moment. She looked at our faces, entirely missing the desperate, iron-clad grip of our hands hidden beneath the white tablecloth.

"Right," Bea murmured, clearly not believing a word but deciding to drop it for now.

"Well, whatever it is, fix it. Because if this project fails because you two are having a cold war, I’m revoking both of your best-friend cards."

When the dinner finally ended, and we stepped out into the humid parking lot, I immediately let go of Khalia’s hand.

The sudden loss of her warmth felt like a physical shock.

Khalia stood under the streetlamp, her hands tucked into her coat pockets, her eyes darker than the night sky.

"Don't ever do that again," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly with an emotion she couldn't completely suppress.

"I was saving us," I argued, crossing my arms.

"She was going to figure it out."

"I don't care," Khalia said, taking a step closer, crowding my space until I was pressed against the side of my car.

"Touching me like that... pretending like things are fine... It’s dangerous, Atasha."

"Then what do you want to do, Khali?" I challenged, my breathing turning shallow as she stood mere inches away.

"Because this tension is going to kill us before the six months are up."

Khalia stared at my lips, a flash of that raw, unmoored hunger from the prologue breaking through her cold facade for a split second, before she forced it back down.

"Tomorrow," Khalia said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, quiet command. "Come to my apartment after work. We are going to establish some real rules."