Chapter 35: The Problem With Being Seen

Sophie’s pov

I didn’t sleep that night.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling — the faint cracks in the paint forming constellations that weren’t really there, but my tired mind kept trying to trace them anyway. Each line looked like memory. Each shadow felt like a question I wasn’t ready to answer.

The city was alive outside my window, its nighttime hum sliding through the glass like a restless tide: cars murmuring down the avenue, music blurring from a rooftop bar two blocks away, someone laughing too loudly in the courtyard. It was the kind of noise that used to irritate me, but tonight it felt like company. Like the world was awake with me.

My mind refused to sit still.

It jumped — back and forth like a film reel stuck on fast-forward.

Adrian’s steady voice…

Lucian’s thunderstorm gaze…

Cassian’s sunlit warmth.

Three brothers.

Three different gravitational pulls.

Three ways of being seen — each one new in a way that rattled me.

My pulse hadn’t slowed since I left the office. I turned onto my side, curling into the sheets as if I could hide from my own thoughts, and the truth hit me with quiet force:

I had been invisible for so long…

I didn’t know what to do with being seen.

Not the kind of seeing that people do because they want something from you.

Not the kind that measures, judges, sorts.

But the kind that notices.

The kind that asks, without asking,

Where have you been this whole time?

I touched my chest, fingertips brushing skin like I expected to feel something physical — something shifting, cracking, awakening. But there was only the steady beat of a heart that had learned too many times to keep quiet.

And yet…

Tonight, it wouldn’t.

I lay awake until morning’s pale light seeped into the room like an apology for the long night.

Monday Morning

I walked into work holding my breath in my chest like contraband — like someone would confiscate it if they saw me trying to hope.

The office buzzed with its usual weekday energy. Phones ringing. Keyboards clacking in uneven, frantic rhythms. Paper being shuffled. Conversations layered on top of each other until the whole room felt like a symphony of urgency.

But I wasn’t in it.

Not fully.

It felt like I was floating slightly above myself, watching from just a fraction outside my skin. Detached. Hyperaware. Too aware.

I went straight to my desk, sat down, opened my laptop…

And froze.

Because right there, centered on my keyboard like an offering, was a folded card.

No name on the outside.

Just a small, clean, crisp rectangle of heavy white stock.

My throat tightened.

I looked around.

Nobody was paying attention. Or at least pretending not to. A few glances flickered my way and darted off like startled birds, but nothing that told me who had left it.

With careful fingers, I opened it.

Inside, in simple handwriting — firm strokes, slightly angled, confident:

“Don’t shrink yourself to fit a past that hurt you.”

— A.C.

Adrian Crawford.

I swallowed.

Hard.

Something warm and painful and grateful bloomed right in the center of my chest — like someone had lit a candle in a room I forgot existed. For a moment, I had to close my eyes, because the ache of it was too much.

I didn’t know whether to smile

or cry

or run.

Adrian had a way of seeing the exact fracture line in me without touching it. As if he knew where not to place pressure. As if he knew the difference between comforting and coddling.

I folded the card gently and slipped it into the inner pocket of my blazer, feeling the weight of it like a promise I didn’t know how to accept yet.

Afternoon — The Meeting

The strategic revision meeting was in Conference Room 12B — the big one, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a table so long it felt like a runway. I walked in, notebook tucked close to my chest as if it could protect me.

Lucian was already there.

He was at the head of the table, leaning back in his chair, spinning a pen between his fingers with controlled restlessness. His posture was relaxed, but it was the kind of relaxed that hinted at a storm contained rather than absent.

His eyes locked onto mine the second I entered.

Not a glance.

Not a double-take.

A strike.

It hit like static — sharp, immediate, undeniable.

“Sit next to me,” he said.

Not a request.

A command wrapped in low, unbothered confidence.

My heart did that stupid jump thing again.

I sat beside him, trying to pretend my pulse wasn’t knocking against my ribs like it wanted out.

He leaned just a little closer, not enough to crowd me, but enough that I could feel the temperature difference — his warmth against the cool office air.

“We’re restructuring the pitch,” he said, voice low and decisive. “I want you to challenge every conservative angle.”

“I’ll try—”

“No.”

He cut me off quietly, but with heat behind it.

“Not try. Do.”

The word Do landed like a challenge, a dare, a permission slip. Heat rushed through me — not romantic, not sexual, but empowering. Like he was handing me a sword instead of a pen. Like he was saying:

Fight.

Take space.

Stop apologizing for existing.

And God help me —

I liked it.

Lucian wasn’t gentle like Adrian.

He wasn’t soft like Cassian.

But there was something in the way he demanded more from me — not to break me, but to let me stop breaking myself.

His intensity didn’t scare me.

It woke me.

Evening — Unplanned

After work, I chose to walk instead of calling a taxi. My head felt too full, too loud. I needed air. I needed street noise and the wind messing up my hair and the feeling of being a small figure moving through a big, uncaring city.

I needed silence inside myself.

At the crosswalk, I waited for the signal, staring at the red hand like it controlled my future.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

“Long day?”

Cassian.

Of course.

He fell into step beside me with an ease that felt almost scripted — like he had been waiting just out of sight, knowing exactly when to appear.

If Adrian was steady and Lucian was electricity,

Cassian was sunlight on the first warm day of spring.

Not blinding.

Welcoming.

“I saw you in the meeting,” he said, voice warm and unassuming.

“Oh?” I forced a small smile. “Was I blinking too loudly or—”

“You held your space.”

I blinked.

“I… didn’t think anyone noticed.”

He looked at me with soft certainty.

Not pity.

Not fascination.

Just seeing.

“I notice.”

Two words.

So simple.

So devastating.

Because his noticing wasn’t a spotlight.

Or scrutiny.

Or pressure.

It was observation without expectation.

Cassian noticed like someone watching a night sky —

looking not for flaws

but for constellations.

On The Walk Home

We walked through the city together, passing a bakery that smelled like cinnamon, a bookstore with a display of antique poetry collections, a florist where bouquets overflowed onto the sidewalk in a riot of color.

When we passed a tailor’s shop, he slowed.

“You know,” he said, voice thoughtful, “you carry yourself like someone always expecting to be asked to leave.”

I froze mid-step.

“That’s…” My voice faltered. “That’s not—”

His expression softened. “Who taught you that?”

The sidewalk blurred slightly.

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

Because the answer was a memory shaped like a knife:

Ryan, my husband, laughing while my mother touched his arm.

Ryan leaving our apartment with her perfume on his coat.

Ryan telling me:

“She understands me in ways you don’t.”

The kind of betrayal that didn’t just hurt —

it rewrote me.

Cassian didn’t push. He never pushed.

Instead, he spoke with quiet conviction:

“You deserve rooms that welcome you…

not rooms that tolerate you.”

My throat tightened.

Not because of the words —

but because, for a moment…

I believed him.

Just for a moment, I believed him.

The Apartment — Later

By the time I reached my building, the sun had dipped below the skyline, painting the windows with streaks of orange and pink that looked like someone had brushed fire across the sky.

Cassian said goodbye with a gentle smile — nothing lingering, nothing suggestive. Just warmth. Just presence. Just him.

I walked inside my apartment in a haze.

Kicked off my shoes.

Dropped my bag.

Collapsed onto the sofa like gravity finally had permission to take me.

And for the first time in months —

maybe years —

I spoke aloud.

To the empty room.

To myself.

“I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

The room didn’t echo it back.

It didn’t mock me.

It didn’t feel too big for me or too small for my voice.

It just held it.

Held me.

Later that night, I reached for my notebook — the one I used not for schedules or deadlines, but for truth. The one I only opened when I needed to feel something without censoring it.

I flipped to a blank page.

And I wrote:

Adrian sees what I can do.

Lucian sees what I could become.

Cassian sees who I already am.

And I…

I am learning to see myself.

I closed the notebook

hugged it to my chest

and let myself breathe —

deep, full, frightening breaths.

Breaths that tasted like possibility.

Breaths that tasted like rebirth.

And it hit me:

Maybe this story wasn’t about three brothers.

Maybe it was about one woman…

finally becoming someone she never believed she had the right to be.