Mag-log inFor a long second, neither of us moves. The silence is thick enough to chew. Then, instinct or accident, my hand lifts—just a little, just enough for my fingers to hover above his, not quite touching, but close enough for the air between us to feel charged. My mouth opens around a breath I can’t see
I pivot from the window, bracing my spine against the desk’s edge, arms crossed—not defensive, but a brace against the collapse of everything I keep just beneath the surface. I watch him in the low amber: the way his jaw is shadowed, the subtle seams of fatigue at the corners of his mouth. I catalog
Lucas watches every movement, but doesn’t comment. His pen—some heavy, old-school thing with a gold clip—sits parallel to the edge of the table, perfectly aligned. He picks it up, spins it once between thumb and index finger, and sets it back down with a sound just audible above the rain. “You don
The rain is worse than usual, a steady artillery on the glass that shivers every window in the building. From this height the city is smeared into an abstract—neon bleeding down concrete, red and gold chasing each other along the river in lines that never meet. Most of the staff filtered out an hour
“I had a sister,” Lucas says, and the words are so out of register for him that I almost miss them. My brain latches onto the tense: had. He lets the word hang, as if giving it permission to hurt. “She was younger, smarter, meaner. Used to say the only thing worth being in this world was necessary.
The rain’s ramped up since sunset, gone from window dressing to full performance: droplets ricocheting down the glass in fat, shivering streaks, each line gathering speed before splintering against the aluminum frame. At this hour, the city’s more abstraction than place—just a haze of sodium arcs an
Lucas smiles, the expression almost teasing. “Sometimes it pays to take risks, Mara.” The use of my name is deliberate, intentional, and I feel my resistance falter, my defenses crumble. I don’t respond. I can’t respond. Not with words, not yet. I reach for a file, anything to keep the conversatio
Crystal shivers on the edges of the too-long silence between us. I search Derek’s face as we eat, my eyes skipping over his proud nose and chiseled jaw, noting every flicker of emotion that might tell me why this evening feels different. He smiles, but it’s an empty gesture that doesn’t reach his ey
I let them watch my lips on the crystal glass, as if that momentary union might yield some secret they can grasp at. The water is cool on my tongue, a contrast to the dry heat that thickens the room and everything in it. It carries the faint taste of minerals, the texture smooth and sliding, an in
It's the friction that keeps us warm in the growing heat of the room, friction between minds and egos, between all we project and all we desire. The temperature rises with the stakes, the glass walls reflecting back our ambition until it feels as if we're caught in a pressure cooker of our own maki







