Chapter 4: Fruit Tabs and Firewalls

Sebastian Mason prided himself on being unshakeable.

Earthquakes, lawsuits, billion-dollar mergers collapsing overnight — he had withstood them all with the composure of a man sculpted out of cold marble.

But there was something uniquely destabilizing about KATHERINE BROWN and her fruit-labeled sticky tabs.

He sat at his desk that morning, already six emails deep into a lawsuit no one had warned him about, when the citrusy scent hit him again — like a ghost of her personality had decided to haunt his office through memory-triggered olfactory sabotage.

He tried to focus on the spreadsheet.

But no, of course not.

He reached for the concept file again. The damn tabs were still there: "Peach = Moodboards," "Mango = Target Audience," "Grapefruit = Legal Risks." Who the hell categorized corporate strategies like a fruit salad?

And worse — why did it work?

---

Katherine, meanwhile, was on her third coffee and second sarcastic comment of the day by the time she strode into the 27th floor lounge.

“Morning, sunshine,” she chirped at the barista who looked like he’d barely survived a midnight audit. “Hit me with something that says: ‘I pretend to care about deadlines.’”

Without missing a beat, he handed her an oat milk latte. “Extra shot of delusion, just like yesterday.”

“You do get me,” she winked, spinning on her heel and almost walking straight into a human wall.

Correction: a cold, glaring, 6’2” Armani-wrapped firewall.

Sebastian.

Of course.

---

“You’re blocking the coffee machine,” she said, sidestepping him.

“You’re five minutes late,” he replied without emotion.

She took a slow sip. “And you’re five years overdue for a personality.”

Silence.

His jaw tightened — ever so slightly. A microexpression, like an iceberg flinching.

He turned to walk beside her, and she realized — he wasn’t just there for coffee.

He was trailing her.

To the meeting room.

Oh no.

“No, no, no,” she muttered under her breath, nearly spilling her drink. “You are not crashing my pitch meeting.”

“I scheduled it.”

“You hijacked it.”

“I restructured it.”

“You reorganized it because you have control issues,” she sing-songed, throwing open the glass door.

---

The room was already half full — a few wide-eyed analysts, one petrified intern, and Nora from HR pretending not to eavesdrop.

Katherine dropped her portfolio on the table with the theatrical energy of someone who had just entered the Hunger Games.

Sebastian took the seat directly across from her, his face the embodiment of neutral disapproval.

She opened her laptop.

He opened his own.

There was a moment of perfect silence — the kind that usually precedes volcanic eruptions or tech expos.

She grinned. “Ready for the fruit parade, Mr. Mason?”

“Enlighten us,” he deadpanned.

---

Twenty-five minutes later, the room was divided between two energies:

1. Katherine’s bold, visual-heavy, absurdly creative pitch about rebranding the software division using seasonal moodboards and a millennial-facing campaign called “Digitally Human.”

2. Sebastian’s bone-dry financial projections and the phrase “ROI” used seventeen times.

“Your numbers are... fine,” she said, waving vaguely at his charts. “But numbers don’t make people feel something. This isn’t a bank. It’s a brand.”

“This is a bank,” he replied.

“Technically,” she countered, “but people don’t dream about banks. They dream about lives made easier because of the bank. That’s the story we tell. That’s the story I’m telling.”

A pause.

He looked at her — really looked at her — for the first time that morning.

And maybe for the first time since she’d arrived.

He didn’t agree.

But he didn’t interrupt.

Progress?

---

After the meeting, she packed up slowly, waiting until the others trickled out.

Sebastian was still there, typing furiously.

“Don’t worry,” she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I’m not planning a glitter explosion for the next presentation. Probably.”

He didn’t look up. “That would be a direct violation of at least three policies.”

She leaned on the chair. “You keep a lot of policies in your head?”

“I enforce them.”

“I break them,” she smiled.

He finally looked up. “That’s not something to be proud of.”

“It’s not about pride,” she said. “It’s about being alive. Try it sometime.”

---

Back at her desk, Katherine found an anonymous envelope.

Inside: a printed version of her pitch with his annotations.

Minimalist.

Precise.

Infuriating.

He had underlined a sentence she’d written — “Let’s turn finance into feeling.” — and scribbled: “Too vague. Specify target emotion.”

She laughed.

Out loud.

Because of course he wanted to schedule emotions like meetings.

She picked up a highlighter — banana yellow — and wrote beneath his note:

“How about... ‘the feeling of not dreading Mondays’? That’s measurable, right?”

She knew he’d see it.

She made sure he would.

---

That night, Sebastian Mason sat alone in his glass-walled office, the city blinking below like a thousand unsolved equations.

He re-read her concept one more time.

He still didn’t like it.

But he couldn’t deny it.

There was something there.

Something alive.

And damn it — something citrusy.

---