Chapter 28: The Near-Miss

The trash can under my desk was getting a workout. Third time this morning.

I sat up, wiping my mouth with a trembling hand, and popped a mint into my mouth. My office—a glass-walled fishbowl in the middle of the development floor—suddenly felt like a cage. The fluorescent lights hummed with a frequency that seemed to vibrate right through my skull, and the smell of someone’s microwaved popcorn from the breakroom was effectively weaponizing the air.

"I'd become an expert at silent nausea," I whispered to my dual monitors. "A skill nobody asked for."

I checked the time. 10:15 AM.

I had a presentation with the level design team in forty-five minutes. I had a deadline for the lighting shaders by 5:00 PM. And I had a baby the size of a raspberry who apparently hated the concept of productivity.

My reflection in the dark screen of my monitor was frightening. My skin was the color of old parchment, and there was a sheen of sweat on my forehead that had nothing to do with the office temperature.

"You okay?"

Lily slid into the chair opposite me, holding a stack of files like a shield. She lowered her voice. "You look like you're about to haunt this cubicle."

"I'm fine," I lied, taking a sip of ginger ale. The bubbles burned my throat. "Just... rough morning."

"You've been in the bathroom three times," Lily noted, her eyes darting around to make sure no one was listening. "Do you need to go home? I can cover the presentation."

"No," I said, perhaps too sharply. "I can't go home, Lil. We're in crunch mode. If I miss this deadline, the whole sprint gets delayed. And with the rumors about lost contracts..."

I trailed off. The office had been tense all week. NeXus had lost three major bids to a competitor, and the mood on the floor was grim. Noah had locked down the servers, restricting access to almost everything. I didn't want to give anyone a reason to think I wasn't pulling my weight.

"Okay," Lily sighed. "But if you puke on the schematic, I'm not cleaning it up."

She stood to leave just as a shadow fell over my desk.

I looked up.

Noah West stood there. He was wearing a charcoal suit, his tie perfectly knotted, looking every inch the billionaire CEO. But his face was thunderous. His eyes were dark, scanning my workspace with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

"Mr. West," Lily squeaked, clutching her files. "I was just... updating Aria on the UI assets."

"Thank you, Lily," Noah said without looking at her. His gaze was fixed on me. "Give us a moment."

Lily shot me a panicked look and fled.

The Interrogation

I straightened in my chair, forcing my spine against the backrest to stop myself from swaying.

"Noah," I said, keeping my voice professional. "Did you need the updated render files? I'm still compiling the—"

"You look pale," he interrupted.

He stepped closer, crossing the invisible boundary of my workspace. He rested one hand on the partition wall, leaning in. To anyone watching, it might look like a casual check-in. But up close, I could see the tension radiating off him.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked.

It wasn't a warm question. It was probing. Suspicious, almost.

"I'm fine," I deflected, reaching for my mouse. "Just tired. Late night coding."

"You were barely here yesterday," he noted. "And your keycard logs show you left at 6:00 PM."

My heart skipped a beat. He was checking my logs?

"I took work home," I lied smoothly. "Sometimes I focus better away from the office noise."

His eyes narrowed. He scanned my face, searching for something. I didn't know what. Was he looking for the truth about the baby? Or something else?

"You're sweating," he observed.

"It's warm in here," I countered, though I was shivering.

He stared at me for a long moment. I held my breath, fighting the urge to gag as the scent of his cologne—sandalwood and cedar—wafted over me. Usually, I loved that smell. Right now, it was just another sensory input my body wanted to reject.

"You should go home," he said abruptly.

"Excuse me?"

"Go home, Aria. You're clearly unwell. You're a liability to the workflow if you collapse."

"I'm not going to collapse," I insisted, my pride flaring up despite the nausea. "I have deadlines, Noah. Unless you're firing me, I'm staying."

A muscle feathered in his jaw. He looked like he wanted to argue, wanted to pick me up and carry me out of the building himself. But we were in the middle of the open floor. He couldn't make a scene. Not without raising questions neither of us wanted to answer.

"Fine," he said tightly. "But if you miss a step in that presentation, I'm pulling you off the project."

He turned and walked away, his strides long and angry.

I slumped back in my chair, exhaling a shaky breath.

He hates me, I thought miserably. He thinks I'm incompetent.

I didn't know that he was actually thinking I might be a spy. I didn't know he was terrified that my "illness" was guilt.

I just knew I had to get through the next hour without fainting.

The Collapse

The presentation was in the main boardroom. The air conditioning was blasting, which helped, but the lights were dimmed for the projector, making the room feel claustrophobic.

I stood at the front of the room, clicking through the slides of the new level architecture.

"As you can see here," I said, pointing to the screen. "The dynamic lighting engine allows for real-time shadow casting..."

The pixels on the screen blurred.

I blinked, trying to clear my vision.

"...which reduces the load on the GPU," I continued, my voice sounding hollow and distant to my own ears.

A wave of dizziness hit me so hard I actually took a step back. The floor seemed to tilt to the left.

Oh no.

"Aria?" Marcus asked from the front row. "You okay?"

"I just..." I gripped the edge of the podium. My hands were numb. "I need a second."

The room went gray. The static noise in my ears roared to a crescendo.

I tried to say I'm fine, but my knees simply ceased to exist.

I crumbled.

I braced myself for the impact of the hard carpet, but it never came.

Strong arms caught me. A solid chest broke my fall.

The world snapped back into focus, sharp and terrifying. I was half-lying on the floor, and Noah was kneeling over me, one arm supporting my back, the other hand gripping my shoulder.

"I've got you," he growled near my ear.

The room had gone silent. I could feel the stares of twenty people burning into us.

"I'm okay," I gasped, trying to push myself up. "I just... skipped breakfast. Low blood sugar."

"Don't move," Noah commanded. He looked up at the room. "Everyone out. Now."

"Noah, we're in the middle of—" Kelly started.

"OUT!" he roared.

The room cleared in seconds. Even Marcus looked startled as he ushered the team out and closed the door.

We were alone. I was still on the floor, in his arms.

"You are impossible," Noah hissed, his face inches from mine. "I told you to go home."

"I didn't think..." I trailed off, closing my eyes as the room spun again. "Okay. Maybe you were right."

"Maybe?" He scooped me up.

"Noah! Put me down. I can walk."

"You just proved conclusively that you cannot," he said, standing up with me in his arms as if I weighed nothing. "That's it. You're going home."

"My car—"

"Is staying here. I'm driving you."

"You can't drive me," I argued weakly, resting my head against his shoulder because holding it up was too much effort. "People will talk."

"Let them talk," he said grimly. "I don't care about the gossip, Aria. I care about..." He stopped himself. "I care about the project."

He carried me to the elevator, bypassing the lobby, taking the private executive lift down to the garage.

The Drive

The interior of his Aston Martin was quiet, smelling of leather and him. I sat in the passenger seat, sipping a bottle of water he had produced from somewhere.

Noah drove with white-knuckled intensity. He didn't look at me. He stared straight ahead at the New York traffic, his jaw working.

"You're angry," I whispered.

"Yes," he said.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disrupt the meeting."

"I'm not angry about the meeting, Aria," he snapped. He glanced at me, his eyes dark and turbulent. "I'm angry that you don't know when to stop. You push yourself until you break. Why?"

"Because I have to," I said, looking out the window. "I don't have a safety net, Noah. If I don't work, I don't pay rent. If I don't succeed, my studio fails. I'm not Sienna. Daddy doesn't pay my bills."

The silence that followed was heavy.

He didn't know about Sienna's blackmail. He didn't know that my career—the one thing I had built for myself—was currently being held hostage by his future sister-in-law. He just thought I was stubborn.

"You have a safety net now," he said quietly.

I looked at him. "The contract?"

"The baby," he said. "And me."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "We agreed. Co-parenting. That doesn't mean you rescue me every time I get dizzy."

"It means exactly that," he countered. "It means you're not alone."

He pulled up in front of my building in Brooklyn. It was a brownstone, charming but old, with peeling paint on the railing. It looked especially shabby next to his sleek car.

He turned off the engine and got out.

"I can walk up," I said, opening my door.

He ignored me, coming around to my side and offering his hand. "I'm walking you up."

We climbed the four flights of stairs slowly. Noah stayed a step behind me, his hand hovering near my waist, ready to catch me if I stumbled again.

When I unlocked my door, I hesitated. I had never brought a man here. This was my sanctuary. My messy, independent, gamer-girl cave.

I pushed the door open.

The apartment was small. A living room cluttered with consoles and design books, a tiny kitchenette, and a bedroom visible through the open door. It was nothing like his penthouse.

Noah stepped inside. He looked around, taking in the mismatched furniture, the Final Fantasy posters, the stack of instant noodle cups on the counter.

I waited for him to sneer. I waited for the billionaire judgment.

Instead, he looked at the desk in the corner—my command center, with three monitors and a custom-built PC tower.

"You built that rig?" he asked, walking over to it.

"Yeah," I said, dropping my keys in the bowl. "Last year."

He ran a finger over the cooling system. "Liquid cooling. Nice specs."

He turned to look at me. There was no judgment in his eyes. There was... respect? And something else. Sadness?

"This is you," he said softly. "All of it."

"It's not much," I said defensively.

"It's real," he said. "It's honest."

He walked back to the door. He didn't try to stay. He didn't try to kiss me. He just looked at me, standing in the middle of my small life, pale and shaking but still standing.

"Lock the door," he said.

"I will."

"Call if you need anything. Anything at all."

"I'll be fine, Noah. Just need sleep."

He nodded once, sharp and curt, and walked out.

I locked the deadbolt and the chain. Then I walked to the couch and collapsed face-first into the cushions.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Noah: Drink water. Rest. That's not a request.

I smiled into the fabric of the couch.

He was bossy. He was arrogant. He was suspicious.

But he had caught me. When I fell, he had been there.

And for a woman who had spent her whole life standing on her own two feet, the realization that someone was willing to catch her was the most terrifying thing of all.