Five

Maya kept walking. The sidewalk stretched ahead of her in uneven slabs of concrete, some cracked, some stained with old gum and oil. Her shoes were already rubbing at the back of one heel, but she did not slow down. Tears still ran down her face in a steady, quiet stream. She had stopped trying to wipe them away blocks ago. People moved past her in both directions, office workers with bags over their shoulders, a couple sharing an earbud, a man talking loudly into his phone. A few glanced at her face and then looked elsewhere. Most did not look at all. The club was far behind her now. The bass that had followed her out the door had faded into the ordinary noise of engines and distant horns.

 She did not have a destination. The idea of going back to the house made her stomach turn. The suitcases were still standing against the wall in the bedroom. The offer letter and the photograph were still on the coffee table. Walking into that space again felt impossible, so she simply kept moving forward one step at a time.

 The sky had been low and gray since early afternoon. Now the first drops began to fall. They landed in scattered dark circles on the pavement, then came faster. Within a minute the rain turned heavy and relentless, the kind that soaked through fabric almost immediately. People around her reacted the way people always did, some ran for the nearest doorway, some pulled jackets over their heads, one woman cursed and tried to open a folding umbrella that refused to catch. A delivery bike splashed through a forming puddle and sent water up the side of a parked car.

 Maya stopped walking.

 She stood still in the middle of the sidewalk and let the rain hit her full force. It plastered her hair flat against her forehead and the back of her neck. Water ran down her temples and into the collar of her shirt. The fabric clung to her shoulders and the curve of her back within seconds. The cold settled into her skin fast, but she did not step toward any of the shop awnings or the covered bus stop half a block away. She simply stood there with her arms hanging loose at her sides and cried harder. The sound of her own breathing mixed with the rain until she could no longer tell them apart.

 Cars passed with their headlights switched on even though it was still technically daytime. Water sprayed out from under their tires in wide arcs. A bus pulled up at the corner, doors hissing open, then closed again and rolled forward. Still Maya did not move. Her shoes were full of water now. Her fingers had gone slightly numb at the tips. None of it registered as something she needed to fix.

 She was still standing in the downpour when a dark umbrella appeared above her head.

 The sudden stop of rain on her face made her blink. Water continued to drip from her hair and eyelashes into her eyes. Her vision was blurred from crying and from the wet. The man holding the umbrella stood close enough that she could see the clean cut of his coat and the way the rain beaded and rolled off the fabric at his shoulders. He was tall, broader than Daniel, with dark hair that was only slightly damp at the edges where the umbrella had not fully protected him. His expression was calm, almost unreadable, but his eyes stayed on her face without shifting away.

 Maya’s voice came out rough and broken by the tears still stuck in her throat.

 “Who are you?”

 She hiccupped in the middle of the question. The small, involuntary sound embarrassed her for half a second, then the embarrassment disappeared under everything else she was already feeling.

 The man did not answer immediately. He adjusted the angle of the umbrella so the rain could not reach her at all, then took one step closer. His free hand rose, and without asking permission he wiped the wet tracks of tears from her cheek with his thumb. The touch was brief, steady, and strangely careful.

 “I’m Lucian,” he said. His voice was low and even, cutting cleanly through the noise of the rain. “Your new boss.”

 Maya’s eyes widened. For a moment the street around them seemed to pull back. She knew that name. Everyone in the country knew that name. Lucian Lockwood. The young CEO whose company sat at the top of every ranking that mattered, technology, media, investment. The man whose face appeared on the covers of business magazines and in the background of late-night financial reports with the same frequency. The same man whose company had sent her the offer letter that morning. Chief Advisor. The heavy paper with the formal letterhead was still lying on the coffee table at home next to the photograph of Daniel selling her father’s necklace.

 She opened her mouth. At first no sound came out. Rain continued to fall hard around the edges of the umbrella, loud against the pavement. Then she managed another rough question, her voice still thick and uneven.

 “What are you doing here?”

 She hiccupped again, smaller this time.

 Lucian’s mouth curved slightly at one corner, not quite a smile but close.

 “What else would I be doing if not personally picking up my own chief advisor?”

 He said it simply, as if the answer should have been obvious to anyone paying attention. Then he reached out with the same hand that had wiped her tears and gently drew her one step closer under the umbrella so that not a single drop could touch her.