The Meeting

Aria told Bella everything the moment the door to her office closed, the words about Max and Joyce spilling out faster than she could organize them into anything coherent. Bella's face moved through shock and disgust before settling into something harder, and she admitted she'd never trusted Joyce, that she'd tried to say so more than once over the years without ever quite finding the right moment. Aria apologized for not listening sooner, and Bella reached across the desk and squeezed her hand, telling her none of it was her fault, that some people were simply gifted at hiding who they really were. The conversation softened from there, Bella pointing out that at least the promotion was real proof that not everything in Aria's life had fallen apart at once, and Aria managed a small, genuine smile at that, grateful for one person in the building who still felt entirely safe.

The rest of the meeting with Colton had gone better than Aria expected, though she still couldn't quite believe she'd walked out of that office with visitation rights and her job intact. What she hadn't expected was the phone call that came an hour later, Colton's assistant relaying the finer details in a brisk, efficient voice: a car would collect her belongings from the hotel that evening, the visitation terms would be added formally to the contract, and Colton himself wanted to confirm she was comfortable with the arrangement before anything was finalized. Aria sat on the edge of the hotel bed after the call ended and looked around the small room that had been the only privacy she'd had in three weeks, the flickering lamp and the thin walls and the loneliness she'd grown almost used to, and thought that whatever waited for her at Colton's house, it couldn't possibly be worse than this.

She packed the little she owned into the same suitcase she'd fled Max's apartment with, and by the time the car arrived she'd talked herself in and out of a dozen different fears about moving in with a man she'd met exactly twice. The house, when the driver pulled up in front of it, was not what she pictured. She had imagined something cold and enormous, all glass and marble with no trace of anyone actually living there, but the entryway held warm lighting and a bowl of fresh fruit on a table by the door, small details that suggested someone had thought, even briefly, about what might make a stranger feel welcome.

Colton was waiting in the front hall when she came in, dressed down from the suit she'd seen him in twice now, sleeves rolled to his forearms in a way that made him look, for the first time, less like a headline and more like a person. He crossed the space between them and extended his hand, formally, as though they hadn't already shaken hands once in Bella's office days earlier.

"Welcome," he said. "I want you comfortable here. If anything isn't right, tell me and it gets fixed."

Aria took his hand, and the same current from before shot straight up her arm, warm and startling enough that she pulled back a half second too quickly, catching the flicker of something in his eyes that told her he'd felt it too, before he masked it completely. "Thank you," she managed. "This is more than I expected."

"You'll have your own wing. Your own space. I won't intrude unless you want me to." He paused, studying her the way he had in the office, steady and unreadable. "You kept your job. I made sure that stayed in the contract, the way you asked."

She hadn't been sure he'd actually honor that part, not really, and something in her chest loosened at hearing him say it out loud. "I appreciate that. It matters to me, having something that's still mine."

"I understand needing that," he said, and something in his voice suggested he meant it more personally than she expected from a man who'd built an empire out of never needing anyone. He gestured toward the staircase. "Come on. I'll show you where you're staying."

The room he led her to upstairs was larger than her entire apartment with Max had been, done in soft neutral tones with a window seat that looked out over the back gardens, and Aria stood in the doorway for a moment just taking it in, the quiet and the space and the strange, unearned safety of it all. She thought about the hotel room she was leaving behind, the flickering lamp and the thin walls, and felt something in her chest ease for the first time in weeks.

"It's beautiful," she said. "Thank you. Really."

"You don't have to thank me for basic decency," Colton said, though something in his tone suggested he wasn't entirely used to giving it, either. He lingered in the doorway a moment longer than the conversation strictly required, then cleared his throat and told her dinner would be ready whenever she was settled, that she should treat the house as her own for as long as she needed it to be.

She thanked him again, and he nodded once and left her alone with her suitcase and the fading warmth of his hand still lingering on hers. Aria sat down on the edge of the bed, in a house that belonged to a man she barely knew, carrying a baby that connected them in a way neither of them had chosen, and let herself admit, quietly, that this arrangement felt far less like a business contract than either of them had probably intended it to. She had no way of knowing yet how quickly the lines between contract and something else entirely were about to blur, or how many of her careful assumptions about staying detached from Colton were going to unravel over the very first week under his roof.