บททั้งหมดของ Proximity Without Permission : บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 34

(Adrian POV) Adrian learned quickly that control didn’t disappear all at once. It eroded. In small permissions she didn’t remember granting. In decisions that felt mutual until she replayed them later and realized she’d been guided there. She noticed it most in the quiet moments — the pauses between calls, the silence after meetings ended, the way her calendar seemed fuller without her adding anything new. She hated that feeling. It followed her now as she stood in her office long after most of the floor had emptied, heels kicked off beneath her desk, city lights pulsing beyond the glass. The building hummed with residual energy, systems running even when people weren’t. She liked systems. Systems didn’t pretend. Her phone lay face down on the desk. She hadn’t turned it over since Elliot’s last message. Did you change your plans tonight? The question itself wasn’t invasive. It was the tone — restrained, precise — that unsettled her. Elliot rarely asked anything without alre

(Damon POV) Damon had learned a long time ago that urgency scared people like Adrian. She didn’t respond to pressure. She responded to certainty — the quiet kind. The kind that didn’t ask for attention or demand reassurance. The kind that stayed exactly where it was placed and let her come to it. That was how you stayed close to someone like her. Not by chasing. By being familiar. He parked two blocks from her building and cut the engine, hands resting loosely on the steering wheel. The city moved around him, indifferent, alive. He could go up. He could text. He could do nothing. So he did nothing. Instead, he waited. Adrian didn’t need to be reminded she wasn’t alone. She needed to feel that she wasn’t being managed. Damon understood that instinctively. He had known her before the layers hardened — before control became armor instead of instinct. That was the advantage of history. He checked his phone. Nothing from her. Good. If she reached out tonight, it would be beca