جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

I settled into my small office just after nine, sorting through the morning's correspondence with the particular satisfaction of a task I'd finally learned to do well.The past week had settled into something I hadn't let myself expect, a rhythm that felt less like performance and more like an actual life. Mornings at the apartment, tangled together beneath sheets that had stopped feeling like a contractual arrangement weeks ago. Coffee at the small table by the window. The drive into the office, his hand finding mine without either of us commenting on it anymore. I'd stopped bracing for the moment it would all fall apart. That, I understood now, had been my first mistake.Anna arrived not long after.I heard her before I saw her, the sharp click of heels against marble, a laugh pitched slightly too loud for the quiet hallway. I looked up in time to catch her passing my open door in a dress that left very little to interpretation, all long legs and plunging neckline, nothing at all li

Alexander’s pov I was halfway through a stack of contracts when Anna burst through my office door without knocking, already crying before she'd fully crossed the threshold. She threw herself into my lap the way she'd done since she was a few years old, arms locking around my neck, her whole body shaking with the particular dramatic force she reserved for moments she'd decided required an audience. I'd grown so used to this particular performance over the years that I barely registered the interruption to my morning, patted her back, let her cry into my shoulder, waited for whatever crisis had triggered this one to explain itself in its own time. It was rarely anything serious. It never had been, not once in the years I'd known her. Anna had come to live with my grandmother the same year my mom died, her own mother, Grandma Rose's youngest daughter, struggling through a divorce that left little room for a teenager's emotional needs. We'd grown up in that house together after tha

I went back to work the following Monday, and within a few days, it felt as though the fever, the hospital chair, and the whole quiet ache of that misunderstanding had never happened at all.The office settled back into its familiar rhythm, calendars colour-coded, correspondence answered promptly, the particular satisfaction of a job I'd grown genuinely good at. Deborah greeted me each morning with the careful, slightly nervous warmth of someone who had learned her lesson thoroughly, always a small smile and an offer of coffee I rarely took her up on. David brought coffee without being asked, along with whatever gossip had made its way through the thirty-eighth floor that morning, delivered with a wink and a level of discretion that somehow made the sharing feel entirely appropriate rather than indiscreet. And Alexander, when he wasn't in meetings, found small excuses throughout the day to appear in my doorway, a question that could have been emailed, a folder he could have sent with

I stood in the closet, folding shirts into the leather case Alexander had brought over that afternoon, while Alexander hovered in the doorway offering opinions I mostly ignored. "Not that one," he said, as I reached for a navy tie. "The grey." "You said the navy this morning." "I changed my mind." I glanced at him over my shoulder. "You're worse than Genna." "I have very specific standards for the Chicago meetings." He crossed the room and took the tie from my hands, replacing it with the grey one without further debate. "This is a three-day negotiation with people who notice everything. I can't afford to look anything less than exactly correct." "You could afford to relax slightly." "I could." He didn't sound convinced. I let it go, folding the last shirt into place, and zipped the case shut with more force than strictly necessary. Three days. It shouldn't have felt like much of anything at all. --- I found him on the bed when I came out of the closet, laptop open,

I made it to Alexander's office just after Margaret had gone to bed, the building nearly empty this late, my footsteps echoing loud and hollow down the same hallway I'd walked a hundred times over these past weeks.My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat.I'd spent the entire cab ride from the coffee shop arguing with myself, half convinced I should forget everything Katherine had said, let it dissolve into the category of things too strange and unprovable to act on. But the other half of me, the half that had woken up in a stranger's body once already, that had learned the hard way how quickly a life could be built on foundations no one had bothered to explain, refused to let it go that easily.I'd told the security I'd forgotten something at my desk. He'd let me up without question, the badge Alexander had given me still working perfectly against the elevator sensor, and now I stood outside his office door with my hand hovering over the handle, some last fragile pa