The Distance
Ethan's silence had changed. It wasn't absence anymore, it was weight.
He sat across from her at the dining table, sleeves rolled, fork untouched. The bourbon near his hand caught the light, but he didn't lift it. His gaze held hers without blinking. Too calm. The kind of calm that waits for something to break.
"You're working late again tomorrow?"Calm. Too calm.
"Yes," she said, setting her fork down with care. "Quarter close moved up."
"Did it." His eyes drifted to her collar, buttoned high, fabric that hid more than skin, and lingered long enough to make the bruise underneath throb as if uncovered. "You weren't like this before."
Before. The word cut the room in two.
She folded her hands in her lap to still the phantom burn at her wrists. "Deadlines stack. It'll settle."
"Will it." Not a question. He leaned back, a dry smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Because if it doesn't, we should call it what it is."
Her breath caught. "What is it?"
"Not us," he said quietly.
The bourbon stayed full. He waited for her to fill the silence; she let it stand. When he finally looked away, it felt less like reprieve than a verdict delayed.
Upstairs, the mirror gave her a woman perfectly arranged: black sheath, hair sleek, green eyes steady. Beneath the fabric, the mark at her shoulder pulsed like a heartbeat that wasn't hers. She pressed her palm there, willing touch to cool it.
It didn't.
Her phone buzzed.
Julian: Noon. My office.
She typed only: Yes, Sir.
The Meeting
Glass and skyline framed him. Jacket on the chair; sleeves rolled. Cufflinks set neatly beside a pen, as if he'd undone them for her and left the evidence in plain sight. He didn't turn when she stepped in.
"Close the door," he said.
She did. The hush that followed wasn't empty; it held them both.
He faced her then. Gray eyes exact, mouth unreadable, breath even. The practiced calm of a man who had rebuilt his walls overnight and mortared the seams.
"Projection deck," he said, and the two words carried more gravity than they deserved.
She set her folder on the table, pages immaculate, every number sharpened into purpose. He skimmed three lines and set the packet aside. The room changed temperature.
"Walk me through exposure," he said. "And tell me what you're not saying."
She drew a breath. "Numbers first. Then the truth."
"Proceed."
She stood by the glass where the city pressed close. Her reflection doubled her: poised attorney on one side, a woman blurred beneath the surface, as if she might drown behind the pane if he looked away. She ran through risk, contingency, path to remedial. Words clean. Tone steady. The cadence of someone who never lost a room.
When she finished, he didn't move. "And the truth."
She met his eyes. "He's watching me now."
"And you."
She didn't flinch. "I'm standing where you put me."
That drew the slightest shift in his breath. Not release. A tell.
He crossed to her slowly, stopping close enough for heat to settle between them without touching. "You will not soothe him," he said. "You will not explain. If he asks for a reason, silence is your answer."
"He deserves…"
"Your honesty belongs here." His voice cut clean, then softened by a fraction. "If you need mercy, you ask me for it."
Need wasn't the same as mercy and both of them knew it. She nodded.
"Good," he said. The praise landed like a hand at the back of her neck.
The Temptation
They stood at the glass. The city moved below as if it were the only thing that ever would. He didn't touch her. The space between their bodies had gravity.
She reached first, small, deliberate; fingertips finding the inside of his forearm where sleeve met skin. Heat leapt under her touch; a vein beat once against her finger.
He didn't pull away.
She slid her hand higher, palm curving around muscle, feeling strength she had been tied to and held by. Her breath thinned. "I can hold," she said, and the words were not about the work.
"Prove it."
She stepped in until her hip brushed his. A stake in the ground. Her mouth tipped up. His didn't lower. She waited, eyes on his, and saw it as it happened: control darkening with want, the memory from two nights ago rising like a tide he couldn't command. The moment when he'd let her straddle him. The sound he'd made into her mouth.
"Julian," she whispered. Not plea. Naming.
Something cracked at the corner of his mouth; near-smile, near-wound. His hand lifted to her face and stopped one inch from her skin, fingers hovering at her jaw without touching.
"Lena," he said, and the name carried the weight of everything he wasn't giving.
She stayed. She didn't press her cheek into his palm. She let the not-touch burn.
The city blurred in the glass.
The Warning
He broke the stalemate first, palm closing gently—not hard—around her wrist, unhooking her from him. He set her hand back at her side with a precision that almost read like care.
"Push me like that again," he said, voice low, "and I'll show you how little control you truly have."
Her pulse kicked. "You already did."
Something roughened his breath. For a heartbeat his eyes weren't gray; they were smoke. He stepped in. One inch, no more, until the line of his body lined up with hers and every nerve in her lit.
"Careful," he murmured.
"I am," she said, and they both knew it was the truth and the lie.
He looked down. Her hands were steady at her sides. She wasn't reaching. She wasn't asking. She was obeying on a knife-edge.
He exhaled once, slow, and the crack sealed over. "Desk," he said, as if they were talking about numbers again. "Nine in the morning. Bring the revised exposure."
She nodded. "Yes, Sir."
The honorific softened him more than any touch would have. He didn't let it show.
"Go," he said.
She did. She didn't look back. The restraint cost her more than flesh had, because flesh healed. Silence did not.
The Ache
Night put its weight on the windows. The apartment held its own quiet, familiar and foreign in the same breath. Ethan worked late or didn't. She didn't check. The arm of the sofa still remembered bourbon from two nights ago; she sat on the opposite end.
She showered long enough for the mirror to ghost. Steam woke the mark on her shoulder. She pressed her mouth there because she could not press it to him, and heat answered anyway. In the glass, her reflection blurred, edges dissolving, as if the woman there might vanish entirely if the steam thickened enough.
In bed, the cotton felt wrong. She pulled on his shirt. The one he'd left, the one he never said was for herand the fabric settled her in a way breath couldn't. She lay on her side, palm over sternum where silk had held her hands, counting in fours because that was the only way to make her lungs behave.
She touched herself once, just to see if it would quiet the ache. It didn't. She stopped before the edge. Control hurt. She let it.
Her phone lit the dark.
Julian: Eat in the morning. Water before coffee. Face. No makeup.
Julian: Ifhe asks again, you forward. You don't answer.
Julian: You need anything, you ask.
Her thumbs hovered. She typed.
Lena: Green.
Lena: I'm steady.
Pause.
Lena: Iache.
Three dots held for a long time. When his reply came, it wasn't mercy and it wasn't punishment. It was the line she'd chosen to stand on.
Julian: Good. Hold.
She set the phone face down. Obeyed.
The ache didn't fade. It settled into her like a second pulse, one she carried to sleep, one that would still be there in the morning when she put on her jacket and walked into his office with numbers.
Outside, the city kept moving. Inside, her body learned a new kind of hunger: the kind that waited because he told it to.