The air in the glass office had grown thin, suffocating, yet entirely necessary. It had been nearly a week since Lila returned, and two days since the Lockdown began. Their dynamic was an elegant, brutal dance: they worked, side-by-side, in near-total silence, communicating only through terse emails and clipped verbal demands.
Lila was a storm of efficiency, but Ethan was better. He'd installed a clear glass divider on the shared table, ostensibly for soundproofing, but functionally, to emphasize the divide. He used his position to insist on unnecessary, late-night data checks, ensuring they spent more time alone together in the dead hours than with their respective teams. Every hour felt like a conscious effort to resist reaching across the divide.
On Thursday, the professional dance finally failed.
Lila was reviewing the final creative brief for the launch campaign, pushing past her own exhaustion to find a flaw. She was struggling to focus on the key language. She rubbed her temples, leaning back and closing her eyes for just a moment. She didn't realize how still she had become.
When she opened her eyes, Ethan was standing over her desk. He hadn't made a sound.
"What is it?" she snapped, instantly defensive, sitting bolt upright.
"Nothing," he said, his voice unusually soft. He didn't meet her eyes. Instead, he was looking at her hand, which was clutching a rubber band she had unconsciously pulled off a stack of papers. She wore the band tightly wrapped around her wrist, a familiar habit she'd picked up in college to snap herself out of overwhelming thoughts.
"I noticed you haven't eaten a solid meal in two days," he continued, still avoiding her gaze. "You're running on three packets of powdered soup and anxiety."
"My caloric intake is irrelevant to the contract," Lila retorted, pulling her hand under the desk.
"It is relevant to your execution," Ethan countered, his voice hardening slightly. "You are approaching burnout. You were always terrible at managing the fatigue."
"And you were always terrible at managing anything that wasn't a spreadsheet," she shot back, immediately regretting the intimacy of the accusation.
Ethan finally looked up, his dark eyes filled with a familiar ache that mirrored the three-year-old memory hanging between them. "Is that what you think? That I only cared about the numbers?"
"I think," Lila said, leaning closer, her voice dropping to a whisper, "that when the risk got too high, you chose the safety of the numbers over the risk of us. You chose the clean exit. And look at what you've built—a flawless empire built on the promise never to feel again."
Ethan didn't deny it. He just stared at the spot where the rubber band had indented her skin.
"The night you left," he said, the words heavy and deliberate. "I didn't sleep for three days. I went through every line of code, every investment decision we ever made, trying to find the precise moment where I made the mistake that cost me everything."
He took a slow step closer. He was no longer the CEO or the supervisor; he was just the tired, devastated man from the loft. "The truth is, Lila, the risk wasn't the market. It was you. You were the only variable I couldn't control, the only asset I couldn't insure."
Lila felt a sudden, devastating wave of pity and recognition. He hadn't pushed her away to save his business; he had pushed her away to save himself from the chaos of loving her. But the effect was the same: he destroyed their trust.
"And now?" she whispered, the question heavy with challenge and vulnerability. "Now you've trapped the variable. What's the plan for control this time, Ethan? A contract clause that stops me from leaving the city?"
He reached out slowly, tentatively, his fingers brushing the faint red mark the rubber band had left on her wrist. The contact was brief, a single electric spark, but it shattered the professional distance they had meticulously maintained.
"No," he murmured, his gaze locked on her wrist. "The plan is to prove to you that I can manage the chaos. That I can be responsible for the price without sacrificing the passion." He lifted his eyes to hers, the professional veneer entirely gone. "But I can't do that if you break yourself trying to beat me first."
He released her wrist and walked back to his side of the glass partition, the silence returning, now vibrating with the intensity of the moment they had just shared. He had offered an admission, an apology, and a warning, all wrapped up in the language of control.
Lila sat frozen, the red mark on her wrist tingling. He was trying to take care of her, despite everything. She realized the professional rivalry was merely a mask, and the terrifying truth was that the man who broke her heart was still capable of seeing the most vulnerable parts of her.
She had survived his professional challenge. Now, she had to survive his intimacy.