[POV Ariel]
It started with a cough. Just a dry scratch in my throat, barely enough to notice. But by the second day, my lungs felt like they were wrapped in barbed wire, each breath shallow and sharp.
Every step I took through the apartment sent a wave of nausea through me that I couldn’t shake, no matter how stubbornly I clung to the idea of productivity.
I didn’t tell anyone. I told myself I didn’t need to.
I’d pushed through worse. Deadlines. Rejections. Years of being overlooked, undermined, uninvited. A fever was nothing compared to that.
But when I collapsed in the elevator on the way back from a board meeting, when the world tilted sideways and the lights overhead blurred into melting halos.
The only thing I remember is cold marble under my palms and the sound of Sloane’s voice—angry, scared, sharp around the edges as he shouted my name.
Then—nothing. Just darkness. Cold and floating and thick. And then his voice again, somewhere near, somewhere deep.
“Ari—stay with me.”
I woke up in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and his hand wrapped around mine.
He wasn’t looking at me when I opened my eyes. He was sitting stiffly in the chair beside me, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled to his elbows, jaw tight and unshaven, like he hadn’t moved in hours.
I must’ve made a sound, because he looked over then—and something in his face cracked open.
Relief. Anger. Something that felt too much like grief.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice low and rough.
I tried to speak, but my throat burned, and I only managed a faint rasp.
He was up in a second, pouring water into a cup, holding it to my lips with a gentleness that didn’t match the tension in his shoulders.
“Pneumonia,” he said after I sipped. “Severe. You’ve been out for almost two days.”
I blinked. Two days?
“You… stayed?”
He looked away, jaw clenching. “I had meetings, but rescheduled them.”
My heart thudded painfully at that.
Because it wasn’t like him to make time for anyone—not even his father in the end. But for me?
Why?
The next memory was of fever.
Sweat-drenched sheets and aching limbs, the echo of my own heartbeat in my ears, and his voice—always his voice, low and steady, guiding me through the fog.
And then—I reached for something. A hand. Warm. Solid.
I found it. I held it. And through cracked lips, I whispered something that didn’t sound like me.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
And maybe I imagined it, maybe it was the fever talking, but I swear—I felt his thumb brush over my knuckles, slow and deliberate, like a promise he hadn’t made out loud.
When they finally released me, I expected a nurse. A driver. A silent car ride home.
But it was Sloane who waited at the doors, arms crossed, expression unreadable. And when I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him I could handle it myself, he cut me off with a single look.
“You’re not doing this alone,” he said.
No room for argument. Not from him. Not this time.
Back at the penthouse, he didn’t hand me off to anyone else.
He carried my bags inside himself, walked me to my room like I was made of glass, and when I tried to insist I could manage on my own, he just looked at me, tired and furious and something else I couldn’t name.
“Sit down,” he said. “And for once in your life, stop fighting me.”
So I did. And he made soup.
Actual soup. In a real pot. On the stove. He burned the first batch—cursed under his breath and threw it out—but the second one was perfect, warm and rich and oddly comforting.
He brought it to me in a wide bowl with a cloth napkin folded neatly beside it, like he couldn’t bring himself to half-ass even this.
“I Googled it,” he muttered, setting the tray on my lap.
I tried not to laugh. It came out as a cough anyway.
Later, when my energy flagged and I couldn’t hold the novel I’d been trying to read, he offered to do it for me—holding the book open with one hand. Reading in that low, dispassionate voice of his until something about the words softened his tone and we both forgot we were pretending.
I fell asleep with his voice in my ear and his hand still wrapped around mine.
The days blurred.
He brought me tea laced with honey and medicine I didn’t have to ask for. He changed the thermostat when I shivered and drew the blinds when the light made my head throb.
He sat on the edge of my bed and read aloud, his voice dipping unconsciously into emotion as the story unfolded between us.
And I hated how easy it became. To lean on him. To let go.
Because for the first time since we’d signed that damn contract, it didn’t feel like an arrangement anymore.
It felt like something else entirely. And that scared the hell out of me.