[POV Sloane]
They called it a drill. But no one told me they were shutting down the elevators.
A dull siren echoed through the building as I exited the boardroom, the robotic voice over the intercom announcing something about a routine evacuation procedure.
I ignored it at first—until I saw Ari in the hall, clutching a tablet, eyes narrowing at the same pre-recorded nonsense blaring overhead.
Her gaze met mine as we both paused by the elevator bank, and for a second, I thought she might say something. Instead, she pressed the button without a word.
We stepped inside together.
It wasn’t awkward. Not exactly. We’d gotten used to this—long stretches of silence, bodies close but never touching, pretending not to notice the weight of every unspoken thing sitting between us like a live wire.
I leaned against the mirrored wall. She stood with perfect posture, her expression unreadable as always, tablet clutched to her chest like armor. I didn’t know what I was going to say.
But I didn’t have to figure it out. Because two floors down, the elevator groaned… then shuddered… then stopped.
Dead halt.
The lights flickered once, then dimmed to emergency red. Ari flinched. The silence that followed was absolute.
Then she turned to me, calm but strained. “Please tell me this isn’t part of the drill.”
I tried the panel. Unresponsive.
“Nope,” I muttered. “Definitely not.”
She exhaled, long and slow, her shoulders pulling back as she leaned slightly against the opposite wall.
“We’re fine,” she said, almost like she was saying it for herself. “It’s just a glitch. They’ll reset it in a minute.”
I nodded. “Sure.”
But a minute passed. Then another. The air grew still and thick, warm with our combined breath, and the silence stretched.
Too quiet. Too close. I looked at her then—really looked.
Her lips were slightly parted, like she’d just exhaled. Her brow was furrowed, but not in fear—something more vulnerable than that. Her dress clung to her in all the places I tried so hard not to stare at.
The subtle rise and fall of her chest. The bare skin of her collarbone, kissed by the emergency lighting.
She caught me watching.
Her lips twitched. “Don’t start panicking now. I need one of us to keep it together.”
I pushed off the wall and crossed my arms. “Who said I’m panicking?”
She tilted her head. “Your jaw’s tight. You do that when you’re anxious.”
I blinked. “You’ve been watching me that closely?”
Her smile faded slowly, replaced by something softer. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I guess I have.”
Then—without warning—the elevator jolted again. A sharp, mechanical lurch. She stumbled forward with a gasp, and I reached out instinctively.
She landed against me, both hands clutching my arms, her body pressed full-length to mine.
And then time stopped. I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Every part of her fit against me too well—like she belonged there. Her face was tilted up toward mine, her breath warm on my chin, her fingers fisting the fabric of my sleeves. My hands rested at her hips. My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning everything else.
Her eyes found mine. Wide. Open and unguarded.
Her breathing hitched, not from fear, but from recognition—recognition of how close we were, how easy it would be to close the remaining space between us. Her mouth parted, and I watched the flicker of something raw flicker in her gaze—want, maybe. Or fear. Or both.
I should have let go.
Instead, I looked at her mouth, at the perfect curve of her bottom lip and the soft, breathless tension that lived just beneath the surface of her calm.
I looked too long, too hard, and when my gaze finally found hers again, something inside me shifted—an awareness, a realization, a need I didn’t know I’d been repressing until it was looking me in the eye in the shape of the woman standing in my arms.
She didn’t move either.
Not when the elevator gave another subtle jolt. Not when the lights flickered back to white. Not even when the soft chime indicated we’d reached the next floor and the doors whispered open.
Only then did she step back.
Only then did I let my hands fall away from her.
And even then, even as we both turned in opposite directions and pretended that nothing had happened, the echo of her body against mine followed me like a shadow I couldn’t shake.
* * *
That evening, the penthouse felt quieter than usual, as if the air itself was waiting for us to speak first.
Ari had barely said more than a handful of words after the elevator incident, retreating to her room under the guise of reviewing contracts while I remained at the bar, pouring a glass of something stronger than I probably needed.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment—about how natural it had felt to hold her, about the split second where I’d almost kissed her, about how hard it had been to stop myself.
And even harder to act like I hadn’t wanted to.
Dinner was quiet, the kind of quiet that hums beneath the surface of civil conversation, where words don’t quite reach the distance between two people who are trying too hard not to think about what they aren’t saying.
We talked about work—the Henderson account, the upcoming press tour, the merger—but it all felt distant, like our voices were paper-thin overlays on a conversation we didn’t dare have.
She sat across from me, her posture poised, her hair clipped back neatly, but every time I looked up, I caught her glancing away too quickly, like she was afraid I’d see something in her eyes that she hadn’t given me permission to look for.
And then she reached for her wine.
It happened so fast I almost missed it—her hand catching the stem wrong, the glass tipping forward, red spilling across the front of her pale blouse in a slow, vivid arc. She gasped, half rising from her chair, fumbling for a napkin.
Without thinking, I was already moving.
“Don’t,” I said, too quickly, as I crossed to her side. “Let me.”
I reached for a clean towel from the kitchen counter and knelt beside her, dabbing gently at the fabric just below her collarbone.
Her breath caught as I touched her, and I felt it—under my fingertips, in the air between us. The tension returned, coiling like smoke, thick and tangible and undeniable.
She looked down at me, her mouth parted, and for the second time that day, we found ourselves suspended in a moment too intimate to name.
I could feel the warmth of her skin beneath the damp cloth, could see the tremor in her lashes as she blinked once, then again.
I should have backed away. But I didn’t want to. And that terrified me more than anything else. When my hand brushed hers, we both froze.
The contact was brief, accidental—barely more than a touch—but it was enough.
She pulled away first, murmuring something about changing her shirt, and I let her go without a word, watching as she disappeared down the hallway with too-quick steps and her shoulders pulled tight.
I returned to my seat, but the food had gone cold, and the wine tasted like ash in my mouth.
And even with the room empty, she was everywhere.