[Oliver’s POV]
The elevator doors slide open on the fourth floor, and I step into my new professional purgatory with a briefcase and approximately zero expectations of happiness.
Sandra, my new manager, walks ahead with the brisk efficiency of someone who schedules bathroom breaks. She's been explaining organisational structure since the lobby.
I stopped listening around "synergy."
The position came through Diana's network—an old acquaintance from my previous life who now runs legitimate business circles. She owed me a favour. I called it in without asking questions.
Client relations. A title vague enough to mean anything. Perfect for a man whose actual skills translate poorly to respectable employment.
Sandra navigates the maze of cubicles with practiced ease. I follow, scanning the open-plan office with professional interest. Ergonomic chairs. Fluorescent lighting. Motivational posters that probably qualify as psychological torture under Geneva Convention standards.
Standard corporate environment. Nothing special. Nothing that should make my heart—
My heart stops.
Completely. Absolutely. A full cardiac arrest in the middle of a perfectly mundane office tour.
Lottie stands by a printer near the far wall. Papers in hand. Brown hair tied back in that practical way she favours. Face pale as death.
She's staring at me like she's witnessed her own murder.
For one eternal moment, neither of us moves. The office continues around us—keyboards clacking, phones ringing, colleagues existing in blessed ignorance of the apocalypse unfolding silently in their midst.
Two weeks. Fourteen days of silence. Three hundred thirty-six hours of staring at her number and drafting texts I never sent.
And now she's here. Twenty feet away. Looking at me like I've personally orchestrated the universe's cruelest joke.
I haven't. For the record. I didn't know she worked for this company. Diana mentioned a mid-sized firm with growth potential. Nothing about brown-haired accountants who haunt my dreams with devastating persistence.
Lottie moves first.
She crosses the office with alarming speed, intercepting me before Sandra can continue her tour of filing systems and break room protocols.
"Sandra, I need to borrow the new hire for a moment." Her voice is professionally calm. Impressively so, given the murder in her eyes. "Urgent question about building security protocols."
Sandra looks confused. Understandably. Building security seems an odd priority for someone who was printing documents thirty seconds ago.
But she waves us off with corporate accommodation. "Of course. I'll be at my desk when you're ready to continue."
Lottie's hand closes around my arm. Her grip is tight enough to leave marks through my suit jacket. She steers me toward an empty corridor with the determination of someone disposing of a body.
The moment we're out of sight, she releases me like I'm contagious. Spins to face me with fury radiating from every pore.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Her voice is a furious whisper. Controlled rage packaged in professional volume.
"I took a job." I keep my tone neutral. Measured. The polished exterior I've perfected over years of performing ease I never feel. "Client relations. Started today."
"Here. You took a job here. At my company."
"I didn't know you worked for this company." The truth sounds inadequate even to my own ears. "Diana arranged it. I never asked the name. Never occurred to me to check."
"You expect me to believe that?"
The question lands like a slap. Fair, perhaps. Given my history of calculated moves and strategic positioning.
"I don't expect anything from you, Lottie." The words come out sharper than intended. Edged with something I meant to bury. "You made your position abundantly clear at the hotel."
She flinches. The tiny movement cuts deeper than her accusations.
I watch her face and think about two weeks of silence. Two weeks of staring at her contact in my phone at ungodly hours. Two weeks of drafting messages I deleted because she asked me to forget and I was trying—desperately, pathetically trying—to respect that.
Even though forgetting her feels like amputating something vital. A limb. A lung. Whatever organ handles the wanting that hasn't faded despite my best efforts at surgical removal.
"What do you plan to do now?" Her voice has shifted. Quieter. Less certain.
"My job." I shrug with manufactured casualness. "Be professional. Maintain appropriate workplace boundaries. Pretend we're strangers meeting for the first time, if that's what you need."
I want to say more. Want to tell her I haven't stopped thinking about her. Want to ask if she really meant what she said or if she was just terrified of wanting something complicated.
I understand terror. Intimately. I've built my entire personality around avoiding it.
Instead, I wait. Let the silence stretch between us like an accusation neither of us is brave enough to make.
Her expression becomes unreadable. That professional mask she wears so well settling into place. The same mask I wear constantly—I recognise a fellow performer when I see one.
"Fine." She straightens her shoulders with visible effort. "Professional. Strangers. Whatever it takes to make this workable."
She walks back toward the office without looking at me. Her heels click against the floor with measured precision. Every step taking her further away.
I stand in the empty corridor watching her disappear around the corner. Wondering how exactly I'm supposed to pretend indifference when every cell in my body screams her name.
When the memory of her sounds still haunts me at night. When I can still feel her hands against my chest, her breath catching, her body finally responding after years of silence.
Professional. Strangers. Workable.
The words taste like surrender. Like the death of something that barely had time to live.
I turn to rejoin Sandra, who's probably wondering if building security protocols typically require fifteen-minute consultations in empty hallways.
Movement catches my attention near the building's glass entrance. A man stands on the pavement outside, looking up at the office floors with unsettling intensity.
Something about his posture feels… off. The set of his shoulders. The focused quality of his observation. Not casual curiosity—deliberate surveillance.
My instincts, honed over years of reading rooms and anticipating threats, prickle with warning.
"Oliver?" Sandra's voice carries from down the corridor. Professional impatience wrapped in politeness. "Ready to continue?"
I glance back toward the entrance. The man is gone. Just pedestrians flowing past in the usual urban current. Nothing remarkable. Nothing threatening.
Probably paranoia. Post-crisis hypervigilance inventing significance where none exists. My brain creating external dangers because the internal ones feel too overwhelming to process.
I straighten my jacket and walk toward Sandra with my practiced smile firmly in place.
"Absolutely. Apologies for the delay. Where were we?"
She launches into explanations about reporting structures and quarterly reviews. I nod at appropriate intervals while my mind replays Lottie's expression. Her flinch. Her retreat.
Whatever it takes to make this workable.
I've spent a decade making impossible situations workable. Charming my way through complications. Performing ease I never actually felt.
But pretending Lottie is a stranger might be the most demanding performance of my entire life.
The office swallows me whole. Fluorescent lights and ergonomic chairs and the woman I can't stop wanting somewhere among the cubicles, pretending I don't exist.
Professional. Strangers.
I almost believe I can manage it.
Almost.