"Lunch." Miles appears at my desk like a weather event—no warning, full sunshine, totally unavoidable. "Real lunch—chairs, menus, a building that isn't this one."
"I have a sandwich." I gesture at the sad rectangle of bread on my desk that even the office fruit flies have declined to colonise.
"That's not a sandwich, that's a cry for help wrapped in cling film." He leans against the partition, sleeves rolled, grin doing something to the fluorescent lighting that it does not deserve.
"There's a cafe two blocks east—exposed brick, seventeen plants trying way too hard, and ginger tea that might actually be drinkable." He says it like he's offering me a holiday, not a lunch break.
My stomach—the tiny dictator currently running my entire existence—perks up like a dog hearing a can opener. Principles say no, but the thing growing inside me that has declared war on every food group except ginger says yes.
"One hour." I grab my bag with the resignation of a woman whose convictions have been defeated by a beverage. "And I'm paying for myself."
"Sure you are." He holds the door with the confidence of a man who has absolutely no intention of letting that happen.
The cafe puts succulents on every surface and names its sandwiches after feelings. Our table by the window catches afternoon light that turns his hair copper at the edges, and I order ginger tea while he orders a coffee so complicated the barista writes it down twice.
"Tell me about the pitch meeting disaster." I sip my tea and the warmth settles my stomach by a single merciful degree. "Spencer’s mentioned it. I bet his face alone must have been worth the price of admission."
"The Henrikson demo—three weeks building this interface prototype, beautiful thing, animated transitions that would make grown men weep." His eyes light up with the particular joy of a man who has fully processed his own humiliation.
"It crashed, rebooted, displayed an error in what I'm pretty sure was Estonian, and then played thirty seconds of a podcast about fermentation at full volume." He presses his palm over his eyes. "In front of the entire board."
"Fermentation." My mouth does something I can't control—a laugh, real and startled, cracking through like light through a door I forgot to lock. "What did Spencer do?"
"Spencer doesn't get angry." Mock gravity layered over genuine reverence. "He gets disappointed, which is significantly worse—because anger you can argue with, and disappointment just sits there being correct while you reboot a laptop under a mahogany table."
The laugh bounces off exposed brick and comes back warmer. His eyes follow the sound across my face and stay there, and my ribs compress around something I don't have clearance to examine.
"Enough about my professional humiliation—tell me about you." He sets his mug down. "Not the work stuff, not the heavy stuff—just you. What do you read?"
"Whatever's cheapest at the used bookstore on Hawthorne." I turn the teacup in my hands. "Paperback mysteries with cracked spines and someone else's coffee stains, which I consider added character."
"TV?" He tilts his head, cataloguing my answers with the attention of a man building something from the pieces.
"Cooking competitions—my mom and I watch them together, she critiques the judges, I critique the plating." The admission slips out uncurated. "We both yell at anyone attempting a soufflé in the final round because that's not ambition, that's hubris."
"Morning person?" His mouth twitches like he already knows the answer and is asking purely for the joy of confirmation.
"Mornings are a personal enemy I've been losing to for twenty-four years." I wrap both hands around the cup. "Every alarm clock I've ever owned has died in the line of duty."
"I knew it—the way you hold coffee, your knuckles whiten." He grins, full and unguarded, the kind that restructures a room. "Both hands, eye contact, absolute refusal to let go until your demands are met."
"My demands are consciousness—the coffee is the negotiator." My mouth curves and I let it, because fighting the ease of this takes more energy than I possess. The pull that usually screams near a Wallace brother has quieted to something warm, my jaw unclenched for the first time in weeks.
Miles makes the space around him feel like the temperature your body's been looking for. My stomach settles, my hands stop shaking, and the threat assessment running behind my sternum goes quiet—the silence so unfamiliar it almost scares me.
"You're staring." He says it gently, amused, and I realise I've been watching his hands on the mug for four seconds too long.
"I'm calculating whether your coffee order qualifies as a personality disorder." I redirect to the window. "Three modifiers and an alternative milk—the barista needed a moment."
"Oat milk is a lifestyle choice, not a disorder." He stands, pulling his wallet. "I'm getting this."
"No—" My hand finds my bag and his head shakes once, firm and final, the kind of no that arrives with its own punctuation.
"Let me buy you a ginger tea, Bailee." He says my name like it settles something. "The world will not collapse."
He turns toward the counter and my window of argument closes with his back. I watch him cross the cafe—easy stride, one hand in his pocket, saying something to the barista that makes her laugh—and the ordinariness of it does something to my chest I'm not equipped to process.
My hand moves before the thought finishes forming. His coffee cup sits on the table, still warm, his fingerprints on the ceramic, and my fingers close around it like a crime in progress—which it is. Napkin from the dispenser—wrap, compress, slide into my bag under the table.
My hands return to the surface and press flat against the tremor running through my fingers. Something heavy drops into my stomach beside the ginger tea—dense, physical, a stone I swallowed on purpose.
He trusted me with an hour of easy conversation and I stole from him while his back was turned. The napkin in my bag holds his DNA and the distance between having lunch and collecting evidence is exactly the width of a ceramic cup.
"Ready?" Miles reappears, jacket over his arm. "I've got a two o'clock that Spencer will personally dismantle me for missing."
"Ready." My bag sits on my lap, heavier than any cup should make it. I grip the strap, and it feels like transporting a detonation device.
We walk back in sunlight that feels unearned, his voice covering the afternoon agenda while my bag presses against my hip. One sample down, two to collect, and each one will carry the exact weight of every kind thing the man beside me said while I calculated the angle of his coffee cup.
My phone buzzes as we reach the lobby—Blake, one line, no greeting: Legal needs your input on the Kellerman file—my office, tonight. The second cup just walked into my schedule, and my stomach turns for reasons that have nothing to do with the pregnancy.
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