Instead: “If you think you’re not on someone’s radar, you’re wrong.”
Her mouth did that thing, the barest curve. “Welcome to the real world, Valor.”
I could have left it there. Should have. But I knew I wouldn’t.
“Just-” I started, then stopped. I didn’t know what to offer her. I wasn’t sure I had anything she’d take.
She stood. Collected her things. “Don’t worry. If I go down, I won’t take you with me.”
She left. The door swung shut, slower than I expected.
Almost for a minute, I didn’t move. I replayed her voice, her eyes, every microsecond of the exchange. I saw her, on the other side of the glass, walking away like she owned the floor. Even now, even after everything, she did.
She’d built walls so high that only someone who really wanted in could scale them. But every wall had a weakness. And now, for the first time, I was sure of mine:her.
I understood her withdrawal now. It wasn’t rejection. It was the only defense she had left.
Someone wanted her to fail. I didn’t know who, or how deep it went. But I knew this: if they wanted to break her, they’d have to go through me.
And I’d have fun breaking them.
Chapter Thirteen
Eliza
I perched on the edge of my sofa, knees together, back iron-rod straight, as if posture alone could stave off the vertigo.
The room was hospital silent, not even the fridge daring to hum. Laptop: open, screen blinding, desktop uncluttered, except for the email draft I’d been staring at for about twenty minutes. Phone: face-down, set to “do not disturb,” like maybe if I pretended it didn’t exist I could erase the urge to text Gabriel Valor a string of caustic, unprofessional, “are you up?” messages.
I could still smell him. Is that possible? Dry cleaning, sharp aftershave, something warm and soft. Even here, in my own cage, I caught whiffs of him whenever I blinked hard enough. He’d never been to my place, but somehow, he still managed to invade my life.
I forced myself to refocus on the spreadsheet, the one I should have finished hours ago. I’d made it to row forty-four before realizing every cell read like an accusation. No, notlike. It was. I was making mistakes, a first, and I’d noticed. A single missing decimal, a careless paste, numbers that didn’t reconcile. My work was the only thing about me that never slipped, untilnow. And this time, I couldn’t blame some faceless entity trying to sabotage me. I was making mistakes.
The last time my hands shook, I’d been waiting for my acceptance letter to Stanford. This was not that. This was not nerves. This was something worse.
Desire. There, I said it. Not “complicated.” Not “distracting.” Not “an unfortunate collision of DNA and trauma.” Just want.
I wanted Gabriel Valor, and the wanting was a double-edged guillotine: half lust, half terror, both sharp enough to draw blood. I wanted the part of him that played chess two moves ahead, that parried my sarcasm with a twitch of an eyebrow, that respected me enough to fight me in the conference room and then pour me a whiskey neat afterwards with no apology.
That wanting was bad enough. But wanting anything, period, was the original sin in my family. Needs are liabilities. I’d carved out a life on that principle.
And I sat with the truth. I wanted him, and that made me weak, and nothing terrified me more than my own weakness.
Except maybe his.
I let myself replay the scene from this afternoon. Not the part where he annihilated my proposal in front of the entire product team. Not the way he turned it, last second, into a compliment, a display for the investors, of course, because Gabriel couldn’t let anyone see him sweat. No. The moment that looped, slow-motion: after the meeting, when we both reached for the same legal pad, and his fingers closed over mine, deliberate, pressure just shy of a handshake.
He didn’t move away. I didn’t move away. The room spun around our two wrists. For three seconds, I felt the heat of him arc up my arm and punch straight through every inch of my being. I remember thinking:If you speak now, you lose.
Neither of us did. He just let go. My hand tingled for ten minutes.
That’s the thing with Gabriel. He’s a walking red alert, but he’s also the only person in my existence who knows not to flinch first. He’s also, statistically, the most likely to have engineered the entire cascade of “errors” that were now pinning me to my own couch like a pinned butterfly. He’s always been the chess master. I hate how much I respect that.
I hated more that I couldn’t stop wanting him.
But it didn’t make sense. He’d been there in the room with me as someone messed with my code. Not that there was no way it could be done, it just seemed so… improbable.
Or I was making excuses for him because I wanted him. So, I sat, rigid, and did not touch my phone. I let the spreadsheet scroll down on its own, the numbers blurring into nothing. I let the memory of his hand on mine melt and settle in my gut.