I took my seat. Gabriel was already in the room, of course, two seats down; enough space for plausible deniability, but close enough to steal my notes if he felt like it. He probably already had.
The agenda was nothing - just housekeeping. But the real work happened in the interstices, in the way people deferred to me and not to Gabriel, even when he disagreed. That was new, and I’d earned it.
As the meeting wrapped, he lingered behind. Everyone else melted away, leaving us the empty echo chamber of glass and steel.
“You’re doing it again,” he said.
“What?”
“Smiling.”
I pretended to consider. “Maybe I’m just gassy.”
He braced his hands on the table and looked at me the way you look at a locked safe. “I’m proud of you.”
For a moment, I just sat there, arms crossed, fending off something that wanted to be a hug. “If you’re about to cry, I’ll have to fire you.”
He straightened. “Unlikely. You’d have to buy out my shares first.”
“Give it six months,” I said. “I’ll have you down to a minority stake.”
“Promises, promises.” He moved to the window, hands in his pockets. “You still don’t trust me.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was a fact, clean and sharp.
I joined him at the glass, city glimmering below. Our reflections layered over the skyline; his taller, but mine unyielding.
“Maybe trust is overrated,” I said. “Maybe it’s about… mutual assured destruction. If you break me, you break yourself.”
He considered that. “That sounds exhausting.”
I shrugged. “We make it look good.”
A silence, then: “I’m not going anywhere, Eliza.”
I turned to him. “Neither am I.”
He nodded, like he’d just signed a contract with invisible ink.
I looked up at him and realized for the first time how tired he was. How tired we both were. But there was no fear left, only certainty. A rare, precious thing.
He reached for me. I closed the distance. Just a touch, palm to chest. No sparks, no battle. Just the hum of two hearts remembering how to be on the same side.
“Lunch?” he said.
“Only if you let me pick the place.”
“Deal,” he said.
And that was it. No speeches, no metaphors. Just us, walking out together, not looking back.
On the street, the world was a little louder, a little brighter. We moved in step, a pair so obviously entangled that even the barista at our regular place stopped pretending not to notice.
We settled in a window seat. I ordered something reckless and sweet; he ordered whatever I was having. The first time, he’d grimaced at the sugar, but now he drank it without comment. Adaptation: it’s what made us work.
He watched me bite into a ridiculous pastry. “You know, when I met you, I thought you’d ruin my life.”
I licked powdered sugar from my lip, slow and deliberate, loving how his eyes followed my tongue. “Only a little.”