“I will. Love you.”
“Love you more.”
And the house settled again into the soft, steady rhythm of morning. After giving Ade two braids, making sure his clothes were neat, and they had everything, they were off. She dropped him off to school, giving him several kisses that he tried to dodge in front of his friends then she headed to work.
The office smelled like fresh coffee and glass cleaner with muted conversations and keystrokes. Sabine moved through it with a kind of quiet precision—heels high against the polished floors, a tablet tucked under her arm, and a fitted ivory blouse tucked neatly into tailored navy slacks. Every inch of her said,I know what I’m doing. Please try and keep up.
Her title—Senior Operations Analyst—meant she wasn’t just here to run the numbers. She built systems. Smoothed inefficiencies. Predicted bottlenecks before they happened. When she spoke in meetings, people listened. Not because she was loud, but because she was right.
Sabine had just finished running a sensitivity analysis on the logistics model for one of their biggest retail clients and was reviewing the final optimization output when a knock came at her office door—more of a lean, really. Casual. Confident.
“Killing it already and it’s not even ten,” said Malik, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation.
Sabine didn’t look up right away. She knew the voice. That low, velvet-smooth bass that always seemed to settle somewhere behind her knees.
“I kill it before coffee,” she said, finally glancing at him. “You bring it?”
He grinned and held up two cups. “You know I did. Caramel for the analyst queen.”
She reached for it. Their fingers brushed. That part was always the same—brief contact that lingered too long.
“Thanks,” she said, sipping.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, settling into the chair across from her. “You’ve got a dozen open variables in this model and zero margin for error. I saw the projection board.”
“I’ve got it handled.”
“You always do,” he murmured. And he meant it.
Malik was a systems engineer, one of the few on her level who could challenge her without posturing. Tall, dark, and built like he played ball in college, which he did. He wore his professional confidence well but when it came to Sabine, it all crumbled.
“You didn’t text me back,” he said after a pause. “This weekend.”
Sabine tapped the side of her mug, not looking at him.
“Busy.”
“I wasn’t just looking for a late-night pull-up, Bine.” His laced tone with honesty. “You know that.”
She looked up, meeting his gaze, “I know.”
He exhaled, leaned back in the chair. “But you’re still not ready.”
“I’m co-parenting a five-year-old. I’m building a life that makes sense outside of that. I’m…” she trailed off, but he didn’t interrupt. “I’m not in the space to offer more than what we already had.”
“Have…” he corrected her. “Last time I checked this was still a have.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that…have.”
“You ever gonna stop pretending like you don’t feel it too?”
“Feel what?”
“That charge. The way you freeze up whenever I get too close. Like your body remembers what your mouth won’t say.”
She smirked, but it didn’t reach her eyes because he was definitely reading way too much into their interactions. “I just have a lot?—”
“Good thing I’m not asking fora lot. I’m just saying, I’m not running just because the situation’s complicated. I respect it,” he added after a moment. “I respect your position, your motherhood, all that shit.”