The city hummed like a live wire.
Four days after Olivia’s piece ran, a second round of coverage hit. Thinkpieces about public-private partnerships. Op-eds from housing advocates. A guest column from Leah about oversight.
TerraNova’s name was everywhere.
So was Jake’s.
He felt it in his inbox—requests, demands, invitations. He saw it in the way people looked at him on the street, that flicker of recognition, of *I know you from somewhere*.
At the office, the air vibrated.
“Version 3.0 deploys to staging in twelve hours,” Samir announced at Monday’s standup. “If anything breaks, we blame Aisha.”
“Excuse me?” Aisha said. “You’re the one who insisted on pushing the optimization.”
Jake half-listened as his leads traded banter and bug reports.
His attention snagged on the corner of his screen, where a news alert ticked by.
*Council Member Reyes Calls for Public Hearings on TerraNova Contract.*
“Jake?” Aisha said. “You with us?”
He blinked, refocused.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. Council hearings. Surprise.”
“Leah wasted no time,” Samir muttered.
“She shouldn’t,” Jake said. “Public hearing’s better than a backroom grilling.”
“They’ll want you to testify,” Aisha said.
“Good,” he said. “I like microphones.”
“You like arguing with people in power,” she corrected.
“That too,” he said.
After standup, Carla cornered him.
“We’re prepping talking points,” she said. “We’ll spin this as an opportunity to reinforce transparency.”
“Spin?” he said. “We *should* be transparent.”
“That’s the spin,” she said dryly. “Walk and talk.”
As they moved toward his office, she added, “Also, the Mayor wants to meet before the hearing. Hart’s office is in mild panic. Apparently someone over there finally realized you’re not as… controllable as they hoped.”
He smirked. “Flattering.”
“Terrifying,” she said. “To them. To me, mildly entertaining.”
They stepped into his office. She shut the door, dropped her tablet onto his desk.
“Heads up,” she said. “There’s another piece coming from *Metro*.”
“Already?” he said. “We just survived round one.”
“This is Part Two of the series,” she said. “Policy focus. Olivia’s working with Leah. You’re going to get hit harder on structure this time.”
He swallowed.
“Did she call it?” he asked. “Tell you what she’s going after?”
“Not directly,” Carla said. “But Hart’s been sniffing around. And Leah’s tweeting about ‘code escrow’ and ‘no plan B.’ Connect the dots.”
He nodded slowly.
“Good,” he said.
Carla stared at him. “You’re either the chillest or the dumbest founder I’ve ever worked with,” she said.
“If we can’t handle criticism on contracts we signed with our eyes open, we don’t deserve those contracts,” he said. “We said we were better than the old way. That includes scrutiny.”
She blew out a breath. “You realize not every billionaire says that, right?”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” he said.
She shook her head, small smile playing at her lips.
“Olivia texted me, by the way,” she said.
His stomach did a weird little leap. “And?”
“She said, and I quote, ‘Tell your boss if he tries to dodge the hearings, I will roast him alive in print,’” Carla said.
He snorted. “Sounds like her.”
“I told her you’d be there,” Carla added. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”
He sobered. “I won’t.”
When she left, he sat for a moment, fingers drumming on the desk.
He opened his email.
No new message from Olivia.
He closed it again.
He needed to focus.
Version 3.0.
The code he’d fought for. The optimization that had caused three all-nighters and one shouting match with Max over cloud spend.
He walked to the glass and looked down.
The bridge. The river. The city.
“Don’t break,” he murmured.
***
On the other side of the river, Olivia sat in a cramped conference room at CityWatch’s shared office, Leah pacing in front of a whiteboard.
“We hit them on three fronts,” Leah said, marker squeaking. “Ownership, oversight, exit plan.”
“That’s catchy,” Olivia said. “Alliteration sells.”
“Don’t make fun of my comms strategy,” Leah said. “I’m a volunteer.”
“You’re better than half the paid flacks I talk to,” Olivia said.
Leah grinned, then sobered.
“You really think he meant it?” she asked. “About walking away from contracts that cross red lines?”
“Yeah,” Olivia said slowly. “I think *he* meant it.”
“And when the board outvotes him in three years?” Leah said. “When some new CEO comes in and says, ‘Actually, profit sounds nice’?”
“That’s what the piece is for,” Olivia said. “To plant in people’s heads that this isn’t about whether they like Jake. It’s about the structure.”
Leah nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we do it.”
They mapped out the second article.
Less Jake. More city.
Quotes from contract lawyers. Interviews with data ethicists. Vignettes from residents whose buses had changed routes overnight without explanation.
Olivia wrote late, her prose sharper this time. Less forgiving. Still fair, but with a clearer line in the sand.
By Wednesday, Draft #1 of Part Two was on Laura’s desk.
“This one’s meaner,” Laura said approvingly. “I like it.”
“It’s honest,” Olivia said. “That’s different.”
Laura gave her a look that said, *You’re splitting hairs and you know it,* but let it go.
Thursday, TerraNova’s official launch.
The big one.
The one with the stage and the screens and the skyline view.
Olivia had a generic press invite in her inbox. *Metro* had claimed two tickets.
She’d volunteered Raj and another colleague.
“I’ve already seen your dog and pony show,” she’d told Jake. “I don’t need to watch you do it in a suit.”
He’d texted back: *You never appreciated my suits.*
She’d rolled her eyes and ignored the photo he’d attached of an offensively good-looking navy number.
On launch night, while cameras flashed downtown, Olivia sat at her kitchen table, eating leftover flan from her mother’s Tupperware and watching the livestream.
Jake stood on a stage in front of a massive screen that showed a stylized map of several cities.
He talked about “equity,” “resilience,” “sustainability.” His hands moved with practiced emphasis.
He was good. Smooth. Funny, occasionally, in that self-aware way that made people trust him.
A chat window scrolled beside the video.
*who is this zaddy and why is he talking about buses* *is there a TerraNova for dating? asking for a friend* *this is what happens when your ex grows up and gets hot af lmao @oliviamwrites*
She nearly choked on her flan.
Her phone buzzed.
*Raj*: WHY IS THE TECH PRESS THIRSTING OVER YOUR EX ON MAIN
She didn’t respond.
On screen, Jake clicked something, and the map shifted.
Colored lines brightened in underserved neighborhoods.
He zoomed in on South Side, talked about pilot routes.
Her chest tightened.
He was putting her block on a screen in front of the world.
Ownership. Oversight. Exit plan.
She scribbled the words on a Post-it and stuck it to her laptop.
When the event ended in polite applause and camera shutters, she closed the stream.
Her phone vibrated.
*Jake*: You watch?
She hesitated.
*Olivia*: Yes. The suit was overkill.
*Jake*: Carla said the same.
A beat.
*Jake*: Drinks? To celebrate me not crashing the grid?
She stared at the screen.
It was nearly ten. She had a half-finished article. She had no business going out.
Her fingers moved anyway.
*Olivia*: One. Journalists are not supposed to accept gifts.
*Jake*: You can get the next round.
She sent back an eye-roll emoji, shocking herself. He replied with a laughing one.
A bar in the East Village, he suggested. Dark, loud enough to give them cover, not so loud they couldn’t talk.
She almost backed out three times on the way there.
But curiosity—and something more stubborn—won.
He was already at a small table near the back when she walked in.
No suit. Black T-shirt, leather jacket, jeans. Casual, but every line of him screamed *money* in a way no thrift-store version ever had.
Her heart did an unhelpful little flip.
He stood as she approached.
“You clean up okay,” she said lightly.
“You say that like you didn’t just watch me in a $5,000 suit on a livestream,” he said.
“On my laptop,” she said. “From the waist down, you could’ve been wearing pajama pants.”
“Jeans,” he said. “I considered joggers.”
She laughed in spite of herself.
He gestured to the stool across from him.
She sat.
The bartender appeared like he’d been summoned by their mutual social anxiety.
“Whiskey sour,” she said. “Extra sour.”
“Negroni,” Jake said.
The bartender nodded, disappeared.
“You don’t strike me as a Negroni guy,” she said.
“You don’t strike me as a whiskey sour girl,” he shot back.
“People change,” she said.
He watched her, eyes shadowed.
“Do they?” he asked.
The question hummed between them.
She broke it.
“So,” she said. “You launched. No crashes. No blackouts. I assume that’s cause for celebration.”
“Somewhere, Samir is still refreshing dashboards,” he said. “But so far? No news is good news.”
“How does it feel?” she asked. “Having your system go live in half the country?”
He exhaled.
“Like standing in the middle of a glass house with a million people throwing rocks,” he said. “And knowing that if any pane breaks, it’s going to cut someone I care about.”
She sipped her drink. The burn grounded her.
“Dramatic,” she said.
“Accurate,” he said.
She swirled the ice cubes, watched them clink.
“You did it,” she said. “The thing you said you were going to do when you were nineteen in a shitty café.”
“Build something that mattered,” he said.
“Escape,” she corrected softly.
He looked down, then back up.
“I did both,” he said. “I left. I… don’t feel like I’ve fully escaped.”
“What does that even mean?” she asked.
He leaned in slightly, forearms on the table. The bar’s dim light caught the edge of his jaw.
“It means,” he said, “that every time I push code, I’m thinking about whether my mother’s water pressure is going to stay steady. Whether your brother’s bus is going to show up. Whether Leah’s nephew gets stopped and frisked because some predictive model told a cop to be on that corner at that time.”
“You’re not the police,” she said.
“No,” he said. “But I can make it easier or harder for them to be in some places.”
She sighed.
“You know, for a guy flirting with godhood, you’re surprisingly neurotic,” she said.
He laughed, startled.
“Flirting with godhood?” he repeated. “That’s what we’re calling it now.”
“That’s what the city thinks,” she said. “That you’re one bad mood away from flipping a switch and plunging Brooklyn into darkness.”
He sipped his Negroni.
“Do you think that?” he asked. Serious now.
She met his gaze.
“I think no one person should have their fingers on that many levers,” she said. “You included.”
He nodded slowly.
“Then write that,” he said. “Louder.”
“I am,” she said. “Part Two drops Monday.”
He winced. “Should I preemptively apologize to Carla?”
“She knew what she signed up for,” Olivia said.
The bartender slid their drinks onto the table.
She took a long sip.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe the low light, maybe the adrenaline dump after days of high-strung focus—but the edges of the world softened.
She found herself leaning in a little closer.
“So,” he said. “Off the record… how are *you*?”
She snorted. “You’re terrible at boundaries.”
“I meant… in general,” he said. “Life. Work. Not in relation to me.”
She considered.
“Tired,” she said. “But in a good way. I like the work. I like… digging. Exposing things. It’s the closest I get to feeling like I’m not screaming into the void.”
“Successful screaming,” he said. “People listen.”
“Some of them,” she said. “The ones who already cared. The ones I need to reach? The ones zoning neighborhoods into oblivion? They skim and hire more lobbyists.”
“Cynical,” he said.
“Realistic,” she corrected.
He studied her face.
“You always were… sharp,” he said. “I think you’ve sharpened further.”
“Is that a compliment?” she asked.
“It’s an observation,” he said. “And a compliment. I like that you’re not… soft around the edges.”
She raised a brow. “And if I was?”
He hesitated. “I’d worry more about you,” he said. “This city eats soft people alive.”
“You’re one to talk,” she said. “Concrete jawline, glass tower, coded ramparts.”
He smirked.
They fell into an easier rhythm then. Stories about their mothers. About Marco’s latest get-rich-quick scheme (“He’s selling sneakers online now,” Olivia groaned. “He calls himself a ‘reseller.’”). About Samir’s obsession with whiteboard markers.
At one point, he reached across the table to demonstrate some absurd gesture Samir had made and his fingers brushed hers.
Heat shot up her arm.
She didn’t yank away.
Neither did he.
The bar blurred for a second. The noise, the clink of glasses, the low music—all faded.
It was just his hand, warm over hers, his thumb pressing lightly against her knuckles.
“I missed this,” he said quietly.
Her pulse roared in her ears.
“This?” she said. “Bad metaphors and secondhand jokes?”
“Talking to you,” he said. “Arguing. Having someone call me on my shit and still… sit across from me.”
Her chest squeezed.
“Don’t do that,” she said, voice low.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Make me the exception,” she said. “I’m not special, Jake. You have people. Friends. A team that would probably walk into traffic for you.”
“They’d walk around it and then file a Jira ticket about poor signage,” he said. “But I get your point.”
He turned his hand, laced his fingers with hers.
She let him.
“Liv,” he said softly.
Her name in his mouth. Damn him.
“You are… special to me,” he said. “Still.”
She swallowed hard.
“Ten years is a long time to carry a torch,” she said, trying for lightness and failing.
“Not a torch,” he said. “More like an unresolved subroutine. Always running in the background. Occasionally crashing the system.”
She huffed a laugh that felt too close to a sob.
“There it is,” she said. “The code metaphor. I knew it was coming.”
“You bring it out in me,” he said.
His thumb stroked over the back of her hand, slow.
Heat pooled low in her belly.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispered.
“Probably,” he whispered back.
He leaned closer.
She could see the darker ring around his irises. The faint scar near his left eyebrow where he’d run into a fence as a kid.
“I’m not… twenty-two anymore,” he said. “I know how to make room now.”
Her breath hitched.
“Room for what?” she asked.
“For more than code,” he said. “For… you. If you’d let me try.”
The word hung between them.
Try.
Not *have*. Not *get back*. *Try.*
Her chest ached.
“I don’t…” She swallowed. “I don’t know if I can risk that.”
He nodded, eyes searching her face.
“I know,” he said. “I’m not asking for an answer tonight. Or next week. I just… needed you to know that it’s not… one-sided.”
“Jake,” she said. “You think I don’t know that? You think I can sit in a diner with you and not feel… something?”
His fingers tightened on hers.
“Then what are we doing?” he asked, voice rough.
She let out a shaky breath.
“Trying not to light the match when we’re both still standing in gasoline,” she said.
He laughed, pained.
“That’s… vivid,” he said.
The bartender dropped the check on their table with a clatter, oblivious.
They both jumped.
Reality snapped back in.
“Let me,” he said, reaching.
She put a hand on the bill too.
“I said round two was on me,” she said. “And I meant it.”
“Stubborn,” he murmured.
“You like that about me,” she said.
He smiled, soft.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
They untangled fingers long enough for her to slide her card in.
In the short distance from the bar to the door, their shoulders brushed twice.
Outside, the air was cold and damp, fog from the river rolling in.
They stood on the sidewalk, under the flickering neon of the bar sign.
“Do you ever… regret it?” he asked suddenly.
“Leaving?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Us.”
She closed her eyes briefly.
“When I’m honest with myself?” she said. “Yes. And no. I regret how it went down. I regret how long it took me to stop being angry. But… I don’t regret choosing myself.”
He nodded, jaw tight.
“You?” she asked.
“I regret hurting you,” he said. “I regret not listening. I regret thinking I could… make it up to you later, when I’d ‘made it.’”
He looked down at his hands.
“But I don’t regret building this,” he said. “Even if it cost us. That sounds… selfish, I know. But if I hadn’t—”
“I know,” she said. “You’d still be in South Side. Coding in your bedroom. Angry at the world.”
He gave a small, pained smile.
“You always did understand me,” he said. “Even when you wanted to strangle me.”
“I still want to strangle you,” she said. “Regularly.”
He laughed.
Silence stretched, charged.
Without really thinking, she reached up.
Her fingers brushed the collar of his jacket, straightening it. A silly, intimate gesture that felt far too familiar for two people who’d spent a decade apart.
He froze.
“Liv,” he said, voice low.
She looked up.
The city blurred around them. Horns. Distant sirens. A couple arguing on the opposite corner.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
She felt the pull like gravity.
Her body leaned in before her brain could vote.
Their noses brushed.
His breath feathered over her lips.
Every nerve screamed *Yes.*
Her phone buzzed, a frantic vibration in her pocket.
She jumped.
The spell snapped.
She stepped back, heart pounding.
“Shit,” she said. “I—I have to—”
She fumbled for the phone.
*Ma*, the screen flashed.
“Hija,” her mother’s voice came, breathless when she answered. “Your uncle—he fell. We’re at the hospital. Can you—?”
“I’m coming,” Olivia said instantly. “Text me which one.”
She hung up, adrenaline burning off whatever heat had fogged her brain.
Jake’s face was taut with concern now.
“What happened?” he asked.
“My uncle,” she said. “ER. I have to go.”
“Okay,” he said. “Do you need—”
“No,” she said. “I’m good. It’s—this is—”
She gestured between them, tripping over her words for the first time all night.
He nodded.
“Go,” he said. “Text me… if you want. When you know.”
She hesitated, then surprised them both by stepping forward.
She pressed a quick, fierce kiss to his cheek.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” he asked, stunned.
“For… not being a complete asshole this time,” she said.
A corner of his mouth lifted, even through the worry.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She turned and ran toward the subway, his gaze on her back like a warmth she couldn’t quite shake.
As she descended into the damp underground, debt and blood and family crisis surged back to the forefront.
Whatever had almost happened on that sidewalk would have to wait.
If it should happen at all.
Above, the city lights flickered.
Somewhere in the glass and steel, code hummed. Buses moved. Sensors pinged.
And in the fault lines between past and present, something had shifted.
Not broken.
Not yet.
But cracked.
And cracks, Olivia knew, were where the light—or the flood—got in.