The conference room lights were too bright.
They always were. Not just here—in every corporate office he’d ever been in. LEDs that buzzed just at the edge of hearing, reflecting off glass and chrome, leaching depth from faces until everyone looked slightly unreal.
Declan Hale sat at the head of the table and kept his eyes on the numbers in front of him. Numbers were safe. They didn’t lie unless someone made them. They didn’t shift expression or roll their eyes or exchange little glances that he could never quite decode on the fly.
“—so if we assume a ten percent haircut on their stated EBITDA, we’re still looking at a multiple that’s… aggressive.” That was Eliza, his CFO. Efficient, sharp. “If we go above fifteen billion, the board is going to—”
“They’ll grumble,” he said, flipping to the next page, “and then they’ll vote yes.”
“Assuming we can line up the financing,” added Victor, Head of Corporate Development, tapping his pen. “The banks are skittish. NexTelis is—”
“A dinosaur with good bones,” Declan interrupted. “Their legacy contracts are messy, but their network effects are real. We can strip the bloat, keep the arteries.”
“Nice visual,” Eliza muttered.
“I don’t do nice,” he said automatically. “I do accurate.”
A few of the board members around the table shifted. He caught it in his peripheral vision: a stiff shoulder, a throat clearing. Discomfort.
He’d overshot. Again.
He took a breath, the way his therapist had taught him. In for four, hold for four, out for six.
“Look,” he said, modulating his voice. Less flat. More… approachable. “NexTelis is rotting in places. That’s true. It’s also true that they own crucial infrastructure that everyone uses and no one else has bothered to optimize. We can do that. No one is better positioned to do that. Unless you all want to wait five years and watch Helix or Caelum eat our lunch.”
He watched their faces now. The board. Ten people, seven in the room, three on screens. Demand forecasting in human form.
A slight lean forward from Patel—that was good. He respected risk. A tight jaw from Marie. She worried about optics. So did half of Twitter.
“Public perception is already an issue,” she said. “NexTelis has a reputation in certain communities.”
“Certain communities?” He couldn’t help it; his eyebrow twitched. “Which ones, specifically?”
She hesitated. “Small manufacturers. Regional suppliers. There were stories, back in the day, about… aggressive tactics. Squeezing out smaller operators.”
Aggressive tactics. He knew the euphemisms. He’d read the old lawsuits. The filings. The union grievances. The little protests that had fizzled when judges had sided with the bigger lawyers, the bigger wallets.
“We’re not them,” he said.
“We will be,” Marie said. “As far as the public sees it. You buy the company, you buy the sins.”
“We buy the assets,” he corrected. “And we decide what to do with them.”
Eliza shot him a quick look. More softness, it said. Less… you.
He’d asked her to do that. To nudge him when he slid too far into the part of his brain that saw everything as moving pieces, solvable if you just applied enough pressure at exactly the right point.
He tried again. “Yes, we’ll inherit their reputation. That’s exactly why we should buy them. You don’t get to change a system from the outside. You get in, find the rot, cut it out. We can do that. We *will* do that. But only if we own the damn thing.”
That landed better. A couple of nods. Someone murmured, “Fair point.”
“Okay,” he said, sensing the tide tipping. “So we agree on the strategic rationale. The question is execution. Can we pull this off in thirty days?”
Victor groaned quietly. “We don’t have a choice. They built the runway. We’re just praying there’s not a cliff at the end.”
Declan flipped to the timeline slide. His own annotations cluttered the margins—call times, contact names, risk flags.
“Diligence team is in place,” he said. “Regulatory pre-briefs have been positive. We’ve modeled over thirty integration scenarios. We know where the quick wins are. What we don’t have—yet—is their full internal data set or management buy-in beyond the CEO and CFO.”
“And they’re… cooperative?” asked one of the dial-in board members, voice grainy.
“They’re cooperative,” Declan said, “in the way people are when they realize the walls are closing in and they’d rather sell than suffocate.”
A faint chuckle around the table. Gallows humor played well in certain circles.
His watch buzzed lightly against his wrist.
He resisted the urge to check it. He knew what it was: the calendar ping he’d set himself. Wrap the board discussion by ten. Move to the NexTelis war room by ten-fifteen. Skip lunch if necessary.
He didn’t need food. He needed this done.
Eliza cleared her throat. “We also need to talk about your bandwidth, Declan.”
“My bandwidth is fine,” he said.
“It’s not,” she countered, in that careful tone she reserved for moments when she was half CFO, half friend. “You’re personally running point on the acquisition strategy, the AI optimization rollout for East Asia, and the Series D prep for the energy division. You need to delegate.”
“I have delegated,” he said. “You’re here.”
She didn’t smile. “The last three months, you’ve burned through three executive assistants and a temp. You’re scheduling your own calls. You’re answering investor emails at two in the morning. You’re coding on weekends.”
“Coding is relaxing,” he said. “I like it.”
“That’s not the point,” she said. “You can’t do everything. And you *can’t* keep dropping balls on stupid things because no one’s there to catch them for you.”
He bristled. “What balls have I dropped?”
She ticked them off with merciless precision. “You forgot the fireside chat with the Stanford alumni group. You missed your niece’s birthday party. You stood up the minister of energy from—”
“I called him back,” Declan said.
“Three hours later,” she said. “He was ‘very understanding.’ Which is politician-speak for ‘mildly insulted but eager to stay on your good side because you’re now too big to ignore.’”
“I told him I was in the middle of something important,” Declan said.
“You were reading code reviews,” she said. “You *like* reading code reviews. That doesn’t mean you should prioritize them over government relationships.”
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I don’t… prioritize poorly. I… hyperfocus. Sometimes. That’s why I need people to gate what gets in.”
“And you don’t have that right now,” she said. “You do realize that.”
“I have an EA starting Monday,” he said. “Margot Chen.”
The name felt… interesting in his mouth. Solid.
“You haven’t even met her,” one of the older board members said. “You’re sure she’s the one?”
“I’ve seen enough,” he said.
He’d seen her case studies, her references, the way she’d handled a crisis while her CEO had been halfway through a bottle of whiskey. He’d heard her voice. Calm, firm, laced with a dry humor that had surprised him.
And he’d heard the moment she’d gone silent at the word *NexTelis*.
He hadn’t expected that.
He pushed the memory aside for now.
“I’ve made my share of hiring mistakes,” he said. “This won’t be one of them. We have alignment.”
“You talked to her,” Eliza said, eyes narrowing. “You *never* talk to EAs before hire.”
“She insisted,” he said.
A flicker at the corner of her mouth. “And you like people who insist.”
“I like people who know what they need to be effective,” he corrected. “She negotiated terms, hours, benefits. She told me she won’t do emotional labor. She also said she’d tell me no if I’m wrong.”
“Bold,” someone murmured.
He felt a faint tug of something that might have been… anticipation.
It had been a long time since anyone new at work had interested him. Most people stopped being interesting when he’d mapped their patterns: what they said versus what they did, how they reacted under pressure, which anxieties ran them.
He suspected this woman would take longer to map.
He turned back to the board. “My bandwidth is fine. It will be better Monday. Focus on the deal. Everything else is secondary.”
The older man on the screen cleared his throat. “Your health is not secondary, Declan.”
“I have a doctor,” he said. “And a therapist. And noise-cancelling headphones. I’m covered.”
Scattered chuckles. A few disapproving looks. He let it wash over him.
He’d learned to mimic certain things. Smiles, nods, strategically placed self-deprecating jokes. It smoothed edges in rooms like this. Helped the neurotypicals relax.
He could feel the mask on his face now. The way his muscles arranged themselves into Approachable CEO. Not too stiff, not too loose. Hands still on the table. Eye contact distributed evenly around the room, never lingering too long on any one person.
He could do this for hours. Days. Weeks.
But every minute he spent in this mode cost him.
It was like holding a heavy weight at arm’s length. Fine at first, then gradual burn, then a shaking he could hide if he clenched his jaw and breathed just right.
He checked the clock. 9:48.
Twelve minutes to go.
He pushed them through the rest of the agenda, keeping things tight. When someone digressed into tangents, he gently but firmly steered back. When someone repeated a point from ten minutes earlier, he cut them off. Politely. Mostly.
By 10:01, they were standing, papers rustling, chairs scraping.
“Good work,” said Patel, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed. He forced himself not to flinch. “You pull this off, you’ll be the man who tamed NexTelis.”
“I don’t want to tame them,” he said. “I want to dissect them.”
Patel laughed like that was a joke.
One by one, they filed out. Screens blinked off.
Silence crept in, broken only by the faint buzz of the lights.
Declan exhaled, long and slow, and let his shoulders drop the half inch he’d held them up.
The door opened again.
Eliza poked her head back in. “Eat.”
He frowned. “What?”
She held up a white paper bag. “Breakfast sandwich. I saw your calendar. You didn’t have time this morning. This has eggs. And carbs. You need both.”
He eyed the bag like it might bite him. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re never hungry,” she said. “That’s not the metric we’re using. Eat half now, half in two hours. Or I’ll stand here and stare at you until you do.”
He rolled his eyes, but he took the bag. “You’re very pushy for someone who works *for* me.”
“I work *with* you,” she said. “And I like my job, so I’d prefer you didn’t pass out in front of the SEC next month.”
He grunted. “Dramatic.”
“You haven’t seen dramatic until you’ve seen a board member faint,” she said. “Trust me. Not pretty.”
He opened the bag, the smell of egg and cheese hitting his nose. His stomach did a small, surprised flip.
“You like her?” Eliza asked.
“Who?”
“Margot,” she said. “The new hire.”
“I haven’t met her,” he said.
“You *talked* to her,” she said. “That’s practically a wedding ring for you.”
He scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She smirked. “You know HR calls you ‘intense’ behind your back, right?”
“They call me worse things to my face,” he said. “Intense isn’t even in the top ten.”
“They don’t understand you,” she said, shrugging. “They’re not used to someone who doesn’t play politics. Or pretend to like people they don’t.”
He chewed mechanically, the texture of the bread oddly rough against his tongue. “I pretend.”
“Not well,” she said. “Which is why you need someone like her. Someone who can do the smoothing so you don’t have to. You sure she knows what she’s walking into?”
“I told her I’m autistic,” he said. “I told her I don’t do small talk, that I’ll forget to eat unless someone reminds me, that I hate surprises and fluorescent lights.”
Eliza blinked. “You *told* her that.”
“Yes.”
“On the first call.”
“Yes.”
She whistled softly. “Either she’s going to run for the hills, or she’s exactly what you need.”
“She accepted,” he said.
“She might still run,” Eliza said. “People say yes in the abstract. Reality is messier.”
Reality was always messier. In his head, everything was clean lines and matrices. He saw dependencies, feedback loops, pressure points. But people refused to behave like code.
“Why the hell did you tell her about NexTelis?” Eliza asked suddenly.
He stiffened. “Because she asked what she was walking into.”
“She didn’t need deal specifics yet,” she said. “You know how sensitive this is. One leak and—”
“She’s my EA,” he said sharply. “She *will* need to know. Better to set expectations.”
“Sure,” she said slowly. “But you also dropped our biggest non-public secret on a woman you haven’t onboarded yet.”
“She’s signed an NDA,” he said.
“She’s *about to* sign an NDA,” she corrected. “Big difference, legally.”
He shrugged, the movement tight. “She’ll sign. She’s not stupid.”
“That’s not the point,” she said. “You don’t usually give people that much that fast.”
He hesitated. “She asked what she needed to know to do her job well. That’s… efficient.”
Eliza watched him a second longer. “And when you said ‘NexTelis,’ she went quiet.”
He looked at her, surprised. “How did you—?”
“She’s human,” Eliza said. “You told someone with manufacturing-adjacent experience that we’re targeting one of the most notorious consolidators in that space. Of *course* she reacted. You’re not the only one who reads subtext, you know.”
His mind flicked back to the call. The silence. The sharp edge when she’d said, *Spell it.*
“She said it wasn’t a problem,” he said.
“People lie,” Eliza said gently.
He huffed a humorless breath. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
She shook her head, then brightened. “Okay. New thing: HR has a pool going.”
“A what?”
“A betting pool.” She smiled, downright wicked now. “On how long she lasts.”
He stared at her, sandwich halfway to his mouth. “That’s… unprofessional.”
“Deeply,” she agreed cheerfully. “Also deeply human. They’ve never seen you keep an assistant longer than eight months. They’re bored. They gamble. So far, the range is from two weeks to a year.”
“Put me down for eighteen months,” he said dryly. “I’ll skew the odds.”
She laughed. “You’re not allowed to bet. Insider trading.”
He took another bite, chewing more slowly now. Eighteen months. The idea of having someone reliable in that role for more than half a year was… novel.
And dangerous.
He didn’t like depending on people. People left. They burned out. They moved on to more “balanced” jobs, like managing trusts for bored heirs. Or starting their own companies, which he understood more, but still.
His first EA, Taylor, had lasted three years. He’d still been writing code in a cramped office then, ten people and a dream. She’d left when her boyfriend proposed and they’d decided to move to Denver “for a slower life.”
He’d given her a very generous bonus and two weeks of sincere attempts at small talk. She’d cried in his office. He’d patted her shoulder awkwardly while she sobbed, “You’re going to be *huge*, Dec. You’re going to change everything.” Then she’d gone.
He’d promised himself, then, not to let anyone get that close professionally again. It had hurt. More than it logically should have.
But as the company grew, the demands on the role did too. His second EA had been technically competent but flustered easily. His third had been brilliant and brittle, burning bright for six months before collapsing in on herself. The fourth had been a disaster from day one, hired by HR over his objections because “she interviewed so well.”
He didn’t interview well. He didn’t trust people who did.
He’d fired the fourth himself after she’d booked him on back-to-back red-eyes and forgotten to schedule any buffer between a Hong Kong investor dinner and a D.C. hearing.
“You’re difficult,” she’d hissed as she’d packed her things. “Do you know that? You make everything hard for no reason. You’re obsessed. You need… help.”
He had help. A therapist. A handful of people who understood him. A calendar. Systems.
What he didn’t have was someone who could sit at the center of the storm and not get swept away.
He’d watched videos of Margot managing chaos. The way she’d physically inserted herself between a furious journalist and her stumbling CEO, smiling coolly as she said, *Of course we’ll answer your questions, but right now, my boss needs to get on stage. Email me. I’ll make sure you get what you need.*
He’d watched her scan a room, taking in who was talking to whom, who was texting under the table, who looked like they were about to bolt.
Pattern recognition. Not unlike his own, except hers was tuned to humans instead of systems.
He needed that.
Needed… her.
He set the sandwich down, appetite gone as fast as it had come.
“Stop worrying,” he told Eliza, more brusque than he intended. “I’m not going to scare her off. HR doesn’t get to win their little pool.”
“You don’t *know* you won’t scare her off,” Eliza said. “You could at least *pretend* to try not to.”
“I told her what I am,” he said. “If she still comes Monday, that’s on her. I won’t… mask… more for her than I do for anyone else.”
“You like her voice,” Eliza said, unbothered. “You soften when you say her name.”
He scowled. “I do not.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, unconvinced. “Anyway, I like her already. Anyone who negotiates with you before you sign a contract is my kind of woman.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t poach her. I need her more than you do.”
She smirked. “I’ll try to resist.”
His watch buzzed again. 10:15.
He stood, the chair legs scraping softly on the floor. “War room.”
“Eliza?” he added as they walked toward the door.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell HR about the pool. I don’t want them thinking I… care.”
She laughed. “You do care.”
“I care about efficiency,” he said. “Losing an EA every few months is inefficient.”
“Keep telling yourself that, boss,” she said.
***
His office on the thirty-third floor wasn’t the biggest in the building. He’d insisted on that. The board chair had a larger one, more for optics than necessity.
Declan’s was a glass box on the corner, all windows and straight lines and screens. The view stretched over lower Manhattan, the river gleaming steel-gray. Some people found it distracting. He found it… background noise.
He kept the lights dimmer here, had fought facilities on it months ago. “This is a workplace, Mr. Hale, not a spa,” they’d said.
“This is *my* workplace,” he’d replied. “Adjust the lux or I’ll work from home and you can coordinate everything by Zoom.”
They’d caved.
He stepped in now and immediately relaxed half a notch. His space. His rules. His systems.
Desk: clear, except for his laptop, a notebook, a mug of pens sorted by color, and a single plant—some kind of low-maintenance succulent his sister had dumped on him last Christmas with the note, *You can’t kill this, even if you forget it exists.*
Shelves: filled with books, not awards. Technical manuals. History of infrastructure. Two shelves of sci-fi he never had time to reread.
On one wall: a massive screen displaying the NexTelis dashboard. Stock price. News feeds. Internal timeline.
On the other: a whiteboard covered in arrows and boxes. Integration plan v7.3.
He sank into his chair, exhaling as the door clicked shut behind him. He toggled the glass to opaque with a tap on his phone, blotting out the office beyond.
Silence.
He rolled his neck, stretched his fingers, and opened his email.
Four hundred and twelve unread.
He didn’t flinch. He triaged. Subject lines, senders, flags. Within five minutes, half were in folders, a hundred auto-responded, a dozen delegated.
He replied to the ones only he could handle. Brief. Precise. No greetings beyond names, no unnecessary pleasantries. It took him twenty minutes to get through enough that the number ticked under two hundred.
Then he opened the file labeled: *Chen, Margot – Dossier*.
It wasn’t his term. That was HR’s. He called it data.
He’d skimmed it last week when the recruiter had first floated her name. Now, with her acceptance, he dug deeper.
Education: NYU, double major in business and East Asian studies. GPA high but not obsessive. Worked through school.
First job: assistant to CEO of a mid-size import/export firm. Two years. Left when the CEO sold the company.
Second: EA to founder of a fintech startup. Chaos. She’d lasted four years, through three funding rounds and one near-death event when the Series C had almost fallen through. Her boss’s reference: *She saved my ass more times than I can count. If she hadn’t been there, we’d be bankrupt.*
Third: Veridian Media. Glamour, headlines, the streaming outage.
He watched the clip embedded in the file. A shaky phone video from someone in the war room.
Chaos. People shouting over each other. Tablets and laptops everywhere. The CEO, red-faced, waving his arms.
Then she stepped into frame. Calm. Dark hair pulled back. Green dress. A clipboard, of all things.
“Stop,” she said loudly, and the room snapped to attention. “We’re not helping anything by yelling. We need one source of truth, one chain of communication, and one decision-maker. Leo, that’s you. Everyone else reports through teams. I’m your filter. If you don’t like that, take it up with me when we’re back online.”
Someone muttered something snide off-camera. Her head turned, eyes narrowing.
“You have a suggestion?” she asked.
A pause. Then, grudgingly, “No.”
“Then find a station and get me a status update in ten minutes,” she said. “Or get out of the room.”
He felt his mouth twitch.
He knew that look. That tone.
It was the same one he used when junior engineers second-guessed his architectural calls without having read the spec.
She held the room. Not with charm. With clarity.
He closed the video.
His phone buzzed.
New email: *Subject: Background materials – Margot Chen*
She’d written already.
He opened it.
> Mr. Hale, > > As discussed, I’d like any non-privileged background materials you can share on the NexTelis acquisition, your current calendar structure, and your preferred communication channels before Monday. > > I work best when I understand context. > > Best, > > Margot
No fluff. No “hope you’re well.”
He typed back.
> Margot, > > See attached: > > – NexTelis deal overview (public + internal high-level) > – My current calendar (this week + rolling) > – Communication guidelines for exec team (we’ll update together) > > Useful context: > > 1. I don’t take unscheduled calls unless it’s an emergency. Define emergency as: something is on fire (literal or existential). > 2. I prefer written summaries over verbal recaps. Bullet points. Max 1 page. > 3. I respond better to direct language than hints. > > You’ll get access to internal systems Monday. We’ll build the rest then. > > D.
He hesitated, then added:
> P.S. If you have any conflicts with NexTelis—past or present—I need to know before you’re in the building.
He hovered over send for a second.
It wasn’t… standard. But the way she’d reacted nagged at him.
He sent it.
Then he opened her LinkedIn, scrolling past endorsements and headshots until he hit the comments on a post from eight years ago. Someone tagging her in an article about small manufacturers protesting NexTelis contracts.
She hadn’t replied.
He closed the tab.
Sometimes, data couldn’t tell you everything. Sometimes, you had to wait for people to talk.
Waiting was not his strength.
He put his headphones on, queued up white noise, and dove into the NexTelis financial model.
By the time he looked up again, three hours had passed. His inbox had filled and been emptied twice more. His watch buzzed with reminders he’d dismissed without reading.
He stretched, the muscles in his shoulders screaming.
He checked his email.
No reply from Margot yet.
He told himself that was good. If she was thinking about it, maybe she’d tell him something useful.
If she didn’t… well.
He’d see her Monday.
And then he’d know if she was going to be another variable he had to manage.
Or something else entirely.
***
On Friday afternoon, his therapist asked, “Why are you scowling?”
He’d almost skipped the session. Thirty minutes in a bland room with a woman who could see through his bullshit felt like a poor use of time when he had three models to validate and a call with a senator at four.
But his assistant—temp number four, briefly—had once rescheduled three sessions in a row.
He’d paid for that. In misread cues. In rising static in his head. In a meltdown that had left him shaking in the server room for forty minutes.
So now, therapy was non-negotiable. Blocked. Sacred.
He shrugged. “I’m thinking.”
“About what?” Dr. Kline asked, pushing her glasses up. She was in her fifties, calm, with soft gray hair and a wardrobe of exactly five cardigans rotated like clockwork.
“The deal,” he said automatically.
Her eyebrows rose a fraction. “What part of the deal makes your mouth go like that?”
He realized his jaw was clenched. He forced it to relax. “We’re under a tight timeline. The board is nervous. NexTelis is… messy.”
She waited.
He sighed. “And I hired a new EA.”
“Ah.” She smiled faintly. “The revolving door position.”
“It’s not a revolving door by design,” he said, irritation flaring. “I’m not trying to burn them out.”
“I didn’t say you were,” she said. “But the pattern is there.”
“I know,” he said tightly.
“So what’s different this time?” she asked.
He thought of Margot’s voice. The steel under the calm.
“She’s… better qualified,” he said. “More experienced. She’s handled people like me before.”
“‘People like you,’” she repeated. “Autistic men?”
“Intense founders,” he said. “CEOs who think the world will end if they miss a meeting.”
She tilted her head. “Will it?”
He scowled. “No. But the probability of catastrophic failure increases when key interdependencies aren’t managed properly.”
“That’s a very technical way to say ‘things fall apart when I’m not there,’” she said.
He didn’t reply.
“You mentioned NexTelis,” she went on. “And then you got that look.”
“What look?” he asked.
“The one you get when you bump into a problem you can’t solve with math,” she said. “What happened?”
“She reacted,” he said. “When I told her. Went very quiet. Then said it wasn’t a problem.”
“And you believed her?” she asked.
“I want to,” he said. “She’s… efficient. Direct. It would be cleaner if it wasn’t an issue.”
“But.” Her eyes softened. “You don’t believe her.”
He rubbed his temple. “I’ve read the case files. NexTelis wiped out a lot of small operators. If her family was in that space… there could be history.”
“You’re good at patterns,” she said. “Except when it comes to your own.”
He frowned. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you’re very good at reading other people’s data,” she said. “But sometimes you skip your own emotional fields. What does it feel like, thinking about this woman working on a deal that might have hurt her family?”
He shifted, restless. “It feels… inefficient.”
Her lips twitched. “Try again. Using feelings words.”
He inhaled slowly. “It feels… risky. Like a variable I can’t quantify. Like I’m… bringing someone into a situation that might hurt them.”
“And that bothers you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, sharper than intended.
“Because…?” she prompted.
He shut his eyes briefly. “Because if she leaves… if she flames out… I’ll have to start over. Again.”
She let the silence stretch.
“And?” she asked quietly. “Is that all?”
He thought of Taylor, three years of shared systems and shorthand. Of the way he’d reached for his phone the week after she left, about to text her, before remembering she was in Denver with a man who liked hiking.
He thought of late nights in the office, the hum of servers, the way an EA’s presence, just outside the door, shifted the weight of everything. Someone else awake. Someone else *holding*.
He opened his eyes.
“It feels like… loss,” he said finally. The word tasted odd. “Before I’ve even met her.”
She nodded. “Anticipatory grief.”
“That’s irrational,” he said. “I haven’t built anything with her yet. There’s nothing to lose.”
“Brains aren’t rational,” she said. “Not even yours.”
He bristled. Then forced himself to breathe.
“You could talk to her about it,” Dr. Kline said. “About NexTelis. About expectations. About your fears.”
“I told her I’m autistic,” he said. “That’s already more personal disclosure than I like in a first conversation.”
“And she stayed,” she said. “That tells you something.”
“It tells me she’s not easily scared off,” he said. “Or that she needs the money enough to override her caution.”
“Why does that bother you?” she asked.
“Because if the only reason she’s coming is money,” he said slowly, “she’ll leave as soon as something better comes along.”
“You want her to want the job,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
He stared at the ceiling. “Because I’m tired of explaining myself to strangers every six months.”
“Ah,” she said softly.
He hated how exposed that made him feel.
“We’re almost out of time,” she said. “Homework?”
He groaned. “I don’t have—”
“You do,” she said. “You always do. Before Monday, write down three clear expectations you have for this new working relationship. And three things you’re willing to offer in return that you haven’t offered others.”
He frowned. “Like what?”
“Like not texting at two in the morning unless the building is on fire,” she said. “Like respecting her boundaries if she says no. Like telling her what you told me today.”
“That’s—” He shook his head. “Too much.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you’re the one who keeps telling me you want to be understood without having to constantly mask. That doesn’t happen by magic, Declan. It happens by deliberately choosing where to take the mask off.”
He stared at her. “With my EA.”
“With the person who will see you more hours a week than almost anyone else,” she said. “Yes.”
He stood when their time was up, already mentally back with NexTelis.
But as he walked down the hall, her words stuck.
Where to take the mask off.
He wasn’t sure he knew how to do that selectively. It was all or nothing. On or off.
But when he thought of Monday morning, of the moment she’d walk into his office at eight sharp with a notebook and a view of his chaos, his chest did that weird tight thing again.
He didn’t know yet if he wanted to take the mask off.
He did know he wanted to see how she looked at him.
Like a problem to solve.
Or like something else.