The storm passed.
The city dried out. Traffic patterns normalized. Long Beach cleared the backlog.
The crane operator, whose name was Miguel, went home to his wife and newborn daughter. HR sent flowers. Marcus quietly sent a check.
Life, as it did, moved on.
On the surface, nothing in the office changed after that night.
Marcus didn’t mention coming to the suite.
She didn’t either.
They didn’t touch. Not beyond the incidental brush of fingers over a tablet, the occasional hand-off of a file.
But the air between them felt…different. Charged. Like a fault line underfoot.
Every time she walked past the guest suite sign on 48 in the following weeks, her stomach flipped.
Late nights at her desk, she’d catch herself glancing at his closed door and wonder if he was thinking about it too—the almost, the no, the half-second of his forehead resting against hers.
She did what she always did when reality got too complicated.
She overcompensated at work.
She was sharper. Faster. More efficient.
She anticipated his needs before he articulated them. She caught a typo in a quarterly report that would have resulted in an embarrassing correction on the earnings call. She saved him from double-booking himself with a board member and a union rep on the same afternoon.
Oliver noticed.
“You’re spoiling him,” he said one afternoon, leaning against her desk while Marcus was on a call.
“He pays me,” she said. “I consider it an exchange of goods and services.”
“In every marriage,” Oliver said, “there’s one over-functioner and one under-functioner. If this were a marriage, you’d be…”
“Filing for divorce,” she said. “This is a job, not a relationship.”
“You sure about that?” he asked, gaze sympathetic.
Her stomach tightened. “Is this the part where you give me an HR-approved speech about boundaries?”
“Veronica already did that,” he said. “Along with at least three thinly veiled threats about what will happen to me if I don’t ‘monitor the emotional climate on sixty-two.’”
“She made you emotional hall monitor?” Maya asked. “I feel safe already.”
He smiled. “Jokes aside. Are you okay?”
She hesitated.
Oliver wasn’t neutral.
He was Marcus’s ally. His friend. His CFO.
But he was also, weirdly, one of the more emotionally literate adults in this building.
“I’m…managing,” she said.
“That’s a very…Marcus answer,” he said.
“Maybe he’s rubbing off,” she said, then regretted her phrasing instantly as his brows shot up.
“Poor choice of words,” she muttered. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen him like this before.”
“Like what?” she asked warily.
“Careful,” Oliver said. “Self-editing. He usually bulldozes through messy things with money and apologies. With you, he’s…restrained.”
She swallowed. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It’s uncomfortable,” Oliver said. “For him. That doesn’t make it bad. Just…new.”
“I didn’t sign up to be his character development arc,” she said.
“Unfortunately,” Oliver said, “you don’t get to choose which stories you’re in.”
“I chose this one,” she said. “Applied for it, interviewed for it, signed a contract and everything.”
“You chose the job,” he said. “The rest is…emergent behavior.”
“You sound like my college stats professor,” she said.
“He sounds like me,” Oliver said. “I tutored him.”
She snorted. “Of course you did.”
Oliver’s expression softened. “Seriously. If this gets to be too much, you know you can move,” he said. “Lateral. Down. Different department. You’re good. People like working with you.”
A lump rose in her throat.
“Are you trying to poach me from your boss?” she asked.
“I’m trying to make sure you know you have options that aren’t ‘stay and be miserable’ or ‘leave and be broke,’” he said.
Emotion pricked behind her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “Really.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank yourself for being competent.”
He glanced toward Marcus’s office. The call light was still on.
“You’re not the only one on a fault line,” he said quietly. “He is too. Remember that.”
She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.
***
Fault lines shifted.
Sometimes slowly. Sometimes with one big jolt.
Their jolt came on a Tuesday afternoon two months later, wrapped in an innocuous subject line.
> From: Veronica Lopez > To: All Kane Global Senior Staff > Subject: Annual Leadership Summit & Retreat
Maya skimmed.
Three days. Off-site. A resort in Laguna. Strategic planning. “Leadership development.” Team building.
Mandatory for senior staff.
That included Marcus.
And Oliver.
And Jenna.
And, by extension, her.
She walked into Marcus’s office without knocking.
“You’re making me go to a feelings retreat?” she demanded, waving her phone.
He looked up from his laptop. “It’s not a feelings retreat. It’s a leadership summit.”
“With trust exercises,” she said. “And icebreakers. And probably a keynote about vulnerability.”
“Don’t read the marketing copy,” he said. “It’s optional.”
“The email says mandatory,” she said.
“For senior staff,” he said. “You’re not on that list.”
“I’m your assistant,” she said. “I coordinate. I schedule. I herd cats. You *want* me there.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
“You don’t have to come,” he said.
“I know I don’t have to,” she said. “But if I don’t, you’re going to text me at midnight asking where your notes are and whether you remembered to move your seven a.m. call.”
He considered that.
“Fine,” he said. “If you want to subject yourself to three days of Veronica’s trust falls, be my guest.”
“I’ll add it to my martyrdom résumé,” she said.
She stepped out and texted Kai.
Maya: *Three-day company retreat. Resort. Laguna. Kill me.*
Kai: *Is this the part in the romance novel where you and your boss share a room by accident and there’s only one bed?*
Maya: *If the hotel tries that shit, I will burn it down personally.*
Kai: *You say that now.*
Maya: *NO.*
Kai: *Okay okay. Jokes aside: you okay with this?*
Maya: *It’s work. It’s coastal. I’ll probably be too tired to ogle his forearms.*
Kai: *You underestimate yourself.*
Maya: *It’ll be fine. Line. Terms. Conditions.*
Kai: *You keep saying that like you’re trying to convince yourself.*
She was.
***
The resort was exactly what she expected a tech-adjacent corporate retreat venue to be.
Glass. Palm trees. Tasteful art. A lobby that smelled faintly of citrus and money.
The company had taken over a wing. Branded signage pointed toward conference rooms with names like *Pacifica* and *Aurora.*
Veronica checked them in with military efficiency. Room keys. Schedules. Color-coded lanyards.
“You’re in 614,” she told Maya. “Marcus is in 616.”
Maya swallowed.
“Adjacency is for logistical purposes,” Veronica added, as if she’d read her mind. “You’ll need to coordinate his sessions and calls.”
“Right,” Maya said, voice thin.
Veronica’s gaze lingered. “We can move you if you’re uncomfortable.”
Maya forced her shoulders to relax. “I’m fine,” she lied. “It’s three nights. I can handle doors.”
Veronica’s eyes softened. “I know you can,” she said. “If anything gets…weird, you come to me.”
“Define weird,” Maya said.
“You’ll know,” Veronica said. “We always do.”
The first day was…tolerable.
Keynote. Breakout sessions. A panel about “Leading Through Disruption.”
Maya sat in the back, laptop open, making notes for Marcus and occasionally snarking to herself in the margins.
He was on a panel about “Strategic Risk,” of course. He spoke in tight, efficient phrases. Other CEOs meandered; he cut to the bone.
On a break, he found her in a courtyard, hunched over her laptop under a palm tree.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked dryly.
“I haven’t been forced to do a trust fall yet,” she said. “So, on balance, yes.”
“Good,” he said. “I need you to push my nine a.m. tomorrow to ten.”
She pulled up his schedule. “You’re in a breakout on stakeholder engagement at ten.”
“I’d like to engage with my stakeholders by not being there,” he said. “Move it.”
“You can’t skip,” she said. “You’re on the panel.”
“Then swap it with the M&A roundtable at eleven,” he said.
She sighed. “You’re really bad at being a team player.”
“I’m very good at being a leader,” he said.
“Tell that to the facilitator with the Post-it notes,” she muttered.
He smiled, brief and real. “Come to the dinner.”
She blinked. “What dinner?”
“Tonight,” he said. “Veronica hasn’t sent the blast yet. Executive dinner. Eight. It’ll be small. You should be there. Hear the things people actually say when they’re not on panels.”
“Won’t I be…in the way?” she asked.
“You’ll be useful,” he said. “As you always are.”
The compliment—if that’s what it was—sent a little warmth through her.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
He nodded and walked back toward the main hall, posture already shifting into public mode.
She watched him go.
He didn’t look back.
***
The dinner was in a private dining room with a view of the ocean. Fifteen people at a long table. Board members. Division heads. Oliver. Jenna. A chef who introduced each course like a TED Talk.
Maya sat near the far end, between Jenna and a woman from European operations, listening more than she spoke.
Marcus was at the head, flanked by the board chair and an investor with too much tan and too white teeth.
He was…on.
Witty. Sharp. Engaged.
She’d seen him perform before—in interviews, on calls.
This was different.
He wasn’t selling a product or defending a strategy.
He was *leading*.
Setting tone. Deflecting egos. Steering conversation away from dangerous shoals.
“And what about work-life balance?” one board member’s wife cooed at one point, swirling her wine. “Marcus, dear, do you ever *relax*?”
The table chuckled, some fondly, some skeptically.
He glanced down the length of the table—just for a second.
His eyes snagged on hers.
Held.
Something flickered there. Amusement. Challenge. Something quieter.
“Rarely,” he said lightly, tearing his attention away. “But I’m told it’s very in this season.”
Laughter. The wife preened, pleased to have evoked a joke.
Maya took a sip of her drink, pulse thrumming.
The courses marched on.
By the time dessert arrived—some deconstructed citrus thing no one had room for—she’d made polite conversation about port regulations, Brexit, and the relative merits of European trains versus American.
People started to peel away around ten-thirty.
Early morning sessions. East Coast calls. Jet lag.
Marcus stayed until the last board member left, then excused himself.
She stood as well, murmured goodnights, and slipped out into the quiet hallway.
Her room was down a carpeted corridor, past tasteful prints of waves.
She unlocked her door and stepped inside.
Kicked off her heels. Exhaled.
She’d just started unzipping her dress when there was a knock.
Her heart jumped into her throat.
She yanked the zipper back up halfway, grabbed the hotel robe, and shrugged it on before opening the door a few inches.
Marcus.
Of course.
He’d taken off his tie. His shirt was unbuttoned at the throat. He looked more relaxed than she’d seen him in weeks—and more dangerous.
“Hi,” she said, pulse hammering.
“Hi,” he said.
They stared at each other.
“Everything okay?” she asked, because that was what she always asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I wanted to—”
He stopped. Looked like he might retreat.
She grabbed the door, irrationally afraid he’d disappear.
“To what?” she prompted.
He exhaled. “Apologize. In advance.”
She blinked. “That’s…ominous.”
“I’ve had three whiskeys,” he said. “I’m tired. My filters are…less effective.”
Her throat went dry.
“And you came to my room to warn me,” she said slowly.
“Yes,” he said.
“That’s…” She searched for a word. “…weirdly considerate.”
He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “I promised you I wouldn’t cross the line,” he said. “I’m reminding myself.”
“How’s that working?” she asked.
“Badly,” he said.
She swallowed.
“You could go to bed,” she suggested. “Cold shower. Meditation. Counting SEC regulations.”
He smiled faintly. “You always make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not,” she said quietly. “You’re not the only one…struggling.”
His eyes darkened.
“I know,” he said.
He took a half-step forward, stopping just shy of the threshold.
He didn’t try to come in.
He didn’t touch the door.
He just stood there, close enough that if she leaned an inch, she’d brush his chest.
“I needed you to know,” he said, voice low. “If I say something tonight or tomorrow that…crosses a line, I want you to understand it’s not calculated. It’s me being…weak.”
Her chest squeezed.
“Marcus,” she said softly. “That’s not your pitch.”
He blinked. “What?”
“You don’t want to be the man who says ‘forgive me, I’m weak’ to justify doing what he wants,” she said. “You’re the one who says ‘I know what I’m capable of and I choose not to.’”
He stared at her.
The air between them thrummed.
“I hate that you’re good at this,” he said.
“At…what?” she whispered.
“Seeing me,” he said bluntly.
Her hand tightened on the edge of the door.
“Is that what this is?” she asked. “You standing outside my room at eleven p.m. on day one of a corporate retreat—me seeing you?”
He smiled, a crooked, exhausted thing. “It’s me trying not to ask if you’ll let me in.”
The question hung there.
Naked. Terrible. Tempting.
She could.
She could step back. Open the door. Let him cross the threshold.
Three nights in adjacent rooms. Three days of sessions and poolside small talk.
She could have *this*, whatever *this* was, and deal with the fallout later.
Or she could close the door.
Stick to the line they’d drawn.
Lose…potential.
Keep…integrity.
“Maya,” he said quietly. “Tell me no.”
She almost laughed.
“You keep outsourcing your self-control to me,” she said.
“I trust yours more than mine,” he said.
She closed her eyes briefly.
“This is fucked up,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed.
She opened her eyes. Met his.
“No,” she said.
His jaw flexed. Once.
“Okay,” he said.
He stepped back.
Her heart did something ugly in her chest.
He caught the flicker in her expression.
“You think I’m angry,” he said.
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
“At you?” he said. “No.”
“At…what, then?” she asked.
“Time,” he said. “Context. Every choice I made when I was younger that led us here instead of somewhere…cleaner.”
Her throat tightened.
“I’m not clean either,” she said. “I’ve stayed in jobs too long because I was scared to leave. I’ve slept with people I shouldn’t have to fill a hole I didn’t know how to name. This isn’t…your unique sin, Marcus.”
He stared at her.
“I want you,” he said. “That’s not going away.”
Her pulse fluttered.
“I know,” she said. “Me too.”
“Then why—” He broke off. Shook his head. “I know why. I just…hate it.”
She offered a helpless smile. “Join the club.”
He exhaled. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be…long.”
“Try not to heckle the vulnerability keynote,” she said.
“No promises,” he said.
He turned to go.
“Marcus,” she said impulsively.
He glanced back.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she said softly.
His eyes softened. “So are you.”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” she said.
“It rarely does,” he said.
He walked away.
She watched him go, robe clutched tight around her.
Closed the door gently.
Leaned her forehead against it.
Her chest ached.
She didn’t know how long they could keep walking this knife edge.
She only knew this: the more times they chose restraint, the more it felt like they were building something.
Maybe not romantic.
Maybe not even sustainable.
But *something.*
Respect.
Trust.
A shared understanding that they were both capable of being worse and were trying, against all their impulses, to be better.
That had to count for something.
Didn’t it?
***