The last morning of the retreat, the resort coffee tasted like regret and overcompensation.
Maya wrapped both hands around the paper cup and stared out at the ocean through the glass wall of the breakfast hall, the endless blue making a mockery of the knot in her chest.
People milled around the buffet in their carefully casual “off-site” outfits—designer jeans with pressed polo shirts, linen dresses with tasteful necklaces. Lanyards swung. Laughter rose and fell in polite waves.
Inside, she felt scraped raw.
She hadn’t seen Marcus since she’d asked him to leave her room the night before.
She’d heard his door open, then shut down the hall around one in the morning. Soft footsteps, the whisper of fabric, the quiet click of a keycard.
She’d lain there, eyes open in the dark, feeling every inch of distance and every ounce of want like weights on her chest.
*I’ve never waited for anything in my life. Until you.*
Who *said* things like that and then walked away?
Men in movies. Men in books.
Not real men. And certainly not the ones who ran empires.
Except, apparently, this one.
“Brooks.”
She blinked.
Jenna slid onto the barstool next to her, carrying a heaping plate of fruit and bacon. Her eyeliner was somehow perfect even after three days of inadequate sleep and emotional excavation.
“You look like you got hit by a keynote,” Jenna said.
“I feel like I got hit by a whole conference,” Maya said. “Keynotes, panels, and twelve trust-building exercises.”
“Did somebody make you fall backwards into their arms?” Jenna asked. “Because if so, I will sue.”
“Not literally,” Maya said. “Metaphorically? Maybe.”
Jenna studied her face. “He came to your room again.”
That wasn’t a question.
Maya took a scalding sip of coffee to stall. “You should consider a career as a psychic.”
“I prefer ‘professional pattern-recognizer,’” Jenna said. “How bad?”
Maya stared at the ocean. “Medium.”
“Did he cross a line?” Jenna pressed.
“Not physically,” Maya said. “Verbally, we’re…in gray territory.”
“Define gray,” Jenna said.
“He told me he wants me, he’ll wait, and if I ever quit, he’s going to pounce,” Maya said shortly. “Also that he doesn’t want to own me, he wants to keep me, and that he doesn’t trust himself not to fuck it up.”
Jenna let out a low whistle. “Wow. That’s…a lot for someone whose emotional openness usually maxes out at ‘I regret that layoff.’”
“I know,” Maya said, voice tight.
“What did you say?” Jenna asked.
“I told him I want him too,” she said, the words tasting like salt. “And that I’m not crossing that line while I work for him. That if he wants any version of me in his life that isn’t just a résumé bullet, he has to earn that *here* first.”
“That,” Jenna said slowly, “might be the most grown-up thing anyone’s ever said on this property.”
“It didn’t feel grown-up,” Maya said. “It felt like letting somebody drop a glass in slow motion and then refusing to catch it.”
Jenna was quiet for a moment.
“You know it doesn’t go back,” she said eventually.
“What doesn’t?” Maya asked, even though she knew.
“Whatever that was in your room,” Jenna said. “You can walk away. You can draw lines. You can pretend. But you don’t…go back to neutral after this.”
Maya’s throat worked. “I know.”
“You can still stay,” Jenna said. “A lot of people work under complicated emotional weather systems. But you can’t pretend the sky is clear.”
“Everyone keeps offering me an escape hatch,” Maya said.
“That’s called ‘being friends with HR and PR,’” Jenna said. “We’re professionally paranoid.”
“I’m not leaving,” Maya said, more to herself than Jenna. “Not now.”
“Because of him?” Jenna asked.
“Because of me,” Maya said. “Because I like what I’m doing here. Because I’m good at it. Because the money matters. Because my whole life isn’t one man, even if he takes up an obscene amount of mental real estate.”
“Good,” Jenna said. “That’s the only reason that makes any sense.”
“He said he’d wait,” Maya blurted. “However long it takes. Until the power balances. Until I trust him not to wreck me.”
Jenna made a face. “Romantic and terrifying. Classic Marcus.”
“Does he mean it?” Maya asked, hating the way her voice wobbled.
“For now,” Jenna said. “He means things intensely until something breaks. The question is whether he’s going to let something break *in* himself this time instead of outside of him.”
Maya stared into her coffee.
“And what if I don’t know what I want in six months?” she whispered. “What if I get used to the wanting more than I’d ever like the having?”
“Then you say no,” Jenna said. “Again. And again. Until it sticks. You have agency, Maya. Don’t forget that.”
Maya nodded, though the word *agency* felt slippery in her hands.
Across the room, she saw him.
Suit. No tie. Hair still slightly damp, like he’d showered fast out of habit.
He talked to Oliver and the board chair by the juice station. His posture was easy, shoulders relaxed in a way they never were on the sixty-second floor.
He looked…
She searched for a word.
Human.
Her chest hurt.
He glanced up, as if he could feel her looking.
Their eyes met.
A world passed in a heartbeat.
Then he gave the barest nod—professional, distant—and turned back to the conversation.
Something in her went…numb.
***
The shuttle back to the city left at noon.
By eleven-fifty-five, she was more than ready.
She packed her overnight bag with mechanical efficiency. Toiletries. Blazers. Lanyard. The printout of the leadership summit schedule she’d scribbled curses on during a particularly grating role-play exercise.
At the door, she hesitated.
Her hand went unconsciously to the wall where he’d stood last night, shoulders tight, voice low.
*I’ve never waited for anything in my life. Until you.*
She pressed her palm to the cool paint for a second.
Then she pulled it away and walked out.
The lobby thrummed with rolling suitcases and polite goodbyes.
Veronica stood by the entrance with a clipboard, making sure no one important got left behind.
“Everything okay with your room?” she asked when Maya approached.
“It didn’t implode,” Maya said. “So yes.”
“Good,” Veronica said. “Back to reality.”
“Was this not reality?” Maya asked dryly.
“This was a curated simulation,” Veronica said. “Reality is catching up on three days of email.”
Maya groaned. “You had to remind me.”
Veronica’s gaze softened. “He’s…been quiet,” she said, nodding toward the far side of the lobby.
Marcus stood near the registration desk, talking low with Oliver. He had his sunglasses in one hand, his phone in the other, as if he couldn’t decide which one to put between himself and the world.
“Quiet is better than impulsive,” Maya said.
“For him, yes,” Veronica said. “For you?”
Maya thought about that.
“Quiet gives me space to…breathe,” she said. “I’ll take it.”
Veronica nodded, but her eyes were watchful.
They boarded separate shuttles.
Executives in one, support staff in another.
On the ride back, Los Angeles unfurled ahead of them, smog-hazy and humming.
Maya sat by the window, earphones in but no music playing, watching palm trees blur by.
Her phone buzzed in her hand.
Marcus: *Board call moved to 3. Please block the time.*
Her fingers hovered.
She typed back: *On it.*
Three dots appeared. Disappeared.
She waited.
Nothing else came.
She shouldn’t have expected more.
He was making good on his word. He wasn’t pushing. Wasn’t leveraging the intensity of last night into some follow-up.
He was back to being her boss.
She was back to being his assistant.
The problem, she thought, wasn’t going to be his behavior.
It was going to be hers.
Because no matter how professional she acted, she couldn’t unknow the way his voice had sounded when he’d said *I want you*.
And there was no going back from that.
Not really.
***
The office felt oddly small after the resort.
Smaller still after the emotional scale of the past three days.
By four o’clock, she’d already rescheduled three meetings, fielded two congratulatory calls about the “transparency” of Marcus’s Rachel story, and flagged an email chain from Legal that made her want to set things on fire.
Marcus was in his glass box, tie back on, hair tamed, working through the board call with that same knife-edged focus.
It was like watching a magician slide a mask back over his face.
At five-thirty, as the floor finally began to empty, her phone buzzed.
Kai: *Drinks tonight? I have gossip that isn’t about billionaires.*
She stared at the message.
She could say no. Go home. Crawl into bed. Stare at the ceiling replaying conversations with a man who owed her nothing beyond a paycheck.
Or she could say yes.
Step outside the Kane Global ecosystem, even for a couple of hours. Remember that sunlight existed in places that didn’t have corporate logos etched into the glass.
Maya: *Yes. God, yes. Where?*
Kai: *That rooftop near your office. 7?*
Maya glanced at the time. 5:34.
She could do that.
Maya: *Done. If I’m late it’s because capitalism chained me to my desk again.*
She slipped her phone into her bag and focused on clearing the last of the day’s urgent items.
At 6:12, Marcus emerged from his office.
He looked tired. Not in an undone way. In a warning-light-went-on-on-the-dashboard way.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Board blessed your new compensation structure,” she said. “With only two veiled threats about activist investors. You’re a hit.”
“Scaring them is half the job,” he said. “What else?”
“Union wants a follow-up call Friday,” she said. “Portvale blinked first on the Anchorage deal. Jenna sent you three talking-point drafts for the labor podcast you agreed to for some reason. And you have a dinner with an Arcturus captain tomorrow that I sincerely hope involves seafood.”
He absorbed it all in that quick, efficient way of his.
“Resend Jenna’s drafts,” he said. “I’ll look at them later. Move the Anchorage debrief to next week. Block out two hours for the union call prep.”
“Done,” she said. “Anything else you need tonight?”
His gaze flicked briefly to her bag, where the strap rested against the corner of her desk.
“You’re leaving,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I have a…thing.”
“A thing,” he repeated, as if testing the word.
“A friend,” she said. “And alcohol.”
His jaw worked once. “Enjoy.”
She fought the urge to explain more. To justify. To say, *It’s not a date, you don’t have to look like that.*
He wasn’t asking.
He wasn’t entitled to the explanation.
“Don’t work all night,” she said instead.
He huffed. “Stop trying to ruin my brand.”
“You already ruined it with all that empathy talk,” she said. “Might as well go all in.”
That got the faintest curve of his mouth.
“Go,” he said. “Before I find a reason to keep you here.”
Her pulse skipped.
She stood, grabbed her tote, and slung it over her shoulder.
At the door, she paused.
“Marcus,” she said softly.
He looked up.
“You did…well,” she said. “At the retreat.”
His eyes held hers.
“Without you there,” he said, “I wouldn’t have gone.”
It landed like a stone in a pond. Ripples spreading.
“Then I’m glad I was,” she said.
She left before she could drown in it.
***
The rooftop bar was exactly the kind of place she wouldn’t normally pick: sleek, expensive, full of people who looked like they’d stepped out of Instagram ads.
But the view was unbeatable, and the cocktails were strong, and Kai was waiting with their arms flung over two stools like a benevolent greeter.
“Look at you,” Kai said as Maya approached. “You look like you just escaped a corporate cult retreat.”
“Accurate,” Maya said, collapsing onto the stool. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I missed traffic.”
Kai pushed a drink toward her. “I already ordered for you. Gin, citrus, something the bartender called ‘a whisper of basil.’”
She took a grateful sip. “Marry me.”
“Get in line,” Kai said. “Half my TikTok followers are already proposing.”
“Slut,” Maya said affectionately.
“You love me,” Kai said. “Now. Tell me everything.”
Maya exhaled. “I can’t tell you everything.”
“Tell me the parts that won’t violate any NDAs,” Kai said.
“Can I plead the fifth on my sex life?” Maya muttered.
Kai’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing happened,” Maya said quickly. “That’s the problem.”
Kai stared at her for a beat, then signaled the bartender for another round.
“Start from the beginning,” they said. “And don’t skip the elevator.”
***
An hour and a half, two drinks, and one order of truffle fries later, Kai knew almost everything.
Not details about Arcturus or Portvale.
But the important parts.
The elevator question.
The line.
The guest suite.
The almost-kiss.
The retreat confession.
The “I’ll wait.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kai said finally, shoving their empty glass away. “You’re living in season three of a prestige cable drama.”
“Tell me about it,” Maya said. “I keep waiting for the showrunner to pull the plug.”
Kai drummed their fingers on the table. “Okay. Here’s what I’m hearing. Tell me if I’m off.”
Maya braced herself. “Hit me.”
“One: he is legitimately into you,” Kai said. “Not in a bored-CEO-‘you’re-convenient’ way. In an ‘I’m rethinking my entire life philosophy’ way.”
Her stomach flipped. “Maybe.”
“Two: he is, shockingly, trying very hard not to abuse his power,” Kai said. “He’s messed up, but he knows it. That puts him miles ahead of most men I know.”
“I hate that the bar is that low,” Maya said.
“Me too,” Kai said. “Three: you are not being steamrolled by this. You’re setting boundaries. You’re saying no, repeatedly, even when your body is screaming yes. That’s not nothing.”
“It feels like nothing,” she said. “It feels like white-knuckling.”
“Yeah, that’s boundaries,” Kai said. “They’re not cute. Four: you want him. Badly.”
She groaned into her hands. “Thank you for that insight.”
“Five,” Kai continued relentlessly, “you also want this job. The money. The experience. The sense that you’re building something that isn’t just ‘helping rich people buy shinier yachts.’”
“That’s weirdly specific,” she said.
“I listen when you rant,” Kai said. “It’s one of my charms.”
She smiled despite the knot in her chest.
“So,” Kai said. “Given all that. What’s your plan?”
“Plan?” she repeated weakly.
“You always have a plan,” Kai said. “Even if it’s subconscious. What’s your strategy here, Brooks?”
She stared at the city lights for a moment, thinking.
“I stay,” she said slowly. “For now. I work. I see if he actually follows through on all this…emotional growth. I see if I still want him in six months when the shine wears off and we’re both more tired and more honest.”
“And if you don’t?” Kai asked.
“Then I leave,” she said. Saying it out loud felt like stepping onto a half-finished bridge. “Lateral or out. With a little more money in my account and a very weird chapter in my memoir.”
“And if you do?” Kai asked softly.
She swallowed.
“Then maybe I quit,” she said. “On my own terms. When I’ve got enough savings and enough leverage to walk away without panicking. And then…we see.”
Kai studied her.
“That’s…not a terrible plan,” they said.
“It’s also not a guarantee,” she said. “He could get bored. He could sleep with someone else in six weeks because this is too much effort. The company could blow up. My mom could get sicker. A hundred things could change.”
“Right,” Kai said. “So build your plan around the thing you can control.”
“Me,” she said.
“Exactly,” Kai said. “Get your money. Get your experience. Get your self-respect. If he’s still there at the end of that—that’s a bonus. Not the prize.”
Tears pricked behind her eyes.
“I hate that you’re right,” she said.
“I usually am,” Kai said. “It’s my cross to bear.”
She laughed, watery and real.
Kai clinked their glass against hers. “To slow burns and smart exits,” they said.
“To not setting my own hair on fire,” she said.
They drank.
Somewhere high above them, a man in a glass tower was likely sitting at his desk, looking out at the same city, wondering how the hell to be the kind of person he kept saying he wanted to be.
For the first time since the retreat, the thought didn’t make her stomach twist.
It made her feel…steady.
Because she wasn’t waiting on him.
Not really.
She was waiting on herself.
And that, she thought, was the one thing that *could* still go back—back to her, back to her control, back to the center of her own life.
Everything else?
She’d figure it out as she went.
One crisis. One calendar. One almost-kiss at a time.
***