The universe, being a perverse little gremlin, wasted no time testing Maya’s shiny new “center yourself” resolution.
It arrived three days later in the form of a tall, dorkily handsome engineer holding a stack of misdelivered prototypes.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, hovering by her desk as she tried to get three time zones on the phone at once. “Facilities sent me up with these. I think they were supposed to go to Logistics.”
She put one caller on hold and covered the mouthpiece. “No worries,” she said. “You can just leave them by the war room door. Someone will grab them.”
He shifted his weight, eyes flicking to her screen, then back.
“I’m Owen,” he blurted.
She blinked. “Okay.”
He flushed. “From Systems. We, uh, we met at the retreat? In the breakout about ‘User-Centric Process Mapping’?”
She cast her mind back. Beige conference room. Too much coffee. A whiteboard titled *Pain Points*.
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. You’re…post-its guy.”
His face lit. “You remembered.”
“You tried to stage a coup against the facilitator’s color-coding scheme,” she said. “Hard to forget.”
He laughed. “Guilty.”
She glanced at her screen. Singapore was on hold. London was waiting. Marcus’s calendar was a minefield.
“I’m kind of in the middle of international diplomacy,” she said. “Can we talk about sticky notes later?”
“Right. Of course,” he said, stepping back. “Sorry.”
He turned to go, then hesitated.
“Actually,” he said, spinning back around, “this is going to sound insane, but, um…do you want to get coffee sometime?”
Her brain hiccuped.
“Coffee,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he said, shoulders hunching slightly. “Like, not here. Off-site. As two people who both have…pain points.”
She almost laughed. “You’re using corporate therapy language to ask me out?”
His blush deepened. “I panicked.”
It was…endearing.
He was endearing.
And normal.
He wrote code. He wore slightly crooked glasses. He’d spent ten minutes in that breakout passionately explaining why his team’s onboarding forms were a crime against UX.
He was the opposite of Marcus in every way that mattered.
Her heartbeat picked up.
This was the test she’d talked about with Kai.
Could she build a life that wasn’t oriented entirely around Kane Global’s resident gravity well?
“Yes,” she heard herself say.
His eyes widened. “Yeah?”
“Coffee,” she clarified. “Not pain points. I’m over-subscribed on those.”
He grinned. “Great. There’s a place around the corner that does cold brew flights. I could, uh, text you the details?”
“Sure,” she said.
They exchanged numbers. He left, shoulders looser.
She put the phones back to her ears, finished brokering the call, and tried not to think about the CEO in the glass box ten feet away.
She failed.
Because when she glanced up, he was watching her.
Not his screen. Not the war room.
Her.
She couldn’t read his expression.
It wasn’t anger.
It was…stillness. Like he’d tucked everything away behind a wall she couldn’t see past.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second.
Then he turned back to his laptop.
Her stomach dipped.
***
She told herself it didn’t matter whether he’d seen.
He had no claim on her social life.
He’d *said* so.
Not in as many words, but in the implications. *I’ll sit in my very expensive chair and grind my teeth and let you live your life.*
This, she reminded herself, was her life.
A coffee with a man who made bad jokes about user experience was part of that.
At six-thirty on Thursday, she shut down her computer, grabbed her bag, and rode the elevator down to the lobby.
The coffee shop Owen had suggested was two blocks away. Industrial chic, exposed brick, baristas with complicated bangs.
He was already there, at a table in the corner, fiddling with a sugar packet.
“Maya,” he said, standing awkwardly as she approached. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said, pushing her nerves down. “You look…less stressed than at the retreat.”
“No flip charts,” he said. “Helps.”
They ordered. She got an oat milk latte. He got something with enough espresso shots to fuel a small army.
They sat.
It was…nice.
He was easy to talk to. Nerdy in a way that wasn’t performative. He cared about server load and code efficiency and his little sister’s theater career.
He asked questions. Listened to the answers without immediately turning them into analysis.
“So what made you go corporate?” he asked at one point, genuinely curious. “Your LinkedIn says nonprofit and chaos management.”
“You stalked my LinkedIn,” she said.
“I research before I make big decisions,” he said, deadpan.
She smiled.
“I was tired of being broke,” she said. “And tired of watching people burn out for causes that treated them like soul-fuel. I figured if I was going to work eighty hours a week, I’d rather have health insurance.”
“Valid,” he said. “And your boss isn’t…terrible?”
She hesitated.
“He’s…complicated,” she said. “Demanding. Brilliant. Intense. He tries. In his own special way.”
“So you don’t…hate him,” Owen said carefully.
“No,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I did.”
“Would make it easier to quit?” he guessed.
“Something like that,” she said.
He studied her.
“Is this a forever job for you?” he asked. “Or a launch pad?”
“Launch pad,” she said without thinking. Then, softer: “Maybe.”
His gaze warmed. Respectful.
“Good,” he said. “You should run something someday. You have that…energy.”
“What energy?” she said, amused.
“‘I see your bullshit and raise you a better system,’” he said.
She laughed.
They talked for an hour. About everything from terrible code comments to the best tacos on the east side.
She didn’t think about Marcus for almost twenty minutes at a time.
It felt like progress.
When they left, the sky had streaked purple.
He walked her back toward the tower, hands in his pockets.
“So,” he said, as they hit the corner, “can I…do this again?”
“Get coffee?” she asked.
“Or something more…dinner-shaped,” he said. “I know a place that won’t ask you to map your feelings on a whiteboard.”
She hesitated.
She liked him.
She could see herself learning to like him more, in that slow, safe way that didn’t feel like standing on the edge of a cliff.
And wasn’t that…exactly what she needed? A person who walked on solid ground, not glass?
“Yes,” she said. “Dinner sounds…nice.”
His face lit.
“Great,” he said. “I’ll text you.”
He didn’t try to kiss her.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
Relieved? Disappointed?
Maybe both.
They parted at the lobby doors.
She rode the elevator up alone.
Her stomach was doing a weird, uneven thing that had nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with cognitive dissonance.
When she stepped onto sixty-two, the floor was mostly dark.
Except for one office.
Of course.
His light was on.
She considered walking straight past.
She didn’t owe him a debrief. Or a confession. Or anything.
She almost made it to her desk.
“Maya,” he said, his voice carrying through the glass like a chord.
She stopped.
Turned.
He stood in his doorway, jacket off, tie loosened, expression unreadable.
“You’re back late,” he said.
“So are you,” she said lightly. “Shocking.”
His gaze flicked over her. Not in that hungry, heated way from before.
In a muted, analytical way. Cataloguing.
“You changed,” he said.
She looked down at her navy dress and boots. “I didn’t want to smell like printer ink on my…thing.”
“A date,” he said.
She exhaled slowly. “Yes.”
Silence stretched.
“How was it?” he asked.
She blinked. “Are we…doing this?”
“Doing what?” he said.
“Small talk about my personal life,” she said. “Because that feels like a level of masochism neither of us signed up for.”
His jaw tightened. “You’re right.”
“About the masochism?” she asked.
“About this being…harder than it needs to be,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “You can just…pretend you didn’t see me leave.”
“I can’t,” he said simply.
Something in her softened against her will.
“His name is Owen,” she heard herself say. “He works in Systems. He likes cold brew and his sister and talking shit about bad onboarding design.”
His expression didn’t change. Much.
“He sounds…solid,” Marcus said.
“He is,” she said. “In a good way.”
“Good,” he said quietly.
She studied him.
“You okay?” she asked, because she couldn’t *not*.
He smiled, a small, crooked thing that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Define ‘okay,’” he said.
“Mmm,” she said. “On a scale from ‘I will quietly repress’ to ‘I will start a hostile takeover,’ where are we?”
He huffed a laugh. “Somewhere in the middle.”
She stepped closer. Stopped just outside the door.
“You said you wouldn’t sabotage,” she reminded him softly. “Or punish. Or…lean.”
“I remember,” he said.
“I’m holding you to that,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“I’m also not…doing this to hurt you,” she added, hating that she cared.
He looked at her then, properly.
“I know that too,” he said. “You’re doing it because you should.”
Her throat tightened. “Should?”
“You should have a life,” he said. “Options. Data. You shouldn’t build your entire romantic future around a man who pays your salary.”
She stared at him.
“Are you…encouraging me to date someone else?” she asked, incredulous.
“I’m encouraging you not to make yourself small for my comfort,” he said. “There’s a difference.”
Her eyes burned.
“Marcus,” she said softly. “You’re…killing me.”
“Likewise,” he said, a ghost of a smile.
They stood there, the door between them, neither stepping through.
“Go home,” he said at last. “Get some sleep.”
“You too,” she said.
“Unlikely,” he said.
“Try harder,” she said.
He inclined his head.
She walked away.
In the elevator, she sagged against the mirrored wall and stared at her reflection.
She looked like someone living two lives.
The woman in the coffee shop with the engineer who talked about servers.
And the woman standing in a glass doorway with a man who was trying very, very hard not to break her.
She didn’t know which one would win.
She only knew this: the dominoes were starting to fall.
And none of them were going to land neatly.
***
The next two weeks were a study in controlled chaos.
Owen texted. Memes. Articles about UX disasters. Photos of his cat glaring at a Roomba.
They had dinner. Once. Twice.
A little neighborhood Italian place where the waiter called them “kids” and the wine list fit on a single laminated page.
They talked. Laughed. Walked her home.
On the third date, he kissed her.
It was…
Nice.
Gentle. Respectful. A little tentative, like he was checking every half-second that she was still there.
No fireworks. No cliff edge.
Her body responded in a muted, agreeable way.
Her brain, traitorous thing, tried to fill in the blanks with another mouth. Another grip.
She shoved it back.
Focus, she told herself. Be here.
After, leaning against her door, Owen pressed his forehead to hers and said, “This okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled, relieved. “Good. I like this.”
“Me too,” she said.
And she meant it.
She *did* like it. The slowness. The steadiness.
The absence of the feeling that she was about to jump out of her skin.
The absence, she thought grimly later, of feeling much of anything at all that scared her.
At work, she and Marcus moved around each other like professionals.
He didn’t mention Owen again.
She didn’t bring him up.
They talked about ships. Unions. Forecasts. Roberto from Procurement’s baffling tendency to schedule three-hour meetings with no agenda.
They didn’t talk about longing.
They didn’t touch without necessity.
But the undercurrent was there.
It showed in the way his eyes lingered a fraction too long on her face when she made a joke in a meeting and the entire room laughed.
In the way his jaw clenched when she said, “I’m out early tonight.”
In the way he’d started going home—home, not just the office couch—before midnight. Occasionally.
“You’re different,” Oliver said one Friday, watching Marcus scrub a hand over his face in the war room as the Asia call wrapped.
“In what way?” Marcus asked.
“You say ‘no’ more,” Oliver said. “To calls. To random ‘can I pick your brain’ requests. You let Maya block your calendar without triple-checking it.”
“That’s delegation,” Marcus said.
“That’s trust,” Oliver said. “And it’s new.”
Marcus didn’t answer.
Oliver glanced at Maya, who was pretending not to listen while color-coding spreadsheets.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Oliver said to her lightly, “keep doing it.”
She lifted a brow. “You think I’m responsible for your boss’s miraculous evolution?”
“I think people change when other people give them a reason to,” Oliver said.
“And you think I’m the reason,” she said.
“I think you’re one of them,” he said. “He has a lot. Money. Power. Equity. But he doesn’t have many people he can’t replace.”
She swallowed. “And you think he can’t…replace me.”
“I think he doesn’t *want* to,” Oliver said.
Her chest hurt.
“Good for my job security,” she said, trying to make it a joke.
Oliver smiled, but his eyes were kind. “And bad for your blood pressure,” he said.
“Story of my life,” she said.
***
It came to a head on a Tuesday.
Because of course it did.
Tuesdays were when the universe liked to throw things.
Her mother’s latest MRI results came back.
Maya found out in the middle of a budget review meeting.
Her phone buzzed once. Twice. Three times.
She glanced down.
Mom: *Call me when you can, sweetheart.*
Mom: *Doctor called.*
Mom: *It’s not urgent, just…call me.*
Her pulse spiked.
She excused herself with a muttered, “Bathroom, sorry,” and practically ran down the hall to an empty office.
Her hands shook as she dialed.
“Hey, baby,” her mother answered. “You’re at work?”
“Yeah,” Maya said, closing the door with more force than necessary. “What’s going on?”
“It’s…nothing to panic about,” her mother said in that tone that always meant *panic, but don’t let it show.*
“Mom,” Maya said, voice sharper than she meant. “Please.”
Her mother sighed. “They saw…something,” she said. “On the scan. A little…shadow. Probably nothing. But they want to keep an eye on it.”
In her mind, Mayo Clinic articles flashed. Shadows. Lesions. Recurrence.
“On your brain?” she asked, throat closing.
“Yes,” her mother said gently. “Where the damage was from the stroke. It could just be scar tissue. But…they want to be sure.”
“Sure how?” Maya asked, fingers digging into the edge of the desk.
“More scans,” her mother said. “Maybe a biopsy down the line. They’re talking to the tumor board.”
The room tilted.
“Tumor,” Maya repeated.
“We don’t know anything yet,” her mother said quickly. “Don’t borrow trouble.”
“How can I *not*—” Maya started, stopped herself. Breathed. “When is the follow-up?”
“Two weeks,” her mother said. “I didn’t want to tell you until then, but…you always know when I’m keeping something.”
“Damn right,” Maya said, a strangled laugh breaking free. “Mom…”
“I’m okay,” her mother said. “I feel fine. I’m still bossing people around at physical therapy. You know I’ve been through worse.”
“I know,” Maya whispered, tears burning. “I just— I thought we were past the scary part.”
“You know better,” her mother said softly. “Life is a series of scary parts with nice parts in between. This might be nothing. It might be…something. Either way, we’ll deal with it.”
“I hate that your first instinct is always ‘we’ll deal,’” Maya said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “Why can’t it ever be ‘we’ll not have to deal because the universe owes us one’?”
“If the universe owed us anything, it paid us back when you were born,” her mother said.
Maya choked on a sob. “Cheesy.”
“True,” her mother said.
“I’m coming this weekend,” Maya said immediately. “I’ll be there for the next appointment. I want to talk to them.”
“You don’t have to—” her mother started.
“I *want* to,” Maya said fiercely. “This job can survive one missed email. You’re not…negotiable.”
There was a pause.
“Okay,” her mother said quietly. “I’d like that.”
They talked logistics. Trains versus rental cars. Schedules. What to bring.
When she hung up, her cheeks were damp, her throat raw.
She stared at her reflection in the dark window.
Corporate armor. Tear tracks.
She didn’t have time for this.
She *didn’t have time* to fall apart.
She swiped under her eyes with her thumbs, forced her breathing to slow.
Then she opened the door.
Marcus was leaning against the opposite wall.
Her heart lurched.
“How much did you hear?” she asked, voice hoarse.
“Enough,” he said quietly. “Tumor board. Shadow.”
She swallowed. “Eavesdropping is a bad look, you know.”
“I was on my way to Legal,” he said. “I heard your voice. I stopped.”
She hated that she was grateful.
“Don’t,” she said weakly. “I can’t— I don’t have the bandwidth to manage your reaction on top of mine.”
He straightened. “You won’t have to.”
His eyes were different.
Not CEO eyes. Not the cool, assessing gaze he wore like armor.
This was…raw. Edged with something like…fear.
“Take Friday,” he said. “And Monday. Go to your mother. Be there. We’ll cover.”
“I didn’t—” Her voice cracked. “I wasn’t asking—”
“I know,” he said. “I’m telling you.”
“You hate unplanned absences,” she said, almost hysterical. “You made Oliver come back from Maui for an earnings call.”
“This is not Maui,” he said flatly.
Tears spilled again.
“Stop being…good,” she snapped. “It makes it harder to hate you.”
“Don’t hate me,” he said softly. “Hate the situation. Hate the shadow.”
A broken laugh escaped her.
“You realize you’re not making it easier for me to…compartmentalize,” she said.
“I never promised to make it easy,” he said. “Only to try not to make it worse.”
She covered her face with her hands.
“Marcus,” she said, every syllable fraught.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that she could feel the heat of him. Smell his cologne.
He didn’t touch her.
Not her arm. Not her shoulder.
Instead, he leaned his back against the wall next to her, shoulder-level with her cheek, and stared at the opposite wall.
“Breathe,” he said quietly.
She did.
In. Out. Fighting her own body’s instinct to hyperventilate or curl in on itself.
“This is the part,” he said, voice low, “where I’m supposed to say it’s going to be okay. That your mother’s strong. That they caught it early. That medicine is miraculous.”
“Lies,” she said bitterly.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Some of it might be true. Some of it might not. I don’t know. What I do know is that whatever it is, you’re not going to go through it wondering if you’re going to lose your job for caring.”
The floor seemed to drop.
“You can’t promise that,” she whispered.
“I can,” he said simply. “I own the company.”
Her eyes burned.
“That’s…not how that works,” she said weakly.
“It is,” he said. “At least as far as you’re concerned.”
Emotion swelled in her chest, unbearable.
“That sounds dangerously like…affection,” she said.
“It is,” he said.
She laughed through tears. “Stop.”
“No,” he said.
She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the carpet, knees drawn to her chest.
He slid down too, suit be damned, until he was next to her. Not touching.
Just…there.
They sat like that, two people in expensive clothes on ugly beige carpet, the hum of the office muffled around them.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said finally, voice small.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Hold this much,” she said. “My mom. This job. You. Owen. Rent. Reality. I feel like my hands are too small.”
He was quiet a moment.
“Then put something down,” he said.
“What?” she asked, almost angry. “My mother? My job? My feelings?”
“Guilt,” he said. “Responsibility that isn’t yours. The need to manage everyone else’s reactions. Mine included.”
She stared at him.
“You’re not making a very compelling case for the patriarchy,” she said.
“I never was,” he said. “That’s your first mistake. Assuming I have any allegiance to systems I didn’t design.”
She laughed weakly.
He turned his head. Looked at her.
“You’ll go Friday,” he said. “You’ll sit with your mother. You’ll listen to the doctors. You’ll ask questions they won’t want to answer. Then you’ll come back. Or you won’t. We’ll look at what’s in front of us. One step at a time.”
“And if it’s…bad,” she asked, “and I can’t do this job the way you need me to?”
“Then we’ll adjust,” he said. “I’ll hire more support. Shift things. You don’t get punished for being a daughter. Not on my watch.”
Her throat closed.
“You’re very bad at being the ruthless CEO everyone thinks you are,” she whispered.
“I’m selectively ruthless,” he said. “You’re not in that category.”
Nitrous and oxygen, she thought. He was both. A high and a necessity.
“Thank you,” she said, inadequate.
“Don’t,” he said. “If I’m capable of being decent, it’s partly because you’ve been beating it into me for months.”
She leaned her head back against the wall.
“Don’t make this about me,” she said.
“Too late,” he said.
They sat there until her breathing evened out and the worst of the panic receded.
Then she wiped her face, smoothed her hair, and stood.
He stood too, slower.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I can function.”
“For now,” he said.
“For now,” she echoed.
He nodded once.
“Let me know the appointment time,” he said. “I’ll block it. And if you need me to talk to anyone—doctors, insurance, whoever—use my name.”
She almost laughed. “Hi, I’d like to speak to my oncologist’s manager, my billionaire boss said—”
“I’m serious,” he said. “People listen when they think money’s in the room. Use it. I don’t care.”
The sheer gall of it—the audacity of leveraging his clout for *her*—made her dizzy.
She nodded. “Okay.”
He stepped back, putting space between them.
“Go splash some water on your face,” he said. “Then come back and yell at Legal for mislabeling that file.”
She snorted. “Bossy.”
“Efficient,” he said.
She walked toward the bathroom, legs still shaking slightly, but head clearer.
At the mirror, she stared at herself.
Red eyes. Set jaw.
She looked like someone standing on a fault line.
But she also looked like someone who wasn’t alone on it.
And that, she thought as she splashed cold water on her cheeks, changed everything.
Not the scan. Not the shadow.
But the way she’d face it.
Hands not as empty. Heart not as small.
Maybe, just maybe, big enough for all of it.
Even him.
***