By the time Eleanor’s piece had been out a month, Aurora Events had a waitlist.
Miranda pretended to complain.
“This is terrible,” she said, flopping dramatically into the chair in Sophie’s new, slightly larger office. “We’re going to have to start *saying no* to rich people. The horror.”
“It’s your dream,” Sophie said. “Admit it.”
Miranda pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Fine,” she said. “It’s deeply satisfying to tell a hedge fund guy that, no, we can’t ‘squeeze him in’ for a full-scale branding retreat in three weeks.”
“Especially when he calls you ‘sweetheart’ on the phone,” Sophie said.
“Exactly,” Miranda said. “I told him my ‘sweetheart’ planner would cry if we took it. I think he almost apologized.”
“I did cry,” Sophie said. “But it was from laughing.”
They grinned at each other.
It felt… different now, sitting across from Miranda.
The partnership paperwork was signed. The lawyer had gone over it, line by line, flagging clauses and suggesting tweaks. They’d negotiated in good faith, firm but fair.
She owned fifteen percent of Aurora Events.
It wasn’t half. It wasn’t control.
It was a stake. A voice.
And with it had come new responsibilities.
Budgets. Hiring decisions. Long-term planning meetings where the conversation wasn’t just “How do we get through next quarter?” but “What do we want this to be in five years?”
It was… exhilarating.
And exhausting.
“Okay,” Miranda said, business-mode clicking in. “We need to decide about the San Francisco tech summit. They want you specifically. But it overlaps with the May weddings. We can’t clone you. Yet.”
“I’m working on it,” Sophie said. “Lia has a plan involving questionable science.”
Miranda shuddered. “No science from Lia. The hospital barely survives her as is.”
They brought up calendars, cross-referenced timelines, played scheduling Tetris.
As they worked, Sophie’s phone buzzed on her desk.
She ignored it.
Miranda raised an eyebrow.
“Very professional,” she said. “You used to leap for that thing like it was a grenade.”
“I’m trying not to be on call for everyone, always,” Sophie said. “Therapist’s orders.”
“Bless that woman,” Miranda said. “Fine. When we’re done.”
They hacked the calendar into something that resembled sanity.
“Okay,” Miranda said, closing her laptop with a satisfying click. “You get San Francisco. Jonah takes point on the May weddings. Mia shadows. I’ll schmooze New York. We all collapse in June.”
“Perfect,” Sophie said.
Miranda stood. Paused.
“By the way,” she said, casual. “Some guy named Nathan left a message with reception, asking to ‘book consulting hours’ with you. I told them to give him your work email. I assume you’ve… handled that?”
Heat crawled up Sophie’s neck.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re… talking.”
“Talking,” Miranda repeated, tone neutral.
“Professionally,” Sophie said quickly. “He wants me to help him… structure his time. And his… life. A bit.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s hiring you as a life coach,” she said. “Of course he is.”
“Not a life coach,” Sophie said. “More like… a systems consultant. For his days.”
“For his days,” Miranda echoed, amused. “And how many of his nights?”
Sophie glared.
Miranda held up her hands. “Not my business,” she said. “I trust you. I also trust him to be a disaster. But if anyone can keep some boundaries, it’s you.”
“I’m trying,” Sophie said.
“That’s all I ask,” Miranda said. “Well. That and that you don’t move to his mountain compound and leave me here with the bridezillas.”
Sophie’s heart stuttered.
“I’m not moving to his mountain,” she said, with more force than necessary.
Miranda studied her.
“I know,” she said softly. “Just… saying it out loud.”
They let the air clear.
When Miranda left, Sophie finally picked up her phone.
Three texts from Nathan.
NATHAN: Tell me about calendars. NATHAN: That sounded less pathetic in my head. NATHAN: Howard says I need a “routine.” I say I have one: avoid people, drink coffee, hate myself. He disagrees. Help.
She snorted.
She typed:
SOPHIE: Your current routine is unsustainable. SOPHIE: We can fix it. SOPHIE: Video call tonight? 8? I’ll send an invoice.
His reply came fast.
NATHAN: Charge double. NATHAN: I suspect I’ll be resistant.
She smiled.
He had started texting more, in the month since the bookstore event.
Not constantly. Not with clingy frequency.
Just… consistently.
A joke about a bad review one day. A photo of a page full of crossed-out sentences another, captioned: “Massacre.” A 2 a.m. “Do you ever feel like your brain is a browser with twenty tabs open and the music is coming from one but you don’t know which?”
She answered when she could, ignored him when she couldn’t, set some boundaries.
He respected them. Mostly.
He also tested them. Constantly.
At 8 p.m. that night, she sat at her small desk at home, laptop open, hair scraped into a bun, wearing a cable-knit sweater and pajama pants.
The screen flickered.
His face appeared.
“Video,” he said by way of greeting, making a face. “Congratulations. You’ve dragged me into the twenty-first century.”
“Look at you,” she said. “A tiny man in a tiny box.”
He scowled.
They were both slightly pixelated, the connection fuzzy. His background was familiar—one of the guest rooms at Elk Ridge, not the study. A dark headboard, a lamp, a sliver of frosted glass.
“You’re not in the study,” she blurted.
“The Wi-Fi’s better in here for video,” he said. “And I thought seeing my glass box might… distract you.”
“It would,” she admitted. “This is better.”
He squinted at her. “Is that a hoodie?” he asked.
“It’s a sweater,” she said, offended. “I own other clothes besides the power turtleneck.”
“You look… softer,” he said.
Her stomach did a stupid little flip.
“Don’t weaponize that,” she warned.
He huffed.
“So,” she said briskly, shifting into professional gear. “Calendars.”
He groaned. “You sound so happy.”
“I am,” she said. “This is my jam.”
She screen-shared her template.
Boxes, color-coded, filled the week.
“You’re currently existing in this nebulous soup of ‘writing’ and ‘not writing,’” she said. “We need to give your days some bones.”
“Bones,” he echoed. “I write crime, not self-help.”
“Same thing,” she said. “You have deadlines. You have therapy. You have exercise needs. You have… human maintenance. We’re going to block it in. Otherwise, everything bleeds together and you end up pacing your glass hallway at 3 a.m. texting me about the void.”
“You like my void texts,” he muttered.
“Your void texts give me hives,” she said. “Pick three times of day you feel most mentally sharp.”
His brows furrowed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Mid-morning. Late afternoon. Late night.”
“Okay,” she said. “We make those protected writing blocks. Two hours each. No email. No social media. No doomscrolling. Phone in another room.”
He grimaced. “You’re cruel.”
“Kind,” she corrected. “Cruelty is letting your brain get yanked in twelve directions every thirty seconds.”
She walked him through it.
Morning: writing, then physical movement, then lunch.
Afternoon: admin, calls, another writing block.
Evening: reading, whatever passed for social life, therapy on Wednesdays at seven.
Night: one last writing block or free time, but capped. No more staying up until dawn because a sentence wouldn’t behave.
“It’s like a cage,” he said.
“It’s scaffolding,” she said. “You like metaphors. Use them for yourself.”
He stared at the screen.
“I’ll fail,” he said quietly.
“Probably,” she said. “At first. That’s fine. This isn’t a religion. It’s a structure. You fall out of it, you climb back in. The point isn’t perfection. It’s… intention.”
He snorted. “Have you been reading self-help books?”
“I read *one* Brené Brown book,” she said. “Now I’m insufferable.”
He almost smiled.
They spent an hour on it.
He surprised her with how willing he was to consider changes.
“I could move therapy earlier,” he mused, dragging a box. “That way I’m not spilling my guts right before bed and then staring at the ceiling.”
“Good,” she said. “And maybe… add a thing that isn’t work. Once a week. A meal with a non-industry person. A movie. A hike that doesn’t end in existential dread.”
He made a face. “I hate hobbies.”
“You don’t need a hobby,” she said. “You need something that reminds you you’re a human, not a content machine.”
Silence.
Then, half-grudgingly: “Fine. Once a week, I’ll… go somewhere. Or let someone in.”
“Howard will be thrilled,” she said.
“He’ll probably faint,” he said. “We barely let him have feelings.”
They shared a small smile.
As they talked, she caught glimpses of him she hadn’t on the mountain.
The way he rubbed the bridge of his nose when he was trying to concentrate and failing. The way he chewed absentmindedly on the end of a pen, an old habit from school he probably hadn’t unlearned. The way he’d disappear from the frame for a second, then come back with a cat-like grace, as if he’d needed to stand and shake something off.
“Who lives in the room above you?” she asked at one point, hearing a faint thump through his laptop mic.
“Empty,” he said. “Staff rooms are in the other wing.”
“Then what’s that?” she asked.
He stiffened.
“I don’t know,” he said. “House noises. Don’t start.”
She grinned. “It’s your guilt,” she said. “Pacing.”
“Demon,” he muttered.
By the time they ended the call, it was after nine.
She should have been tired.
Instead, she felt oddly… energized.
Like she’d spent time with someone interesting.
Not the reclusive genius, not the impossible client.
The person.
Her phone buzzed as she closed her laptop.
NATHAN: That was… weirdly helpful. NATHAN: And also terrifying. NATHAN: I printed the calendar. Howard framed it.
She laughed.
SOPHIE: Baby steps. SOPHIE: If you manage even half of it this week, I’ll be impressed.
NATHAN: What’s my prize?
Her mind, unhelpfully, offered images.
None of which were appropriate.
SOPHIE: You get to text me “I told you so.” SOPHIE: Which I know is your kink.
NATHAN: You know too much. NATHAN: Goodnight, Sophie.
SOPHIE: Goodnight.
She put the phone down and crawled into bed.
Her world had stretched.
The mountain was on the other end of a glass rectangle now.
He was a face in pixels, a voice in her ear, a presence in her day.
It felt less like a one-off storm, more like a weather pattern settling in.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
But as she drifted off, calendar boxes and gray eyes drifting behind her lids, she knew one thing:
She wasn’t bored.
Not even a little.
***
Two weeks into their “consulting arrangement,” she got the first panicked text.
NATHAN: I did the thing. NATHAN: I opened the doc in the morning. I wrote for two hours. It was… not terrible. NATHAN: Afternoon block: crash and burn. Spiral. Contemplated moving to a monastery. NATHAN: Is this… normal?
She smiled.
SOPHIE: Yes. SOPHIE: Your brain’s just mad because you’re asking it to behave differently. SOPHIE: Keep going. SOPHIE: Also do not move to a monastery. They don’t have good Wi-Fi.
He sent back a photo.
A screenshot of a word count.
4,327.
Her breath caught.
NATHAN: Day total. NATHAN: I know it’s not that much for normal people. NATHAN: For me, lately, it’s… something.
She felt an odd, fierce pride.
SOPHIE: It’s huge. SOPHIE: I’m so fucking proud of you.
There was a long pause.
Then:
NATHAN: Nobody says that to me. NATHAN: Thank you.
Her chest ached.
She typed before she could overthink it.
SOPHIE: That’s criminal. SOPHIE: I’ll say it as many times as you need.
She stared at the thread for a while after that, thumb hovering.
If she kept this up, she was going to fall.
If she hadn’t already.
She was good at compartmentalizing. At building walls. At keeping the personal separate from the professional.
But this wasn’t a clean divide.
He wasn’t just a client.
He was a man who texted her pictures of his stupid cat—she’d discovered, with delight, that he had one, a beefy gray thing named H.G. Fluffcraft—and nervous updates about his pages and occasional, startling confessions at midnight.
NATHAN: Sometimes I feel like if I stop writing, I’ll disappear. NATHAN: Like I only take up space because words justify it.
SOPHIE: You take up space because you exist. SOPHIE: The words are extra.
NATHAN: You believe that. NATHAN: I don’t. NATHAN: Yet.
SOPHIE: Then we’ll work on it. SOPHIE: That’s what consultants are for.
He called her on a Sunday afternoon, voice rough.
“Tell me to keep going,” he said, without hello.
“Keep going,” she said automatically. “Why?”
“Because I’m at the part in the draft where everything sucks,” he said. “And I want to throw it all out and move to Bali.”
“You’d hate Bali,” she said. “Too hot. Too social.”
“You’re not wrong,” he admitted.
“Send me the pages,” she said.
Silence.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. “Because they’re raw? Because they’re messy? Because they might be… honest?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Then they’re worth saving.”
He made a pained noise.
“Fine,” he said. “But if you hate them—”
“I’m not your editor,” she cut in. “I won’t give notes. I’ll just… read. And tell you if I see *you* in there.”
“Is that… good?” he asked.
“It means you’re not hiding,” she said.
An hour later, her inbox pinged.
ATTACHMENT: NEW_DRAFT_CROSS_CH12-20.docx
Her stomach fluttered.
This was… intimate.
More intimate, in some ways, than the kiss.
Words were where he lived.
He was inviting her in.
She read that night, curled on her couch, a blanket over her legs, the city a low hum outside.
The pages were… rough.
Uneven. Some overwritten, some skeletal.
They were also… alive.
The character based on her—thinly veiled, but different enough—was sharp and foul-mouthed and carried a multitool instead of a clipboard. She ran underground operations for a shadowy group that rescued people from corrupt corporations.
It should have felt absurd.
Instead, it felt… like an echo in a funhouse mirror.
She recognized the way he’d captured her way of scanning a room. The way she cataloged exits. The way she overprepared and pretended it was no big deal.
She also saw the places where he’d made her braver.
Gave her a knife.
Let her stab someone.
She laughed out loud at a line where the character told a billionaire client, “Your money doesn’t impress me. Your ability to not be a dick under pressure does.”
Her heart squeezed at a paragraph where the POV character described watching her move through chaos like a conductor.
“He’s sweet on her,” Lia said when Sophie sent her that snippet, omitting the context.
“No,” Sophie texted back. “He’s sweet on his *idea* of me.”
Lia replied with twenty-seven eye-roll emojis.
When she finished the pages, she stared at the last line for a long time.
Then she opened a new email.
> From: Sophie Turner > To: Nathan Cross > Subject: Pages > > They’re good. > > Not polished. Not ready. But good. > > You’re in there. So am I. And so is something else that feels new. > > Don’t throw them out. > > —S
His reply came twenty minutes later.
> From: Nathan Cross > To: Sophie Turner > Subject: Re: Pages > > I hate you. > > In a good way. > > Fine. I won’t delete them. > > Yet. > > —N
She smiled at the screen, feeling absurdly warm.
She was in his pages.
He was in her calendar.
Lines were blurring.
She knew she should be scared.
Instead, she felt like she was balancing on a knife’s edge, adrenaline high, wind in her hair, the drop below terrifying and enticing at once.
***
A month later, the universe decided that was too stable.
It started with an innocuous email from Aurora’s generic inbox.
> Subject: Media Inquiry – Sophie Turner > > Hi Aurora team, > > We’re putting together a piece on “Behind-the-Scenes Power Players”—the planners, fixers, and consultants who shape major cultural events. > > We’d love to feature Sophie Turner, given her role in the recent Nathan Cross summit, as highlighted in Eleanor Chase’s article. > > Would she be available for an interview next week? > > Best, > Jordan Blake > Features Editor, *The Current*
Miranda forwarded it with a single line:
> Are you ready to be famous? 😈
Sophie stared.
Interviews.
More pieces.
More people knowing her name, her face, her… connection.
She could already see the headline: THE WOMAN WHO TAMED NATHAN CROSS.
Her stomach knotted.
She met Miranda in the conference room.
“I can say no,” Miranda said, sensing her hesitation. “It’s a big outlet, but it’s not *Eleanor*. We don’t *need* it.”
“It could be good for Aurora,” Sophie said automatically.
“It could be good for *you*,” Miranda countered. “Separate from Aurora. As an individual. As a consultant.”
“That’s part of the problem,” Sophie said. “The more visibility I get, the less I can hide behind the clipboard. The more people will… make assumptions.”
“About what?” Miranda asked.
“About me and Nathan,” she said bluntly.
Miranda didn’t flinch.
“Let them,” she said. “You’re not his property. He’s not yours. You did a job. You built a relationship. Professional, personal, whatever. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
“That’s naïve,” Sophie said. “People always want a story. And they’ll write their own if we don’t give them one.”
“Then we give them one,” Miranda said calmly. “On our terms.”
Sophie rubbed her temples.
“Would you be in the interview?” she asked. “Not just me.”
“Of course,” Miranda said. “This isn’t a Sophie exposé. It’s a piece about what we do. You’re the hook, because you’re more interesting than a mission statement. But Aurora’s the story, too.”
“What about him?” Sophie asked quietly.
“He’ll be mentioned,” Miranda said. “He’s the reason the first piece happened. But this isn’t about him. It’s about you. About us.”
Sophie thought of Nathan.
Of how much he hated being spun.
Of how he’d trusted her with parts of himself the world hadn’t seen.
Would doing this feel like a betrayal?
Or like reclaiming her own narrative, separate from his?
“Let me talk to him,” she said finally.
Miranda arched a brow. “You don’t need his permission,” she said.
“I know,” Sophie said. “But I need to know how he’ll feel. For me. Not for the article.”
“Fair,” Miranda said. “Just don’t let him make the decision for you. That’s not his call.”
“I won’t,” Sophie said.
She hoped.
That night, she texted him.
SOPHIE: Call me when you’re not mid-genius.
He pinged back almost immediately.
NATHAN: I am *never* mid-genius. NATHAN: Always mid-crisis. NATHAN: What’s up?
They shifted to a call.
His voice, in her ear, was oddly grounding now.
“I got a media request,” she said. “For me. Because of you.”
He made a disgusted noise. “I corrupt everything I touch,” he said.
“That’s not what I said,” she said. “They want to do a feature on ‘behind-the-scenes power players’ and use the summit as a hook. Eleanor’s article started this. They want to talk to me. And Miranda. About what we do.”
“You should do it,” he said, without hesitation.
She blinked. “You don’t even know what they want to ask.”
“I know what Eleanor wrote,” he said. “It was accurate. It made people realize you exist. That can only be good.”
“It might mean more attention on you,” she said. “More speculation. More… curiosity.”
“I’m a big boy,” he said. “I can handle it.”
She frowned. “That’s not very on-brand for you,” she said.
He exhaled.
“Okay, I *hate* it,” he said. “But I hate the idea of you hiding because of me more.”
Her chest ached.
“You’re not… mad?” she asked quietly. “That they want to… use you as a peg?”
“I’ve been a peg my whole career,” he said dryly. “At least this time the hat hangs on you, not just on my stupid face.”
She laughed despite herself.
“You’re… okay,” she pressed. “With me talking about the summit. About… you. In a professional capacity.”
“As long as you don’t share how often I text you about my cat’s bowel movements,” he said.
“I would never,” she said solemnly.
“And as long as you remember you’re more than ‘the woman who handled Nathan Cross,’” he added.
She swallowed.
“Say that again,” she said.
“You’re more than—”
“I heard it,” she cut in. “I just wanted to make sure you did.”
Soft silence.
“I know you are,” he said. “So make sure they know it, too.”
She smiled, her throat thick.
“Okay,” she said.
“Also,” he added, lighter, “send me the link when it goes live. I need more material to hate myself with.”
She snorted. “Deal.”
She hung up feeling… clearer.
He didn’t own her story.
She didn’t own his.
They overlapped.
But she could carve out her own space.
She emailed Miranda.
> Let’s say yes. > But we set boundaries.
Miranda replied in minutes.
> Already drafting them 😈
The interview was scheduled for the following Thursday at Aurora’s office.
The reporter, Jordan Blake, turned out to be in their early thirties, with close-cropped hair, a blazer over a T-shirt, and a way of putting people at ease that Sophie recognized as a weapon.
“I’m not here to do a takedown,” Jordan said, clicking on a recorder. “I’m fascinated by what you do. Especially in high-stakes, weird situations. The Cross summit is just one example. We’ll touch on it, but this is about your work, your approach, the realities of your job.”
“Understood,” Sophie said.
Miranda took most of the business questions—growth strategy, client selection, post-pandemic trends.
Sophie talked about logistics, about emotional labor, about the way events could be “containers for feeling” that needed to be held carefully.
Jordan’s gaze sharpened whenever she veered into philosophy.
“You said something interesting,” they said at one point. “About exits. That you always know where they are.”
Sophie smiled wryly. “It’s half-therapist, half-middle-child,” she said. “You grow up mediating fights in small spaces, you learn to map escape routes.”
“Does that extend to your own life?” Jordan asked, tilt of head casual. “Do you have exits planned for yourself?”
She thought of the key card.
Of the partnership papers.
Of the kiss.
“I’m… working on it,” she said honestly.
Jordan’s lips twitched.
They broached Nathan gently.
“Eleanor’s article painted a vivid picture,” Jordan said. “Storm, blackout, reclusive author reluctantly hosting a summit. You keeping everyone calm. What was that like from your side?”
Sophie chose her words carefully.
“Intense,” she said. “Challenging. Necessary. It was three days of managing not just logistics, but fear. The guests’. The staff’s. His. Mine. It… crystallized a lot about why I do what I do.”
“You and Cross seem to have developed a rapport,” Jordan said. “Do you consider him a… difficult client?”
Miranda made a warning noise.
Sophie smiled.
“He has high standards,” she said. “Which I appreciate. He also has… limits. Boundaries. Which we respected. It wasn’t about taming him. It was about building a structure where he could do what he needed to do without feeling… caged.”
“You slipped into present tense just then,” Jordan observed, sharp.
Sophie’s cheeks warmed.
She hadn’t realized.
“Do you still work with him?” Jordan asked.
Miranda opened her mouth.
Sophie beat her to it.
“Yes,” she said. “In a consulting capacity. I help him manage his time, his events, his… chaos.”
There. It was out.
Jordan’s eyes gleamed, but they didn’t pounce.
“That’s fascinating,” they said instead. “We’ll definitely talk about that. It’s not every day a planner becomes a… life architect for a client.”
Sophie exhaled.
The interview lasted two hours.
By the end, she was wrung out and oddly exhilarated.
Jordan promised to send quotes for fact-checking.
Miranda, when they left, looked at her with something like pride.
“You handled that,” she said.
“I hope so,” Sophie said.
She texted Nathan that night.
SOPHIE: Survived my first real interview. SOPHIE: I only talked about you 23 times.
NATHAN: Amateur. NATHAN: You should always talk about me 47 times. NATHAN: Did they make you sound smart?
SOPHIE: Jury’s out. SOPHIE: I did mention you hate foam.
NATHAN: Good. NATHAN: The world needs to know. NATHAN: How are you?
SOPHIE: Tired. SOPHIE: Wired. SOPHIE: Aware that my life is no longer small and local.
NATHAN: Uncomfortable?
SOPHIE: Yes. SOPHIE: And… kind of excited.
NATHAN: That’s the sweet spot. NATHAN: Terrified and thrilled. NATHAN: That’s where good shit happens.
She stared.
SOPHIE: Look at you, giving pep talks.
NATHAN: Don’t get used to it. NATHAN: I’m still a misanthrope. NATHAN: Who happens to be very proud of you.
Her eyes stung.
She blinked hard.
SOPHIE: Stop. SOPHIE: You’ll ruin your brand.
NATHAN: Worth it.
He sent a photo.
His calendar printout, taped above his desk.
Boxes filled in, some scribbled over, some ticked.
At the bottom, in his messy hand, a note:
> Stop hiding.
> —S
She hadn’t written that.
He had.
Her heart did that dangerous lurch again.
She didn’t know when she’d crossed the line between client and… whatever this was.
All she knew was that she was over it.
And that going back wasn’t going to be simple.
---