Saturday was useless.
She woke earlier than she wanted, lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the sunlight striping her walls.
The city outside sounded… normal.
Cars.
Distant sirens.
A dog barking.
Her head, however, buzzed.
She tried to go about her day.
She made coffee.
Sat at her kitchen table.
Opened her laptop.
Stared at a budget spreadsheet without seeing numbers.
She closed it.
She scrubbed her bathroom grout.
She organized her spice shelf.
She alphabetized her tea.
By noon, she’d run out of chores.
Her phone buzzed.
Lia.
LIA: Want to come watch me stick needles into people? LIA: I mean, “shadow my shift”? LIA: It’ll make your client problems look adorable.
SOPHIE: I’m decision-paralyzed. SOPHIE: I’ll just stare at the IV bag and think about event flow.
LIA: That’s fair. LIA: Come over tonight then. LIA: We’ll eat pizza and make pros/cons lists. LIA: Re: Mountain Man Summit 2.0.
SOPHIE: You’re going to be biased.
LIA: Obviously. LIA: But I make a mean spreadsheet. LIA: Also I have wine.
SOPHIE: Sold.
She spent the afternoon answering easy emails.
She sketched a few ideas for a tech company’s “immersive product reveal.” She texted a caterer about vegan options. She avoided looking at the folder on her desk.
At seven, she drove to Lia’s small duplex near the hospital.
The living room smelled like tomato sauce and garlic.
Lia opened the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt that said “TRUST ME, I’M ALMOST A DOCTOR.”
“You look like someone about to take the bar exam,” she said, eyeing Sophie’s tense shoulders.
“It feels like that,” Sophie muttered, shrugging off her coat.
They ate pizza on the couch.
Lia let her ramble.
“He *gets* it,” Sophie said at one point, waving a slice. “The power dynamics. The boundaries. He’s not just barreling in. That… matters.”
“It does,” Lia agreed, mouth full.
“But Elk Ridge is… intense,” Sophie said. “All glass, all him. We did that in a crisis. Now it’d be with cameras and executives and the whole streaming machine. It’s… a lot.”
“Pros and cons,” Lia said, reaching for a notebook on the coffee table. “Let’s be basic.”
She drew a line down the middle of a page.
“Pros,” she said, pen hovering.
Sophie sighed.
“Career,” she said. “Money. Prestige. Aurora getting more of the right kind of clients.”
Lia scribbled.
“More practice for him doing people,” Sophie added reluctantly. “Me being there might make that easier. Safer.”
Lia wrote: THERAPEUTIC EXPOSURE W/ SAFETY NET.
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“For you?” Lia asked. “Personally?”
Heat crept up her neck.
“I… like being around him,” she admitted. “He… sees me. In ways… not a lot of people do.”
Lia softened.
She wrote: YOU GET HOT MOUNTAIN MAN & FEEL SEEN.
“Cons,” she said.
“Blurred boundaries,” Sophie said instantly. “More than they already are.”
Lia wrote: MESSY.
“Gossip,” Sophie said. “More internet bullshit. More ship names.”
Lia wrote: SATHAN 2: HORNYER.
Sophie barked a laugh.
“You’re impossible,” she said.
“What else?” Lia asked.
“Risk of Aurora’s reputation,” Sophie said. “If something goes sideways. If I lose my objectivity.”
“Do you think you will?” Lia asked.
Sophie hesitated.
“I… don’t know,” she said. “That’s what scares me.”
Lia added: SELF-TRUST WOBBLY.
They sat back.
The list looked… evenly weighted.
Of course it did.
“Here’s the thing,” Lia said, chewing the end of the pen. “You can’t make this decision purely on logic.”
“I know,” Sophie said. “But logic is my only tool.”
“That’s a lie,” Lia said. “You have other tools. Intuition. Gut. Therapy voice.”
Sophie groaned. “Don’t call it that.”
“Therapy voice says: what would you regret more?” Lia pressed. “Going and having it blow up? Or not going and watching someone else handle it—maybe badly—and sitting at home wondering ‘what if’?”
The question landed heavy.
She knew the answer instantly.
“I’d regret not going,” she said quietly.
Lia nodded.
“You hate handing things off when you know you’re the best person for them,” she said. “You’d watch every livestream, every panel, and critique it. And you’d torture yourself if anything went wrong that you could have prevented.”
“Control freak,” Sophie muttered.
“Prepared,” Lia corrected gently.
Sophie stared at the pros and cons list.
“You’re worried about falling,” Lia said.
“Yes,” Sophie said.
“News flash,” Lia said. “You’re already in mid-air.”
She swallowed.
Lia squeezed her knee.
“You can’t unfuck that,” she said. “Not by staying away from the mountain. Not by saying no to work you want. The only thing you can do is decide if you’re going to pretend gravity doesn’t exist or learn to fall with a parachute.”
“Terrible metaphor,” Sophie said thickly.
“I’m a doctor, not a poet,” Lia said. “My point is: you and Nathan are already in something. You’ve already crossed lines. Running from a summit won’t fix that. It’ll just make you resentful.”
“Resentful of him,” Sophie said.
“And yourself,” Lia said. “For not being brave.”
Her eyes stung.
“I’m tired of being brave,” she whispered.
“I know,” Lia said softly. “But you’re also tired of being stuck.”
The word echoed.
Stuck.
Storms.
Roofs.
Rooms.
Lives.
She thought of sixteen-year-old her in a Missouri hallway, counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, promising herself that one day she’d build spaces that felt safer than this.
She thought of thirty-two-year-old her on a mountain, counting breathing with a man who understood roofs and fear better than anyone.
She thought of the feeling when he’d stepped off the gala stage.
The swell of pride, of relief, of affection that had nothing to do with his reputation and everything to do with the person he was when he let himself be visible.
She covered her face with her hands.
“I want to go,” she said into her palms. “Fuck.”
Lia’s voice was warm.
“Then go,” she said. “But go with your eyes open. With boundaries. With a plan. Like you do everything. Don’t romanticize it. Don’t martyr yourself. Do your job. Let him do his. And… see what happens.”
“Worst-case scenario?” Sophie asked, dropping her hands.
“You get your heart broken,” Lia said. “And you survive. Because you have me, and Miranda, and Rafe, and that stupid pothos. And a therapist on speed dial.”
“Best-case?” Sophie whispered.
“You get something real,” Lia said simply. “Messy and inconvenient and complicated. But real. With someone who’s actually doing the work on himself. Who doesn’t ask you to fix him, just… to stand next to him while he tries.”
Tears slid down Sophie’s cheeks.
She let them.
“I hate you,” she said weakly.
“I know,” Lia said. “Love you too.”
They watched Netflix until midnight, some show about con artists that made them both yell at the screen.
When Sophie crawled into bed later, she felt… not lighter.
But clearer.
Her fear was still there.
So was her desire.
So was her ambition.
She didn’t sleep much.
When her alarm buzzed at seven Monday morning, she groaned and groped for her phone.
Two notifications blinked.
One from Miranda:
MIRANDA: Need to give StreamWave an answer by noon. MIRANDA: No pressure.
One from Nathan:
NATHAN: Can’t sleep. NATHAN: Dreamt the summit was in a Costco. NATHAN: Send help.
She snorted.
She typed to Miranda first.
SOPHIE: Let’s say yes. SOPHIE: I’ll go.
A minute, then:
MIRANDA: Knew you would. MIRANDA: Proud of you. MIRANDA: And also very excited because $$$. MIRANDA: We’ll do this on OUR terms. MIRANDA: Come in. We’ll plan.
She smiled.
Then she wrote to him.
SOPHIE: Good news. SOPHIE: It’s not Costco. SOPHIE: It’s your house. SOPHIE: And I’ll be there. SOPHIE: Say hi to the roof.
The reply came in under ten seconds.
NATHAN: You’re coming. NATHAN: Shit.
She laughed out loud.
SOPHIE: That’s one reaction.
NATHAN: That’s the panic part. NATHAN: The other part is… glad. NATHAN: Shit.
Warmth bloomed in her chest.
SOPHIE: We’ll build it right. SOPHIE: For you. For them. For us.
The three letters hung there.
Us.
He didn’t let them slide.
NATHAN: “Us,” huh.
Her fingers hovered.
Then:
SOPHIE: Whatever “us” is. SOPHIE: We can’t figure it out by avoiding each other. SOPHIE: We might as well do it with catering.
He sent back a string of typing dots that went on so long she started to worry he’d passed out.
Finally:
NATHAN: You terrify me. NATHAN: In a good way. NATHAN: Okay. NATHAN: Let’s do this. NATHAN: Summit 2.0: This Time with Feelings.
She snorted.
SOPHIE: Ew. SOPHIE: Don’t ever say that again.
NATHAN: No promises.
She got out of bed.
Pulled on jeans.
A sweater.
Stood in front of the drawer for a long beat.
Opened it.
The key card lay there, matte black, unassuming.
She picked it up.
Held it between her fingers.
It was lighter than it felt in her head.
She slipped it into her pocket.
Just in case.
Then she grabbed her bag, her laptop, and her courage, and headed out into the cold.
There was a mountain to climb.
Again.
But this time, she wasn’t going up as a stranger, or as a desperate planner trying to save her company.
She was going as a partner.
In business.
In chaos.
Maybe—just maybe—in something like love.
Slow.
Burning.
Complicated.
Real.
The road ahead was long.
There would be storms.
Roofs.
Rooms.
Rumors.
But as she stepped into Aurora’s elevator and hit the twelfth-floor button, she felt something she hadn’t let herself feel fully in weeks.
Hope.
Not that it would be easy.
Not that it would be clean.
Just that, whatever happened, she was choosing this.
Consciously.
With her eyes open.
With her own two hands on the wheel.
And with a man on a mountain who, for all his flaws, had started to choose, too.