Chapter 2
The 22nd floor was empty and dark except for the light spilling out from Damian’s office.
Ren knocked once and stepped inside.
Found him standing at the window with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled to the elbow, looking older somehow without the armor of a perfectly pressed suit.
“How is she?” he said.
Not a question, exactly. More like he’d been holding it in for hours.
“Stable.” Ren’s voice cracked on the word. “They’re running more tests tomorrow.”
He nodded once.
He didn’t say anything comforting.
He didn’t need to.
Something in his face had already said it.
“Why did you do that?” Ren asked. “The hospital thing. You didn’t have to.”
Damian was quiet for a long moment, looking out at the skyline instead of at her.
“My father died in a hallway,” he said finally. “Alone, at night. I was asleep two floors up, and I didn’t wake up in time to hold his hand.”
His jaw tightened just slightly.
“I promised myself a long time ago I’d never be the reason someone was alone when something like that happened. Even if it isn’t my family.”
Ren felt something in her chest crack open—careful and slow, like ice giving way underneath spring sun.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Don’t be.” He finally turned to look at her. “It’s not a story I tell people. I don’t know why I told you.”
Neither did she.
But she understood, standing there in the low light of an empty office, that the cold, exacting man who counted her seconds every morning was not cold at all.
He was armored.
There was an enormous difference, and she had only just learned to see it.
Over the following weeks, something between them kept quietly rearranging itself.
Damian began coming down to the 22nd floor before nine—before he technically needed to—and would linger near her desk with a question about a file that didn’t really need asking.
He started sending Theo to drive her home on the nights she worked late.
No explanation offered. None expected anymore.
He learned her mother’s name was Deborah.
He learned Eli was obsessed with a video game about building cities and had strong opinions about zoning laws for a twelve-year-old.
He never met either of them directly during those weeks, but he asked about them the way a person asks about people they’ve decided quietly to care about.
Monday, he asked how Deborah’s follow-up appointment had gone.
Tuesday, he mentioned offhand that he’d read something about a scholarship program for middle schoolers interested in urban planning—and did she think Eli might like it?
Wednesday, he said nothing about either of them at all.
Only worked in silence two feet from her desk until nine at night.
And something about the quiet felt like company instead of loneliness for the first time in longer than Ren could remember.
February brought the company’s annual winter gathering, held every year in a rented ballroom two floors below the executive suite.
More obligation than celebration for most of the staff.
Ren went because attendance was expected.
Wore the one good dress she owned and spent the first hour trying to make herself invisible near the dessert table.
Damian found her there.
He was out of his usual suit jacket, sleeves rolled, tie gone entirely, looking like a slightly different version of himself that she hadn’t met before.
“You look like you’re guarding the cake,” he said.
“Someone has to. Marisol already ate two slices and denied it.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
“You’re allowed to enjoy the party, Ren.”
“I don’t really know how,” she admitted before she could stop herself. “I’ve been working since I was sixteen. Parties feel like something other people get to do.”
Something shifted behind his eyes—quick and private, gone before she could name it.
He held out a hand.
Not quite an invitation. More like a question.
“One dance. Consider it a mandatory professional development exercise.”
She laughed, surprised into it, and took his hand.
They moved slowly, badly, both of them a little stiff, both of them entirely too aware of how close they were standing.
Neither said anything for a long moment.
Then Damian spoke, quiet enough that only she could hear it.
“I keep telling myself this is inappropriate,” he said.
“Which part?”
“All of it.” He looked down at her, something raw flickering across his face before he caught it and put it away again. “I should let go of your hand.”
“You should,” Ren agreed.
And did not step back.
He didn’t let go until the song ended.
And even then, it felt less like a decision and more like a rule he was forcing himself to remember.
Marisol cornered her by the coat check twenty minutes later, eyes wide.
“You danced with Damian Cole.”
“It was a work thing.”
“Ren, he does not dance with people. I’ve been here six years. I’ve seen him shake exactly one senator’s hand at this party, and it looked like it physically pained him.”
Marisol studied her face.
“You like him.”
“I don’t,” Ren said, and heard exactly how unconvincing it sounded, even as the words left her mouth.
March brought a cold snap and a broken heater in the assistant’s office.
And Damian, without a word of explanation, had a space heater delivered to Ren’s desk the next morning. Still in its box. No note attached.
When she thanked him, he only shrugged and said the vendor had a surplus.
She didn’t believe him.
She didn’t say so either.
That same week, Eli’s school called about a science fair project he’d been too anxious to start, certain he’d fail no matter what he built.
Ren mentioned it once—briefly, exhausted—to no one in particular while organizing files at nine at night.
Damian, working two feet away as he’d started doing most evenings, said nothing at the time.
Two days later, a package arrived at the apartment.
A beginner’s engineering kit. The exact model Eli had circled in a catalog months earlier and never mentioned wanting out loud because wanting things cost money the family didn’t have.
There was no note on that one either.
May you like
Ren didn’t need one.
She sat on the kitchen floor that night after Eli had gone to bed, holding the empty box, and let herself cry for reasons that had nothing to do with sadness at all.
