12. Sloane
Sloane
The rooftop is empty except for Marcus and the city lights stretching endlessly behind him.
For a second, I consider turning around before he notices me.
He’s standing near the edge of the building with his sleeves rolled up and his jacket abandoned over the back of one of the lounge chairs nearby, the wind moving lightly through his shirt while the skyline glows gold and silver beneath the haze of the night.
Then he says, “If you were planning to leave before I noticed you, you’re too late.”
I stop near the rooftop entrance. “That sounds vaguely threatening.”
“It’s observational.”
“That somehow feels worse.”
The corner of his mouth shifts faintly, not quite a smile, but enough to catch me off guard anyway.
I blame exhaustion immediately.
The last two days have been relentless. Leak management.
Board pressure. Investors suddenly deciding they have opinions about communications strategy despite never surviving a media cycle in their lives.
Dana fell asleep on the office couch an hour ago with her laptop balanced against her knees, and Graham finally forced most of the executive team to leave before midnight.
Marcus, apparently, ignored that instruction, which means I’m not the only one avoiding sleep.
“I thought you left,” I say as I walk farther onto the rooftop.
“I thought you did too.”
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
The rooftop stretches around us in quiet layers of glass, steel, and low architectural lighting designed for wealthy people who enjoy pretending fresh air compensates for stress.
Somewhere below, traffic moves through the city in softened waves, distant enough to sound peaceful instead of exhausting.
Marcus looks back toward the skyline. “Couldn’t shut my brain off yet.”
There’s something unusually honest about the admission. Not dramatic. Not calculated. Just tired enough to slip through before he can smooth it back into something controlled.
I should probably leave him alone. Instead, I stop beside the railing a few feet away from him, close enough to talk comfortably and far enough that neither of us has to acknowledge how aware we’ve become of physical distance lately.
“You realize the board will survive until morning without another strategy session,” I say.
“I’m aware.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I don’t trust quiet after escalation.”
The answer comes too quickly, like the response was already waiting beneath the surface before I asked the question. For someone like Marcus, silence clearly isn’t restful. It’s the part where he waits for the next impact.
His answer is heavier than he probably intended.
I glance toward him automatically, and for the first time all day, Marcus actually looks tired.
Not physically. Controlled people like Marcus rarely let exhaustion show that obviously.
But the tension is there now that there’s no audience left to manage.
For some reason, that unsettles me more than it should.
Marcus always looks composed. Even angry, he looks composed. Even when he’s pushing too hard or taking over rooms or standing too close to me in hallways, while my pulse completely abandons professional standards, control seems built into the way he exists.
Seeing the strain underneath it feels dangerously personal.
“So your solution is insomnia and rooftop brooding?” I ask lightly.
“I wasn’t brooding.”
“You were emotionally brooding.”
That earns me a quiet laugh before he can stop it. The sound catches me off guard badly enough that I stare at him for half a second too long, and he notices immediately.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“You’re looking at me like I’ve developed a concerning medical condition.”
“That laugh sounded unfamiliar. I was assessing whether someone replaced you during the board meeting.”
“I’ll notify legal you’re suspicious.”
I shouldn’t enjoy this.
Somewhere between the press conference, the hallway, and every near-disaster since, being around Marcus stopped feeling entirely adversarial. The arguments are still there. The tension is definitely still there. But underneath all of it now is something quieter and infinitely more dangerous.
Familiarity.
The wind lifts my hair across my shoulder, and Marcus’s attention flicks toward the movement automatically before he looks away again.
Small things like that have become impossible not to notice lately; the instinctive reactions, the awareness, the fact that he watches me even when he’s trying not to.
I look back toward the skyline before the silence changes shape completely.
“You were right about one thing earlier,” I say.
“That sounds promising already.”
“The leaks are escalating.”
Marcus doesn’t answer immediately. When he finally does, his voice is quieter than before.
“Yes.”
No argument. No strategic reframing. Just an agreement.
I lean against the railing, crossing my arms lightly against the wind. “I hate this part of the job.”
“The leaks?”
“The waiting.” I stare down at the traffic below us. “The part where you know something else is probably coming, but you don’t know when or how bad it’ll be. You spend days preparing responses to situations that don’t even exist yet.” I exhale softly. “Eventually, it makes everyone paranoid.”
Marcus watches me carefully now, and the fact that he’s listening without interrupting shouldn’t feel unusual enough for me to notice. Somehow it does anyway.
“It’s worse when it gets personal,” I admit before I can reconsider the sentence. “Corporate crises are easier when no one’s trying to turn your actual life into entertainment.”
I regret the words almost immediately, not because they’re wrong, but because they reveal more than I intended.
Marcus’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly. “What happened?”
I shouldn’t answer. That instinct arrives immediately, sharp and familiar. Keep it professional. Keep it controlled. Keep enough distance that no one gets close enough to use personal information against you later.
The problem is that Marcus already feels too close anyway. And I’m tired enough that the walls slip before I can reinforce them properly.
“My ex leaked things to reporters once,” I say quietly.
Marcus stills slightly beside me.
“He wanted leverage during the breakup,” I continue, forcing out a dry laugh that doesn’t sound convincing even to me. “Apparently, public humiliation felt easier than accepting that I was leaving.”
Marcus says nothing, so I keep talking just to fill the silence.
“He wasn’t famous enough for tabloids to care, but a few business blogs picked it up because of one of his investors. Half the articles weren’t even accurate.” I shrug one shoulder. “Didn’t matter. Once people think they’re entitled to personal details, accuracy stops becoming important.”
The memory settles unpleasantly under my ribs. I hate that it still can.
“It made work miserable for a while,” I admit. “Every meeting felt like someone had already read something about me before I walked into the room.”
For a second, neither of us speaks.
Then Marcus says quietly, “That wasn’t your fault.”
No hesitation or careful phrasing. Just immediate certainty, like the idea that I should carry responsibility for someone else’s cruelty, genuinely offends him.
I look at him before I mean to. He’s already watching me, and something in his expression changes in a way I can’t fully name. Not strategy, or calculation. Something rougher than that. Anger, maybe. Not directed at me, but for me.
And there it is again, that impossible contradiction at the center of him. The protectiveness is real. So is the control threaded through it.
Marcus pushes too hard. Controls too much.
Takes over rooms like resistance is simply a temporary inconvenience.
But underneath all of that is someone who looks at damage and instinctively moves toward protecting it, not because it benefits him, but because he genuinely doesn’t seem capable of doing anything else.
That should make him easier to resist; instead, it makes him infinitely more dangerous.
“You’re doing it again,” I say softly.
His brow furrows slightly. “Doing what?”
“Looking like you want to solve the problem personally.”
A faint breath leaves him. “Occupational hazard.”
“No,” I say quietly. “I think that’s just you.”
Something unreadable moves through his expression then, and for one suspended second, I think he might actually answer honestly. Not strategically, but personally.
“My father used to say—”
The words cut off hard enough that I feel the restraint behind them immediately. Marcus looks back toward the skyline, jaw tightening once before the control slides back into place.
The redirect is so deliberate it almost makes me smile.
“That wasn’t what you were going to say.”
“No.”
The honesty catches me off guard again.
“You stopped yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marcus is quiet for long enough that the rooftop suddenly feels much smaller than it did a minute ago.
“Because,” he says carefully, “I’m trying very hard not to make this more complicated than it already is.”
The words hang heavily between us, not because he touches me or moves closer, but because he doesn't. For the first time since this started, I understand exactly how much that restraint is costing him.
The realization shifts something quietly inside me, though nothing around us changes.
The skyline still glows beneath the haze of city light, the wind still moves softly across the rooftop, and somewhere below us traffic continues threading through the streets like the rest of the world hasn’t noticed my entire emotional equilibrium tilting sideways.
But internally, something cracks anyway.
Marcus looks away first this time. “You should get some sleep.”
The dismissal is gentle enough to almost qualify as concern.
“You first.”
“I’ll survive.”
“That sounds suspiciously like something people say right before making terrible decisions.”
A faint smile touches his mouth again before disappearing. “Probably.”
I should leave. Instead, I stay beside him another minute longer than necessary, watching the city lights reflect across the surrounding glass buildings while the silence between us settles into something dangerously comfortable.
There are no arguments, no strategy, no cameras between us now. Just awareness, and somehow it feels far more intimate than the almost-kiss did.
Eventually, I straighten away from the railing. “Goodnight, Marcus.”
His gaze shifts toward me one last time.
“Goodnight, Sloane.”
My name sounds different tonight. Softer somehow. Less guarded.
And that follows me all the way to the rooftop door.
I pause once before stepping back inside, my hand still resting against the metal handle as cool night air moves around me. Marcus remains standing at the railing behind me, looking out over the city like he’s trying to hold the entire weight of it together through force of will alone.
For the first time since this started, I think I finally understand the most dangerous thing about Marcus Vale.
It isn’t the control, or the power, or even the attraction that unsettles me most.
It’s the growing realization that underneath all of it, Marcus might actually care.