Cassidy
Monday mornings at Opus usually feel calm.
Not necessarily quiet, but there’s an unhurried energy about them.
I get here early enough that the actual pressure hasn’t arrived yet. The corridors are mine for a little while, the air still clean from the weekend.
It’s time I need to prepare myself for the day and get my anxiety under control.
Today, though, I don’t need it quite as desperately as usual.
For the first time in over a week, I woke up feeling refreshed.
No alarm panic. No immediate spiral. No lying in the dark cataloguing everything I’d done wrong the day before.
Honestly, that alone makes it a good one. None of the guys can complain—even if I did break my promise to rest.
I was terrified that Harlan would confront me with that on Saturday, and part of me is nervous he’s holding onto it to confront me today, where there are fewer witnesses.
But he can’t argue against the healthy glow in my face. The weekend helped, even if I was busy throughout.
Saturday’s sleep must have been the most restorative I’ve had in months—I don’t know what shifted, and I’m trying not to examine it too closely in case I unravel it somehow.
Even Sunday was better than I expected.
Aunt Jess’s house was its usual chaos—the twins bickering before ten, too much sugar, not enough organisation—but somehow, I moved through it easily. Stepped between Kai and Koa when things escalated, helped defuse the tension without it costing me anything.
It was energising being there. Being able to help.
There’s comfort in being useful in ways that make sense. Wrapping presents. Icing cupcakes. Setting tables whilst the kitchen filled with noise and warmth around me.
I think I desperately needed this kind of reset after the… mortifying ordeal of Friday.
My stomach twists faintly at the thought. Shaking my head, I press the button for the lift and drift into the memory of the gala instead.
Spending the night opposite him, talking with his family, talking with them all.
I hope we don’t need to discuss it today. I shove the thoughts firmly into the mental box I’ve been attempting to keep them inside since Saturday night.
I genuinely don’t know what to do with that night.
The lift doors slide open onto a floor that’s still half asleep.
A few assistants linger near reception with takeaway coffees. Someone laughs softly somewhere down the corridor.
The lighting hasn’t fully shifted over from overnight mode yet, leaving everything washed gold and muted instead of Opus’s usual sharp white precision.
I breathe easier here this early. Before the building fills with competing scents and rushing people.
The pressure hasn’t fully arrived yet. No last-minute disasters. No clipped voices. No impossible demands flying between departments.
Just space.
Enough space that I can almost pretend I’m normal.
My heels click softly against the floor as I head toward my office, mentally sorting through the day ahead.
Thursday’s shoot.
The lookbook.
Silas’s review notes.
The fact that I was supposed to finalise the entire document on Friday before… well.
Before I disgraced myself by nearly passing out in Harlan’s office. Heat prickles faintly up my neck at the memory.
I’d planned on coming in early today to finish it before anyone else arrived. If I can get ahead before campaign mode fully kicks in, maybe I can regain some dignity before the week swallows me whole.
I push open my office door, already lifting my bag off my shoulder, but stop as soon as I lay eyes on my desk.
It was clear when I left on Friday, thanks to Isaac’s insistence on organising it for me to reduce stress.
But now there are three folders on the desk. One is the lookbook, and I know for a fact I never touched it.
Who was in my office?
I drop my bag onto my chair and rush towards the desk, dropping into my seat unceremoniously as I pull the lookbook towards me.
Sticky tabs protrude from the side, and I know for a fact I didn’t put those there.
Fuck.
My stomach drops, a wave of dread crashing through me as I take a calming breath.
I open the folder and spot the handwriting on the first note.
No.
No, no, no.
Tracked edits stare back at me instantly in Harlan’s handwriting. He’s gone through this, at some point this weekend, because I failed.
Fuck.
The first sticky note is on the cover page, and I read it.
Aurelion campaign—first-pass styling review completed.
I blink slowly at the page and read it again.
Then again.
He… he did it all himself. Harlan must have stayed late on Friday and finished my work for me.
The realisation lands awkwardly. My fingers tighten faintly against the edge of the paper as I skim the comments, my scent starting to perfume the space around my desk.
Half of them are brutal. I wouldn’t have expected anything else.
This spread looks like three separate campaigns fighting for dominance.
Who approved this lighting reference? Were they visually impaired?
This is the ugliest piece of fabric I’ve ever seen. Find it, burn it, and get something that doesn’t make my eyeballs burn.
Despite myself, my mouth twitches. Because underneath the sharpness, the edits are good—better than good.
I didn’t think what I had was good enough, but he’s only remarked on the work I did, so I know the feedback is for me to keep learning, not for the actual shoot to be improved.
He’d have fed that back to Silas, if so.
I think.
He understood exactly what I’d been trying to build with the shoot. How it was supposed to soften. How it was meant to stop feeling so cold by the end.
And somehow he sharpened it without stripping any of me out of it.
My throat tightens faintly. There’s another tab near the middle of the document, and because it’s red, I’m nervous. Is this a section I destroyed?
I flip to it automatically and half-pull away as I read the words.
This concept is passable.
I stare at the sentence, looking for more. It’s a red tab. Red means bad, it means a warning or dangerous.
And yet… there’s no criticism attached to it.
This concept is passable.
Which, translated from Harlan to normal human language, is practically a standing ovation.
Heat crawls slowly up my neck, and I look at the ceiling, trying to get some control over myself.
I don’t know what to do with the fact he stayed behind to help me.
Especially not after the mess I made of myself on Friday.
My pulse trips as flashes of the weekend threaten to surface again—Evander’s hand at the small of my back, Harlan watching me from across the table like I was something precious…
I shove the thoughts firmly back into their box.
Absolutely not.
I force myself to keep reading instead. The further I get into the edits, the more obvious it becomes that Harlan didn’t just skim this quickly for errors.
He paid attention to every bit of it. Tiny continuity details I hadn’t even noticed missing have been flagged.
He’d tightened the pacing. Shifted the copy. Balanced pages I hadn’t even realised were leaning wrong.
It must have taken him hours, and he did it after I’d already left.
He must’ve given up most of his Friday night.
Guilt twists sharply beneath my ribs.
Not because he helped me—although that alone feels dangerous enough—but because I know exactly why he did it.
Because any mistake I make reflects poorly on him.
The thought settles heavily in my stomach, and I have no idea how to go about making this up to him.
Over and over again, I’ve let him down, and every time I’ve had a chance to show him I’m capable, I’ve done the opposite.
I hate that he’s had to compensate for me—manage my failures as if they’re his own.
My eyes snag on another comment written on a pink tab this time near the final pages.
Stop apologising for good instincts.
I freeze, re-read the section he’s referring to, and grimace. It was unfinished, so, of course, it sounds messy, but he’s caught something I never wanted him to see.
The sentence beneath my styling notes stares back at me now.
This is probably too soft for the campaign direction.
My stomach twists. I was going to remove that—I wasn’t supposed to add my own comments to it.
A knock sounds lightly against my open office door before I can spiral any further.
I jump hard enough that the folder nearly slips from my lap, and when the person comes in without waiting, I freeze.
Dark hair, dark eyes, and a beautiful golden tan from the alpha I’m least comfortable around.
Or maybe one of them.
“Careful, little omega,” Silas drawls lazily from the doorway. “You look about three seconds from a stress-induced cardiac event. It’s only me.”
Heat floods my face, and I adjust the book so it’s closed, hoping my scent hasn’t spiked as badly as it feels.
Silas leans one shoulder against the frame, coffee in hand, dressed in black, completely at ease despite being in my office.
That’s the thing that always catches me off guard with him.
“I didn’t hear you walk up,” I mumble, hurriedly flattening the pages closed.
“Clearly.” His eyes flick toward the folder. “You look guilty enough that I assumed you were either hiding classified government information or reading your own performance reviews.”
Mortification crawls up my throat, and I shake my head quickly. “I would never, I didn’t—”
A grin pulls at his mouth as he pushes off the doorframe and wanders in without waiting for permission.
“I was only teasing,” he says, waggling a brow. “So, clearly it was the second option.”
My face heats up even further, if that’s even possible.
“I wasn’t—”
“You’re fine, Cassidy,” he says.
My chest loosens a fraction despite myself, some of the tension easing from my scent with it.
Silas sets his coffee down on the edge of my desk before dragging the spare chair closer and dropping into it like he belongs there.
“I came to go through the fabric selections before the production meeting,” he says. “Harlan said the lookbook should be ready, but if I’m too early, I can come back for ten.”
I pause and glance down at the book I’ve not even fully read through yet.
Silas raises a brow. “I take it by those tabs, my brother has terrorised it personally already.”