16. Chapter 15
Liv Strauss
Time passed like someone pressed slow motion on my life.
I work my shifts at the Tavern, pour drinks, and make small talk with regulars. I count tips. I wipe down the bar. I pretend my phone isn't burning a hole in my pocket every time it buzzes.
Zoltan texts me: Committee liaison requested a meeting on Friday. I understand if you'd rather not be there.
I would like you there. But I won't ask twice.
I stare at that last message for a long time.
I text back: What time should I be there?
His response comes in under thirty seconds: Dex will pick you up at 9:15.
I don't argue. I don't make a joke about his driver knowing my address better than my own sister does. I just type okay and put my phone face-down on the counter and go back to my cold coffee.
The morning of the meeting, I wear the only business-looking dress I own. It's navy blue, slightly too big in the shoulders, purchased at a thrift store in Greenpoint three years ago for a job interview I didn't get.
I pair it with my least-battered boots and tell myself this is fine. This is professional. This is what someone wears when they're about to sit in a room full of people who think they know everything about her and prove them wrong.
Piper catches me checking my reflection in the bathroom mirror for the third time.
"You look like you're going to war," she says from the doorway, toothbrush hanging from her mouth.
"I'm going to a meeting."
"Same thing, apparently." She spits, rinses, leans against the doorframe with her arms crossed. "You sure about this?"
I meet her eyes in the mirror. "No."
"Good answer." She pushes off the frame and squeezes my shoulder on her way past. "Go get 'em, tiger."
The black car is waiting at the curb when I walk outside. Dex gets out to open my door, which he's never done before, and I catch something that might be approval in his expression before he slides back behind the wheel.
"Morning, Ms. Strauss."
"Liv," I correct him, same as always.
"Liv." He pulls into traffic. "Mr. Boros wanted me to tell you there's coffee in the center console if you need it."
I find the cup. Still hot. Black, no sugar, exactly how I take it.
I drink it anyway.
Boros Tower looks different in the morning light.
Less imposing, somehow. More like just another building full of people trying to make it through their day without catastrophe.
The lobby is all glass and marble and the kind of silence that costs money, and I walk through it like I belong there because the alternative is walking through it like I don't, and I refuse to give anyone that satisfaction.
Zoltan is waiting by the elevator bank.
He's in a charcoal suit today, no tie, collar open at the throat.
"You came," he says.
"You asked."
"I said I wouldn't ask twice."
"You didn't have to." I stop three feet away, close enough to catch the familiar coffee-and-cedar scent, far enough to pretend it doesn't affect me. "What's the plan?"
"Joint statement. Petra drafted it, I approved it, my new COO will deliver it." He pauses. "You don't have to say anything. You don't have to perform for anyone in that room."
"What if I want to?"
Something shifts in his expression. Not quite surprise. More like recognition. "Then you say whatever you want to say."
The elevator doors open. We step inside together.
The conference room has floor-to-ceiling windows and a table that could seat twenty.
Today it holds four people: Petra, a woman I don't recognize in a tailored grey suit who must be the new COO, a man with silver hair and a government ID badge clipped to his lapel, and a stenographer in the corner whose fingers are already hovering over her machine.
Zoltan pulls out a chair for me. I sit. He takes the seat beside me, close enough that our elbows almost touch.
The liaison, whose name turns out to be Director Hensley, opens a folder and spreads several documents across the table. I recognize the conduct agreement. The revised NDA. Printouts of Calloway's article, which apparently dropped this morning to modest fanfare and immediate legal pushback.
"Mr. Boros," Hensley begins, "the committee has concerns about the nature of the arrangement described in these documents."
"The arrangement," Zoltan says, "was a response to a clause in our contract review that the committee itself acknowledged was legally problematic."
"The stability clause has since been removed from consideration."
"I'm aware."
Hensley's gaze shifts to me. "Ms. Strauss. You signed both the original conduct agreement and the revised NDA. Can you speak to the nature of your relationship with Mr. Boros?"
I feel Zoltan tense beside me. His hand, resting on the table, curls slightly inward. He's waiting for me to deflect. To give a professional non-answer. To let his lawyers handle it.
I don't.
"The conduct agreement," I say, "was given to me by Marcus Webb on my first day working as a temporary nanny for Mr. Boros's daughter.
I signed it because it seemed reasonable.
I had no intention of becoming personally involved with my employer.
" I pause. Let that land. "The revised NDA was sent to me after the Meridian Hotel gala. I didn't sign it."
Hensley blinks. "You didn't sign it."
"No." I keep my voice steady. "Because the language described our relationship as simulated for professional purposes. And it wasn't."
The silence in the room has a weight to it. Petra's pen stops moving. The COO's expression doesn't change, but her posture shifts. Zoltan is completely still beside me, not breathing.
"Ms. Strauss," Hensley says carefully, "are you stating for the record that your relationship with Mr. Boros is genuine?"
I think about the terrace. The cedar smell.
The way he'd said my name that night, low and rough and nothing like the clipped sentences he uses for everyone else.
I think about Missy's drawing, three figures in crayon, labeled in six-year-old letters.
I think about the background check I never asked for and the apology he gave me anyway, standing on the wrong side of the bar with his armor stripped away.
"Yes," I say. "I'm stating for the record that the man who ran a twelve-hour background check on me before letting me near his daughter, who schedules his entire life around being home for dinner, who fired his own COO for using company resources to harass me, is not the kind of person who simulates anything. "
Hensley writes something in his folder. The stenographer's fingers fly.
Zoltan's hand finds mine under the table. His fingers are warm, steady, slightly rough at the calluses. He doesn't squeeze. He just holds on.
The COO, whose name I still don't know, clears her throat.
"Director Hensley, if I may. Mr. Webb's termination is a matter of documented record.
His data policy violations are currently under review by three separate regulatory bodies.
The conflict-of-interest filing he prepared was based on documents he obtained through unauthorized access to company systems."
She slides a folder across the table. "The committee's stability clause was legally indefensible under current family law. My team has prepared a brief on the relevant precedents if you'd like to review them."
Hensley takes the folder. Flips through it. His expression doesn't change, but something in his posture relaxes.
"The committee will take this under advisement," he says finally. "We'll be in touch."
He stands. Shakes hands with the COO, with Petra, with Zoltan. When he gets to me, he pauses.
"Ms. Strauss," he says. "Thank you for your candor."
I nod. Don't trust my voice.
The door closes behind him. The stenographer packs up her machine and follows. Petra and the COO exchange a look, then make their own quiet exit.
And then it's just us. Me and Zoltan and the conference table and the city spread out below us.
He hasn't let go of my hand.
"You didn't have to do that," he says quietly.
"I know."
"You could have given a non-answer. Let the lawyers handle it."
"I could have." I turn in my chair to face him fully. His eyes are dark, unreadable, fixed on my face like he's trying to memorize something. "Is that what you wanted?"
"No." The word comes out rough. "I wanted you to be there. I wanted you beside me when they asked their questions. I wanted them to see that this wasn't a variable I was managing."
"What was it, then?"
He's quiet for a long moment. His thumb traces a slow circle on the back of my hand.
"The first time you told me I couldn't sit at your bar," he says, "I knew I was going to come back. Not because I needed the drink. Not because the Tavern was convenient. Because you looked at me like I was just a man taking up space, and no one had looked at me like that in years."
I don't say anything. Can't.
My throat is tight. My eyes are burning. I blink hard and don't look away.
"You're not very good at apologies," I say.
"I'm aware."
I laugh. It comes out wet, unsteady, and his hand tightens on mine.
I reach across the table. Take his other hand. Pull him toward me until we're both leaning in, foreheads almost touching, breathing the same air.
I close the distance between us.
The kiss is nothing like the terrace. That was desperate, urgent, the wire pulled too tight finally snapping. This is something else. Slow. Deliberate. His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone, and I taste coffee and something sweeter underneath.
When we break apart, I'm breathing hard. So is he.
"Your new COO is going to come back," I say.
"Probably."
"Petra's going to have opinions."
"She already does."
"Missy's going to ask questions."
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes are warm now, open in a way I've never seen them.
"Missy asked me this morning if you were coming home," he says. "I told her I didn't know. She said I should ask nicer."
I laugh again. Still wet. Still unsteady. "Smart kid."
"She gets it from her mother." He pauses. "And from you."
I don't have words for that. So I kiss him again instead.
The door opens. Petra's voice: "Mr. Boros, Director Hensley left his, oh."
We break apart. Zoltan doesn't look embarrassed. He looks like a man who's been caught doing exactly what he intended to do.
"Petra," he says. "Is there something you need?"
She's holding a folder. Her expression is carefully neutral, but her eyes are bright.
"Director Hensley left his briefing documents," she says. "I'll have them couriered to his office."
"Thank you."
She doesn't move. Her gaze shifts to me.
"Liv," she says. "Missy wanted me to tell you she finished her puzzle. The one with the horses."
My chest tightens. "Tell her I'll come see it."
"When?"
I look at Zoltan. He's watching me with that careful, measured expression, the one that means he's trying not to hope for something.
"Tonight," I say. "If that's okay."
His hand finds mine again under the table. Squeezes.
"It's okay," he says.
Petra nods. Something that might be a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.
"I'll let her know," she says, and closes the door behind her.
The conference room is quiet again. The city stretches out below us, all glass and steel and possibility. Zoltan's hand is warm in mine, solid and steady and real.
"You know," I say, "this is still a terrible idea."
"Probably. The door.”
"It doesn't lock," I said, breathless, already drawing him toward the table.
"Then anyone could—"
"Yes." I found his mouth. "They could."
He stopped arguing.
He lifted me onto the long table, the surface so polished it squeaked under my palms when I braced myself—a sharp little sound that made me flush hot.
My heel knocked the table leg, a low ringing knock that seemed enormous in the quiet.
We both froze. Listened. Nothing but the hum of the air system and my own breathing, fast and uneven.
"Still want to?" he asked.
I answered by hooking my fingers in his belt.
He got my dress up and out of the way, and when he touched me I had to press the back of my hand to my mouth to stay quiet.
The sound I made anyway—muffled, desperate, not like me at all—seemed to undo something in him.
The table squeaked again as I shifted, skin against the polish, and every noise felt amplified, reckless, broadcast to a building that might not be as empty as we'd told ourselves.
A door closed somewhere down the hall.
I gripped his shoulders. "Was that—"
"Probably the cleaners." He didn't stop. "Be quiet and they'll never know."
"You be quiet."
He pushed into me in one slow motion and the sound I made then—low, broken, swallowed against his neck—frightened me with how little control I had over it.
The table squeaked beneath me with every thrust, rhythmic and traitorous, and I laughed once, helpless, before it melted into a moan I barely caught in time.
Footsteps. Faint. Somewhere beyond the frosted glass.
I dug my fingers into him. "Zoltan—"
"Probably nothing." But he went still, and I felt his heart slamming against my chest, as loud as mine. A shadow crossed the far wall. Paused. Moved on. The footsteps thinned toward the elevators, a door sighed shut, and then there was only us and the city and the wild double-time of two hearts.
"They're gone," I whispered.
"They're gone."
And then it changed.
The urgency was still there, but something underneath it softened.
He cupped my face, kissed me slow, moved in me like we had all the time the empty building could give us.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him closer—not for leverage now, just closer—and when the tightening broke through me it was with his name on my lips, soft, nothing performed about it, nothing held back.
He followed me, holding me there on that ridiculous squeaking table, his forehead against mine, both of us breathing the same air.
For a long moment neither of us moved.
"We are never," I said finally, into the warm line of his neck, "using this conference room for an actual meeting again."
He laughed, and I felt it move through me, and he held me a little longer in the dark.
"Come home," he says. "See Missy's puzzle. Stay for dinner."
"And after dinner?"
His eyes darken. "After dinner, we'll see."
I think about my crumbling studio. My cold coffee. The laundromat at midnight, watching his scent spin away.
I think about the terrace. The drawing. The wrong side of the bar.
I think about Missy's voice, high and clear: "Papa. Liv. Me."
"Okay," I say. "But I'm picking the restaurant."
He almost smiles. "Deal."
We stand. His hand doesn't leave mine as we walk to the elevator. Doesn't leave mine as we ride down. Doesn't leave mine as we step into the cool lobby.
Dex is waiting by the door.
"Ms. Strauss," he says. "Liv."
"Dex."
"Where to?"
Zoltan looks at me. I look at him.
"Home," I say. "We're going home."