Chapter 7
Anna
He stood like nothing happened.
That was the part I couldn’t stop staring at.
The way he got to his feet and became someone else in the space of seconds.
He straightened his jacket, tugging the lapels into place.
Pushed his glasses up with a hand that was still trembling, though he held it steady enough that you’d miss the shake if you weren’t looking. But I was looking.
He ran his fingers through his hair, damp with sweat, pushing it back from his forehead the way he probably did every morning in a mirror. Then he glanced down at his shirt, saw the blood, and his jaw worked once before going still.
Just like that. Shattered to composed. Like watching someone rebuild a wall in real time, brick by brick, while you stood there holding the dust.
He was tall. I’d known that since the farmers market, since the first time I’d crashed into him and had to look up to find his face.
But in the elevator, on the floor, in the dark, he’d been small.
Smaller than me, somehow, even though that wasn’t physically possible.
He’d curled in on himself and shaken. Now he was tall again, filling the space the way he always did, and the gap between those two versions of him left something in my chest unsettled.
We had walked out of the elevator by then. The maintenance crew was talking. Asking questions. Something about a power surge, a faulty relay, they’d have it fixed within the hour. I couldn’t process any of it because my hands were still shaking and it happened again even as I watched.
"Mr. Hunter. Your nose." My eyes followed another trickle of blood.
He touched his upper lip. His fingers came back red. He stared at them, whole body going rigid, and started to shake again.
"Here." I pulled the last tissue from my bag and held it out.
He didn’t take it. He was looking at the blood on his fingers like it had taken him somewhere else entirely. His breathing was changing. Not the full collapse from the elevator, but close enough that I could feel it building.
I didn’t think about it again. I stepped forward, pressed the tissue to his nose.
He flinched. His whole body jerked under my hand and for a second I thought he was going to push me away.
But he didn't. He went still instead. Every muscle rigid, his jaw clenched so tight I could feel the tendon jumping beneath my fingers.
His pulse hammered through the fabric of his jacket, fast and hard and completely at odds with how frozen the rest of him had gone.
"It’s just a nosebleed," I said. I kept my voice low, close, barely louder than his breathing. "The stress and the allergy. It’s just your body reacting. You’re okay."
He didn’t say anything. But he let me hold the tissue to his face. He let my hand stay on his arm. And after a few seconds, his breathing started to come back down.
We stood like that in the elevator lobby while the maintenance crew worked behind us and people walked past doing that thing where they were absolutely looking but pretending they weren’t.
Me holding a tissue to my boss’s bleeding nose.
Both of us looked like we’d just come through something that neither of us could explain to anyone who hadn’t been in that box.
The bleeding stopped. I pulled back. Looked at my hands.
His blood on my fingers, dark against my skin.
He was looking at them too, and whatever was on his face wasn't the disgust I'd expected.
I'd braced for the recoil, for the sanitizer, for the look he gave me at the farmers market when my coffee touched his shirt.
But he just stared at my bloodied fingers, his brow drawn, his mouth slightly open, like he was trying to understand something and the answer kept moving out of reach.
"You should wash your hands," he said, his accent thick. "It’s unpleasant."
He looked at me then. Not the way he usually did, like I was a problem on his schedule. This was different. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt it.
Three seconds. Maybe less. Then it closed. I watched it happen in real time, the way his expression smoothed out and his shoulders squared and the man from the elevator floor vanished behind the one who ran a gaming empire and never let anyone see him sweat.
He stepped back, lowering his voice. "Not a word of this to anyone."
"It won’t leave that elevator," I assured.
He didn't respond. Just turned and started walking, his pace measured, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
"Mr. Hunter." I called his name, but he kept going. "Are you alright?"
One sharp nod without turning. A lie, and we both knew it. But I let him have it because some lies are the only thing keeping a person upright, and I’d told enough of my own to recognize the shape of one.
I watched him disappear into the stairwell.
I stood in the hallway for a long time. What was he doing in the elevator? He’d seen me inside when he stepped in.
Did he come to that elevator on purpose? But why? To fire me again? Or maybe tell me seventeen more ways the orchid had ruined his morning?
I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t sure I wanted one.
Eventually I went to the bathroom. Washed my hands under water so hot it hurt. The pink swirled down the drain and I tried to make sense of a morning that started with a flower and ended with me on the floor of a dark elevator holding a man’s face while he fought off ghosts I couldn’t see.
The orchid was in the break room where I’d left it. White petals catching the window light. Peaceful. Oblivious. I picked it up, carried it down the back stairwell, and set it next to the dumpster.
I wasn’t angry. I’d been furious minutes ago—humiliated, fighting tears over a plant I’d spent money I didn’t have on because an article on the internet told me he loved orchids, and I thought I could bridge the distance between us with a flower.
That felt naive now. Almost embarrassing.
You don’t reach a man like Jace Hunter by knowing what he likes.
You reach him by understanding what he’s afraid of and making sure you’re never part of it.
I went back upstairs. Priya was near my desk with a coffee.
"Hey." She studied my face. "You okay? You look like you’ve had a morning."
"I’m fine."
"You sure? Mr Hunter left his office and crossed the floor looking for someone, which apparently hasn’t happened since the building was constructed, and then the elevator went down for maintenance, and now you look like…" She read my face and stopped. "Never mind. None of my business."
"Appreciate that, Priya. Don't worry. I'm alright."
She gave me a small nod and wandered back toward the art department with a coffee-cup salute.
I sat at my desk and tried to work. Couldn’t. My hands smelled like soap from scrubbing them too hard and every time I closed my eyes I saw his face in the dark, the way his eyes looked when the lights came back on. Like a man who’d been caught naked and couldn’t find his clothes.
About an hour later, Miles appeared at my desk. Not his usual entrance. No grin or breezy one-liner. He just walked up and stood there, his mouth set in a line I'd never seen on him before, and I knew before he opened it that he'd heard.
"I owe you an apology," he said.
I looked up from my screen. "For what?"
"The orchid. The pollen allergy. It should have been in your briefing materials and it wasn’t. That’s my mistake." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I’m sorry, Anna. I should have made sure you had everything you needed."
"It’s fine."
"It’s not fine. You walked in trying to do something nice and got blindsided because I dropped the ball on paperwork." His eyes stayed on mine, patient, unhurried, not letting me off easy. "How are you doing? Honestly. I’m still sorry. Jace must have been hard on you."
"I’m fine," I said again, and this time I almost meant it. "But is he okay?"
Miles didn’t answer. He just looked at that closed door, and the silence said more than any answer would have.
"Let me know if you need anything," he said.
He gave my shoulder a brief squeeze and walked away. I watched him go, and then it was just me and the hum of the building and that closed door at the end of the hall.
The rest of the day passed in suspended quiet. I managed the schedule, fielded calls from developers and legal and a gaming journalist requesting an interview Jace would never agree to. His door stayed closed.
At four, I texted him.
Anna
Do you need anything before the end of day?
One word back.
Jace
No.
At five-thirty the floor emptied. I looked at his office one last time. He still wasn’t out.
I grabbed my bag and left.
Miley was on the couch when I got home. Television murmuring, popcorn on her knee, phone in her other hand.
I was hanging my bag on the hook when she sat up.
"Oh my God. Tobias Hart and Christopher Vale." Her voice hit that register reserved only for celebrity gossip and men she found attractive. "Anna. Anna, look at this man. How is he real? That’s not a person. That’s what happens when God shows off."
I froze, my fingers tightening around the strap before I could stop them.
There he was. On the screen. That face. That smile. The one the cameras loved, the one I used to believe was real before I learned what lived behind it.
I grabbed the remote and killed the TV.
"Hey!" Miley twisted around. "I was watching that!"
"Too loud." The harshness in my tone was audible but I couldn’t fix it. I set the remote down and walked to the kitchen.
Miley looked at me and scoffed.
"You’re no fun," she pouted, then studied me for a second and her tone shifted. "Hey. You hungry?"
"Yeah. Food sounds good."
We heated up leftover bibimbap from the Korean place on the corner and ate on the couch.
We watched a cooking competition. Argued about whether the contestant’s risotto was undercooked or whether the judges were being dramatic. Miley said dramatic. I said undercooked.
I went to bed at eleven. Asleep by eleven-thirty.
The nightmare came at two.
A room. Walls close enough to touch with both arms outstretched, door locked. I was pulling the handle with both hands, pulling until my arms burned, and it wouldn't give. Then hands around my wrists. Strong. Cold. My body knew them before my brain caught up. He turned me around.
This is your fault. You know that. I didn’t want this. You made me. Who’s going to believe you? Nobody. You’re a nobody. I made sure of that.
The room shrank. His grip got tighter. His mouth against my ear, his voice dropping to the quiet place, the almost-gentle place that was worse than yelling because gentleness that hurts you is something your brain can’t make sense of no matter how many times it happens.
Keep quiet. Or I’ll have no choice but to hurt you. And we both know I don’t want to do that.
I screamed but nothing came out. The walls were closing and his hands were everywhere and I couldn’t breathe.
I woke up gasping.
Sweat on my neck. Fingers white in the sheets. The room was dark, and for a terrible spinning second I didn’t know where I was. Charlotte? Miami? That room?
I reached for the bedside lamp.
Miley’s apartment. Wynwood. Miami.
Safe.