Chapter 8
Anna
I talked to my little brother Caleb while I was making coffee.
"Okay, don’t laugh," he said.
"Already a bad sign," I replied, stirring the spoon against the mug.
"Whitmore gave me a sixty-two on the thermo midterm," he went on, voice flattened with outrage. "And before you say anything, I studied. Like, genuinely sat down with the textbook and everything."
"And?" I asked.
"And apparently that wasn’t good enough for a man who thinks partial credit is a personal insult." I could hear him shifting, probably sprawled across his dorm bed with his shoes still on. "I even made flashcards. Don’t make it weird. My roommate’s girlfriend had a laminator and I figured why not."
"You laminated flashcards for thermodynamics," I said, pausing mid-stir.
"It felt like the responsible thing to do at the time. Turns out the universe doesn’t reward effort."
"Did you get the answers right?"
"I got them in the neighborhood of right," he said, dragging out the words.
"Caleb, that’s not how engineering works," I said, almost laughing.
"I know how engineering works. I just think it should be more flexible about it."
I leaned against Miley's kitchen counter and let him talk. He went on about the professor, about his roommate's new habit of playing guitar at midnight, about the dining hall running out of chicken tenders on a Wednesday which he considered a personal attack. Normal things. College things.
Problems that fit neatly inside a nineteen-year-old's world, where the worst thing that could happen was a tough grading curve and a roommate with bad timing.
I held my coffee with both hands and let his voice fill the kitchen, grateful for a few minutes inside a life that still made that kind of simple sense.
I listened and something in my chest ached.
"You okay out there?" he asked. "In Miami?"
"I’m great."
"You sure? Mom said you sounded tired last time you called."
"I’m adjusting. New job, new city. It takes a minute."
"Yeah." He was quiet for a second. "I still don’t get why you left Charlotte. I mean, you had the photography stuff going and everything."
Change of scenery, that was the story. A change of scenery. Which was technically true, like calling the Titanic's sinking a slight navigation error.
"Sometimes you just need something different," I said.
"I guess." He didn’t push. He never did, which I loved him for and also felt guilty about, because he deserved better than a sister who lied to him every time he asked a direct question. "Well, Miami better be treating you right or I’m coming down there."
"You can barely treat yourself to chicken tenders."
"That was the dining hall’s fault, not mine."
I smiled. "I love you, Caleb."
"Love you too, weirdo."
He hung up, and the kitchen went quiet. Nothing left but the drip of the faucet and the tick of the clock on Miley's wall.
A second ago his voice had been right here, warm and easy, full of laminated flashcards and dining hall grievances, and now it was just me and a cooling mug and the distance between Miami and everyone I loved.
Small, warm dispatches from a life I'd stepped away from. A family that thought I'd left for adventure, and never knew I'd gone because staying would've meant staying within reach of someone who'd already proven he could take everything from me and still smile while doing it.
I finished my coffee, grabbed my bag, and headed to work.
The elevator ride up felt different today. Not better, exactly. Just different. I was still thinking about the night before, about the elevator and the dark and the way Jace Hunter’s face looked when the lights came back on.
I sat down at my desk. A few minutes later, Miles walked in with two coffees and a grin that should require a permit before nine in the morning.
"Good morning." He handed me a cup. "You look radiant."
"I look like I fought a raccoon in my sleep and lost."
"Radiant raccoon energy." He said it without missing a beat. "It’s a vibe. Own it."
I rolled my eyes but took the coffee. Rich, smooth, still hot. Miles always got his from the place on Brickell that charged eight dollars a cup and was worth every cent.
"I'm good," I said. "Really."
He studied me for a second, a look that told me he wasn’t quite convinced.
"Yeah?" he said.
"Yeah."
He held my gaze a moment longer, then nodded slowly. Whatever he'd been looking for, he'd either found it or decided to let me have the lie.
"Good," he said softly.
And then something shifted in his face. The concern folded itself away, replaced by a grin that started in one corner of his mouth and spread with the confidence of a man about to do something ridiculous.
He took my hand with exaggerated gallantry, bowed at the waist like a duke in a period drama, and kissed the back of it.
"Then allow me to formally welcome you to another beautiful day at Hunter Interactive, my lady."
I laughed and pulled my hand back. "You are going to get yourself an HR complaint before ten a.m."
"Bold of you to assume I haven't already." He straightened up, still grinning. "Besides, HR loves me. I brought them muffins last week."
"Bribery is not a legal defense, Miles."
"It is if the muffins are good enough."
I was still laughing when the voice cut through.
"Ms. Wilson."
We both turned.
Jace was in his office doorway. Dark suit.
No tie. Glasses in place. His eyes went from my face to Miles’s hand, which was still holding mine because I hadn’t pulled it away fast enough.
His gaze stayed there for a beat. Then it came back up to my face and his expression was the usual granite, but something had moved behind it. Fast. Buried before I could name it.
"I have work for you," he said. "We’re going to a meeting. Be ready in twenty minutes."
Miles straightened up. "I thought we were handling the Meridian meeting together."
"Change of plans. I’m taking my assistant." The word landed with a weight that drew a line around me.
Miles looked at me. I looked at Jace. The air between the three of us did something I couldn’t describe but definitely felt. Miles raised his coffee in a mock salute, and backed away.
"Have fun, try to be cordial," he said over his shoulder.
Jace was already walking back into his office. "Twenty minutes, Ms. Wilson."
Twenty minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of a black Mercedes that smelled like leather and something clean I couldn’t identify, and the silence between us was so thick I could’ve cut it with a knife.
He drove the way he did everything. Precise.
Controlled. Both hands on the wheel, gloved, ten and two.
Brickell slid past outside the windows, all glass towers and palm shadows and heat shimmering off the pavement, and I sat with my notebook in my lap, waiting.
The silence had a texture to it. I could feel him building toward something in the stillness of his hands, the slight set of his jaw.
A man arranging words in his head before letting them out.
"I wanted to thank you," he said, eyes on the road. "For yesterday. The elevator."
I turned to look at him. He was staring straight ahead, his profile sharp against the window, and his grip on the steering wheel had tightened just enough to notice.
"The way I’ve conducted myself since you arrived has been…" He paused, as if searching for something precise enough to satisfy him. "I’ve been a pain in the arse."
Something about hearing it in that accent, the careful pronunciation, the way he said it like he was reading from a formal apology written on expensive stationery, made it almost charming.
"It’s okay," I said.
"It isn’t. But I appreciate you saying so."
"Consider it goodwill," I smiled. "For the time I puked on you."
His face did something. I wouldn’t call it a smile, not even close, but the corner of his mouth twitched like it was thinking about it and changed its mind.
"I owe you an apology for that night as well," he said. "What I said was disproportionate."
"I ruined your suit. We’re even."
"It wasn’t about the suit." He stopped. The sentence just ended there, like he’d hit a wall mid-thought and couldn’t climb over it. I let it sit.
The silence settled back in, but it was different now. Lighter. The charged heaviness had eased into something more like two people sitting in the same car without wanting to escape.
"Can I ask you something?" I glanced at him.
"You can ask."
"Are you allergic to dirt the same way you’re allergic to pollen?"
The color climbed from his neck to his ears.
Actual, visible color, spreading across skin that I’d only ever seen in one shade: pale and composed.
Jace Hunter was blushing. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste it because if I grinned right now I’d ruin the moment and I was not about to ruin this.
"I’m not allergic to dirt," he said stiffly. "I don’t like it. There’s a difference."
"Is there?"
"There categorically is."
"Anyone who carries personal hand sanitizer has crossed from preference into clinical territory."
"That is a gross oversimplification."
"It’s an accurate simplification."
He was quiet for a second. A brief strain crossed his face, then disappeared, and I waited.
"Everyone has things they can’t tolerate," I said, softer now. "It’s survival, not weakness."
It surprised him. He turned and looked at me directly, his gray eyes clear behind the glasses, the morning light catching them and turning them almost silver. "What about you, Ms. Wilson? What do you dislike?"
He glanced over at me, and the usual sharpness behind his glasses had gone quiet. His eyes were soft, curious, holding mine as if whatever I was about to say was something he wanted to hear.
I held his gaze. "That’s a secret."
The corner of his mouth moved again. Not a smile. But closer than I’d ever gotten. He turned back to the road, and I sat there with my pulse going stupid because a man had almost smiled at me in a car, and apparently that was all it took.