Chapter 10
Anna
Miles ambushed me at the coffee machine on Thursday morning.
"Hey," he said, smiling wide. "How’s it going? You look great, by the way. Your hair looks really nice today."
I poured my coffee without looking at him. "What do you want, Miles?"
"What? I can’t compliment your hair?"
"My hair is the same way it’s been every day this week. It’s not styled. I didn’t do anything to it. There’s a hair tie and a prayer holding it together. Just tell me what you want."
He clutched his chest like I’d wounded him. "I compliment your hair all the time."
"Name one other time."
He opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. Tried a second time. Same result.
"That’s what I thought." I took a sip. "Spill."
He dropped the performance and leaned against the counter.
"There’s a gala this weekend. The Miami Gaming Awards.
Hunter Interactive is nominated in three categories, including Best RPG for Ethereal Vanguard.
Jace hasn’t attended in five years. The board is using words like reclusive and liability in the same sentence, which is never good for stock prices or for my ability to sleep at night.
" He looked at me. "I need him there. And I need you to convince him. "
I laughed so hard I almost spit out my coffee. "You’ve lost your mind."
"Hear me out."
"I can barely get him to acknowledge I exist in the same timezone.
Last week he communicated with me exclusively through a scheduling app for three days.
Three days, Miles. Not a word. Not a nod.
Just bullet points on a screen. And you want me to convince him to attend a public event with hundreds of people and shared surfaces and communal everything? "
"I have a feeling he’ll go if you ask."
"What kind of feeling? A psychic feeling? A delusion? Did you hit your head recently? Should I call someone?"
"I’m serious, Anna." The grin was gone. "It’s good for him. Being around people. The isolation, it looks like a choice but it’s a cage. Even when the cage has floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the ocean."
The word struck something I hadn’t braced for.
Cage. I knew about cages. I knew what it felt like to live inside something that looked like a choice from the outside while the walls got closer every day.
I knew about a beautiful apartment in Charlotte with good lighting and nice furniture, where I couldn’t leave because the man who paid for everything had made sure I had nowhere else to go, and no one left to call.
I didn’t say any of that. I just took my coffee and went back to my desk.
The morning passed. Emails. Calls. The Meridian narrative team sent another revision request that I forwarded to Jace’s inbox.
A developer named Sam stopped by to ask if Mr. Hunter had reviewed the Ethereal Vanguard texture update, and I told him I’d check, and he thanked me with the desperate gratitude of someone who’d rather communicate through a third party than knock on that office door himself.
My phone pinged around ten. Salary deposit notification. First paycheck from Hunter Interactive.
I stared at the number on the screen for a long time, doing the math in my head.
Rent. Miley’s utilities that I still owed.
Groceries. Phone bill. The minimum payment on a credit card I’d been pretending didn’t exist. What was left after all of that was a number that could generously be described as depressing.
And then there was the suit. Twelve thousand dollars. A debt I’d carry for the next decade if I didn’t start now.
I’d told him I’d pay, and I was going to. Because I didn’t break promises, not even the ones my bank account was going to need years of therapy to recover from.
I knocked on his office door.
"Come in."
He was at his desk. Cube moving in his left hand while his right held a contract, because apparently running two independent cognitive tasks at once was just something his brain did to stay entertained.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms and his glasses were low on his nose, and there was something distractingly composed about him that I had to force myself to look away from.
"I want your bank details," I said. "I’m starting payments on the suit."
He didn’t look up. "Forget it."
"I’m not going to forget it," I stated, steadying my tone. "I pay my debts. First installment goes today."
"Ms. Wilson. Let it go."
"I won’t."
"The suit is irrelevant," he said, finally shifting slightly in his chair.
"Twelve thousand dollars isn’t irrelevant to anyone who isn’t you."
"It’s irrelevant to this conversation," he said, voice clipping by a fraction.
"It’s the entire conversation."
He looked up. I held his gaze. We stayed there, neither of us moving, and I could see the irritation building in the way his fingers paused on the cube.
I’d learned to read that pause. Three weeks ago it would have scared me.
Now I recognized it as the thing his face did when he was impressed and would rather chew through his own desk than admit it.
I switched tactics.
"Fine," I said. "Forget the bank transfer. I’ll buy you a replacement suit instead." I let that sit for a second. Then, with my most innocent voice: "Isn’t there some kind of awards ceremony coming up? You’d need something to wear."
The cube stopped mid-turn.
"Did my brother send you?"
"Nobody sent me."
"I’m not going."
"You built something remarkable, Mr. Hunter. Your company employs hundreds of people and makes games that matter to millions. Hiding in your office while someone else accepts your awards is a waste of everything you’ve earned. People should see the man behind the work."
He didn't answer. The cube sat motionless in his hands, and the quiet stretched long enough for me to hear the ventilation system, the distant hum of the dev floor, and my own heartbeat, which was louder than it had any right to be.
"Do you want to go?" he asked, finally.
I shrugged. "I’ve never been to a red carpet event. Wouldn’t be the worst night of my life."
His mouth twitched. Just barely. "Fine," he said. "Not the gala. The suit. You can pick one out." He set the cube down. "We’ll go to the mall."
Four seconds. That’s how long it took for my brain to catch up to what my mouth had done.
I had volunteered to buy a suit for a billionaire.
On my salary. The man earned more before his morning coffee than I’d earn in a calendar year, and I’d just offered to purchase his clothing like I was doing him some kind of favor.
This was what happened when I tried to be clever.
Good intentions were just bankruptcy wearing a nicer outfit.
"Is Ms. Wilson changing her mind?" He was watching me. One eyebrow raised the tiniest fraction.
I forced a smile so hard my cheeks ached. "No. Of course not, sir."
We took his car. The drive was the good kind of quiet, two people sitting in the same space without needing to fill every second, and I spent most of it mentally calculating how many months of instant noodles it would take to recover from whatever price tag was about to ruin my life.
We pulled into the parking structure of a fashion house I’d driven past a hundred times and never entered, because the storefront alone radiated an energy that said my bank account was not welcome here.
But the place was strangely empty. No luxury cars lined up near the entrance. No shoppers drifting in and out with glossy bags hanging from their wrists. The showroom was usually packed with wealthy people treating retail like a competitive sport.
He stepped out of the car and came around to my side. And then he did something that made every thought in my head stop moving.
He held out his hand.
His gloved hand. The left one. The one I’d watched solve cubes and sign contracts and push elevator buttons with his elbow to avoid touching surfaces. That hand had never once reached for another person in the entire time I’d known him.
It was just there. Extended. Waiting for mine.
The black leather. The long fingers underneath. My heart picked up speed in a way I couldn’t blame on coffee, cardio, or anything other than the fact that Jace Hunter was offering me his hand, and my body apparently thought that was the most significant event in recorded history.
"Is this okay?" I asked.
"Should it not be okay?"
"I mean… am I allowed to touch you without triggering some kind of emergency response? The last time I made contact with a man in a marketplace, he scrubbed his mouth like I’d poisoned him, pulled out a bottle of sanitizer, and told me to never cross his path again.
So I’m just checking the current policy. "
The color started at his neck. I watched it climb, slow and gorgeous, past his collar, up the side of his face, all the way to the tips of his ears, turning them a shade of pink I didn’t even know his skin was capable of producing. Jace Hunter was blushing again. Because of me.
"The man you’re describing," he said, and his voice had gone stiff in a way that made his accent twice as British, "doesn’t exist anymore. Things have changed."
I lifted a brow. "He changed? Really?"
He didn’t answer. His hand stayed where it was. Steady. Patient. Offered without pressure, which was maybe the most charming thing about it.
I took his hand.
He took my hand and helped me out of the car.
The leather of his glove was warm from his skin underneath, his grip firm and steady.
Once I was standing, his fingers didn't pull away all at once.
They slid from mine slowly, as if they were leaving on their own schedule, and by the time the contact broke I'd forgotten how to breathe.
He was already walking toward the entrance like nothing had happened. But his grip had been careful. Measured. Like he'd thought about exactly how much pressure to use before I'd even reached for him.
Maybe for him nothing had happened. Maybe holding someone’s hand for three seconds was a normal thing that people did and I was the one making it into something it wasn’t.
Except I'd seen the tips of his ears go red. You can't fake that.
Inside the showroom was empty.
Every fitting suite, every mirrored corridor, every rail of clothing behind glass scrubbed clean and completely vacant.
The air smelled like fabric spray and industrial disinfectant, like the entire place had been sterilized within an inch of its life.
Our footsteps echoed off the floors, and there was not another living soul in sight.
"There seems to be no customers today. Is it normal?" I asked.
"I rented the showroom for half a day."
"What?" I almost choked. "H-how much did it cost?"
"About fifty thousand dollars."
I searched his face for any sign he was joking. Found nothing. He’d rented an entire fashion house to avoid sharing air with strangers, and he said it like he was mentioning a coffee order.
I guess this is normal for billionaires.
The store employees stood at careful distances, hands clasped, radiating the energy of people who’d probably received very specific instructions about proximity, volume, and breathing patterns. I was directed toward the suits and told to choose.
I approached the first rack and looked at a price tag and my throat did something involuntary.
I checked the next rack. The numbers got worse.
At the third rack, the figure on the tag could have funded Caleb’s entire engineering degree with enough left over for a car, a vacation, and possibly a small boat.
I turned back to Jace. Whatever was happening on my face must have been spectacular, because he was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. His eyes were warm.
The ice was gone, and what remained was something close to amusement, but it was also softer than that. Gentler. Seeing it on his face felt like watching a locked door swing open into a room I hadn’t known existed.
"I may be the most insufferable man you’ve ever met," he said, "but there is no universe in which I allow a woman to spend money on me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a coffee or a suit. It goes against everything in me."
I blinked. Replayed the last hour. The suit negotiation. The drive. The rented fashion house. He never intended to let me pay.
He’d agreed to all of this because I’d asked, and he’d let me believe I was buying.
I’d been outmaneuvered by a man who couldn’t touch a doorknob without gloves. Respectfully, I deserved this.
"You’re infuriating," I said.
A tiny smirk formed at the corner of his lips. "I’ve been told."
I picked the suit. Black. Classic. And then I reached for a tie without thinking, pulled it off the rack, and held it up against the jacket.
Gray. The exact gray of his eyes behind those rectangular glasses.
I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was holding it and by then it was too late to put it back without making it obvious.
"That one," I said, like I’d made a calculated professional decision and not an instinctive, deeply personal one.
He took the suit into the fitting room. I stood outside and studied the ceiling tiles, the fire exit sign, the pattern on the carpet—anything that wasn’t the fitting room door, because I needed to get my face under control before he came back out.
The door opened.
Two seconds. That’s how long I held it together.
He stepped out in the black suit, and everything I knew about maintaining professional distance and appropriate workplace behavior went quiet inside my head.
The jacket sat flush against his shoulders, sharp and clean, then followed the line of his frame down to a waist I hadn't realized was that narrow.
The collar pressed close against his neck, and above it his jaw caught the fitting room light in a way that made my breath stall somewhere between my lungs and my mouth.
He turned toward the mirror, adjusting one cuff with his gloved fingers, and I saw the full line of his back through the jacket, the fabric pulling gently across his shoulders, tapering at his hips.
I'd had something to say. I was sure of it. It was gone.
"It looks fine," I managed.
He looked at me through the mirror. One eyebrow up. "Fine sounds underwhelming."
"It looks adequate."
"Now you’re being cruel."
"The suit is acceptable," I said, and my voice was steady even though the rest of me was not.
He turned away from the mirror and walked toward me. Stopped. Close. Closer than he’d ever voluntarily stood near me. The fitting room mirror behind him, the empty store around us, the silence so complete I could hear both of us breathing.
He held up the gray tie. "I can manage everything except this," he said. His voice was quieter than before. Those gray eyes on mine. "Would you help me?"