Chapter Fourteen and Three Quarters - Elias
Pitch day arrived the way big deadlines always did — abruptly, despite six weeks of very obviously arriving, like the calendar had been lying about how much time was left the whole time.
He got to the office at seven, found Nora already there, already three coffees in, rehearsing the opening under her breath while she paced a track into the carpet by the window.
She'd worn the red-soled heels. He seen them the second he walked in, the same way he'd seen them the very first morning, six weeks ago now, except this time the clocking came with a private, proprietary kind of warmth instead of just noticing — he knew what those shoes cost her by the end of a long day, knew what she'd be doing with her feet the second they got somewhere private tonight, and the knowing sat there under his ribs the whole morning like a secret he was allowed to keep.
"You look terrifying," he told her. "In a good way. Genuinely."
"I feel like I'm going to throw up."
"You're not going to throw up. You've rehearsed this eleven times. I counted."
"You were supposed to be sleeping during at least some of those."
"I was. You woke me up twice to run it again.
" He said it without any real complaint in it, because he hadn't minded, hadn't minded any of it — three a.m. run-throughs in his kitchen, her barefeet on his cold floor gesturing through slide transitions like the Hensley executives were standing right there in his living room, judging her tagline in real time.
Priya gathered the team in the small conference room twenty minutes before the client arrived, ran through logistics nobody needed reminding of, more for her own nerves than anyone else's.
Nora stood next to him through the briefing, close enough that her arm brushed his once, twice, an accident that didn't feel entirely like an accident.
"Whatever happens in there," he said quietly, while Priya fussed with the projector, "you already did the hard part. The room's just going to find out what we already know."
"That's a very calm thing to say to someone about to throw up."
"I contain multitudes."
She laughed, short, some of the tension breaking off her shoulders, and he felt an old familiar want rise up in him that had nothing to do with the thing everyone assumed when they thought about what he wanted from her — just the plain, ordinary want to reach over and squeeze her hand, steady her, remind her with something other than words that he was there.
He didn't. Not here, not with Priya three feet away and half the account team close enough to notice.
But he let his knee find hers under the table instead, small, deliberate, and felt her lean into it, just slightly, just enough.
The pitch itself went the way good pitches went — a blur, adrenaline carrying most of it, the actual content secondary to the performance of confidence around the content.
Nora ran the strategy section — hers, start to finish, whatever her title said — sharp and clear, no hesitation in her voice even though he knew, standing two feet away, exactly how much hesitation she was swallowing to get there.
He ran the creative walkthrough, watched the Hensley CMO's face do the thing faces did when a room actually believed what was being sold to them.
Afterward, in the hallway, waiting on the verdict, Nora leaned against the wall next to him, quiet for the first time in six weeks. "I can't tell if that went well or if I've lost the ability to tell anything apart from adrenaline."
"It went well."
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually. I watched the CMO's face during your closing slide. That's not a face people make when they're not sold." He glanced at her, found her watching him with something unguarded in her expression, tired and hopeful and real. "You did that. Not the deck. You."
"You keep saying that. Like you weren't in the room too."
"I was in the room. I just know the difference between what I built and what you carried. The strategy section was yours. That was the part that actually sold it."
She didn't answer right away, just looked at him a moment longer than she meant to, something warm passing over her face that had nothing to do with the pitch anymore. "You're annoyingly good at saying the right thing at the right moment."
"I've had six weeks of practice."
Priya came out of the conference room forty minutes later with the kind of face that made the whole floor go quiet before she'd said a word, and then she said the word — *yes* — and the office did the thing offices did when a big win landed: noise, relief, someone's phone going off with a congratulatory text before anyone had even fully processed it.
Nora cried a little, quick and embarrassed about it, swiped it away before anyone but him could clock it, and he let her have that privacy even while standing right next to her, already thinking about the ten minutes he was going to spend that night with her feet in his hands and absolutely no deadline left standing between them.