There are thunderstorms, and then there are Midwestern thunderstorms.
A Midwestern thunderstorm does not politely announce its arrival. It drops out of the sky like a grand piano, turning the afternoon sky the color of a bruised plum and unleashing a torrential, apocalyptic wall of water that instantly paralyzes the entire city of Chicago.
At 6:15 p.m. on Thursday, the CTA Red Line suspended all service due to flooding. At 6:20 p.m., Uber surge pricing hit a multiplier that required a second mortgage. And at 6:25 p.m., Ava Reynolds accepted the fact that she was trapped on the fourteenth floor of Summit Strategies for the foreseeable future.
The bullpen was mostly empty. Sarah had managed to sprint to the train station before the skies opened up, and Julian had simply vanished, presumably to go brood in a subterranean cavern somewhere.
Ava sat at her desk, watching the rain lash violently against the floor-to-ceiling windows. The thunder was so loud it rattled the glass in its frames.
She sighed, closing her laptop. She had spent the last four days successfully maintaining the Arctic freeze. She had kept her interactions with Ethan strictly professional, communicating mostly through bullet-pointed emails and brief, heavily chaperoned meetings.
It was exhausting. It took more energy to pretend she didn’t care about him than it did to actually run the fifty-million-dollar campaign. A massive crack of thunder shook the building, followed immediately by the sharp, terrifying sound of a transformer blowing somewhere down the street.
The lights on the fourteenth floor flickered, buzzed angrily, and then died completely.
Ava gasped, her hands gripping the edge of her desk. The bullpen was plunged into a heavy, suffocating darkness, illuminated only by the frantic, strobe-like flashes of lightning outside the windows.
Ten seconds later, the emergency backup lights kicked on, casting the office in a dim, eerie, yellow glow.
“Well,” a voice said from the shadows. “That’s not ideal.” Ava jumped, her hand flying to her chest.
Ethan stepped out of the hallway leading to the soundproof pods. He was holding his phone, using the flashlight app to navigate around a cluster of ergonomic chairs. He was wearing a dark sweater, his sleeves pushed up, and he looked just as startled by the sudden darkness as she was.
“Are you the only one left?” Ethan asked, walking toward her pod. “I think so,” Ava said, her voice sounding entirely too loud in the
sudden, humming quiet of the power outage. “The trains are down. I was waiting out the surge pricing.”
“Me too.” Ethan stopped on the other side of the frosted glass divider. He set his phone face-down on the desk, the flashlight creating a glowing halo around them. “Building management just sent an automated text. The whole block lost power. They’re estimating two hours before it’s restored.”
Ava groaned, dropping her head onto her desk. “Perfect. Just perfect. I am going to die in this office, and my tombstone is going to say ‘She just wanted to color-code her inbox.’”
Ethan let out a soft, genuine laugh. It was the first time she had heard him laugh in four days. The sound of it sent a sharp, familiar ache straight through her chest.
“Come on,” Ethan said gently. “Let’s go to the breakroom. They have emergency flashlights in the supply closet, and I think there’s half a bag of stale pretzels in the pantry. We can ration them to survive the winter.”
Ava lifted her head. She looked at him in the dim, yellow light. The professional armor he had been wearing all week was gone, stripped away by the storm and the darkness. He just looked like Ethan.
“Okay,” she agreed softly.
They walked to the breakroom together, the silence between them heavy but no longer hostile. Ethan found a heavy-duty red flashlight in the utility closet and set it on the counter, pointing it at the ceiling so it illuminated the room in a soft, diffused glow.
Ava sat down at the small circular table. Ethan sat across from her.
Outside, the storm raged on, the rain hammering against the glass like a drumbeat.
“I hate thunderstorms,” Ava admitted, wrapping her arms around herself. “I always have.”
“I know,” Ethan said quietly. “You used to hide under the duvet and make me read Wikipedia articles to you until you fell asleep.”
The memory hung in the air, warm and undeniable. Ava didn’t push it away this time. She was too tired to fight it.
“You read me the entire Wikipedia page on the history of the zipper once,” Ava recalled, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“It’s a surprisingly dramatic history,” Ethan defended, a matching smile breaking across his face. “There was a lot of patent espionage.”
They looked at each other, the shared history wrapping around them like a blanket. The Arctic freeze was officially thawing, melted by the simple, undeniable fact that they knew each other better than anyone else in the world.
Ethan’s smile slowly faded. He looked down at his hands, his thumb tracing the edge of the vintage watch on his wrist.
“Ava,” he started, his voice dropping to a low, serious register. “I need to tell you something. And I’m telling you because I promised I wouldn’t keep secrets from you anymore.”
Ava’s heart skipped a beat. The tone of his voice sent a sudden spike of anxiety through her veins. “What is it?”
Ethan took a slow, deep breath. “The LA office called me on Monday morning. David Sterling.”
Ava froze. She knew that name. David Sterling was the ruthless, legendary managing partner of the agency Ethan worked for.
“Okay,” Ava said, her voice remarkably steady. “Why did he call?” “They’re restructuring the leadership team,” Ethan said, meeting her
eyes. The vulnerability in his gaze was absolute. “They offered me a Full Partnership. My name on the door. Equity. The corner office.”
The words hit Ava like a physical blow. It was the exact thing she had thrown in his face during their fight in the conference room. What happens when the LA agency calls with a partnership offer?
She had predicted it. And now it was happening.
“Wow,” Ava breathed, forcing her face into a mask of polite, professional neutrality. She dug her fingernails into her palms under the table. “Ethan, that’s… that’s incredible. That’s everything you’ve been working for. Congratulations.”
“Ava, stop,” Ethan said, his voice cracking. He reached across the table, his hand stopping just an inch away from hers. “Don’t do that. Don’t put the wall back up.”
“I’m not putting a wall up,” Ava lied, her voice trembling. “I’m congratulating you. It’s a massive achievement. When do you leave?”
“I didn’t accept it.”
The three words hung in the dim, yellow light of the breakroom. Ava stared at him, her brain struggling to process the information.
“What?”
“I didn’t accept it,” Ethan repeated, his voice fierce and urgent. “David gave me until the end of the month to decide. But I already know my answer. I’m turning it down.”
“Ethan, you can’t do that,” Ava said, panic suddenly rising in her chest. “You can’t turn down a Full Partnership. It’s the holy grail. It’s your entire career.”
“It’s a glass box, Ava!” Ethan argued, his voice echoing over a crack of thunder. He leaned across the table, his eyes locked onto hers. “It’s a glass box in a city where I don’t know anyone, working eighty hours a week for people who only care about my billing metrics. I don’t want it.”
“You wanted it six years ago,” she whispered.
“I was an idiot six years ago!” Ethan ran a hand through his hair, his frustration and desperation bleeding into the room. “I thought success was a destination. I thought if I just climbed high enough, I would finally feel like I was enough. But I got to the top, Ava. And the only thing I realized was that I left the best part of my life behind in Chicago.”
Ava’s breath hitched. She stared at him, the walls she had spent six years building finally, completely crumbling into dust.
“I’m not turning it down as a grand gesture,” Ethan continued, his voice softening into a raw, devastating honesty. “I’m not doing it to manipulate you, or to force you to forgive me. I’m turning it down because I don’t want that life anymore. I want to start my own consultancy here. In Chicago. I want to build something that actually matters.”
He finally closed the distance, his hand covering hers on the table.
His palm was warm, his grip steady and grounding.
“I’m staying, Ava,” Ethan vowed, his thumb tracing the line of her knuckles. “Whether you ever forgive me or not. Whether you ever let me back in or not. I’m staying. Because I never stopped missing you. Not for a single day.”
A tear slipped down Ava’s cheek, hot and fast. She didn’t bother wiping it away.
She looked at the man sitting across from her. He wasn’t the ambitious boy who had broken her heart, and he wasn’t the slick LA consultant she had been so determined to hate. He was just Ethan. Flawed, terrified, and completely, undeniably hers.
She turned her hand over, lacing her fingers through his.
Ethan let out a sharp, shuddering exhale, his eyes dropping to their joined hands as if he couldn’t quite believe it was real.
“You’re really staying?” Ava whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
“I’m really staying,” Ethan promised, looking back up at her. “Okay,” Ava breathed, a watery, genuine smile breaking across her
face. “Okay.”
They sat there in the dim, emergency lighting of the breakroom, the storm raging outside the windows, their hands locked together on the table. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t need to. The shift in the air was profound and absolute. The war was over.
“So,” Ethan said after a long moment, a faint, familiar spark of humor returning to his eyes. “Does this mean I don’t have to pretend to be fascinated by the drywall every time you walk past my desk?”
Ava laughed, wiping her cheeks with her free hand. “Yes. You can stop staring at the drywall. It was getting weird.”
“Thank God,” Ethan smiled, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “Because you look incredible in that emerald blazer, and it was taking every ounce of my professional willpower not to tell you.”
Ava felt a flush of heat rush to her cheeks. The banter was back, but it wasn’t defensive anymore. It was warm, electric, and entirely terrifying.
“We still have to work together, Hayes,” Ava warned, though she
made no move to pull her hand away. “We have a pitch to execute. We have to be professional.”
“I can be professional,” Ethan promised, his eyes dancing with mischief. “I am a bastion of professional stability.”
“You stole that line from me.”
“I’m a copywriter, Red. I steal the best lines.”
The nickname didn’t hurt this time. It felt like coming home.
The lights above them suddenly flickered, buzzed, and snapped back on, flooding the breakroom with harsh, fluorescent reality. The HVAC system roared back to life.
Ava and Ethan blinked, their eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness. They slowly, reluctantly untangled their hands.
“Power’s back,” Ethan noted, his voice a little rough.
“Yeah,” Ava said, standing up and smoothing her blazer. She felt lighter than she had in six years. The heavy, suffocating weight of her resentment was gone. “I should probably check the train schedule.”
“I’ll walk you to the station,” Ethan offered, grabbing the red flashlight and turning it off.
They walked out of the breakroom side by side. The distance between them was no longer a defensive barrier; it was a comfortable, magnetic space.
Act I was officially over. The ghosts of their past had been laid to rest.
As they rode the elevator down to the lobby, listening to the rain pound against the glass, Ava looked at Ethan’s reflection in the polished steel doors. He caught her eye in the reflection and smiled.
Ava smiled back.
They had five months left on the contract. They had a fifty-million-dollar campaign to launch. And for the first time in six years, Ava was actually looking forward to Monday morning.