By 9:00 a.m. on Monday, the temperature on the fourteenth floor of Summit Strategies had dropped by approximately ten degrees.
It wasn’t an issue with the HVAC system. It was a localized, meteorological phenomenon centered entirely around the desks of Ava Reynolds and Ethan Hayes.
Ava was currently engaged in a task she only performed when she was experiencing severe emotional distress: she was aggressively color-coding her inbox. She had created seventeen new sub-folders, including one labeled Miscellaneous Inquiries That Do Not Require My Immediate Emotional Labor.
She had spent the entire weekend in her apartment, stress-baking two loaves of sourdough bread, walking Pixel until the beagle simply refused to move, and aggressively not thinking about the look on Ethan’s face when he had walked out of Conference Room B.
She had drawn a boundary. She had protected herself. She was a strong, independent, thirty-one-year-old professional who did not need a man with a vintage watch and a fear of commitment to validate her existence.
She was also completely, profoundly miserable. “Morning,” a voice said.
Ava looked up. Ethan was standing on the other side of the frosted glass divider. He was wearing a dark charcoal suit, no tie, and his hair was neatly combed. He looked rested, polished, and entirely unapproachable.
“Good morning,” Ava replied, her voice perfectly level.
“I sent over the revised timeline for the Bean & Leaf deliverables,” Ethan said, not meeting her eyes. He was looking at a spot on the wall approximately two inches to the left of her head. “Julian is handling the logo vectors today. I’ll be in the soundproof pods if you need me for the app integration.”
“Great. I’ll review the timeline before lunch.” “Thanks.”
Ethan gave a short, crisp nod, turned on his heel, and walked away. Ava stared at his retreating back, her fingers hovering over her keyboard. There was no lingering look. There was no banter. There was no devastating, charismatic smirk. He was treating her exactly the way he would treat a colleague he had met at a networking mixer three days
ago.
It was exactly what she had asked for. It was exactly what she wanted.
So why did she feel like she wanted to throw her stapler through
the window?
“Okay, what the hell was that?” Sarah demanded, rolling her chair into Ava’s pod. She was holding a massive iced coffee and looking at Ava with an expression of deep, clinical suspicion.
“What was what?” Ava asked, returning her attention to her inbox. “That… that Arctic freeze!” Sarah gestured wildly in the direction Ethan had gone. “On Friday, you two were practically generating enough electricity to power the entire Gold Coast. You tag-teamed a focus group, you pulled an all-nighter, you crushed the pitch. I was fully prepared to walk in here today and find you two making out by the copier. Instead, he just spoke to you like you were a particularly disappointing quarterly earnings report.”
“We established professional boundaries,” Ava said stiffly. “Professional boundaries?” Sarah repeated, her voice rising an octave. “Ava, you don’t have professional boundaries with that man. You have unresolved trauma and a terrifying amount of sexual chemistry. What happened on Friday?”
“Nothing happened,” Ava lied, her eyes fixed on her screen. “We realized that our personal history was becoming a distraction, and we agreed to focus on the work. We have a fifty-million-dollar account to
land, Sarah. I am up for Vice President. I don’t have time for a workplace romance.”
Sarah stared at her for a long, agonizing moment. “You fought.” “We did not fight.”
“You fought,” Sarah confirmed, nodding slowly. “You pushed him away because you got scared, and he actually listened to you, and now you’re mad that he listened to you.”
“I am not mad!” Ava snapped, her voice echoing slightly in the quiet bullpen. Several heads turned in their direction. Ava lowered her voice to a furious whisper. “I am not mad. I am relieved. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go to the breakroom and get some coffee before I spontaneously combust.”
Ava stood up, grabbed her empty mug, and marched toward the breakroom, leaving Sarah looking entirely unconvinced.
As Ava approached the breakroom, she heard the low, conspiratorial murmur of voices. She paused just outside the door, recognizing Lena’s sharp, no-nonsense tone.
“I’m telling you, the odds have shifted,” Lena was saying. “As the house, I have to adjust the spread. The ‘Inevitable Hookup in the Supply Closet’ bet is currently suspended.”
Ava frowned, leaning closer to the doorframe.
“You can’t suspend the bet!” Tyler the Intern protested. “I put twenty dollars on ‘They Kiss in the Rain After a Client Dinner’! I need that money, Lena. I have student loans.”
“Tyler, did you see them this morning?” Lena asked dryly. “They looked at each other like they were negotiating a hostage exchange. The romantic tension is dead. I’m opening up a new betting bracket: ‘Mutual Assured Destruction.’ I’m giving it three-to-one odds that one of them requests a transfer off the account by Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll take that bet,” a deep, gravelly voice drawled.
Ava peeked around the corner. Julian Vance was leaning against the breakroom counter, stirring a cup of black coffee. He was wearing a faded band t-shirt and looked like he had just rolled out of bed, which only made him look more infuriatingly cool.
“You’re betting on them destroying each other?” Lena asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” Julian said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I’m betting fifty bucks on ‘Repressed Yearning Leading to a Dramatic, Public Declaration of Love.’ Probably involving an airport, or possibly a rainstorm. They’re classic textbook cases.”
“You don’t even know them,” Sarah’s voice snapped as she pushed past Ava and marched into the breakroom. “You’ve been here for three days, lumberjack. You don’t know anything about their dynamic.”
Julian looked at Sarah, that slow, mocking smirk spreading across his face. “I know human nature, Patel. I’m an artist. I observe things. For instance, I observe that you are currently wearing two different earrings, which suggests you were highly distracted when you got dressed this morning. Probably because you were too busy worrying about your best friend’s love life to focus on your own.”
Sarah’s hands flew to her ears. She was, in fact, wearing one gold hoop and one silver stud. Her face turned the color of a ripe tomato.
“I hate you,” Sarah hissed. “I hate you with the fire of a thousand suns.”
“Put me down for fifty on the dramatic declaration, Lena,” Julian said, completely ignoring Sarah’s rage. He pulled a crumpled fifty-dollar bill from his pocket and dropped it on the table. “And put me down for another twenty that Patel here tries to stab me with a stylus before the end of the week.”
“I’ll take that action,” Lena said, pocketing the cash.
Ava decided she had heard enough. She stepped fully into the breakroom, her expression a mask of icy, terrifying calm.
The room went dead silent. Tyler actually squeaked and tried to hide behind the refrigerator.
“Good morning, team,” Ava said, walking over to the coffee machine and pouring herself a cup. She didn’t look at any of them. “Just a quick administrative update. If I catch any of you gambling on my personal life again, I will personally ensure that you are all reassigned to the industrial floor sealant account for the rest of your natural lives. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Lena said, not looking the least bit intimidated. “Yes, ma’am,” Tyler whimpered.
Julian just raised his coffee cup in a silent, mocking salute.
Ava turned and walked out of the breakroom, her spine perfectly straight. She made it all the way back to her desk before she let out a long, shaky exhale.
The betting pool was humiliating, but it wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that Julian was right. It was repressed yearning. She missed Ethan. She missed the banter, she missed the easy rhythm of their collaboration, and God help her, she missed the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.
But she had made her choice. She had to live with it.
Across the floor, in one of the soundproof glass pods, Ethan Hayes was staring at his phone.
The caller ID read DAVID STERLING - LA OFFICE.
Ethan let it ring three times before he finally swiped the screen and lifted the phone to his ear.
“David,” Ethan said, leaning back in the small, ergonomic chair. “It’s 7:30 in the morning in Los Angeles. Don’t you usually wait until at least nine to start yelling at me?”
“I only yell at you when you’re losing, Hayes,” David’s voice boomed through the speaker, loud and aggressively cheerful. “And right now, you are winning. I just got off the phone with Marcus Kline. He said the Bean & Leaf pitch on Friday was a masterpiece. He said you and the Reynolds girl knocked it out of the park.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened at the mention of Ava’s name. “Ava is a brilliant strategist. The core concept was hers.”
“Whatever. You’re the closer. That’s why I sent you to Chicago,” David said dismissively. “Listen, Ethan. I’m not calling to give you a performance review. I’m calling because the board met this weekend. We’re restructuring the leadership team here in LA.”
Ethan sat up a little straighter, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. “Restructuring?”
“We want you back, Ethan,” David said, his voice dropping the cheerful facade and shifting into pure, ruthless business. “Not as a freelancer. Not as a consultant. We want you as a Full Partner. Your name on the door. Equity in the firm. A corner office that looks out over the Pacific.”
The words hung in the air inside the soundproof pod. Full Partner.
It was the holy grail. It was the exact thing Ethan had been chasing for six years. It was the reason he had left Chicago, the reason he had lived out of a suitcase, the reason he had sacrificed every personal relationship he had ever had. It was the ultimate validation of his entire career.
“The compensation package is… aggressive,” David continued, clearly sensing Ethan’s silence. “I’m emailing you the term sheet now. It’s a seven-figure base, plus profit sharing. But there’s a catch.”
“There’s always a catch,” Ethan murmured, staring blankly at the glass wall of the pod.
“We need you here, Ethan. In LA. Permanently,” David said. “We’re launching a massive acquisition push in Q1. I need my new Partner in the room. I know your contract with Summit runs for another five months, but Kline loves you. If you ask him to let you out early, he’ll do it. You can transition the Bean & Leaf account entirely to Reynolds. She can handle the execution.”
Ethan looked through the glass wall of the pod.
Across the bullpen, Ava was sitting at her desk. She was wearing her emerald blazer, her auburn hair pulled back into a messy low ponytail. She was chewing on the end of her pen, her brow furrowed in concentration as she stared at her monitors.
She looked beautiful. She looked brilliant. She looked like the only thing in the world that actually mattered.
You don’t want me, Ethan. You want a home. And you’re confusing the two.
Her words from Friday morning echoed in his head, sharp and devastating. She didn’t believe he had changed. She didn’t believe he would stay. She thought he was just a lonely guy looking for a quick fix until the next big offer came along.
And now, the biggest offer of his life was sitting in his inbox.
If he stayed in Chicago, he would be proving her wrong. He would be proving that he could choose love over ambition. But he would be doing it for a woman who had explicitly told him she didn’t want him, who had built a massive, impenetrable wall between them.
If he took the Partner job, he would get everything he had ever worked for. But he would lose Ava forever. He would be proving her right. He would be exactly the man she thought he was.
“Ethan? You still there?” David asked impatiently.
“I’m here,” Ethan said, his voice sounding hollow and distant to his own ears.
“Look at the term sheet,” David urged. “Talk to your lawyer. But don’t take too long. The board wants an answer by the end of the month. We need to know if you’re ready to step up to the big leagues, Hayes.”
“I need some time to think about it, David,” Ethan said quietly.
“Take a week,” David said. “But Ethan? Don’t overthink this. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t let sentimentality keep you in the minor leagues.”
The line clicked dead.
Ethan slowly lowered the phone from his ear. He sat in the quiet, soundproof pod for a long time, staring at the black screen of his phone. He looked back up, through the glass, at Ava. She was laughing at something Sarah had just said, her face lighting up with that bright,
genuine smile that he hadn’t seen directed at him in six years.
Ethan closed his eyes, a heavy, suffocating weight settling over his chest.
The ticking clock on his contract had just accelerated. The bomb was armed. And Ethan had absolutely no idea how to defuse it without blowing up his entire life.