The human brain is a remarkable organ. It is capable of complex problem-solving, deep empathy, and, when backed into an emotional corner, spectacular levels of self-delusion.
As Ethan’s Audi navigated the nighttime traffic on Lake Shore Drive, Ava’s brain was currently performing an Olympic-level gymnastics routine to explain away the fact that she had just aggressively made out with her co-lead in a coat check closet.
“It was an anomaly,” Ava announced to the windshield.
Ethan, who had been driving in a heavy, loaded silence for the last ten minutes, blinked. He glanced over at her, his hands resting lightly on the leather steering wheel. “An anomaly.”
“A situational anomaly,” Ava clarified, nodding sharply. She smoothed the silk of her jumpsuit, refusing to look at him. “Think about the variables. We just closed a fifty-million-dollar account. We were running on pure adrenaline. Richard called me ‘sweetheart’ and you defended my honor like a Victorian gentleman. The lighting in that hallway was incredibly flattering. It was a perfect storm of environmental triggers.”
“Ava,” Ethan said slowly, his voice thick with amusement and disbelief. “We practically inhaled each other next to a rack of trench coats. I don’t think we can blame the lighting.”
“I’m not blaming the lighting, I’m citing it as a contributing factor,” Ava argued, her voice rising an octave. “My point is, it was a stress response. A trauma bond. And… and it was closure.”
Ethan hit the brakes a little harder than necessary at a red light. He turned fully in his seat to look at her. “Closure.”
“Yes. Closure.” Ava finally met his eyes, clinging to the word like a life raft. “When you left for LA six years ago, we never got a proper goodbye. We just fought, and then you were gone. We had all this unresolved, lingering… whatever. And tonight, the adrenaline spiked, and
the wires crossed, and we finally got it out of our systems. It was a onetime, necessary release of pent-up historical tension.”
Ethan stared at her. The streetlights illuminated the sharp angles of his face, highlighting the faint smudge of her lipstick near the corner of his mouth.
He knew she was lying. She knew he knew she was lying. But he also saw the absolute, wide-eyed panic in her expression. She was terrified. She had spent six years building a fortress, and he had just blown the doors off the hinges in under three minutes.
Ethan let out a long, slow exhale. He turned back to the windshield as the light turned green.
“Okay,” Ethan said quietly. Ava blinked. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he repeated, his voice perfectly level. “It was a situational anomaly. It was closure. We got it out of our systems.”
Ava felt a sudden, sharp pang of disappointment that she immediately, violently suppressed. “Right. Exactly. So, tomorrow, we go back to normal. We’re professional co-leads. We focus on the pitch.”
“Professional co-leads,” Ethan agreed. He pulled the Audi up to the curb outside her apartment building and put the car in park. He didn’t unlock the doors immediately. He turned to look at her, his hazel eyes dark and entirely unreadable. “Have a good night, Ava. I’m glad we finally got that closure.”
“Goodnight, Ethan,” Ava said, her voice trembling slightly.
She practically fled the car, sprinting up the steps to her building. When she finally locked the door to her apartment, she leaned back against the wood, sliding down until she was sitting on the floor. Pixel trotted over, sniffing her knee and letting out a confused whine.
“It was closure, Pixel,” Ava whispered to the dog, pressing the heels of her hands against her burning eyes. “It was just once.”
The “Just Once” Fallacy lasted for exactly fourteen hours.
By 11:00 a.m. the next morning, the fourteenth floor of Summit Strategies felt like a pressure cooker.
Ava was sitting at her desk, wearing a thick, oversized cashmere sweater that felt like a suit of armor. She was staring at a spreadsheet, but the numbers were swimming in front of her eyes. Every time she heard Ethan’s voice from the other side of the bullpen, her heart did a frantic, chaotic little flip. Every time he walked past her pod, the scent of his sandalwood cologne lingered in the air, a ghost of the coat check closet that made her skin flush hot.
“You look like you’re vibrating at a frequency only dogs can hear,” Sarah observed, rolling her chair into Ava’s pod. She narrowed her eyes, leaning in close. “And you’re wearing the ‘I Made a Bad Decision’ sweater.”
“It’s cashmere, Sarah. It’s a staple of a professional autumn wardrobe,” Ava said, not looking away from her screen.
“You only wear that sweater when you’re trying to hide from the consequences of your own actions,” Sarah countered. She squinted, her gaze dropping to Ava’s mouth. “Your lips look different. Did you get filler? No, you wouldn’t get filler without telling me. Are they… bruised?”
Ava’s hand flew to her mouth before she could stop it. “I ate a very aggressive bagel.”
“You are a terrible liar,” Sarah gasped, her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. “Oh my god. The client dinner. You and Ethan. You hooked up.”
“Keep your voice down!” Ava hissed, glancing frantically around the bullpen. “We did not hook up. We had a… a brief, adrenaline-fueled moment of closure.”
“Closure?” A deep, gravelly voice asked from behind them.
Ava and Sarah both jumped. Julian Vance was leaning against the frosted glass divider, holding a cup of black coffee. He looked at Ava, his dark eyes gleaming with quiet amusement.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” Julian drawled. “In my experience, ‘closure’ is just the word people use when they want to make a terrible decision but still feel intellectually superior about it.”
“Nobody asked you, lumberjack,” Sarah snapped, her cheeks flushing pink.
“I’m just offering a male perspective,” Julian said, taking a sip of his coffee. He looked at Ava. “For the record, Hayes has been staring at the back of your head for the last forty-five minutes. If that’s what closure looks like, I’d hate to see what happens when he actually wants something.”
Julian offered a mocking salute with his coffee cup and strolled away toward the art department.
Ava dropped her head onto her desk with a muffled groan. “I need to leave the country. I need to fake my own death and move to a sheep farm in Scotland.”
“You don’t need a sheep farm, you need a nap,” Sarah said, patting Ava’s shoulder sympathetically. “You look exhausted. Go to the Zen Den. Take twenty minutes. I’ll cover for you if Kline asks.”
The Zen Den was Summit Strategies’ attempt at corporate wellness. It was a small, soundproofed room at the end of the hallway, equipped with dimmable lights, a white noise machine, and three plush, velvet daybeds separated by heavy privacy curtains. It was designed for meditation. It was mostly used by junior copywriters crying over client revisions.
“You’re right,” Ava sighed, standing up. “I need twenty minutes of absolute silence to reset my brain. If Ethan asks for the wireframe approvals, tell him I’m in a meeting.”
Ava walked down the hallway, slipping into the Zen Den and letting the heavy, soundproof door click shut behind her.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the soft, blue glow of a Himalayan salt lamp in the corner. The white noise machine was playing a
gentle, rhythmic track of ocean waves. It was cool, quiet, and perfectly isolated.
Ava walked to the furthest daybed, pulling the heavy velvet privacy curtain shut behind her. She kicked off her flats and lay down on the plush velvet, closing her eyes and letting out a long, shaky exhale.
She just needed to breathe. She just needed to remind herself that she was a professional, that the kiss was an anomaly, and that she was in complete control of her life.
The heavy door to the Zen Den clicked open. Ava froze, her eyes snapping open in the dark.
She heard the soft thud of footsteps on the carpet. Someone walked past the first two daybeds. The footsteps stopped right outside her privacy curtain.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the rhythmic crashing of the digital ocean waves.
Then, the velvet curtain was slowly pulled back.
Ethan stood in the narrow opening. The soft blue light from the salt lamp caught the sharp angles of his face. He had taken off his suit jacket, and his tie was loosened. He looked down at her, his chest rising and falling with a heavy, uneven rhythm.
“Sarah said you were in a meeting,” Ethan said, his voice a low, rough whisper that barely carried over the white noise machine.
“I am,” Ava breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs. “I’m meeting with my sanity.”
Ethan stepped into the small, enclosed space, letting the velvet curtain fall shut behind him. The area around the daybed was incredibly narrow. His knees brushed against the edge of the mattress.
“I tried, Ava,” Ethan said, his voice thick with frustration and a desperate, starving heat. “I sat at my desk for four hours. I tried to be the professional co-lead. I tried to respect the anomaly.”
“Ethan…”
“But I can’t,” he confessed, dropping to his knees beside the daybed so he was eye-level with her. He rested his hands on the edge of the mattress, his knuckles white. “I can’t look at you across that bullpen and pretend that last night didn’t happen. I can’t pretend that I don’t know exactly what you taste like, or the exact sound you make when I touch your neck.”
Ava’s breath hitched. The air in the tiny, enclosed space was suddenly so thick it was suffocating. The “Just Once” Fallacy, which had been holding her together all morning, instantly evaporated into dust.
“It was supposed to be closure,” Ava whispered, a weak, final attempt at self-preservation.
“I think,” Ethan murmured, leaning forward until his face was inches from hers, “that I need a little more closure.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He reached out, his hand tangling in her auburn hair, and pulled her mouth to his.
If the kiss in the coat check had been an explosion, this was a wildfire.
Ava let out a soft, desperate sound, her hands flying up to grip
the lapels of his shirt. She pulled him forward, and Ethan shifted his weight, moving from his knees onto the edge of the daybed. The mattress dipped under his weight, pressing them flush against each other.
There was no hesitation, no awkward fumbling. Their bodies remembered exactly how they fit together. Ethan’s mouth was hot and demanding, his tongue sweeping along her lower lip, tasting of coffee and mint. Ava opened to him instantly, her fingers sliding up his chest to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Ava,” Ethan groaned against her mouth, his hand sliding down her side to grip her hip, pulling her impossibly closer.
The white noise machine masked the sound of their ragged breathing. The heavy velvet curtain shielded them from the rest of the world. They were completely, utterly isolated in the dark, and it stripped away the last remaining shreds of their professional restraint.
Ava shifted, swinging her leg over his hip so she was straddling his lap. Ethan let out a sharp, guttural exhale, his hands immediately dropping to grip her thighs, steadying her against him.
She kissed him with six years of pent-up, furious longing. She kissed him for the nights she had spent crying over him, for the mornings she had spent looking for his car, and for the terrifying, undeniable realization that she had never actually stopped loving him.
Ethan’s hands slid under the hem of her cashmere sweater, his warm palms flattening against the bare skin of her waist. Ava gasped into his mouth, her spine arching at the contact. His thumbs traced the line of her ribs, sending shockwaves of heat straight to her core.
He kissed his way down her jaw, his lips pressing against the sensitive skin of her neck. Ava tilted her head back, her fingers gripping his shoulders tight enough to bruise.
“You’re driving me insane,” Ethan breathed against her pulse point, his voice rough and ragged. “You have been driving me insane since the second I walked back into this building.”
“Good,” Ava gasped, pulling his face back up to hers. “You deserve
it.”
He laughed, a dark, breathless sound, before capturing her lips
again. He rolled them over, pressing her back into the plush velvet of the daybed, his body covering hers. The weight of him was grounding, familiar, and entirely intoxicating.
They were reckless. They were in a corporate wellness room on the fourteenth floor of their office building, at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning. Anyone could walk in. Marcus Kline could walk in.
But as Ethan’s hands moved higher, tracing the curve of her spine, Ava realized she didn’t care. The professional boundary was gone. The Arctic freeze was a distant memory.
The “Just Once” Fallacy had officially collapsed, leaving behind a reality that was infinitely more complicated, and infinitely more dangerous.
Ethan pulled back slightly, resting his forehead against hers. They were both breathing heavily, their chests rising and falling in unison. His hazel eyes were dark, dilated, and burning with a fierce, possessive heat.
“Tell me this is an anomaly,” Ethan challenged softly, his thumb brushing across her swollen lower lip.
Ava looked up at him, her heart hammering a frantic, chaotic rhythm against her ribs. She reached up, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, feeling the faint shadow of stubble.
“It’s not an anomaly,” Ava whispered, finally surrendering to the truth.
Ethan closed his eyes, a look of profound, overwhelming relief washing over his face. He let out a long, shaky exhale, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead.
“Thank God,” he murmured.
They lay there in the dark, the digital ocean waves crashing rhythmically in the background, tangled together on the velvet daybed.
They had crossed the Rubicon. There was no going back to being just co-leads. There was no going back to the safety of their separate lives.
Ava rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady, rapid thud of his heartbeat. She had let him back in. She had given him the power to break her heart all over again.
But as Ethan’s arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her like he was never going to let her go, Ava realized something else.
For the first time in six years, she actually believed he might stay.