I know this because I recognize it. I've built an entire company on the same principle, on refusing to admit when the universe has stacked the deck against me, on pushing through impossible odds through sheer bloody-minded persistence.
The difference is that I'm twice her size and built like a tank, and she's a human woman who weighs maybe a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, which she currently is, standing in a mountain storm that's dropping the temperature by the minute.
I move before I consciously decide to move, stepping off the porch and into the rain, my boots squelching in the mud that's rapidly forming across the lawn. The cold doesn't bother me the way it will bother her. Orc physiology runs hot, designedfor endurance and adverse conditions, and while the rain is unpleasant it's not dangerous, not the way it will be for her if she stays out here much longer.
She doesn't notice me approaching until I'm directly behind her, and even then she doesn't turn around, just keeps staring at the ruined bonfire setup with devastation and fury.
"Romee," I say, pitching my voice to cut through the sound of the rain hammering against the ground.
"Don't," she says immediately, her voice tight and sharp and brittle in a way I haven't heard before, not even when I ripped her itinerary in half or when my executives staged a mutiny over the trust fall exercises. "Don't tell me it's fine. Don't tell me we can reschedule. Don't tell me it doesn't matter."
I wasn't going to say any of those things, but I file away the fact that someone, probably multiple someones, have said those exact phrases to her before in moments when things fell apart, have dismissed her distress with empty platitudes that did nothing except make her feel worse.
Instead I step closer, and she has to tilt her head back to look up at me when she finally turns around.
Her makeup is running. Her hair is plastered to her skull. Her blazer is completely ruined, the expensive fabric darkened with water and clinging to her in a way that outlines every curve, every line of her body, and she's shivering, fine tremors running through her frame that she's trying desperately to suppress.
She looks furious and miserable and absolutely beautiful, and I'm struck by the sudden, overwhelming realization that I want to fix this for her, want to make the storm stop and the bonfire materialize and the schedule align perfectly, want to give her the flawless event she's been fighting for, not because it serves my business interests but because the alternative is watching her stand here in the rain looking like something vital inside her has cracked.
"Inside," I say, which is not a suggestion, not a request, just a flat statement of what's about to happen.
"I need to clean up the?—"
I don't let her finish. I bend down, wrap one arm around her waist and the other behind her knees, and lift her clean off the ground before she can mount a coherent protest.
"What are you—put me down!" Her voice spikes into a register that's pure outrage, her hands bracing against me as I turn and start walking toward my private cabin, which is significantly closer than the main lodge and has the added benefit of not containing twenty-three nosy Orc executives who would absolutely notice their CEO carrying the event planner through a rainstorm.
"You're going into shock," I tell her bluntly, adjusting my grip so she's settled more securely against me. She weighs almost nothing, even soaked through, light enough that carrying her requires zero effort, and some primitive part of me that I've spent years suppressing takes visceral satisfaction in the fact that I can do this, that I'm strong enough to simply remove her from a bad situation and deliver her somewhere safe whether she cooperates or not.
"I am not going into shock, I'm going into crisis management mode, which is completely different and requires me to be on the ground doing damage control, not being hauled around like a sack of potatoes by an overbearing?—"
"You're shaking," I interrupt, taking the steps up to my cabin two at a time. "Your lips are turning blue. You've been running on coffee and spite for three days straight, you skipped lunch, and you just stood in freezing rain for ten minutes having what I'm generously calling an emotional processing moment. You're going inside, you're getting warm, and then we're having a conversation about your complete inability to prioritize your own basic physical needs."
I kick the cabin door open, which is harder than it should be because I'm balancing her weight and trying not to jostle her too much, step inside, and kick it shut behind us as the heavy wood frame rattles in its hinges.
The cabin is warm, blessedly warm, the heating system I had them install specifically because I can't stand being cold cutting through the chill immediately. I set her down, but I don't step back, keeping myself positioned between her and the door in case she gets any ideas about bolting back out into the storm.
She sways slightly when her feet hit the floor, catching herself against the wall, and I see the moment the adrenaline starts to drain out of her system, the moment the shivering gets worse instead of better now that she's out of the rain.
I grab the largest towel from the bathroom, which is functionally the size of a blanket because everything in this cabin is scaled for my proportions, and drop it directly over her head.
"Hey—"
"Dry off," I tell her, cutting off whatever protest she was about to launch. The towel muffles her voice, turning her objection into an indistinct sound of frustration, and I feel a grim satisfaction at having found a method to effectively shut her up that doesn't involve actually arguing with her, because arguing with Romee Lin is like arguing with a particularly aggressive optimization algorithm—technically possible but ultimately exhausting and counterproductive.
I hear her moving under the towel, the soft sounds of fabric rubbing against fabric, and I turn away to give her privacy while I strip off my own soaked shirt and grab a dry one from the bedroom.
When I come back she's emerged from the towel, her hair roughly dried into a messy, chaotic cloud around her face, her blazer discarded in a wet heap on the floor. She's standing in my cabin in a damp silk blouse that's somehow survived thedownpour and a pencil skirt that's clinging to her hips, and she's staring at me.
"The evening activity?—"
"Is cancelled," I say flatly. "The rain cancelled it. Not you. The weather. An act of nature beyond your control or mine. My executives will survive one unscheduled evening. Most of them are probably thrilled."
"The schedule?—"
"Is flexible," I continue, cutting her off again because if I let her build momentum she'll spiral into a full crisis management mode that will take hours to talk her down from. "Schedules are tools, Romee. They're useful right up until external circumstances render them obsolete, at which point clinging to them becomes a liability instead of an asset."
She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, and I can see her physically struggling with the concept that something on her carefully color-coded itinerary might be negotiable, that perfection might not actually be an achievable or even a reasonable goal.
