"Yeah." But neither of us moved. "Zoe likes you," I said. It felt important, somehow.
His eyes met mine. "Just her?"
My pulse jumped. I should answer honestly. Should tell him that no, it wasn't just Zoe. That somewhere along the way, against my better judgment, I'd started to like him too. That the kiss had meant something. That today had meant something. That I was terrified of how much I was starting to feel.
But I couldn't. Couldn't open that door. Couldn't risk everything I'd built on something that might not be real.
"Goodnight, Xavier."
I walked to the door and opened it. An invitation to leave. An escape from the question I couldn't answer. He walked past me, pausing in the doorway. Close. So close.
"Goodnight, Kim." He left.
I closed the door and leaned against it, heart pounding, mind racing. This was supposed to be simple. A transaction. A job. It was becoming something else entirely.
And I had no idea what to do about it.
8XAVIER
I was in trouble.
Professionally, the Cole Matthews deal was getting complicated. Every time I thought we'd ironed out the details, his team came back with new concerns, new clauses, new demands that made Sebastian's jaw tighten and my headaches worse.
Personally, I couldn't stop thinking about Kim.
It had become a problem. A real, actual problem that I had no idea how to solve.
I noticed everything now. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was concentrating. The exact shade of exhaustion that crept into her face around four in the afternoon, when the day had worn her down, but she still had hours to go. The way her fingers moved across her keyboard, quick and efficient. The way she said my name, like she was still deciding whether I deserved the familiarity of it.
I found excuses to call her into my office. A file I could have retrieved myself. A question I could have emailed. A meeting I wanted her opinion on, as if I'd ever needed anyone's opinion on meetings before.
I was aware of how pathetic it made me.
The worst part was that it was working. Not the deal—the deal was still a mess—but the arrangement. My grandmother had backed off, stopped showing up unannounced, and stopped making pointed comments about my timeline. She seemed to genuinely like Kim, kept calling her "a breath of fresh air" and "exactly what you need."
She wasn't wrong.
Kim was a good influence on me. I'd started showing up to work on time. Started actually reading the reports instead of skimming them. Started caring about things I'd never cared about before, just because I knew she was watching, and I didn't want to disappoint her.
When had her opinion started mattering so much?
That night, after work, I was sprawled on my couch, staring at the ceiling and definitely not thinking about the way Kim had smiled at me when I'd made a stupid joke about spreadsheets, when my buzzer rang.
Isaac's face appeared on the security camera. He was grinning, which meant trouble.
I let him up.
"Get dressed," he said, pushing past me into the apartment. "We're going out."
"I don't want to go out."
"That's exactly why we're going out." He surveyed my sweatpants and t-shirt with obvious disdain. "Look at you. This is sad. When did you become a hermit?"
"I'm not a hermit. I'm... resting."
"You're moping." He grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the bedroom. "Come on. Let’s go to the club, everyone's going to be there. It'll be fun."
"I don't want fun."
