Page 1 of Love Unspoken

IT MUST BE LOVE

Can my love erase her scars? Even the ones that I caused…

She's my friend's sister and I know she’s always had a crush on me. It makes me uncomfortable. When she came back to Boston to take care of her dying father, I made sure she had a job in my tech company.

According to her boss, she's an introverted software genius. According to my girlfriend, she's plain and boring. According to her brother, she has no social life and is damaged.

The worst part of the story? She overhears me say I think she has no curves, no fashion sense and was hired as a favor to her brother. All true at the time!

But when we are forced to work together on a project, her brilliance, resilience, and hidden depths challenge everything I thought I knew about myself and my feelings for her.

As barriers break and truths emerge, I'm on a mission not just to win her heart but to prove love can transcend past judgments and scars.

ONE

NAYA

"I think Naya has a crush on you, Amias," I heard Ann's voice right before I was about to knock on my company's CEO's office door.

"I've known Naya for years," Amias replied.

"And she's had a crush on you for years. Everyone knows it."

"She may have a thing for me, but everyone also knows that I don't think of her that way. She's Nolan's sister, for fuck's sake."

Ann laughed and there was a teasing note in her voice. "Ah, you do know about her crush."

"It's a little hard to miss. I wish she wouldn't be so obvious. But it is what it is."

"It is a little pathetic the way she keeps watching you. Are you really not interested in her, even just a little bit? I mean, I know she's dull but…some men like that."

"I'm not interested in Nolan's fucking sister," he growled.

"Really?"

"Oh, for god's sake, Ann, please tell me you're not jealous of Naya. Have you looked at her? The woman has no curves to speak of; she has terrible fashion sense. Added to that, she's boring as fuck."

I stood frozen outside his door. Not sure what to do or how to do it. I just needed to raise my hand and knock on his door, and they'd stop talking about me.

"Then why did you hire her?"

"I was doing her brother a favor, alright? And she's a decent programmer."

A decent programmer?

"She went to a state school; how decent can she be?" Ann said.

I'd gone to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and had graduated with a degree in computer science engineering. I was recruited from university and worked at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area for three years before returning to Boston when my father fell sick. I moved in with him and took care of him until he passed some months ago.

Nolan said he had a family, so he couldn't take care of Daddy and would have to put him in a home. I knew my father was frightened of that because of how he had seen some of his friends treated at hospices, which is why I became his full-time caregiver. I hired a nurse to be with him during the day and tried to work from home as often as possible.

"She's an okay programmer, Ann. She needed a job in Boston, and I helped out. And she's Ethan's problem. Not mine."

Ethan's problem? Ethan Rogers, my boss, always told me I was his star employee. Was he gaslighting me?

I wanted to walk away, but I couldn't. We were on a deadline, and I needed to run the specs of the program the team had been working on by Amias.

Finally, after pulling together all my courage, I knocked on his door, not letting my mind wander. I had to compartmentalize. Keep things in their place. Emotions locked in one file server. Password protected.