The week after the mixer felt like walking through fog.
Nothing had changed, not really — and yet, everything had.
Adrian had gone quiet. Quieter than usual, and that was saying something. Meetings were shorter, conversations clipped, glances avoided. It wasn't coldness exactly, but distance — deliberate and suffocating.
I matched it, of course. What else could I do?
Pretend. Work. Smile when needed. Breathe only when it didn't hurt.
But pretending has its limits, and mine were starting to crack.
The kiss — if that's even what it was — replayed at the edges of my mind like a scene I couldn't edit right.
The terrace. The air too cold, too quiet. His eyes — sharp, tired, dark with something I didn't understand.
And then — closeness. Breath. Warmth. A heartbeat where the world stopped pretending too.
Then nothing.
No apology. No explanation. Just silence.
And now, every time our eyes met — if they met at all — there was something like panic buried beneath the calm.
I didn't know if it was mine or his.
That morning, the office buzzed with a strange kind of energy. Rain threatened again — thick clouds pressing against the glass, thunder humming somewhere distant. The kind of day where people move faster, talk louder, as if to drown out the sky.
I buried myself in reports, my desk cluttered with papers that refused to make sense. I'd been rereading the same line for ten minutes when I felt it — that familiar weight of someone watching.
I looked up.
Adrian stood a few feet away, coffee in hand, unreadable as always.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
He looked… tired. Not just physically — tired in the way people get when they're fighting something invisible.
"Morning," I managed.
"Morning," he replied, his voice calm, controlled. The kind of calm that hides chaos.
He placed a file on my desk. "New brief. Deadline's been moved up."
"Got it."
Our fingers almost brushed as I reached for the folder. Almost.
He noticed too. The smallest flicker in his expression. Then he stepped back, nodded once, and turned away.
And that was it.
A routine interaction, completely normal — except for the heartbeat I could feel pounding in my throat.
By noon, the storm broke.
Rain slanted against the glass, drumming steady and relentless. People complained about traffic, about the roads flooding. Someone suggested working from home, but deadlines laughed in our faces.
I tried to focus. Failed.
Every time Adrian's voice carried from his office, low and restrained, my pulse stuttered.
I hated that it did. I hated that after everything — after silence and distance — part of me still waited for him to look at me again the way he had that night.
I had finally made it through the day when it happened.
I'd taken a taxi instead of the bus or the subway. The rain had eased to a drizzle, the streets outside slick and shimmering like glass.
There was a delivery truck parked across the street — too close to the pedestrian path. The driver was arguing with security, blocking half of the my road. Typical city chaos.
I didn't think twice before walking towards my place.
The car shouldn't have come that fast.
I heard it before I saw it — the sharp screech of tires against wet asphalt, the blare of a horn cutting through the air.
Someone shouted my name.
And then everything blurred.
A rush of movement — a hand grabbing my arm, yanking me backward hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
We hit the ground. Hard.
The sound of impact — metal against metal — followed a second later.
For a moment, the world tilted. The rain, the lights, the shouting — all of it spun around me in dizzy circles.
And then I saw him.
Adrian.
Lying half over me, one arm braced protectively across my chest, his breath sharp and uneven.
There was blood.
Not much at first. Just a dark smear across his sleeve, spreading too fast.
"Adrian—"
He winced, tried to move, failed. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused but searching.
"Are you—hurt?" he managed, voice strained.
I shook my head, too stunned to speak.
He smiled — small, broken, relieved — and then his face twisted, the pain catching up to him.
"Don't—move," I whispered, already pressing my hands against the side of his jacket, where the blood was seeping through.
He flinched but didn't push me away.
The driver was shouting something nearby. People ran toward us. Footsteps splashed in the rain.
But all I could see was him.
His eyes — the same dark storm I'd spent months pretending not to drown in.
"You shouldn't—" he tried, his voice breaking.
"Don't talk," I said, choking on the words. "Just—don't."
I couldn't feel my hands anymore — they were shaking too much.
He reached down, fingers brushing my wrist weakly. "It's—fine," he breathed. "You're—safe."
And that broke me.
Because it wasn't fine. Because he wasn't.
Because the man who had spent months keeping his distance had just thrown himself into danger without thinking twice.
For me.
The ambulance arrived in flashes — sirens, voices, chaos blurring together. I didn't remember moving but somehow I was standing.
They lifted him onto a stretcher, blood staining the wet pavement beneath where he'd been.
"Wait—" I tried to follow, but someone held me back.
"Miss, we need you to stay clear."
"I'm going with him," I said, voice trembling.
They didn't argue.
Inside the ambulance, the air smelled like antiseptic and rain. The paramedic worked fast — bandages, oxygen, clipped commands I couldn't process.
Adrian's eyes opened once, barely.
"Amara," he whispered.
"I'm here."
His fingers twitched, searching for something — maybe mine, maybe just a thread of consciousness. I caught his hand and held it tight.
He exhaled shakily, the faintest hint of a smile ghosting across his lips.
Then the monitor beeped faster.
"Stay with me," I said, voice breaking. "Please."
He didn't answer.
The city lights streaked past through the rain-soaked glass, smearing into something that looked too much like tears.