CHAPTER TWENTY —
EMMA
I wake up before my alarm feeling optimally refreshed.
That alone is strange enough to make me check the time twice.
6:42.
I lie there for a moment, waiting for the usual scramble in my head. The half-formed worry about work. The faint irritation that I didn't sleep long enough even when I did. The sense that I'm already behind before the day has started.
None of it shows up.
I feel rested. Not euphoric. Not energized in a dramatic way. Just… normal, in a way I haven't felt in a long time.
I sit up, stretch, and notice my shoulders don't ache the way they usually do. My jaw isn't tight. My phone hasn't buzzed yet and I'm not already annoyed by the thought of it.
That's new.
In the bathroom, my face looks like mine. No shadows I didn't earn. No exhaustion etched into the corners of my eyes. I brush my teeth, half-expecting the calm to crack, the way it always does but it doesn't.
I shower, dress, move through the morning on autopilot that somehow feels lighter than usual. When I spill a bit of coffee on the counter, I wipe it up without muttering under my breath. When I miss my bus, I don't swear about it. I just felt good like the dwe of the morning fresh.
That's when it really hits me.
Something has changed, not in a way I can name. Just in the way the day unfolds without friction.
Like a weight I didn't realize I was carrying got set down somewhere behind me. I don't remember putting it there.
At the office, the lobby hums with its usual noise. Phones ringing. Shoes clicking against marble. Someone laughing too loudly at something that probably isn't funny.
Normally, it usually just annoying me and make me want to scream but today, it doesn't.
The sound moves around instead of through me.
I walked to the reception area and nods at the receptionist with a genuine smile. Surprisingly, she smiles back, a real one, not the polite reflex. I notice that too and was genuinely thrilled.
In the elevator, a man will tag name Timothy Thomas sighs dramatically when we stop on every floor. I watch the numbers change and feel… nothing about it. No irritation. No eye roll. Just time passing and smiles at his irritation, because that's was me some days back.
When I reach my desk, I set my bag down carefully, like I'm afraid to disturb whatever followed me in. My inbox loads. Deadlines. Emails. A calendar reminder I forgot yesterday.
My pulse doesn't jump.
Harper peeks over the divider. "good morning love. how are you today."
"I am very good" I replied smiling broadly "I hope you feel the same I said and she nodded absent mindedly, as she type into her computer.
"It's good to see your face this early" she said still typing.
"I woke up early," I say.
She squints at me. "You look fine."
I laugh. "That's not exactly flattering." she stared at me her eyes not blinking.
"No, I mean actually fine. Like you didn't spend the night arguing with your own thoughts." she concluded with a genuine smile.
I turn my chair toward her. "Is it usually that obvious?" I smiled back feeling more alive.
She grins. "Painfully."
As the day progresses, work comes more easily. Not faster, exactly. Just smoother. I respond to emails without rewriting them three times. I make a decision and don't immediately second-guess it. I don't feel the urge to apologize for taking up space.
By midmorning, I realize something else.
I'm not waiting. Not for lunch. Not for the weekend. Not for the day to be over so I can finally breathe. I'm just… here.
That thought gives me pause.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling for a second, then shake it off. Overthinking is a habit. I don't need to invite it back in.
Still, when I catch my reflection in the dark screen of my monitor, I barely recognize the ease on my own face.
Around noon, Ashley stops by my desk.
"Hey," she says. "You good?"
"Yeah," I answer automatically. Then, after a beat, more honestly, "I think so."
She studies me in that quiet way of hers. Not invasive. Just present. Her eyes soften, like she sees something I don't.
"You seem lighter," she says.
I frown slightly. "Do I?"
She nods. "Yeah."
I smile. "That's good coming from you dear ." I said my heart some how feel very grateful to this lady and I do not know why.
She lingers a moment, then heads back to her desk. I watch her go, a strange warmth settling in my chest. Not attachment. Not longing. Just gratitude, sudden and unexpected again.
The afternoon drifts by without dragging. When five o'clock comes, I'm surprised. I pack up slowly, said my good byes and walked out slowly and unhorried
Outside, the city glows the way it always does at this hour. Glass catching the last of the sun. Traffic thick but moving. People spilling out of buildings with tired faces and loosened ties.
I blend into it easily.
On the bus ride home, I rest my head against the window and let myself think about nothing in particular. No sharp memories surface. No strange hunger. No sense of being watched or pulled or hollowed out.
Just the quiet certainty that whatever was wrong with me isn't clawing at my ribs anymore.
I don't question it.
Tonight, I cook dinner instead of ordering takeout. I eat slowly. I clean up without resentment. When I crawl into bed later, my body sinks into the mattress like it belongs there.
As I turn off the light, a thought drifts through me, uninvited but gentle.
This is what being whole feels like.
I fall asleep before I can wonder why.
ERIC
I don't usually notice individuals.
That's the advantage of scale. People blur when you've spent years standing above systems instead of inside them. Buildings, companies, cities. Faces turn into patterns. Movements into trends.
So when I walk into CrownWave that morning, I expect the same thing.
Noise. Motion. Predictability.
I get three steps past the security desk before something registers wrong.
Not dramatic. Not sharp.
Just… off.
Like a room where someone opened a window an inch without telling you.
I slow without meaning to.
The lobby is busy, but there's a point of stillness near the elevators. Not emptiness. Presence. Subtle enough that no one else seems to react to it, which makes it worse.
I follow it with my eyes before my brain catches up.
She's standing near the wall, phone in hand, waiting. No urgency. No visible tension. Just a woman killing time before work swallows her again.
She doesn't look at me.
That's part of it.
Most people do. A glance. A flicker of recognition. Curiosity at the very least. She doesn't lift her head. Doesn't shift. Doesn't brace.
She exists like I'm not there.
I hate that I notice.
She smiles faintly at something on her screen, and the air does something strange. It's not attraction. Not hunger. Not the sharp pull Damien described once, half-drunk and furious with himself.
This is quieter, like a lock recognizing the shape of a key without turning yet.
I keep walking.
By the time I reach the elevator, I'm irritated with myself for it. I've met heads of state who barely registered. I don't get distracted by assistants and analysts and junior staff.
Still, as the doors close, I glance back.
She's gone.
The feeling doesn't follow me upstairs, but it doesn't disappear either. It settles. Patient. Observant.
In the meeting later, when HR rattles off names and roles, her file comes up.
Emma.
I don't react. I file it away like everything else.
But when I see her again on the floor later, speaking with Harper, laughing softly at something I can't hear, it clicks into place.
She's clean.
Not innocent. Not naive. Just… cleared. Like a surface wiped of residue that was never meant to be there in the first place.
Whatever Damien touched, whatever mess he dragged through this building with him, didn't stick to her.
That shouldn't be possible.
I don't approach her.
That's important.
I don't summon her. Don't test the line between curiosity and control. I've crossed that line enough times to recognize its edge.
Instead, I watch.
Not like a predator. Like a man taking note of an anomaly in a system he thought he understood.
She moves easily. Speaks when spoken to. Doesn't overcorrect. Doesn't shrink. Doesn't reach.
When she passes me in the corridor, she nods politely. No charge. No tension. No awareness of the shift she causes simply by existing in proximity.
The absence of reaction is what lingers.
Later, alone in my office, I find myself thinking of her again. Not her face. Her presence. The way the building felt different around her.
That bothers me more than hunger ever could.
I don't want her.
I don't need her.
But I want to know why someone like her makes a place like this feel less hollow.
I lean back in my chair, staring at the city through glass.
"Interesting," I murmur, and for once, it's not about profit or leverage or control.
It's about proximity.