Love Me Hate Me

Aria's POV

Eight months.

Eight months of walking through these glass doors every morning telling myself the same lie. That today would be different. That today I would stop feeling what I had been feeling since the very first morning Daniel Cole walked past my desk without looking at me and somehow still managed to take up every single thought I had for the rest of that day.

I was still telling myself that lie.

I set my bag down at my desk and smoothed my skirt before pulling up the morning schedule. The 34th floor of Cole Enterprises was already alive with the quiet focused energy that I had grown to love. Keyboards clicking. Phones humming. The smell of fresh coffee threading through the cool conditioned air. I loved this place. I loved this job. I was also painfully aware that loving this job and loving the man who owned this building were two very different things and I had somehow managed to confuse them completely.

I opened his calendar.

Board debrief. Singapore call. Meridian contract review. Lunch that he would skip unless I reminded him twice. I added my usual note beside the lunch slot the way I always did, the way that had become less of a professional habit and more of something I did because taking care of him had quietly become the most natural thing in my day.

I stared at what I had typed.

Then I deleted it and rewrote it three times before settling on something that sounded less like a woman in love and more like a competent secretary.

The truth was I was both and only one of those things was acceptable here.

I picked up the morning report and stood from my desk. His office door was closed. It was always closed before he arrived. But I crossed the floor toward it anyway because there was always something to check, always a reason to step inside, always some professional justification for standing in the space that smelled like his cologne even when he wasn't in it yet.

I was not proud of this either.

I straightened the files on his desk. Adjusted the blinds two inches. Moved his pen holder one centimeter to the left and then back again. I stood in the middle of that office for a moment longer than I needed to and felt the particular ache that had become so familiar it almost felt like company.

Daniel Cole did not know I existed beyond the boundaries of this job.

And still I waited.

I walked back out into the hallway and that was when I heard it. That easy familiar sound that meant my morning was about to become slightly more complicated.

"Aria."

Marcus Reed was walking toward me from the direction of the finance department, tall and unhurried, with that smile already arranged on his face. The smile that arrived the moment he saw me and never quite left until we parted ways. It was a good smile. Warm and genuine and completely uncomplicated in a way that should have felt like relief.