had memorized the sound of his footsteps. Not because I meant to.
Not because I was some lovesick idiot scribbling hearts in the margins of my planner.

It was just survival.

Nicholas Wolfe didn’t walk like other people. His steps were sure. Purposeful. Calm in a way that didn’t need to announce itself. He moved through the marble corridors and glass-walled offices like he owned the place.

Which he did.

But he never flaunted it. He didn’t need to. The world bent around him without being asked.

It was my fifth day pretending to be perfectly competent while carrying a secret heavy enough to tilt my center of gravity.

Each morning, I printed the board memos before he asked, filtered his inbox so ruthlessly that he barely had to skim it, and prepped his agendas with a level of obsessive precision that made some of the older assistants slow down when they passed my desk, glancing twice.

I kept notes in tight columns on color-coded Post-its.
I remembered names before I was officially introduced.
I learned the cadence of his workdays — the exact second he reached for a stapler, the subtle shift in his voice when he needed a file versus when he just wanted the room to be quieter.

We didn’t talk much.

He didn’t hover. He didn’t make small talk.
He never asked why I sometimes rubbed the back of my neck at 10:00 a.m., when the nausea flared worst.
He never commented on the fact that my blouses were suddenly a size too loose for my frame.

But I felt him watching sometimes, in the quiet flick of his gaze when I slid a corrected contract across his desk without being prompted. In the small tilt of his head when I answered a question from legal a half-second faster than anyone expected.

Once, we ended up standing too close at the printer.

I hadn’t heard him approach. I hadn’t realized until I reached forward to grab a stack of paper and felt it….the shift of air behind me, the faint warmth of another body far too near.

He didn’t step back.

Neither did I.

I grabbed the papers and left without a sound.

At lunch, I sat outside on the curved stone bench that edged the plaza.
My salad wilted uneaten in the sun. I stared at my phone instead, scrolling mindlessly through a list I didn’t remember making.

Names That Won’t Feel Like Lies:

I read the heading once, twice, and then turned the screen off like that could erase it.

Back inside, I threw myself at the next task, cleaning up a legal contract thick with so much passive voice it felt like wading through concrete. I flagged every missing clause, tightened every dangling modifier, cross-checked every rate against the master sheet until the document looked like a bloodied battlefield of margin notes. In my past life, when I worked as an architect, I always loved these methodical tasks.

It felt good. Something I could fix, unlike the chaos snarling inside me.

When I finished, I stacked the papers neatly into a red folder and walked down the hall.

I knocked once, heart thudding too hard.

“Come in,” Nicholas said without looking up.

I pushed the door open and crossed to the desk, folder clutched in both hands like a shield.

He was typing something quickly, his gaze flicking between screens.

“I finalized the legal edits,” I said, holding the folder out.

“There were three typos in the original draft,” I added. “And I flagged a discrepancy in the contract dates.”

He nodded, taking the file, skimming without slowing his typing. I lingered a beat too long. Not quite dismissed. Not quite invited to stay.

“Anything else?” he asked finally, voice even, not dismissive, but distant enough that it carved something sharp into the back of my ribs.

I should have said no. I should have turned, walked out, kept the careful clockwork rhythm of professionalism ticking along.

But my fingers clenched against my skirt. I hesitated.

Just a second too long. He looked up. His eyes met mine and the room seemed to narrow around us, cutting out everything else.

“I remember everything,” Nicholas said.

My stomach flipped violently.

There was no smirk curling at the edge of his mouth. Just Nicholas Wolfe, going back to his screen as if he hadn’t just unraveled me with four quiet words.

“Close the door when you leave,” he added without looking up.

I nodded, throat too tight to speak.

I closed the door softly behind me. Then walked back to my desk on legs that barely felt solid, tucking my shaking hand under a folder so no one would see.

I wasn’t sure what scared me more: the fact that he remembered. Or the part of me that didn’t want him to forget.