Chapter 75: Unburdened

Lisa’s POV

The office seemed different at night.

Situated behind a bank of sleek glass windows during the day, the place was teeming with efficiency and echoes of hushed voices and office phones ringing. By night, it was shadows and silence, mellowed by the feeblest glimmer of desk lamps and city lights filtering through the windows.

The outside world did carry on, but in here, time evaporated into high piles of paper, convoluted figures and a nest fever in my chest.

The alliance figures on my screen were all wrong.

They had previously. I knew they had. I recalled doing the calculations, verifying the numbers, experiencing that little bit of reassurance when everything made sense. But now the balance was off. Millions missing. Complete swaths of data bent out of shape, as if someone had turned the fabric of reality just enough to cause it to taunt me.

I was frozen, my hands poised over the keyboard.

“No,” I whispered beneath my breath. “No, no, no…”

That was weeks of work, that project. Sleepless nights negotiating and delicate competing alignments of factions that barely trusted each other. If this fell apart now, it wouldn’t just cost money. It would cost credibility. Mine. I pressed my fingers lightly to my temples, as if I could will away the panic building behind my eyes.

Think, Lisa. You’ve handled worse.

But the more I looked at the screen, the less it added up.

Rapping came from my office door.

“Come in,” I said without looking up.

I sensed it before I spotted it — his presence. Calm, steady, unsettlingly normal yet somehow comforting.

“Everyone left,” Leo said softly. “Your car is out there. I guess you either forgot it… or forgot who you are.”

At last I faced him.

"If I could just wash my mind clean of all this," I said, vainly waving towards the data-wall that was illuminating behind me.

He advanced into the chamber. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. The numbers changed. The margins don’t quite fit. It’s as if the whole ground gave way beneath me when I wasn’t looking.”

His brow furrows slightly as he looks at the screen. “Move over.”

“Leo, you don’t need to —”

“Yes, I do,” he interrupted softly. “Scoot.”

His tone brooked no argument. I pulled in my chair, and he drew up another seat and placed it beside me. Not opposite me. Beside me – shoulder to shoulder.

The closeness sent a little jolt beneath my skin.

“Walk me through it,” he said.

I began to talk him through it, showing him important things, pointing at where the perturbation had started. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t rush. Just listened. He listened, thoroughly.

Then he reached for the mouse.

He began working.

No hesitation. No superiority. Ignoring everything else.

Minutes turned into an hour. Then an other. We whispered to one another, sometimes interrupting, sometimes falling silent as we simultaneously examined the same screen from two different angles. He noticed what I missed. I noticed what he missed. It turned into a silent, but effective, rhythm.

Our hands touched as we both reached for the keyboard.

“I’m sorry,” I said without thinking.

“Stop saying that,” he said without turning to me. “You have as much right to be in the same space as me, Lisa.”

These words stung more than he realized.

To be or allowed to be.

When did I last receive that simple permission from someone?

I exhaled slowly. “You’re pretty good at this.”

“Don’t tell my board. They think I’m already too attached to you, as it is.”

I eyed him warily. “In the project… right?”

He turned to me. His gaze softened. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

My breath caught, but before I could respond, he turned back to the screen, re-directing us both to the numbers, rather than feelings that were far too raw to examine.

Hours went by without anyone noticing.

At some point, he disappeared and returned with two cups of coffee. He placed one next to me.

“You’re shaking,”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” He didn’t argue. He just wrapped his fingers around my wrist for a split second: grounding, warm. “You don’t have to do it all by yourself.”

The words rang; long at the bottom of the simple stress of work. When he released me, there was warmth left over.

By the time we came to the final tables, the problem made itself known: a slightly misaligned integration point, invisible to the naked eye but destructive beyond measure. One tiny, merciless error. One decimal place too far.

“See that?” he said.

My eyes widened. “That’s the crack… That’s the crack.”

An “easy fix,” he said. “Go ahead. You do it.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Take it back.”

I straightened. Slowly, deliberately, I breathed out and corrected. Re-ran the sequence.

The numbers knitted back together.

The system stabilized.

The total glowed in bold green — complete, accurate, perfect.

Relief poured over me with such force that my body nearly gave out.

“I… we did it,” I whispered.

A small, genuine smile curved his lips. “You did.”

“No,” I said, turning now to him completely. “We did.”

For a second we just looked at each other, the glow of the screen illuminating his face in a soft light. The tension–the last several days–dissolved into something lighter, something warm and newly formed.

Trust.

Not negotiated. Earned.

He leaned back slightly, still looking me in the eyes. “You’re incredible under pressure, you know that?”

“I don’t need to feel incredible. I feel like I almost failed.”

“But you didn’t,” he said. “That matters.”

The way the man said it — so firmly, so unquestionably — made me feel steadier than any compliment ever could.

Silence found us again, but this time it wasn’t heavy. It was peaceful. Shared. I realized then how long it had been since I’d done this with anybody. Not against me. Not over me. But with me. Beside me.

“I don’t know what I’d have done without you tonight,” I said.

There was something quiet that flickered in his eyes. “You would’ve found a way. You always do.”

A pause. “But I’m glad I was here anyway.”

“So am I,” I whispered.

We both did not expect the confession.

Rising slowly, he offered me his hand without a second thought. I took it.

No strings, no complications, just the connection.

But it did make a difference.

As I packed up my things, my fingers grazed his once more and neither of us made a move to retreat. “We should leave,” I said softly.

“Yes” he consented, although he did not move immediately.

In the half light, in that quiet little office, we were more than two people joined by nothing more than contracts and titles. By effort. By vulnerability. By something BIG AND REAL, fortunately.

The elevator took us down, and we sat in silence. I felt it.

This shift was about more than just emotions now.

It was rooted. The invisible boundary had been crossed by what was developing between us.

And there was no doing it over.

Not now.