Chapter 77: An Unexpected Touch

Lisa’s POV.

The conference room is blinding.

Numerous eyes are gazing forward, the projector illuminating the long table with a faint glow, displaying charts and numbers on the wall. As the final coalition members take their seats, voices hush. The low level of background chatter gives way to silence, as the stillness of anticipation that always seems to precede the start of a talk begins to settle in around the room.

These are the moments that normally energize me.

Today, it just reminds me painfully that Leo is standing next to me.

He’s near — not close enough to touch, not close enough to draw the questionable looks of the others, but close enough to make me feel the heat emanating from his body, close enough to make the memory of last night press against my ribs like a secret heartbeat.

No one here has any idea that only hours earlier, his lips were on mine.

No one knows how long I stay awake after that — rewinding the confession over and over again in my mind, staring at the ceiling, wondering how something so simple could change everything so drastically.

For them, we are nothing but work colleagues.

Each breathe his seems to weigh down the air a little more for me.

“Ready?” he whispers beneath his breath, still staring at the screen in front of us.

“I’m as good as I’ll ever be,” I tell him, but my voice sounds alien even to my own ears.

The talk starts. I get into the flow relatively fast, slipping into the familiar rhythm of numbers, projections, risks and solutions. The words spill free, as if on cue and professionally rehearsed. The people at the table nodding. Pens and paper grind.

Ahem, clears someone throat. All the usual hallmarks a regular deck has are happening all around me, they bring me down to earth.

I Actually forgot – everything – for a while!

And then the pointer slips from my grasp.

It’s so quick It’s literally nothing — the plastic apparatus move when I reach out for it, making as if to fly off and land on the table in the middle of all of us.

And then his hand covers mine.

Warm. Firm. Shockingly gentle.

Our fingers meet.

The world exhales.

It’s stupid, how much silence can scream in my brain at a single touch. That jolt through the skin is like lightning, zipping through my arm, into my chest, and resting on something deep in my stomach. I can’t even hear what the investors are saying anymore. All I sense is him.

The palm of his hand beneath mine.

My breath stutters.

Little by little, my eyes lift.

In that brief, quiet stolen moment, his eyes meet mine and we connect with an electric charge. Not lust. Not even attraction. It’s recognition. Vulnerability. Desire mingled with restraint. The kind of look that says I felt that too.

In half a second, the whole room disappears.

There is no conference table, no executives, no ticking clock on the wall. It’s just me and Leo hanging in this delicate, dangerous silence that only we can experience.

Then a voice clears at the far end of the table.

“Lisa? The next slide?” someone prompts.

Reality crashes back in.

He immediately withdraws his hand and steps back with a cautious professional. However, the warmth remains.My skin tingles, where he touched me. like the imprint of him refuses to fade.

“I—yes,” I manage, forcing a smile. My fingers tighten around the pointer, though the tremor in my hand refuses to abate.

I slide forward both feet and turn back to the wall, advancing the slide, but now all the numbers are obscured by the dull reverberations of last night and the crushing sensation of his presence at my side.

Concentrate, I tell myself. They don’t know. Don’t give them a reason to look.

Still, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse what seems to be a barely smile forming at the corner of Leo's mouth before he reins it back into something neutral. It’s the smallest hint of a smile, almost private.

It’s mine It belongs to me. The idea frightens me more than the contact could ever do.

The show goes on. I answer questions. Leo seamlessly contributes his own strategic take and the two of us swivel-having week long rehearsals under our belts. But beneath the surface, something fresh, something unsaid, hums steadily between us.

Whenever our arms get close, and whenever our shadows fall together on the floor, I feel it.

That spark.

It’s only when we finish that a muffled applause bursts out, accompanied by murmurs of approval. People start to discuss the next steps, their voices gently rising again. But the only real thing I feel is the accidental graze of skin that was anything but accidental in my memory.

As people file out of the room, Leo collects his papers on one end of the table. I do the same, try not to look at him… but just as much as I can catch a glimpse of him.

He huffs also just a few employees left and breaks silence with another whispered, “you know you make it sound worse than it is,” and anyone still at his mercy is gonna find it hard not to appreciate lie.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” It’s out a little too quick. “I’m just… surprised, is all.”

He softens his tone. “You’re not easily scared.”

“No,” I confess. “But this… is different.”

He lowers his gaze and nods once. “I felt it too.”

A quiet confession, secreted between stacks of papers and flickering projectors.

Through the large windows, the sky has mellowed to an afternoon gold that spills sunshiny ribbons of light onto the floor. Time goes on. Life goes on. But something has changed within me that I know will not easily become what it was.

We're moving towards the door together. Just as I reach for the handle, we brush arms again. This time, slower. Almost deliberate.

I glance up.

“Careful,” I whisper, although there is little danger anywhere near us.

“I’m being careful.” he replies. “That’s what scares me.”

Between us hangs the candour of his words.

Outside the door, voices and footsteps roll down the hall, jolting us back to the reality of the moment. We break as we resume the pace that the world expects us to keep.

But my heart knows better.

That inadvertent brush wasn't simply a graze of the fingers.

It was a reminder.

A promise.

A quiet assertion that no matter how much we pretend that’s not true . . . what we have already is starting to grow a little between us.

And it's getting more and more... impossible... to ignore.