Chapter 84: We all Have a Weakness

Lisa’s Point of View

Arrival of the email at 9:17 a.m.

I know the exact time — and when the notification chimes, something inside me goes eerily still, as if my body is anticipating what my mind hasn’t yet fully comprehended. I stare at the subject line for a full minute before clicking on it.

RE: Project Lead Change of Assignment — Effective Immediately

My stomach sank.

The letters become blurred as I go over them, then read them again, as though I have the ability to make them change with my eyes. Restructuring. New leadership direction. Concentration of power. My name is never mentioned once except for a polite, meticulously delivered thank you for my hard work and contributions.

They’ve taken me out. Quietly. Efficiently. As if I weren't the one who laid the groundwork for the whole thing.

I have a soft ringing in my ears, which drowns out the low buzzing of the office life beyond my door. My hands are cold and I crack my knuckles, as if circulation will bring lucidity. But lucidity is what I don’t want the hell of right now.

I can’t get that thought out of my head: Not again. Not one more thing to take from me when I was just starting to get solid. The knock is just seconds later.

I don’t answer. don’t even move. I just keep staring at the screen, at the digital evidence of my failure.

“Lisa?” Leo’s voice, hesitant. Concerned. 1

The door is opening gradually. I know who it is even before I see him. No one else approaches my office that way, as if they’re stepping into a delicate glass enclosure.

“He was asking quietly, ‘What Happened?’.

I tip the laptop toward him, not trusting my voice.

Upon reading, his gaze intensifies. His jawline as I look. How his shoulders tense up. How a flash of rage crosses his face — not at me, but for me.

“They can’t do this,” he mutters. “Not after everything you’ve done on that project.”

“They just did.” finally appears, but it’s as if it’s coming from a different person, I can hear it, but I know it’s not mine.

I shut down the laptop. It’s like slamming shut a coffin lid.

Leo comes closer. “Is this why you’ve been working so hard? You sensed something was going to happen, right?”

I nod once. “I just thought that if I worked harder. If I proved my value over and over again, maybe they wouldn’t be able to justify it.” “I just thought that if I worked harder .If I proved my value over and over again, maybe they wouldn’t be able to justify it.”

“Already more than enough you were.”

I am almost undone by the plainness of what he says.

I don’t feel like it right now,” I whisper. Everything in the room seems dangled. The walls are too white, too bright. Bit by bit, my hard-won calm is crumbling.

“I gave them everything,” I whisper, my eyes welling up as the burning stings the back of my eyes. “Every late night. Every plan was cancelled. I gave up everything for something I couldn’t even hold on to.”

Leo doesn’t hesitate. He came up in front of me and dropped down until his face was level with mine. Not towering. Not intimidating. Just…there.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Look at me.”

I don’t want to. But I do.

His eyes are different today. Denuded of his normal reserve. Raw and honest. Achingly human.

“That does not define you,” he says. “How politics, Ego, Fear of a woman who refuses to be small. That’s all. It’s not about your talent or your worth.”

Tears are falling down my cheeks before I can stop it.

“I hate that I’m crying,” I admit. “I don’t do this. I don’t fall apart.”

“You’re not falling apart,” he says softly. “You’re letting go. There’s a difference.”

His thumb brushes away the tear that rolls down the line of my jaw. The feel of it is soft, worshipful, as though he’s touching something absurdly valuable.

“‘You don’t have to be strong with me’,” he murmurs. “Not today. Not ever, if you don’t want to.”

With that, the dam broke. The sob escapes me, raw and ugly, ripping through years of holding back I’ve sewn into my own skin. My body instinctively curls inward and before I can second guess it, my hands are clenched into fists in the fabric of his shirt as I bury my face in his chest.

He hesitates for a half-second — caught off guard. Then his arms close around me.

Firm. Protective. Steady.

He holds me as if I might float away if he lets go.

And for once I allowed myself to be held.

“I’m so tired,” I murmur into him, voice muffled. “Tired of having to prove myself. Tired of pretending it doesn’t sm — I mean, it’s real pain. Tired of being the only one in this.”

“You’re not alone anymore,” he whispers in my hair.

The words affect me. They burrow too deep. Create roots somewhere inside my ribs.

“You don’t get to say that unless you mean it, Leo,” I say, my voice shaking.

He tightens his grip slightly. “I mean it. And I’m scared out of my mind because I care so much,” says the man in front of me.

That makes me lift my head.

He exhales a shaky breath. “This — us — it scares me. Because it matters. Because I have never been this scared to lose something in my life.”

“You’ve never been scared of anything,” I mutter.

“I was just better at hiding it,” he admits. “But you? You’re in my every thought lately. And I’m not sure how to carry that without being scared.”

Reflexively my hand slips up to his cheek. “We’re both standing on the brink of something,” I say.

“Yes,” he agrees. “And this is the time I don’t want to take a step back.”

The air between them thickens, heavy with all unsaid.

“I don’t want to spoil this,” I whisper.

“Then don’t run from it,” he says. “Let it change you. Let it change me.”

There is no hurry in the next moment. Just breathe. Heat. Heartbeat. Awareness.

This time when his lips brush against mine, it’s not frantic. It’s deep and sure and devastatingly tender. It has the taste of truth and relief. As if it was earned rather than stolen.

I melt into it.

Into him.

My fingers slide through his hair like my body already knows that space is his now. And for a moment, the world fades — the office, the upset, the future, the fear.

It’s just us.

Two strangers who lived together for years.

Too late for two hearts to learn each other and perhaps not too soon.

When we separate, his forehead is pressed against mine.

“Whatevs out there,” he whispers, waving vaguely toward the door, toward the world, “we take it on — together — now.”

I nod slowly, breathing him in.

“Together,” I say again.

And for the first time in a very long time, that word doesn’t feel like a lie.

It feels like home.