Chapter 30: I don't know how to be soft without you
Chapter 30: I don't know how to be soft without you
Chapter Thirty: I Don’t Know How To Be Soft Without You
POV: Elias Voss
The office was dark.
Not dimly lit. Not shadowed. Dark.
Elias had killed every light source—the recessed overhead panels, the brass desk lamp, even the subtle LED strips lining the bookshelves. Only the indifferent glow of the city remained, bleeding through the floor\-to\-ceiling windows. Skyscrapers stood like sentinels, their windows glittering like scattered diamonds against the bruised twilight. The horizon still smoldered, a fading stripe of tangerine and rust where the sun had surrendered.
He stood before the glass, a silhouette etched against the urban tapestry. His shirt hung open at the collar, sleeves carelessly rolled past his forearms, still as they’d been during the live interview hours earlier. His tie lay discarded somewhere in the gloom—a serpent shed on the marble floor.
His calm was gone too.
He’d held himself together for days. Weeks. Months.
Through Bernard Liu’s poison\-tipped maneuvering in the boardroom.
Through the gut\-punch violation of the leaked security still.
Through the media cyclone dissecting his life, his company, his heart.
Through the blinding studio lights and Jenna Calen’s surgically sharp questions.
And through Noah’s voice, steady and clear through the microphone, slicing through the noise: “I love him. There’s nothing strategic about it.”
Simple. Devastating. A truth Elias still felt reverberating in his bones.
But now?
Now the silence was a physical weight.
Now his phone lay dark and heavy on his desk, its screen a graveyard of notifications: three major investors threatening withdrawal in terse, legalistic emails. An anonymous HR complaint flagged as “Priority Alpha” citing “gross misuse of authority via inappropriate romantic entanglement.” A brutal op\-ed in The Financial Journal declaring Noah Hart his “glaring PR Achilles heel and governance liability.”
None of it truly mattered. Not the money, not the power plays, not the venomous ink.
What mattered was the cold, clawing dread coiling in his chest:
He was terrified.
Not of losing Voss Capital.
Of losing Noah.
The door sighed open behind him. A sliver of amber hallway light cut across the polished floor, then vanished as it closed.
He didn’t turn. Didn’t need to.
“Noah.”
“Figured you’d be here.”
Soft footsteps crossed the expanse of the office—quiet, deliberate. No sharp click of expensive dress shoes. He’d changed. Into the worn cotton sweatshirt Elias secretly loved, the one that smelled faintly of old paper and bergamot. The observation was a tiny flare of warmth in the chill.
“You’re brooding,” Noah said, his voice gentle, a low hum in the darkness. He stopped a few feet away. “Which means you’re thinking. Which means you’re spiraling.”
“I’m fine.”
A soft, disbelieving huff. “You’re never fine when you stop wearing cufflinks.”
Elias exhaled sharply, the sound rough in the stillness. “Is that your new diagnostic tool?”
“It’s highly effective.”
A beat of silence stretched, thick and fragile. The city’s distant pulse thrummed through the glass.
Then Elias spoke, the words raw, barely more than a whisper scraped from somewhere deep and unprotected:
“I don’t know how to be soft without you.”
Noah didn’t speak. Didn’t rush to fill the aching quiet. He simply stood, a steady presence in the gloom.
Elias finally turned, leaning back against the cool windowpane, letting the city’s indifferent glow outline his profile. He felt exposed, vertebrae pressed against unyielding glass.
“I spent… decades,” he began, the words slow, deliberate, like unspooling barbed wire, “learning how to be impenetrable. Stone. Steel. I built this company,” he gestured vaguely into the dark office, “from dust and debt and desperation. I carved power out of concrete and other men’s contempt. I walked into boardrooms where they wouldn’t say my name without a sneer, and I made them.”
His voice cracked on that word—made. A fracture in the foundation.
“I’ve bled for this empire. Starved for it. Sacrificed…” He swallowed hard, the click audible. “Everything.”
Noah took a single, silent step closer. His eyes, reflecting the city’s cold light, held only understanding. “Including yourself.”
Elias nodded, a stiff, almost imperceptible movement. “Especially myself.”
He lifted his gaze, finally meeting Noah’s eyes in the half\-light. And for the first time in weeks—perhaps years—the ruthless CEO wasn't there. In his place stood a man stripped bare, eyes shadowed with exhaustion so profound it seemed etched into his bones.
“I know how to protect things,” Elias admitted, the confession feeling like a surrender. “Assets. Deals. Territory. I know how to see threats coming and burn them to ash before they breathe. But I don’t…” He faltered, searching for the words that felt foreign, dangerous. “I don’t know how to… let someone protect me. I don’t know how to need.”
“You don’t have to know,” Noah said softly, closing the remaining distance. His voice was an anchor. “You just have to let me try.”
Noah reached out. Not demanding, not claiming. Just… offering. Fingertips brushed the bare skin of Elias’s wrist—a point of startling warmth. They trailed lightly up his forearm, tracing the tense muscle beneath rolled cotton, then curved along the sharp line of his jaw, rough with late\-day stubble.
“You don’t always have to be steel,” Noah murmured, his thumb resting against the frantic pulse in Elias’s throat.