Chapter 163 Working Late

Chapter 163 Working Late
ZARA

The worst part about a deadline isn't the clock ticking down. It's the absolute, suffocating quiet that settles over an office when everyone has gone home.

The digital clock at the corner of my monitor flashed 8:30 p.m., the amber glow casting long shadows across my cluttered desk. The thirty seventh floor of Evercrest Publishing Firm was completely vacant, save for the hum of the central cooling units and the frantic scratching of my pen against a fresh set of galley proofs. We were dealing with a massive, catastrophic system delay on our premier international acquisition. The author had botched the entire structural flow of the final three chapters, and if Kai and I didn't verify the tags tonight, the global winter portfolio rollout would collapse before sunrise. I hadn't eaten anything since noon, my stomach twisting into a tight knot of exhaustion as I rubbed my stinging eyes.

"Hey," Kai’s deep baritone cut through the silence of the pod, making me blink as he dropped a fresh stack of edited pages onto the layout table. He had loosened his tie, the top button of his dress shirt undone, his broad shoulders slightly hunched under the weight of the endless hours. "Your concentration is slipping, Zara. Neither of us has had dinner. Let's order some takeout from the late night diner down the avenue before the kitchen closes."

I looked up, letting out a long, ragged breath. "We don't have time to eat, Kai. Marcus needs this framework on his desk by seven in the morning."

"The framework isn't going anywhere if your brain shuts down," Kai murmured, a soft, unforced grin touching his lips that felt completely human. "Ten minutes. My treat."

I swallowed the exhaustion and nodded. "Fine. But make it fast."

We ordered the food, the delivery guy dropping the grease-stained brown bags off at the security desk twenty minutes later. Kai's suggestion had been exactly what my body needed, the sharp scent of hot noodles momentarily cutting through the stale, aroma of dark roast coffee. We sat on the edge of the central island layout, eating in a comfortable, quiet shorthand that had slowly become our new normal since the work trip.

Suddenly, without a single warning chime, a sharp metallic click echoed through the ceiling grids.
The entire thirty seventh floor plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness. The glowing monitors died instantly, the printing presses stopped humming, and the emergency backup batteries let out a low, pathetic whine before dying completely. A total power failure. I instinctively gasped, my hand freezing over my takeout container as the suffocating blackness swallowed the pod.

"Zara? You good?" Kai’s voice rumbled through the dark, sounding incredibly close, his shoes shifting against the floor.

"Yeah," I rasped, frantically reaching for my phone on the desk. I tapped the glass screen, but it remained completely dead. "Fuck. My battery died twenty minutes ago. I forgot to plug it into the auxiliary port."

A second later, a sharp beam of white light sliced through the darkness. Kai had activated the flashlight on his personal device, the glare illuminating the sharp angles of his jaw as he held the screen up. He flicked his thumb over the display, a low hiss escaping his teeth. "My phone is active, but there's absolutely no network signal up here right now. The power grid crash must have fried the regional tower routers."

I stood up, walking toward the grand arched windows to look through the clear glass down toward the front of the building. The city avenue below was cast in dim, flickering shadows, but the emergency exterior lights were still functional.

"Look," I said, pointing down toward the limestone curb. "The security detail is still standing by the main entrance pillars. They’re on the radios."

Kai stepped up right beside me, his broad frame casting a heavy shadow over my shoulder, his proximity sending a sudden, strange shiver down my spine. He glanced through the glass pane, nodding slowly. "Yeah, they know we're up here. They'll do something about it soon. The maintenance team is probably resetting the main breakers in the basement right now. We're stuck until the grid reboots."

Since there was no power and our terminals were completely useless, we couldn't do any actual work. We slowly walked back to the central desk pod, Kai balancing his phone against a stack of manuscripts so the white beam bounced softly off the ceiling, casting a warm, candle lit glow across our chairs. We sat down, the initial stiffness melting away into the quiet dark.

Without the manuscripts to shield us, we simply started to talk. We talked about books we actually wanted to write, about the high stakes dreams we had buried and eventually, the conversation drifted inevitably back toward our university days. It wasn't defensive, and it wasn't an argument. It was just a raw, transparent translation of the people we used to be.

"I don't like the person I used to be, Zara," Kai said softly, his dark eyes locking onto mine through the dim light, his voice dropping to a low, completely sincere register. "The arrogance, the performative distractions, the way I treated the people who actually mattered then.... I look back at that boy on the quad especially during my final year and I don't even recognize him."

I offered a sad, fragile smile, my fingers nervously tracing a pattern against the edge of my paper coffee cup. "Neither do I, Kai. A whole lot happened in that institution that we completely lost our way."

For one brief, breathless second, the words ran out entirely. We simply looked at each other. The atmosphere inside the small collaborative pod shifted violently, turning heavy, intimate, and thick with a lingering history that hadn't fully burned to ash. The memory of his mouth on mine, the tragic depth of our first love, and the soft, vulnerable space we were sharing in the dark seemed to bridge the miles between us. My heart hammered against my ribs, the butterflies in my stomach flaring up with a sudden, terrifying heat.

Then, the ceiling lights violently flashed twice, and the power grid surged back to life with a loud, mechanical roar.

The monitors blinked awake, the printers initialized their automated cycles, and the sterile glare filled the room instantly. The moment disappeared into thin air. Neither of us mentioned it, and neither of us allowed the vulnerability to breathe as we both instinctively retreated back behind our professional desks.

At that exact micro-second, a sharp wave of absolute panic slammed into my chest. My eyes tracked the digital clock on my monitor, which now read 10:00 p.m.

Fuck! I completely forgot!

The realization hit me like a physical blow. I had a date with Damon tonight, a night away to make up for the gala disaster. We were supposed to meet up at the obsidian lounge after work, and he must be waiting for me there right now.

"Zara? What happened?" Kai asked, his brow furrowing in confusion as he watched me scramble across the floor to plug my dead phone into a rapid charging unit by the archive locker.

"I forgot my date with Damon," I gasped, my voice shaking with a desperate panic as I waited for the battery core to register. "We were supposed to meet hours ago. He's going to think I ghosted him on purpose after the gala."

Kai paused, a subtle shadow of quiet regret flitting behind his dark eyes before his posture locked into a supportive register. He stepped back to give me space. "Hey, calm down, Zara. He'll understand. Just explain everything to him clearly. Call him right now to cancel so he doesn't keep waiting."

The moment the screen illuminated, my fingers flew across the glass in a frantic sequence, dialing his number. My heart was in my throat as the line rang once, twice, before clicking open.

"Zara?" Damon’s deep, rich voice came through the receiver. It was entirely controlled, but there was a tight, exhausting layer of strain cutting beneath the surface that told me he had been idling for hours.

"Babe, hi," I breathed, the words tumbling out of my mouth in a chaotic rush as I leaned against the locker frame. "Am so sorry, am calling to cancel our date let's do it tomorrow. I know I should have called earlier because it's late now, but I totally forgot and my phone was off. I'm stuck at the office with Kai working on an urgent publication. We would have finished earlier but we had an issue with the power, but it's restored now."

The silence that followed through the line was heavy, static, and absolutely suffocating. I could hear the faint, tight sound of his breathing through the receiver.

"Hope you had dinner at least," Damon finally said, his tone dropping to a low level that made my stomach drop.

I felt completely awkward answering that, the guilt of the deceptions making my throat feel like sandpaper. We were supposed to share that meal together, and the realization that I had eaten takeout with my ex while he sat in alone in that lounge was a bitter pill to swallow. But I forced myself to answer honestly. "...Uhmmm, yeah. I did."

"Fine then," Damon murmured smoothly, his voice completely unreadable as he prepared to cut the connection. "Tomorrow it is. Love you."

"Love you too, babe," I whispered before the line went entirely dead.

I set the phone down against the archive table, my chest expanding with a deep, lingering sense of dread. I couldn't really fathom if the call went well or not, because I couldn't tell how Damon truly felt from the cold, sterile tone of his voice.

But I forced a tight breath out of my lungs, trying to calm the racing pace of my pulse.

I guess it wasn't that bad after all, I said to myself, turning slowly back toward the glowing monitors to finish the final lines of the text and head home, completely unaware of what is to come next.