The first thing I learned about the corporate world was that it doesn't care if your heart's a battlefield.
It doesn't pause for guilt, or longing, or the sound of your pulse every time the person you shouldn't want walks into a room.
It just keeps moving — deadlines, numbers, reports — like a machine that eats weakness for breakfast.
So I threw myself into it.
If distraction could save me, I'd drown in it.
The office buzzed around me like a hive — interns darting between glass-walled offices, phones ringing, printers humming, people speaking in acronyms and profit margins. And there I was, sitting at my new desk, pretending to know what ROI meant in context.
The old me — the past me — was a writer, an artist, someone who cared about color and emotion and the way words could make someone feel. But this new life was all numbers and strategy.
No emotion.
No Mara.
Or at least, that's what I told myself.
"Morning, COO," said a voice from the door.
Mara.
Of course.
She leaned casually against the frame, one hand in her pocket, the other holding a folder. She looked maddeningly composed, like the night between us hadn't burned my sanity to ash.
"Thought you might need this," she said, stepping closer and setting the file on my desk. "It's the quarterly report. I highlighted the sections you should probably read before the board meeting."
"Thanks," I said, my tone neutral. Too neutral.
She didn't leave.
She just stood there, looking at me in that quiet, knowing way. "You're… different today."
I forced a smile. "That's kind of the point, isn't it? New life, new me."
Her gaze flicked down — to the tattoo, to the open collar of my shirt, to the tremor in my hand as I turned the page.
"Sure," she said softly. "New life."
And then she was gone, leaving her perfume in the air like a taunt.
I spent the rest of the day in boardrooms, taking notes that made no sense and nodding at words that sounded vaguely threatening — liquidity, turnover rate, capital gains. Every so often, someone would glance my way for confirmation, and I'd just smile like I'd known all this since birth.
It was exhausting.
Pretending to be someone competent, someone in control.
Pretending I wasn't unraveling inside.
During lunch, I locked myself in my office, spreading files across the desk. I read everything twice, three times. I scribbled notes in the margins, trying to map this empire I was supposed to help lead. And the more I learned, the more I respected the woman whose life I now lived — she'd built herself into something sharp, steady, and enviable.
I wasn't her.
But I wanted to be.
By evening, I was still there, the city glowing outside the glass walls. My eyes ached. My hands shook from too much coffee and not enough sense.
A soft knock came at the door.
Mara again. Always Mara.
"Still here?" she asked. "Everyone's gone home."
"I need to catch up," I said, not looking up. "I can't afford to be the weak link."
She walked in anyway, silent until she was standing across from me. "You're not a weak link. You're… just trying too hard to outrun something."
I finally looked up, meeting her eyes.
There it was again — that current, invisible but impossible to ignore.
I swallowed. "And what am I trying to outrun?"
Her lips curved slightly. "You tell me."
Before I could respond, she turned and walked out. Just like that.
Leaving me alone with the hum of the city and the weight of everything I was trying to unlearn.
That night, as I stared at my reflection in the office window — city lights behind me, exhaustion in my eyes — I realized something painful and true.
I could learn every spreadsheet, every corporate rule, every loophole in the book.
But there was no equation that could fix this.
No formula for forgetting her.
And maybe I didn't want to.