The building felt different by late afternoon.
The rush of the morning had drained away, leaving behind a quieter sort of movement—measured footsteps, hushed conversations, the low murmur of people trying to tie up loose ends before the day slipped out of their hands completely. The sky outside had begun to lean toward evening, soft and muted, clouds stretched thin like tired thoughts.
Senna remained in the conference room longer than she needed to after the session ended. The others had already gone. Legal had thanked her, Layla had given her a small, tired nod, and even Mark had managed a stiff, grudging acknowledgment that her methods were "helpful." But once the door clicked shut behind them, she stayed seated, her notebook open on the polished table, pen resting idly between her fingers.
She wasn't avoiding Calder.
At least, that's what she told herself.
She was just… recalibrating.
She had felt the change all through the meeting. His presence, even for those twenty minutes, had altered the shape of the room. People had held their shoulders differently, chosen their words more carefully, checked his expression before finishing a sentence. And beneath all of that, like a thread running through the center of every glance, there had been the rumor—thin, half-formed, but present.
CEO.
Mediator.
Car.
Rain.
People didn't need details to construct a story. They only needed two quiet figures in the same frame.
She drew a line under her last note and closed the notebook, pressing her palm over the cover for a moment. Calder had asked to see her after the session. It would be easier to pretend this was only routine, only professional, if the air around his name didn't feel so charged.
A soft knock came at the door.
She looked up. Mara stepped in, her expression composed but wary.
"He's ready for you," Mara said. "I can walk you up."
Senna stood, slipping her notebook into her bag. "Thank you."
They walked down the hallway in silence. The fluorescent lights above hummed softly. From one of the nearby rooms came a burst of laughter that ended quickly, as if whoever was laughing remembered where they were.
Halfway to the elevator, Mara spoke without looking at her.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
"For what?"
"For the talk," Mara replied. "You've done a good job in there, and it's not fair that people are… attaching other stories to your presence."
"That tends to happen when a room is full of tension and nothing else to do at lunch," Senna said gently.
Mara gave a humorless smile. "They've started pushing this idea that you're here because he… favors you."
Senna felt something small and tight close around her ribcage, not quite anger, not exactly hurt. "Is that what you think?"
"No," Mara said at once. "I watched him tear apart a consulting firm last year because he thought they were overrated. He wouldn't bring you in if he didn't think you were the best option. That's why this is dangerous. People don't know what to do when he actually… looks at someone."
"Dangerous for whom?" Senna asked.
"For you," Mara said. "He'll be fine. He always is. But you? You're the one they'll call unprofessional. Compromised. Emotional."
Senna exhaled slowly. The words hurt because they were true—not in fact, but in possibility.
"Do they actually think I'd risk my work for a man I met three days ago?" she asked quietly.
Mara shrugged a little, sadness creeping into her eyes. "They don't think about what's real. They think about what's easy to repeat."
The elevator arrived with a soft chime. They stepped inside.
As the doors closed, Mara added, almost reluctantly, "He called HR this afternoon."
Senna glanced at her. "Why?"
"To shut it down," Mara said. "He told them to clamp down on gossip concerning you. Said it was unprofessional and threatened the mediation. He was… sharp about it."
Something warm and sharp flared in Senna's chest. It was an odd mix—gratitude that he would defend her, and a prickle of discomfort at how much power he had to change the shape of her reputation with a single phone call.
"We don't have many independent women consultants come through here who aren't attached to big firms," Mara went on. "He knows that. I think he was trying to protect you."
Senna's fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
She could almost hear him:
Tell me before it reaches the outside.
He wanted control. Outside and inside.
"Thank you for telling me," she said softly.
Mara nodded. "Good luck."
The elevator doors slid open onto the executive floor. This level was quieter than the others, the thickness of the carpet swallowing footsteps, the glass walls dim with the fading light outside.
Senna walked alone now. She counted her breaths without realizing it, one after another, like small anchors.
When she reached Calder's door, she paused.
She remembered his voice asking, Do I inspire fear in you?
She remembered her answer, clear and steady.
No.
She knocked.
"Come in," came his voice, low and even from inside.
She turned the handle and stepped into his office.
He was standing near the window, not behind his desk. His jacket was off, draped neatly over the back of his chair, and his sleeves were rolled up again, revealing the strong lines of his forearms. The fading light painted the edges of his profile, softening the usual severity into something almost contemplative.
He turned when he heard the door close.
"Senna," he said.
He rarely used her first name. Hearing it now, bare and unarmored in his mouth, sent a small shiver through her.
"Mr. Voss," she replied, forcing her voice to stay level.
"Calder," he corrected, almost absently. "We're past titles, I think."
Her heart gave a short, confused thump.
He gestured toward the small seating area to the side of the office rather than the desk. "Sit with me?"
She nodded and made her way to the low sofa, setting her bag down beside her. He joined her a moment later, leaving a careful amount of space between them—not so far that it felt cold, not so close that it was inappropriate.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The city stretched out beyond the glass, glittering in patches where the evening lights had already come alive. The rain from the night before had given way to a clear, coolness in the air. Everything felt sharper, more defined.
"You did well," he said at last.
She turned her head slightly. "Thank you."
"The legal team is already sending me notes," he continued. "They said the tone between the departments has shifted. Less combative. More… contained."
"That's a start," she said. "They still don't trust each other, but they've stopped trying to win every sentence."
His mouth curved in the faintest echo of a smile. "Progress."
"Yes. But I wanted to talk to you about something before we go into details."
He stilled, just slightly. His attention sharpened on her. "All right."
She folded her hands in her lap, not to make herself small, but to ground herself.
"I know you contacted HR," she said quietly. "About the rumors."
He watched her, his expression unreadable. "Mara told you."
"She did," Senna said. "Is it true?"
"Yes."
The word came without apology. Just a fact.
"Why?" she asked.
A hint of surprise flickered across his face. "Because it was inappropriate. Because it threatened the focus of the mediation. Because people had no right to attach your name to anything that wasn't your work."
His voice roughened slightly on the last word, and something in her chest tightened again.
"I appreciate the intention," she said slowly. "But I need you to understand what that looks like from where I stand."
He turned more fully toward her now, one arm resting along the back of the sofa, very close to her shoulder but not touching.
"What does it look like?" he asked.
"It looks like the man at the top swooped in to control the narrative," she said. "It looks like I'm being protected by someone who already has too much power in this building. It looks like the rumor is true."
His jaw tightened. "It isn't."
"Yes," she said softly. "But you know what people are like. They won't see your call as neutral. They'll see it as proof."
His gaze dropped for a moment to her hands, then returned to her eyes. He seemed to consider each word before he spoke.
"I couldn't just let them talk," he murmured. "Not about you."
"That's the part I don't understand," she replied, her voice barely above a whisper now, more intimate than she meant it to be. "I've only been here for a few days. You barely know me. Why are you so determined to stand between me and their opinions?"
He inhaled, long and slow, as if steadying something inside himself.
"Because I brought you into this," he said. "I chose you. I asked you to walk into a mess I should have handled sooner. I will not allow the same people who created that mess to damage your name for sport."
"That's not all," she said softly.
He didn't deny it.
Their eyes held. The air between them felt charged, like the moment right before a storm breaks—heavy, waiting, full of unsaid things.
"Senna," he said, and her name in his voice felt almost like a confession, "I don't know how to explain this without sounding… wrong. But I can't stand the thought of them speaking about you carelessly. As if you're another topic in their inbox. As if you're just another variable in my day."
Her pulse quickened. It wasn't the intensity of his words alone. It was the way he said them: slow, measured, as if each one carried more weight than he was used to letting anyone hear.
"You are my client," she whispered. "This is a contract. Professional. Boundaried."
"Yes," he said. "And still. I am not only reacting as your client."
She swallowed carefully. Heat rose low in her chest, not burning, but deep and steady.
"That's exactly what complicates things," she said. "My work depends on people believing that I am not attached to anyone's side. If they think I matter to you in a way that is not defined and distant, everything I say becomes suspect. Every room I walk into, someone will be wondering if my decisions are for the company, or for you."
"And are they?" he asked quietly. "For me?"
The question hung in the space between them like something fragile and alive.
Her first instinct was to deny it, to push the idea away for the sake of clarity and safety. But she couldn't quite bring herself to lie—not to him, not to herself.
"They're for the truth," she said eventually. "But I can't pretend I haven't… noticed you. That would be dishonest."
His hand flexed slightly where it rested along the back of the sofa, his fingers curling once and relaxing.
"What have you noticed?" he asked, his voice lower now, the roughness in it more obvious.
She hadn't meant to walk this close to the edge, but each step had felt so small until now, when she looked down and realized how far the ground was.
"I've noticed that you listen," she said. "Even when you don't like what you're hearing. I've noticed that you adjust. That you think before you respond. I've noticed that you're much kinder than the stories about you suggest, even if you don't know how to show it without sounding like you're apologizing for it."
Something shifted in his eyes, a barely visible softening that made him look younger for a heartbeat.
"And," she added quietly, "I've noticed that you are alone. Even when this entire building bends itself around your presence."
He didn't move.
If someone had looked in from outside the glass walls—the employees walking down the hall, the city shining beyond—they might have seen only two figures sitting with an appropriate distance between them, facing slightly toward each other. But from where Senna sat, the space felt narrower than a breath.
He dropped his gaze briefly, and when he looked back at her, the careful distance in his expression had thinned.
"You see too much," he said softly.
"It's always been my problem," she replied.
"And your gift."
They sat in silence for a moment. The hum of the building felt very far away. She was acutely aware of his body near hers, of the heat radiating from him, of the faint scent of his cologne—something warm and subtle, like wood after rain.
He shifted slightly, angling his body more fully toward her. One of his knees almost brushed hers. They were not touching, but the almost of it made her skin tingle as though the contact was already there.
"I've spent most of my adult life trying not to care about people who might leave," he said, the words low and deliberate, as if he were opening a door he hadn't touched in years. "It was easier to be distant. To be the person they all imagined. The man who signs papers and improves numbers and keeps the floors above water."
"And is that who you want to be?" she asked, her voice barely above a breath now.
"No," he said, without hesitation. "But it was safer."
The honesty in that single syllable hit her harder than any speech could have.
"Calder," she said, and it felt strange and right, all at once, to use his name in this room, "you can't live your whole life in safety. Not like that. Not behind glass."
His eyes darkened slightly.
"You know what happens," he said quietly, "when I let someone close to me?"
She held his gaze. "They matter."
"They leave," he corrected, and the ache underneath the words was not loud, but it was deep. "Or they're taken. Or they change. And I am left standing exactly where I was, wondering why I ever considered stepping toward them."
Her chest ached at the tired resolve in his voice.
She felt an almost overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his hand, just to give his grief a place to sit that wasn't solely inside him. She didn't move. But her fingers did uncurl in her lap, a small invitation even she wasn't fully aware of yet.
"I'm not asking you to let me close," she said gently. "That's not why I'm here."
"Is that the whole truth?" he asked.
It was an unfair question. It was also the only one that mattered.
She drew in a slow breath and let it out carefully. "I don't know," she admitted. "Part of me wants to keep you exactly where you are—on the other side of the desk, with a file between us and nothing more. It's simpler that way. Cleaner. But…"
"But?" he prompted when she didn't continue.
"But another part of me keeps noticing the way your voice changes when you're not talking about work," she said, the words spilling out more freely now. "The way your shoulders loosen when you step into your garden. The way your eyes lose that hard edge when you're listening instead of defending. And that part of me doesn't feel very professional at all."
The confession hung between them, fragile and blazing.
He closed his eyes for a moment, just a moment, as if steadying himself against a wave he hadn't expected to be so strong.
When he opened them again, the guardedness was still there, but it was thinner now, stretched over something naked and unsure.
"I don't know how to do this," he said quietly. "I don't know how to… care for someone without breaking something. I don't know how to want more from you without compromising the work you came here to do."
"Then don't ask," she said, her throat tight. "Not yet. Let us finish this first. Let us get your house in order. And then, if we still…" She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence without stepping off the ledge entirely.
"If we still feel like this," he finished softly.
The way he said "like this" made her skin flush with heat, not shame, but a sharp, startling awareness. This. Whatever this was—this pull, this ache, this river of questions and half-thoughts—had become something they could finally name, even if they didn't have the courage to define it.
He reached out then—slowly, as if moving through water—and his hand came to rest on the sofa cushion between them. He didn't touch her. He left a narrow strip of space between his fingers and hers, but the intention was unmistakable.
She stared at his hand, at the pale joints, the veins beneath his skin, the slight curl of his fingers as if he were restraining himself from doing more.
Very gently, as if she were afraid to break something invisible, she shifted her hand closer. Not enough to close the gap completely. Just enough that the air between their skin seemed to thicken with meaning.
Her fingertips hovered a breath away from his.
He looked down at the small distance between them, and something in his expression cracked, a subtle fracture in the smooth composure.
"I keep thinking," he said in a low voice, "that it's a small thing. Giving you a ride home. Asking for a debrief. Calling HR. Sitting here instead of behind my desk. Each choice seems small, but when I look up, I realize I've walked a long way from where I was supposed to stand."
"And do you regret it?" she asked, her voice trembling in spite of her efforts to keep it steady.
"No," he said. "That's the problem."
His fingers twitched, and before she could talk herself out of it, Senna let her hand slide the last few millimeters forward, until the side of her smallest finger brushed the side of his.
It was the barest contact—an accident, if anyone had walked in at that moment. But to her, it felt like stepping into sunlight after standing in the shade for years.
To him, it felt like the first honest thing he'd allowed himself to feel in far too long.
He didn't grab her hand. He didn't thread his fingers through hers. He merely turned his palm slightly, so that more of their skin touched, a quiet alignment that spoke louder than any embrace.
Her breath caught.
His gaze flicked to her mouth for the briefest moment before finding her eyes again. The look there, dark and unguarded, made her pulse drum in her ears.
This is dangerous, she thought.
This is not wise.
This is not what I came here for.
But another part of her, tired of living her life entirely in caution, whispered back:
Yes.
But it is real.
The room felt smaller now, wrapped around them like a held breath. The sound of the city outside faded, replaced by the rhythm of their own breathing. She could see the slight rise and fall of his chest. He could see the quick, nervous flutter of her throat.
He leaned in a fraction, not enough to break the rules, but enough to answer a question she hadn't dared to ask aloud.
"Senna," he murmured, her name coming out softer than she'd ever heard it, "if I cross this line now, I won't be able to pretend later that I didn't know what I was doing."
She swallowed. Her thumb brushed lightly against the side of his hand, the movement so small it could have been a tremor.
"Then don't cross it," she whispered. "Not yet."
It cost her something fierce to say it. To pull them both back from the verge of something that felt like it had been waiting behind every conversation. But she knew, with the same clarity she brought into every mediation room, that if they moved too quickly now, it would ruin the fragile balance they had managed to build.
His fingers pressed gently, almost imperceptibly, against hers in acknowledgment.
"You're the one asking for restraint," he said, a trace of rough humor threading through the tension of his voice. "You may be the only person in this building who has ever done that."
"Someone has to keep you from burning down your own house," she replied, a soft, shaky smile touching her lips.
He exhaled, a breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside him all day.
Slowly, reluctantly, he withdrew his hand. The loss of warmth felt immediate, but the imprint of his skin lingered.
She straightened, needing the small formality of posture to pull herself back from the edge.
"We should talk about next steps," she said.
"Yes," he replied, but his gaze was still on her, as if the conversation they had just had mattered more than any report ever could. "We'll schedule another session with both departments. I want written agreements this time. You think they'll agree?"
"With enough guidance, yes," she said. "I'll draft a framework and send it to legal first."
He nodded, but then his eyes softened again, the business conversation nothing but a thin layer over what remained between them.
"Senna," he said quietly, "for whatever it's worth… if any of this ever damages your reputation, I will make it right."
"You can't control everything," she answered.
"I know," he said. "But I can try to control what I break."
Her chest pulled tight.
"That is not your job," she said. "Your job is to lead this company. Mine is to walk in, do the work, and walk out."
"And do you plan to walk out?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered immediately, because she had to. "When the work is done."
He accepted that. Or at least, he pretended to.
"Then let me make sure that when you walk out," he said, "you do so without regret."
The words sank deep, deeper than she wanted to admit.
She stood, needing the small safety of movement. He rose with her, their eyes locking again in the dim light.
"I should go," she said.
"Yes," he replied, though nothing in his face said he wanted her to leave.
She reached for her bag. Her fingers still remembered the heat of his touch.
At the door, she paused and turned.
"Calder," she said softly.
He looked up.
"We didn't cross the line," she said. "But we saw it. That matters."
He held her gaze, something like gratitude and grief mingling in his eyes.
"It does," he said. "More than you know."
She opened the door, letting in a sliver of cooler air from the hallway. She stepped through, the click of the latch echoing a little too loudly as the door closed gently behind her.
He stood motionless in the center of the room, staring at the place where she had been sitting. The imprint of her presence lingered like warmth in the air, like a scent on his skin, like the memory of a touch that had almost become something more.
On his desk, his phone buzzed with a new email.
He didn't move to check it.
For the first time in years, Calder Voss felt the unmistakable ache of wanting something he had no guarantee of keeping— and knowing that, for once, he might be willing to risk the glass walls of his life to reach for it.