Marcus asked. She was quiet for a moment. The date change for the dinner was 3 weeks ago. But the relationship between Derek and Victor I think that goes back further. Maybe a year.
Maybe more. She said it evenly, but Marcus heard what was underneath it. The particular weight of discovering that someone you worked beside every day someone you trusted with the interior workings of something you built had been planning your removal for months. I keep thinking about what he said. That he was trying to save something.
He believed it, Marcus said. I know he did. She turned to look at him. That's the part I can't quite put down. He wasn't lying when he said it.
He genuinely thought he was right and I was wrong and that gave him permission to do everything he did. She shook her head slowly. There's a particular kind of dangerous in a person who has convinced themselves that the end justifies whatever they decide the means are. "Yeah." Marcus said.
"I've met that kind before." She looked at him. "In this building?" "In life." he said simply.
People who decide they know better than you what's good for you and use that belief to take your choices away. He paused. Doesn't matter if they're right about the outcome. The taking is still the taking. Arya was quiet for a moment.
Is that what you thought about last night? She asked. When you stepped back? He knew what she was asking. Not about Derek, about her.
About 1:47 a. m. in his living room. I thought, he said carefully, that you were in a situation you hadn't chosen. And I didn't want to be one more thing that happened to you without your full consent. He looked at her. That's all it was.
It wasn't rejection. I know, she said quietly. I knew it then. I was just She stopped. I was embarrassed.
Not of the impulse, of the timing, of the fact that I'd spent four years being very precise about every single professional boundary I maintain, and then I She exhaled. I kissed my operations manager in his living room at 1:47 in the morning while I was potentially drugged and under active threat from a corporate conspiracy. Despite everything, Marcus almost laughed. He caught it. When you say it like that, it sounds insane, she said, because it was insane.
But there was something in her voice now that wasn't embarrassment. Something lighter. The specific relief of a person who can finally see the absurdity of a situation from the other side of it. I want you to know something, and I need you to believe me when I say it. Okay?
What I felt last night was real, she said. Not the situation. The situation was a disaster. But what I felt, that wasn't the wine, whatever was in the wine. That wasn't the vulnerability or the fear or the relief of being somewhere safe.
She held his gaze. That was something I've been aware of for longer than last night. And I'm telling you that because I think you deserve to know the truth of it. Not because I'm asking for anything. Just because the truth matters to me and you have more than earned the right to hear it.
Marcus looked at her for a long time. 4 years. 4 years of Regal Heights board meetings and operational crises and a professional distance so precisely maintained that he had almost convinced himself it was all that was there. Almost. "I know."
He said. She blinked. "You know?" "I've known for a while." He said.
And then, because he was Marcus Cole and he had never in his life said something he didn't mean, he said, "It goes both ways." The silence after that was different from the silences before. It had a different weight. Not heavier, more present. The kind of silence where both people in it are aware that they've just said something they can't unsay and are deciding how they feel about that.
Aria looked at him for a long moment. Then she said, "I don't know how to do this." "Do what?" "This." She gestured between them with one hand.
"Whatever this is. I've been running this company since I was 28 years old. I know how to handle investors and board members and hostile acquisitions and apparently also corporate conspiracies. I do not know." She paused.
"I am not good at things that don't have a protocol." "Neither am I." He said. "I have a 9-year-old daughter and an apartment with a soccer trophy on the shelf and a job that I love. My life is very structured.
Very deliberate." He looked out at the city for for "The last time I let someone in, really in, it was Joey's mother. And that He stopped. Started differently. Joey is the best thing in my life.
Her mother and I were not right for each other. And I'm careful now about what I let matter. "Because the cost is high." Aria said. "Because the cost is high."
He agreed. They stood with that between them for a moment. Then Aria said, "I'm not asking you to do anything tonight. I want to be clear about that. I'm not standing up here looking at you because I expect something or because I want to rush past what happened and into something easier.
I'm standing up here because She stopped. Looked down at her bare feet for a moment, then back up. "Because you are the first person in a very long time who made me feel like I didn't have to perform, even in the middle of a crisis, even when you were documenting everything and calling witnesses and doing exactly the right thing. You never made me feel like a problem you were managing. You made me feel like a person you were protecting.
And I don't know the last time someone did that." Marcus felt something move in his chest that he wasn't prepared for. Not dramatically. Quietly. The way water moves through a crack in stone.
Slow and inevitable and capable of changing the shape of things over time. "Aria." He said. She looked at him. "I'm not going anywhere."
He said. "I'm right here and I'm not running from this. But I need us to take it at the speed of something real. Not a crisis, not a proximity, not a night that almost destroyed both of us." He held her gaze.
I need it to be chosen by both of us on a regular Tuesday when nothing is on fire. She stared at him. Then she laughed. A real one. Unexpected and unguarded.
The kind that is impossible to perform because it comes from somewhere below the level where performance lives. She laughed and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and shook her head. A regular Tuesday, she repeated. Regular Tuesday, he said. Marcus Cole, you are She stopped, shook her head again, still almost smiling.