Turns out, Aiden's not so secret investor was none other than Jason, and I found myself grinning at the opportunity to work up close with the genius again. He insisted he'd be fine-tuning the funnels we had created and most of the initial B2B drives, taking on a more passive role after we hit a milestone. Aiden had been bending over backwards to gain my affections again, letting me use an office within Steele Park till the new place we'd settled on was finished redecorating.

We'd settled on a two-storeyed building that I had to purchase since the owner didn't want to lease it to us, just wanting to get rid of the property. We got it for much cheaper too because of his obvious willingness to get rid of it. Aiden had people look into the place, finding it suspicious, but it turns out the man just really wanted to relocate and this sale would help him do that. Having two floors meant more space than was needed, so we put up the ground and the first floor up for leases. An additional source of income never hurt anyone. An average millionaire had at least 7 sources of income. I was well onto my fourth now, and with every passing day, my dream life was turning more and more into a reality. Things were moving perfectly in my professional life, but every single day that I took a ride home in Aiden's car I was remembering how my personal life seemed to be crumbling under me. Like sand, the more I was trying to control it in my palms, the more it slipped out. And I was just watching the waves carry it away from me.

I remembered when my professors had talked about the 'It's lonely at the top' thing in class. I've never felt lonelier than I did when we lay in the same bed every night and he hesitated to hold me closer. I would wait for him to fall asleep before turning over and sliding in his embrace. He woke me every morning with my coffee and toast that he insisted on making despite Josie's insistence to make something more wholesome. He's emptied space for me in his bathroom to put in my shampoo and conditioner.

And somehow, I still can't let go of that file.

Lydia said it's because of my ego, and because I always want to be the right person in the room. I'm not sure if I want to agree with that. I mean... all we've ever learned is that drugs are bad and doing drugs is bad and selling drugs is bad and everyone involved in the business is bad. But Aiden wasn't a bad person. Having a constant war in my head was draining and it had started showing on my face. When I had first contacted Lydia to ask her if she wanted to work with me, the first thing she had said was, "Cupcake, I don't get hired by zombies. Put some concealer on and then we can discuss my salary."

I had even reached out to Sera, the goddess who had brought out the opportunity for me to work at Negative in the first place. Without her, I'd still be folding clothes and eating soup and crackers for dinner. Sera was more than happy to put that stunning face to use and work at the reception as soon as the new office was functional, but for the time being, she helped me organize things and crunched in numbers that I didn't have the time for. Having her around again was fun, and she invited herself over someday to try out the magical bathtub in my house. Since the core of the business was the app itself, the lead developer for the app had to be hired by Jason, who knew infinitely more about that business than I did. The developer, Alex, brought a team of five with him to finish the job on the deadlines, and I found myself picking up lines of their conversation with more and more ease as the days passed. Hectic didn't begin to describe what my schedule looked like, but Lydia was a woman with a mission when she pulled me out of discussions to eat a meal or to hydrate myself. It was the middle of July when she had me pulled out of yet another intense discussion with Alex, telling me to get in my office where she had a meal warmed up for me.

There was no winning with her, so I didn't bother to argue, heading to my temporary office. Strangely, at the door, there was a transparent sticky note, and I recognized Aiden's handwriting before I could even make out the words.

Taking the note off, I read

I promise you I did not spend any money on this.

I hope you like it, even if it's a little late.

Huh?

Oh. My birthday gift. I was excited to see what he had managed to come up with a whole month later, so I opened the door with enthusiasm, finding the room empty. Huh. My desk was clean as ever, with only a closed laptop and another clear note on it.

Join the meeting link asap.

Okay...

I turned on the device, finding a mail from Aiden with a link to join the meeting he'd been asking me for. I clicked on the small green button once I was seated properly and my earphones were plugged in, watching the loading circle going round and round, a strange feeling building up inside me.

When the person on the other end joined, I almost fell off my chair.

"Zara?" Seeing her in carefully angled pictures and selfies with filters was one thing. Seeing Zara as she was, without the makeup and without the editing, just as she was... I was overwhelmed by the waves of nostalgia and wistfulness that surged in me. She was wearing pink – and I fucking knew she remembered. She had to have fucking remembered. It was a running joke, and she remembered it just as well as I did. The hijab around her face was a light champagne colour and I wondered if under the layers she had managed to tame her frizzy and wavy hair.

"Hi Dodo!" her voice was cooler, not the same way that she whispered my name cuddling under the sheets, lacking all the love she was packing all those years ago.

"How are you?" I managed to sputter out, still very taken aback by this.

"Really good!" she smiled, telling me about her kids and her day job. She had taken up being a dance instructor for kids, and she was sure it was her true calling, not Broadway like she had imagined in her childhood. I told her about the crazy circumstances and how I'll be starting my own business soon. Life had taken us on two completely different paths, and I couldn't help but imagine if we'd stayed together till we got to college. We could have had much longer...

Zara was the one who pointed out that we were young, and we never thought about the future, but she knew she would marry someone else one day, someone her parents picked, someone who wasn't a woman. She was happy with where life had landed her. She had accepted this fate long before I had, and she implored me to stop thinking about the past. It wasn't healthy or helpful.

"By the way, your boyfriend is a real treat, huh?" She wiggled her eyebrows, making me laugh.

"He's very easy on the eyes, yes."

"Easy on the eyes? Dodo, he's a smoking bomb. I don't understand how you ever concentrated around him at work."

"It was a challenge," I laughed, "but he helped by being an asshole all the time."

"He was so sweet when he reached out! He told me he couldn't figure out a birthday gift because you refused the money, which by the way, you're an idiot for doing that. He's fucking loaded from what I understood. He offered a private jet to bring me to the States. But my son, Ridan, has his exams going on, I couldn't just leave him and come. This was the next best option."

"Well, he's already been throwing so much money from me, I don't feel comfortable."

"You need to let people take care of you, Thea." Zara shook her head, "I think it's about time you start letting people in. Especially if you see this man in your future."

"It's hard, and he's a complicated person." I sighed.

"Take it from someone in a happy marriage, Theodora. You can't pick and choose what parts of people you love and hate. I can tell from the way you're talking about him that you love him more than you can admit, but something is holding you back. And you need to let it go. He's not perfect, no one is. But is he worth fighting for? Because I see him and I see he is trying his damn best to make you love him. He's already at the edge of the cliff, and he's terrified of falling because he knows you won't take that step with him."

I knew he was in love with me, I had known since the funeral. And it scared me how accurate Zara was. I was almost there, but if Aiden allowed himself to feel further... I would never be able to catch up. And I would never be happy breaking his heart. The thought of breaking his heart was excruciating, and I knew where I had to be right after this call. Zara spoke about making plans to visit someday, and we promised to stay in touch, even though I knew none of these things would materialize. Zara had a life that went beyond our high school love, and mine had moved too far ahead to return to the person I was then. When she waved goodbye, I froze that frame in my mind, remembering how we were once in love, and now we were simply not. And I was now okay with that.

Because my heart had, even without my permission, belonged to a certain Steele man, and he was sitting in an office not so far away and very much in my reach.

Turning the device off, I headed out, bumping into Lydia.

"I've already cleared your afternoon and spoken to Monica about Aiden. Now, go."

"You're magic, how can I thank you?" I hugged her.

"I need the new LV bag; I'll send you the link." She called after me, already speeding down the hallway. I met Quinton on my way from one building to another, who had an awful lot of questions to ask about my internship and what I was still doing here and all of that. I absentmindedly told him I was working on something with Jason. Mary stopped me in the reception, hurriedly issuing me a visitor's pass since I was no longer employed at Steele. 

Jesus, what the fuck.

I took the elevators up to the top, unfortunately being interrupted several times by curious people and just random work friends wanting to know what's up with me. I answered as many as I could politely, always making excuses. Fuck, no one pestered me this much when I was working here. Or maybe I always found time to fuck around with everyone while working and they hadn't seen me in weeks.

But I needed to get to Aiden.

As I turned the hallway, Monica spotted me first, flashing me a wide smile. "Mr Steele is on a conference call with some people from Japan right now. I'll let you know when he's done."

I took a seat in front of her, staring at the space my desk should have been. It had only been weeks and the desk had already been removed, the floor looking new like nothing had ever been there. When sitting in silence didn't help, I walked around the hallway, reminding myself every two seconds that this was not our home. We couldn't just jump from one apartment to the other whenever we felt like it. Or maybe I could.

"You know what, Monica? I think I'm going to go in anyway." I told her.

She raised a brow, "You're looking for trouble."

"Honey, I am trouble." I winked before slowly opening the door to his office, sliding in. Aiden looked up ever so slightly from his video conference, acknowledging me before he continued to focus. Good. At least I wasn't being yelled at anymore. I doubted he'd yell at me again considering how harshly I had reacted to something like this.

For once, I was holding all the power in the relationship, and I didn't like it one bit.

Seeing as he was occupied, I walked up to his desk and took my shoes off, trying my best not to annoy him when I was really here for other reasons. I paced around the room, hearing his conversation from one side, but not even attempting to make sense of it anymore. It wasn't my job to know this, and knowing only brought with it a world of suffering that I wasn't prepared for, as I had recently come to realize. As long as I could separate the man from the business, I was good to go. And why not? The law recognised a person was removed from the company. I could do it too.

"Thea?" He called me, and I turned around to see him taking his earphones off and lowering the screen of his device.

"You free for a minute?" I don't know why I was asking that question. Anything I had asked for these past few days had been mine. A few minutes wasn't going to be any different. He raised a brow before using his desk phone to call Monica, "Clear the next hour."

"Already done, sir." Monica put her phone down, making me laugh at Aiden's confused expression. He thought for a moment before concluding, "Lydia."

"Of course, it's Lydia." I smiled, seeming to jar him for a second. He quickly recovered when I padded over to him, extending a hand. His gaze went from my bright face to the outstretched hand, taking it in a solid grip. I led him to the couch on the other corner of his huge office, pushing him to sit down. His eyebrows reached his fucking hairline when I didn't take the seat next to him, choosing to straddle him instead.

"Thank you for the gift. It was very thoughtful." I leaned forward to kiss his cheek, a shaky breath emanating from his throat.

"Please just let me spend some money next time. It was hard to make this happen." He choked, making me snort.

"I get to decide the budget then." I mused, "I want to see you struggle in a dollar store so bad, it's not even funny." His face of disdain made me laugh. "Anyway, we'll see about that next year. I need to talk to you about something important." He stiffened at those words, and I was quick to ease his worries away, "It's alright, nothing bad."

I took in a deep breath, getting comfortable on his legs before talking, "So... I was talking to Zara and she helped me put some things into perspective. I've been so hung up on things that don't matter- wait." I shook my head. That was the wrong word, "I mean, it's about, you know, what matters the most to me. And like, I see this thing going long term. I see you and me, and I see that fucking dream. We're that power couple. I want to stumble in your apartment at two am and be absolutely wasted because you will take care of me. I want to fall asleep in your bed and I want to step into your balcony someday holding your hand. I just don't think you understand how much I want us to work out, and it physically hurts me that I've spent all this time just trying to convince myself that you're the villain of the story all along. You're not."

Aiden opened his mouth to say something but I just lifted his tie and pressed it against his lips, "I'll let you know when you can talk." He smiled under the tie, his hand taking over mine in holding the fabric across his mouth. "We're both good and bad. There will be days when I will get up late despite 80 or 90 alarms, and there will be days when you burn my toast. There are always going to be days when I'll shut you out when my feelings get too intense and there will be days you wouldn't want me in your bed. It's going to happen, and we're going to fuck this up so many fucking times. We're going to be so fucking bad at this relationship, Aiden..."

His face creased in worry, so I put him out of his misery, "But if I fuck up, I want to fuck up with you. And I want you to fuck up with me. Because I don't want to see you with someone else and I don't want you to break someone else's heart. You have every single bit of my heart, Aiden. And you can do as you please with it because it's yours. Just like I know I have yours. So, for your sake and mine, we're going to figure our way through this. I wouldn't want to put in this effort with anyone else."

Aiden stayed silent.

"You can speak now," I remembered, flicking the tie off his face.

"You talk a lot for someone who has very little to say." He complained, finally relaxing his hands enough to come up to hold my face.

Offended, I pouted, "That was so nice and meaningful, what do you mean?"

Aiden brushed my hair off my face, "You spoke like, ten pages worth of material, and you know what was the only thing I heard?"

Worry washed over me. What if I was too late to fix this slump?

"I'll give you a hint – it's three words. Actually, for your dirty mouth, it's four."

Catching on, I eased up again, leaning into my man, "I fucking love you."

I cannot fucking believe it! Three months coming to an end like this, it feels bittersweet. But there's an epilogue coming in, and then a few announcements, so hold on for a bit :)

Someone marvelous decided that the covers for the series should coordinate, so this is what we came up with today 👀 for Book 1

Let me know what you think?!