(Alex POV)
I shouldn't have kissed her.
The thought doesn't arrive dramatically. It doesn't interrupt meetings or derail my focus. It waits. It slips into the quiet moments between decisions, surfaces when the office empties and the noise finally drops away, settles into the stillness where avoidance becomes harder to maintain.
It comes calmly.
Insistently.
Like a fact I can't reason my way out of.
I crossed a line.
And worse — I crossed it knowingly.
The kiss wasn't an accident. It wasn't confusion or alcohol or circumstance, no matter how convenient it would be to assign blame elsewhere. I knew exactly who she was when I leaned in. I knew the imbalance that existed between us. I knew what it meant to be the one with authority in the room, the one whose choices carried weight beyond intention.
That knowledge should have stopped me.
It didn't.
And instinct has never been something I trusted.
Instinct is imprecise. Emotional. It's what ruins people who mistake desire for clarity. Hale Industries exists because I learned early how to ignore it, how to choose control over impulse even when restraint costs something.
Especially when it costs something.
So when something threatens order, I respond the way I always have.
I step back.
I draw the boundaries tighter. I remove myself from the equation and tell myself that distance is discipline — that restraint is responsibility — that silence is the cleanest way to prevent damage.
The office makes that decision easier to maintain.
From the outside, nothing changes. Meetings run on time. Decisions are clean. Numbers align. The floor hums with the same measured efficiency it always has.
No one knows the distance is deliberate.
No one knows that I've trained myself not to look toward her desk when I walk onto the floor. That my attention redirects automatically now, the way you avoid touching something you know will linger longer than it should.
When I speak to her, it's brief. Professional. Necessary.
Elara adjusts quickly.
That shouldn't surprise me adaptability has always been one of her strengths but the ease with which she settles into the new distance unsettles me anyway. She doesn't linger when she delivers reports. She doesn't ask follow-up questions unless they're essential. Her presence is contained, efficient, controlled.
Impeccable.
And it bothers me more than I expected.
Not because she's doing anything wrong.
Because she's doing exactly what I set in motion.
Vivienne brings the proposal two weeks later, sliding a slim folder onto my desk during a quiet window between meetings.
"We should formalize the structure for the expansion project," she says. "It's grown beyond what we anticipated."
I skim the outline. Timelines. Deliverables. Oversight.
"It's already functioning," I say.
"Informally," she agrees. "But it's drawing more attention now. A defined team will streamline accountability."
Reasonable. Necessary.
"Who leads it?" I ask.
"Tessa," she replies without hesitation. "She has seniority, client-facing experience, and familiarity with regulatory expectations."
I pause, just long enough to consider it.
"Elara's been handling most of the analysis," I say. A statement, not an argument.
"And she'll continue to," Vivienne replies smoothly. "But Tessa has experience managing visibility at this level. That matters."
It does.
Experience matters. Especially on projects that invite scrutiny.
I nod once. "Fine."
"There's one more thing," she adds. "I'd like to assign Daniel as a compliance partner. It keeps everything aligned from the start."
Daniel is competent. Reliable. Unlikely to complicate things.
"Approved," I say.
Elara doesn't hear it from me.
She learns the way these things usually happen through process.
An updated meeting notice appears in the system that afternoon. Same project. Same timeline.
Only the hierarchy has shifted.
Tessa is listed as lead.
Daniel as compliance partner.
Elara's name beneath them.
Later, walking the floor, I catch sight of them together.
Elara and Daniel are seated near the glass partition, documents spread between them. He's pointing something out on the screen. She listens, nodding, responding with quiet focus.
They work well together.
That shouldn't register as anything more than efficiency.
Yet somehow it does.
Something sharp and unwelcome settles low in my chest.
Jealousy is an irrational response. I know that. It has no place here. She's allowed to work with whoever the structure assigns. She's allowed to build professional relationships that don't involve me.
Still, the sight unsettles me.
The ease between them. The way she looks less guarded than she has in weeks. The small smile she doesn't seem to realize she's wearing.
There's nothing inappropriate about it.
That's what makes the reaction harder to dismiss.
I keep walking.
Over the next few days, the project progresses smoothly . Updates come through the proper channels. Reports are clean. Timelines hold.
Distance does what it's meant to do.
And yet, I notice her less.
Not because she isn't there she is but because the structure I approved has shifted her just far enough out of my direct line of sight that I no longer have to account for the reaction she provokes.
Late one afternoon, as the office thins out, I glance through the glass walls of my office and see her again.
She's standing beside Daniel's desk, reviewing something quietly. Focused. Intent. At ease.
The sight settles into me in a way I don't like.
I tell myself this is good.
That she's finding her footing without my presence complicating it. That if she gravitates toward someone steady, someone safe, then that's exactly how it should be.
That's what I tell myself.
What I don't examine too closely is the realization that she no longer looks toward my office at all.
That night, alone in my apartment, the quiet feels heavier than usual. I pour a drink I don't really want and stand by the window, watching the city lights blur together below.
The same moments replay without invitation.
The kiss.
The pause afterward.
The way she stepped away when her friend appeared, embarrassment flooding her face like she'd done something wrong.
The way she hasn't looked at me the same since.
I tell myself restraint is maturity.
That wanting something doesn't entitle me to take it.
That distance is safer for both of us.
But there's a difference between discipline and avoidance, and the longer I sit with it, the less certain I am which one I've chosen.
What I do know is this:
I created space so wide that something meaningful is already slipping beyond reach.
And I'm not yet willing to admit whether that loss is temporary —
—or the cost of a line I was too careful to cross again.