Working with Adrian Velasco was exhausting.
Not because he was careless or unpredictable in the wrong ways—but because he was neither.
He was precise.
Too precise.
"You're overthinking it," Adrian said, leaning casually against the edge of the conference table as if the weight of their current decisions didn't matter at all.
Amara didn't look up from her tablet. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency, scrolling through data, cross-checking projections, recalibrating projections in her mind. "And you're underestimating the risk."
"I'm calculating it."
"You're gambling."
A pause.
Then—
"You don't trust me," he said.
Amara finally lifted her gaze.
For a moment, the room seemed quieter than it already was.
"I don't trust anyone."
There was no apology in her tone. No hesitation. Just truth.
Something subtle shifted in Adrian's expression.
Not offense.
Not challenge.
Understanding.
"Fair," he said simply.
Silence stretched between them, long enough to become something else entirely. The soft hum of the air conditioning filled the gaps, but it did nothing to ease the tension that had settled in the space they now shared more often than not.
They had been working side by side for hours.
Too close.
Too often.
Too… aware.
Amara stood abruptly, needing movement, needing distance. She walked toward the large digital screen mounted on the wall, adjusting the presentation with sharp, deliberate gestures, as though precision alone could ground her thoughts.
Adrian followed.
Of course he did.
"You missed a variable," he said, his voice calm, already behind her.
"I didn't—"
Before she could finish, his hand reached past her, tapping the screen just beside her own.
Correcting her.
Fixing it.
Her breath caught—not because she was wrong, but because of how close he was.
Now, he was right there.
Close enough that she could feel the subtle warmth of his presence at her back. Close enough that if she shifted even slightly—if she turned—there would be no space between them.
"You did," he murmured.
But something in his voice had changed.
It wasn't sharp.
It wasn't challenging.
It was lower now. Softer.
Measured in a different way.
Dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with business.
Amara slowly turned her head.
A mistake.
A quiet one.
But a mistake nonetheless.
Their eyes met.
And just like that—
Everything else disappeared.
The project.
The numbers.
The carefully structured future they were building together.
None of it mattered in that moment.
Because the air between them had shifted again.
His gaze lingered on hers—not calculating now, not analyzing—but steady, almost searching.
And for once, Amara felt something she couldn't control.
Something she couldn't predict.
Her heart betrayed her with a quiet, unsteady rhythm she refused to acknowledge.
"You're distracting," she whispered, though her voice lacked its usual firmness.
A small smirk appeared on Adrian's lips.
"You're the one who turned."
Her cheeks warmed—subtle, but enough.
And she hated that he noticed.
She hated even more that he was right.
"Focus," she said quickly, stepping back, reestablishing the distance between them as if distance alone could reset what had just happened.
But it didn't.
Because the moment didn't leave.
It lingered.
In the space between them.
In the way they both hesitated, just slightly, before returning to the work.
In the quiet awareness that something had shifted—something neither of them had intended.
And something neither of them was willing to ignore.
Not anymore.