LOVE ME OR HATE ME

Aria's POV Eight months. Eight months of walking through these glass doors every morning telling myself the same lie. That today would be different. That today I would stop feeling what I had been feeling since the very first morning Daniel Cole walked past my desk without looking at me and somehow still managed to take up every single thought I had for the rest of that day. I was still telling myself that lie. I set my bag down at my desk and smoothed my skirt before pulling up the morning schedule. The 34th floor of Cole Enterprises was already alive with the quiet focused energy that I had grown to love. Keyboards clicking. Phones humming. The smell of fresh coffee threading through the cool conditioned air. I loved this place. I loved this job. I was also painfully aware that loving this job and loving the man who owned this building were two very different things and I had somehow managed to confuse them completely. I opened his calendar. Board debrief. Singapore call. Meridian contract review. Lunch that he would skip unless I reminded him twice. I added my usual note beside the lunch slot the way I always did, the way that had become less of a professional habit and more of something I did because taking care of him had quietly become the most natural thing in my day. I stared at what I had typed. Then I deleted it and rewrote it three times before settling on something that sounded less like a woman in love and more like a competent secretary. The truth was I was both and only one of those things was acceptable here. I picked up the morning report and stood from my desk. His office door was closed. It was always closed before he arrived. But I crossed the floor toward it anyway because there was always something to check, always a reason to step inside, always some professional justification for standing in the space that smelled like his cologne even when he wasn't in it yet. I was not proud of this either. I straightened the files on his desk. Adjusted the blinds two inches. Moved his pen holder one centimeter to the left and then back again. I stood in the middle of that office for a moment longer than I needed to and felt the particular ache that had become so familiar it almost felt like company. Daniel Cole did not know I existed beyond the boundaries of this job. And still I waited. I walked back out into the hallway and that was when I heard it. That easy familiar sound that meant my morning was about to become slightly more complicated. "Aria." Marcus Reed was walking toward me from the direction of the finance department, tall and unhurried, with that smile already arranged on his face. The smile that arrived the moment he saw me and never quite left until we parted ways. It was a good smile. Warm and genuine and completely uncomplicated in a way that should have felt like relief. It did not feel like relief. "Good morning Marcus," I said, keeping my voice even and my expression professionally pleasant. He fell into step beside me as I walked back toward my desk. "You look tired," he said, and the concern in his voice was so sincere it almost made me feel guilty. "I slept fine," I told him. "You always say that." "Because it's always true." He laughed softly and I felt the weight of everything he wasn't saying pressing against the space between us. Marcus Reed had never been difficult to read. He wore his feelings the way he wore his suits, cleanly and without apology. And what he felt about me had been written clearly across every conversation we had shared for the past three months. I knew what he wanted. I also knew I could not give it to him. Not because Marcus was not worthy. He was good and steady and the kind of man that women in books described as husband material without hesitation. Not because the timing was wrong or the circumstances were complicated. But because my heart had already gone somewhere it had no business going and it had gone there so completely that there was simply no room left for anything else. I thought about Daniel Cole's office. The way his presence filled every corner of it. The way he sometimes paused in the middle of a sentence and looked at me and I felt it all the way down to my feet. "I should get back to my desk," I said to Marcus. "He'll be in soon." Marcus nodded slowly. That particular nod that said he understood more than I was saying. "Of course," he replied. "Have a good morning Aria." I watched him walk away and then I sat down at my desk and pressed my fingers flat against the cool surface and asked myself the question that had been sitting quietly at the back of my throat for eight long months. My boss did not see me. Not the way I needed to be seen. Not the way a woman waits to be seen by the one person her heart had chosen without permission. But must I continue waiting for a man who may never look up, while someone else who already sees me stands right in front of me? I did not have an answer. I opened his calendar again instead.