My Bonus for Her Ring? Watch Me Board This Flight.
Chapter 5
I made it to Clara's desk by 5:48 PM.
She'd already sealed the manila envelope. Edges crisp, flap pressed flat. The kind of care you give something you know the other person won't open twice.
"Last signature," she said. "Bottom right."
I signed. The pen was hers — a heavy black rollerball.
A yellow sticky note sat on the seal. Three words in Clara's neat print: *Take care, Nora.*
"That's everything?" I asked.
"That's everything."
She didn't stand. Didn't offer a handshake. Clara understood economy. Three words on a sticky note. That was her entire budget, and she'd spent it.
"One more thing." Her voice dropped. "Elliott wants you upstairs before you leave. Said he has something to go over."
I looked at her. She looked back. Neither of us pretended this was normal.
"When did he say that?"
"Twenty minutes ago. Called down himself."
I stood very still. The boarding pass was already on my phone. Fourteen hours from now I'd be above the Pacific.
But five years has weight. You can't mail it back. It needs a last room, a last door, a last moment where you stand in the same space and know it's the final one.
"Okay," I said.
Clara's mouth tightened. "Nora — be careful. Jade's been in his office for the last hour."
"I know."
***
The twenty-third floor was quiet. Most of the offices had gone dark. The corridor lights ran on motion sensors, clicking on one panel at a time as I walked, like the building was reluctantly acknowledging I was still here.
Elliott's office sat at the end of the hall. The door was closed. But the long glass partition between his office and the corridor was fully transparent. No blinds. No frost.
I saw them before I reached the door.
Jade was on the leather sofa. She wore a long skirt that pooled around her ankles, body turned sideways, head resting against the armrest. Relaxed. Like the leather had already learned the shape of her.
Elliott sat beside her. His arm stretched along the back of the sofa, not quite touching her shoulder but close enough that the gap was a choice. He said something. Jade's hands flew to her mouth. Her shoulders shook with laughter — silent, the soundproofing was thick.
Elliott's face turned toward her.
And there it was.
The expression.
I knew it the way you know a word in a language you've studied but never spoken. Five years of cataloguing — the slight lift at the corners of his mouth, the way his eyes softened until the sharpness bled out, the looseness in his jaw that made him look ten years younger and like someone I'd never met.
He'd never worn that face for me. Not on the night he proposed. Not on the morning I said yes. Not in any of the thousand quiet rooms where I'd sat across from him and waited for something that looked like warmth.
He'd saved it. All of it. Stored. Locked. Reserved.
My hand was on the door handle.
Cool, brushed steel. The latch would give with a quarter-turn. I could walk in. I could stand in front of them and say the things that five years had earned me the right to say.
On the other side of the glass, Jade said something that made Elliott shake his head, still smiling. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Small. Automatic. The kind of thing you do when your hands already know someone's face.
I let go of the handle.
Not because I was afraid. Not because my voice would break.
I let go because the two people on the other side of that glass had nothing to do with where I was going.
The door stayed shut. The glass stayed clear. I turned away from both.
The motion sensors clicked off behind me, one panel at a time, the corridor going dark in my wake.
The elevator was waiting. Empty car. I stepped inside and pressed L.
As the doors closed, my phone screen lit up.
*Check-in confirmed. Flight LH7192. Seat 22A. Window. Departure: 6:15 AM.*
The doors met. The car dropped.
Behind me, twenty-three floors up, the glass wall held two people in a frame I would never stand inside again.
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