That night, Nicole sat on the edge of her bed, her mind racing.
She could hear her mom in the kitchen, the muffled sound of her slip-resistant tennis shoes. TV voices. A cabinet pulled open. The light from the hallway made a thin strip under her door.
Nicole uncapped her pen. In her notebook, she wrote one sentence.
If I think about leaving, will Bloomwell respond?
The line felt like a trap she’d set for herself. Her stomach tightened like her body already knew what the answer was going to be. Yes.
She closed her notebook, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The tremor traveled through her wrist and up her forearm. She could still see the wall when she closed her eyes. Could still feel the drop in her stomach, the animal part of her recognizing something alive where life wasn’t supposed to be. Her mouth tasted sour.
Nicole arrived early at Bloomwell and sat down at her desk with her coffee. She waited for her computer to fully load. The familiar folder tree populated, and with it, the illusion that nothing had changed from the day before.
Her stomach clenched because she knew she was about to provoke it on purpose.
She pulled last night’s question forward into her mind. I want to leave. She kept the thought steady and waited. She opened her first email, then her calendar. She watched other people drift in, smelling of shampoo, perfume, and mint. Her stomach started to tighten, as if her body already knew what she was doing.
At 8:16, a system notification slid across the top of her screen.
Attendance Support: If you need to leave campus during scheduled hours, please notify your manager and use the time away form.
Nicole’s fingers paused above her keyboard. The message looked like any other message Bloomwell sent: clean font, straightforward, and friendly tone.
She clicked out and swallowed roughly.
She wrote down the time and the message in her notebook, then hid it under a stack of intake folders.
The second test, she chose something more direct.
I should call someone about this.
She did not even have to decide who. Maybe to a reporter’s email, maybe as an anonymous local news tip, maybe in a social media comment section full of people who still acted like Bloomwell was a spaceship that had landed on Robinswood.
At 10:12, an email arrived from Corporate Communications.
Media Guidelines: Reminder that external inquiries should be routed through approved spokespeople. Please do not share internal information.
Nicole stared at the subject line until her eyes started to sting. The words sat there, calm and managerial, but felt like a hand pressed gently over her mouth.
She glanced up from her monitor, scanning the cubicle openings. Peter laughed softly with Lauren near the printers. Someone’s phone rang and was immediately silenced. Nothing else in the room changed, and that made the message feel heavier. Like the building responded without moving a muscle.
Nicole wrote it down. She kept her handwriting small in case someone looked overhead.
9:58 thought: call someone.
10:12 email: media guidelines.
By lunchtime, her notebook held half a page of times and responses, each one lined up like a receipt.
She didn’t work much the rest of the day.
Her mouth stayed dry even after drinking water; her eyes kept sliding to the wall behind her, as if expecting it to move like a throat swallowing.
In the courtyard, she tried to eat. Her fork pushed her potatoes into new shapes. Around her, the lunch crowd spoke in careful cadence. People said “incident” instead of “death,” “concerns” instead of “fear.”
No one said Lila’s name unless they had to.
Peter sat a few feet away, his lunch container balanced on one knee, his attention split between his food and the flow of people crossing the courtyard. Nicole watched him without meaning to, the way his hands moved with quiet economy, the way he seemed aware of where everyone was without acting like he cared.
Across the courtyard, Adrian stood near Quad 2’s entrance again, talking to the new Payroll hire. He turned his head slightly, as if sensing Nicole. For a moment, his expression said nothing, almost dead. Then, his lips slowly spread, as if mocking her.
Nicole looked away. Her fingers tightened around her fork.
When she looked back up, she caught Peter watching her.
Nicole stood. She grabbed her tote and keys and nodded toward the parking lot before she could lose her nerve.
“Come with me,” she said.
Peter blinked, surprised, but followed her anyway. He did not ask where.
Nicole walked fast, past the crowds of whispering people, beyond Adrian’s dead glare. The gravel crunched under her shoes.
She kept moving until she reached her car, the one place on campus that still belonged to her in a way her cubicle never did.
She unlocked it and got in. The interior smelled like vanilla air freshener and the faint trace of her mom’s hand lotion from the last time she’d borrowed the car. The seat was warm from the sun. The air conditioner blasted cold the moment she started the engine.
Peter shut the door. He glanced through the windshield, back toward the building.
“He’s still looking at us.”
Nicole didn’t speak right away. She watched her hands on the steering wheel, the way her fingers trembled slightly even at rest.
Peter murmured. “He looked like he wanted to rip my head off.”
“He’s always mad.”
She’d expected a text. An apology. A sign that the argument mattered. When it didn’t arrive, irritation curdled into something weaker. She hated that she’d watched her phone.
Peter looked at her. His face remained composed, but his eyes held a protective quality.
“He thinks he owns you,” Peter said.
Nicole’s throat tightened. She swallowed, but it didn’t help. Her throat still ached from the knot that’d been in it all day.
“Listen,” she said. The word came out rougher than she meant. She reached into her bag and pulled out the notebook. “I brought you out here because we can’t talk out there.”
Peter’s focus moved from the windshield to her notebook. “What’s this?”
“You noticed that Slack message we got yesterday about building paths? And compliance?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah.” He looked at her. “It sounded like the conversation we had out there.”
“I think Bloomwell is watching us closer than we think,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I started logging my thoughts and what showed up on Slack right after.”
Peter read in silence.
His face changed in increments; first confusion, then concentration, then something colder, the kind of focus people got when they realized a thing they once dismissed might actually kill them.
His thick brows knit together. “It’s responding to you.”
“Not even just what I’m saying,” Nicole said. “My thoughts.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not everything. Just whenever I think about Bloomwell.”
“How long has this been happening?”
Nicole swallowed. “I noticed it after I sent that text to Lila. The Slack reminder about not contacting former employees. It dropped right after that.”
“Jesus,” Peter said quietly.
The car suddenly felt sealed, like a room that could trap sound.
“Do you think Katrina knows about this?” Nicole asked.
“I doubt it,” Peter said.
Out the window, a golf cart drifted across the far edge of the lot. Two figures rode in it, silhouettes washed in glare.
“Who’s that?”
They both leaned forward.
The cart veered toward Quad 3’s side path. Nicole tried to make out their faces, but the cart passed into shadow before she could catch any detail.
Peter’s back straightened almost imperceptibly. The building loomed behind a thin scatter of trees, its body low, windowless, and plain.
Peter spoke without looking away. “I bet Katrina’s in there.”
Nicole’s head felt suddenly light. The words hit her like cold fingers pressing along her spine, not because they made sense but because something inside her reacted before her mind could.
“Why do you think that?” she asked.
His jaw tensed slightly, the tendons in his neck visible. “Where else could she be? No one’s seen her for two years.”
The cart had disappeared somewhere at the side entrance. The door didn’t open, or maybe it did, and the shadows swallowed it. Nicole breathed shallowly.
Peter’s voice dropped to almost a murmur. “I got a feeling.”
The steadiness in his voice made something in her gut curl low. The building’s dark gray surface gleamed like skin in the afternoon light, but the reflection off it didn’t feel like light. It felt like the surface of something watching them back.
Home smelled like garlic and laundry detergent. Nicole pushed the door open with her shoulder, her jacket already sliding down her arm. The television murmured from the living room.
A tall glass vase sat on the entry table, crowded with pale blush roses and baby’s breath. A folded card rested against the rim.
Her stomach flipped.
Her mom leaned out of the kitchen. “You’ve got an admirer.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked out to the hall. “It looks expensive. Who’s it from?”
Nicole stepped closer and read the card. Adrian’s name sat there in clean handwriting. The note wasn’t long, just ‘Thinking of you.’
He had barely looked at her all day.
“It’s just someone from work,” she said, sliding the card back before her mom could take it.
“From your job?” Her mom’s eyebrows lifted. “Nicole. You don’t mix work with that.”
“It’s no one,” Nicole said quickly, her neck heating. “I don’t even like him.”
The lie came out smoother than she expected.
“Is this person bothering you?”
“No, mom,” Nicole sighed. “Just forget it.”
What else could she say? I’m having sex with a superior at my job? I’m not sure how I feel about him? I’m kinda in over my head right now?
Her mom frowned. “Okay…”
Nicole picked up the vase and carried it down the hall to her room. In the bathroom, she dumped out the water and tipped the flowers into the trash. She dropped the card in after it and pushed the lid closed.
Her chest felt tight. Part of her wanted to fish them back out, to smooth the petals, to read the card again. He hadn’t spoken to her since. That silence and this gesture sat side by side in her mind, mismatched and incomprehensible. Peter’s voice surfaced uninvited. Weird dude.
She washed her hands and stared at herself in the mirror until the heat in her cheeks faded.
The next day at work, her phone buzzed.
Adrian:
Meet me at my car.
She looked up at the clock. 4:57.
Her hand withdrew as if the device burned her. She turned her phone face down and stared at her computer screen.
She didn’t want to see him.
Voices drifted past her cubicle. Someone said goodbye. Clusters of people headed for the stairs. The sound in the room gradually faded as the workday ended.
By 5:35, A12 had gone quiet. Nicole slipped her phone into her bag and stood.
The parking lot stretched wide in the late sun. She adjusted the strap on her shoulder and headed toward her car.
She froze.
The black Audi sat near the exit row. Adrian leaned against the driver’s side door, sleeves pushed up, one ankle crossed over the other. He looked like he’d been there a while.
She forced her legs steady again. Breathe.
She angled away and walked past him.
“Nicole.”
She kept moving.
“Nicole!” he called. “Can we talk?”
Nicole stopped a few feet away.
“Just for a second,” he said. “Please.”
The word hung strangely between them. Please. Mostly because it didn’t seem like the type of word a man like him would say.
He looked tired; the skin under his eyes sat darker than usual. His collar was rumpled at the fold, the kind of small disarray he would have fixed hours ago on any other day.
Nicole let her shoulders drop.
“Okay,” she said. “Five minutes.”
He nodded.
When she got in his car, he didn’t start the engine.
He rested his hands on his thighs and looked straight ahead for a long moment before he spoke.
His profile looked sharper in the confined space, and there was a strained quiet in the line of his mouth.
“I was an asshole,” he said finally.
Nicole looked away.
“The way I spoke to you.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t— I don’t do that. That’s not me.”
His voice caught on me like the word had a splinter in it. Something in her leaned toward the sound before she could stop it, drawn by that rough, unpolished crack in him that didn’t match the man who usually controlled a room without ever raising his voice.
“I was jealous,” he said. “I saw you with him, and I just— You’re younger than me. He’s closer to your age. And I thought, she’s going to figure out she’d rather be with someone who—”
“That’s not the point,” Nicole said.
Adrian stopped.
She turned toward him. Her eyes burned, but she held them open.
“It’s how you treated me. You threatened my job. You said things to me that I can’t unhear, Adrian. That’s what this is about.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I know,” he said.
“Do you? Because sometimes I think you don’t.”
“I know because I couldn’t sleep after.” He rubbed his thumb across his knuckle, back and forth. “I kept replaying it. The look on your face when I said that shit about your job. About Peter.” He closed his eyes. “I sounded like my father.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“I know.”
The admission sat between them. Adrian’s chest rose and fell heavily.
“I felt small,” he said.
Nicole blinked.
“With Peter. With you looking away from me. I felt small, and I hated it, and I took it out on you.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t want to be like that with you.”
“I’m going to do better,” he said. “I know that sounds like nothing right now. But I mean it.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. The apology wasn’t in his words anymore. It lived in the way his shoulders had dropped, the way his hands lay open on his legs, palms up, like he was offering her something he couldn’t name.
Nicole didn’t know if she believed it. She wasn’t sure belief was the right metric anyway. What she knew was this: his face looked open in a way she hadn’t seen before, stripped of the polish that usually coated him like lacquer. Underneath it, he looked tired and young and even a little bit afraid. She’d only slept with one person before him, a college boyfriend who barely counted anymore, and maybe that shouldn’t have mattered so much, but it did.
Her eyes spilled over.
She hadn’t meant to cry. The tears came anyway, silent and sudden, streaking her cheeks before she could catch them. Days of holding it in, of Lila, and Peter, and Lauren, and walking through a building that listened to her fears and answered with management—all of it pressed upward at once, and her body did the only thing it knew how to do with pressure.
It broke.
Adrian reached across the console. His thumb caught the tear at the curve of her cheek and wiped it away with a gentleness that made her chest ache. His palm cupped her jaw, his fingers warm against the side of her neck.
“Don’t,” she whispered. She meant ‘Don’t be gentle right now, I can’t handle it.’
“Shhhh…”
She shook her head.
He wiped the other cheek. His fingers lingered along her skin, tracing the path the tears had taken, the pad of his thumb rough.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was low and rough at the edges. “Nicole, I’m sorry.”
His mouth brushed hers like a question, then pressed in when she didn’t pull away. The taste was familiar; warm, and salted now from her tears—and his. He kissed her slowly, one hand still cradling her face, his thumb resting against her cheekbone. His hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair, and the tenderness of it, the care with which he held her, as if she were something that could shatter, made her cry harder.
She kissed him back.
When they parted, her forehead rested against his. She could feel his breath on her lips.
“I care about you,” he said. “I don’t know how to do it right. But I do.”
Nicole kept her eyes closed. Something inside her chest opened, wide and aching, and she understood with a clarity that frightened her that she cared about him, too. She cared about this man who’d hurt her. That part of her would always lean toward the heat of him, toward the way he looked at her like she was the only person in the room.
She cared about him, and it was the most dangerous feeling she’d had since walking through Bloomwell’s doors.