Page 41 of Shattered

“Nothing happened. We had a meeting.”

“You let Henderson talk about his daughter’s soccer game for five minutes. Voluntarily. You don’t even know what soccer is. Last month you asked if the Super Bowl was a bowling tournament.”

I’d been reading an article about Delia’s favorite artist when Henderson brought it up. I hadn’t wanted to interrupt.

“I can’t be interested in my employees’ lives?”

“No. You can’t. It’s against your nature.” Mark leaned back in his chair. “So I repeat: what happened?”

I began to gather my laptop. “Is there a point to this?”

“Just concerned for your mental wellbeing. Yesterday you left a board meeting early to buy takeout. Today you’re acting almost human. Tomorrow you’ll probably start using the company slack channel.”

“That’s not happening.” I cut him off with a grimace. I wasn’t that social.

“Thank god. There are still limits.” He stood when I did, following me toward my office. “Seriously though. You seem… lighter. Less like you’re carrying the weight of Western civilization on your shoulders.”

I stopped at my office door. All the time Mark had worked with me, he barely commented on my personal life.

The fact that he was doing it now meant my distraction was more obvious than I’d thought. Still, he was probing too much.

“Since when is it the employee’s turn to interrogate their boss? I suppose you have so much free time, how about submitting the Maximillian project this night,”

Mark extended his hands in surrender, “Sorry Sir. Do whatever you’re doing that’s making you act human. I’ll go home to my wife this night,”

He left before I could respond, which was probably for the best.

The drive to her place felt longer than usual. Traffic crawled through Manhattan while my mind replayed last night on a loop. About Delia pressed against my side, about the way she’d looked up at me with those hazel eyes still wet from crying, about how I’d been half a second from kissing her when Daniel called.

Bad timing. Or maybe perfect timing. I didn’t know anymore.

What I knew was that I’d spent years keeping polite distance, and somewhere in the last few weeks that distance had collapsed entirely. Now I was thinking about her constantly—the way she talked with her hands when excited, how she made those sounds when eating good food, the paint stains that never quite came off her fingers.

I was missing her. Being away from her apartment felt wrong—like I’d forgotten something essential and couldn’t remember what.

This was dangerous. This was everything I’d spent years avoiding. This was going to end badly because it always ended badly when you wanted things you shouldn’t want.

But I couldn’t stop myself from stopping at Hector’s restaurant on the way back.

The same restaurant from last night. The place that made her light up like someone had switched on every lamp in her body. I wanted to see that expression again—wanted, selfishly, to be the reason for it.

I placed the order and waited, checking my phone for messages from her. Nothing. Which was normal. We didn’t text at all.

The food was ready in twenty minutes. I drove with the takeout warming the passenger seat, thinking about how I’d present it. Casual, like I’d just happened to be nearby. Not desperate, not obvious, not revealing that I’d left work early specifically to buy her dinner because making her happy had become more important than anything else.

I parked on her street and grabbed the bags, and that’s when I saw them.

Delia standing in her doorway—tense, guarded, not smiling.

And Jake Foxx on the landing, holding flowers like a man begging for absolution.

I stopped walking.

Jake looked different than I remembered from the wedding. Thinner. Hollowed out, like someone had scooped out his insides and left just the shell. He was talking rapidly, hands moving in agitated, desperate gestures as he tried to push the roses toward her. Delia stood with her arms crossed, body angled away, looking overwhelmed and exhausted.

I walked toward them in purposeful strides.

Jake stopped mid-sentence when he saw me. We stared at each other—two men who’d made polite conversation at industry events, discussed market trends and investment strategies, who now had Delia standing between us like a fault line.