Page 63 of Wells

The Flambeaux: Before electric light, masked torch-bearers carried open flame through the streets so the crowd could see the night parade pass. He lit the dark he swore he would leave alone, and once he could see her, he could not unsee who she was.

Monday morning, Cera sits at the desk outside my office with her hair pulled back and coffee steaming beside her keyboard. She looks up when I walk past, and the office does nothing to cool what followed us back from Florida.

Her eyes meet mine. We hold too long, and I keep walking because stopping would be worse.

I drop my bag in my office, pull up the Rotterdam file, and try to put the hotel where it belongs. It belongs behind me, beneath me, anywhere but in the office with her voice coming through the door, low and patient as she talks someone through a file request.

Nothing more than sex as punctuation between work sprints. Practical and contained.

Then she laughs at something I can't hear, and my attention splits anyway.

I pull up the revised interface map she sent last night, just before my call with Peoria. I didn't have time to review it until after my call. I sent her an email at two in the morning with three small data corrections, but other than that, it's flawless.

I wanted to find more wrong with it, but she's that good.

I open the door of my office and she looks up across the open space that separates my office from her cubicle.

"Did you see the corrections I sent last night?"

Her mouth twitches at one corner.

"Do you ever sleep?"

I don't answer.

"Yes, I did. This morning over coffee. I fixed them and just sent it back. Try to contain your joy."

"I will suffer privately."

Her smile breaks through, just for a second, and I turn back into my office before I forget which side of the door she works on.

The morning moves in pieces. Email, a call with Singapore and a gap analysis I should have finished last week. At ten thirty, I want her to walk through the partner handoff protocol, so I step out and find her at the printer with her back to me.

"Conference room two in five."

She turns, a stack of bound decks in her arms.

"Ridge or just us?"

"Just us."

Her expression doesn't change, but something in her posture does. She shifts her weight, and I clock it before I can stop myself. A small change. A bad habit. The kind of detail I am trained to notice and smart enough to leave alone.

I walk to the conference room and set up the prototype on the main screen. Cera arrives exactly five minutes later, sets her laptop on the table, and pulls out a chair across from me instead of next to me.

We work through the handoff sequence for forty minutes. She catches a data point I missed, flags a duplication in the metrics layer, and asks three questions that force me to rethink the entire third module. By the time we finish, the prototype is tighter than it was when I walked in.

"That work?"

She nods. "It works."

We pack up in silence. I reach the door first and hold it open. She walks through, and as she passes, my hand settles at the small of her back before I make the decision to put it there. It's there just long enough to guide her into the hallway, just long enough for her breath to catch.

She keeps walking, doesn't look back, and I follow her to the elevator bank where two analysts from logistics are waiting. We ride down in silence, her standing to my left, close enough that the scent from the hotel finds me again. It's lavender, maybe mint, clean enough that I have no business thinking about her skin.

The elevator opens on three, the analysts get off, and the doors close again. We're alone for six floors.

"You're staring. I think I'd be derelict if I didn't encourage you to blink. You've gotta protect your eyes."