But it didn’t.
He stopped, hovering just above me.
Confused, breathless, I opened my eyes, and found him staring down at me, his gaze burning, searing right through me.
Fuck. I must’ve looked so obvious, practically begging for it.
Heat and embarrassment crashed over me all at once, my heart stuttering wildly.
Then, without a word, he let his hands fall away and stepped back.
"I don’t know if I can promise I won’t cross that line again," he said, his voice low, rough. "And honestly… I’m not even sure how much you want me to."
His eyes flicked to my still-parted lips.
A beat passed. His expression shifted, one last, bittersweet smile.
And then he turned, got into his car, slammed the door, and drove off.
Leaving me standing there, in complete disarray.
SARIEL
That evening wasn’t easy. But I forced my way through it.
Whatever was happening between Winter and me, it felt like a damn sine wave: rising, falling, rising again.
A spark of hope, then a plunge. Mixed signals, crossed wires.
He never fully shut the door, not quite, but he kept trying to close it anyway.
Daring to do what I did in the supermarket parking lot came almost too easily. Feeling him tremble, soften in my embrace, almost melt, gave me firm reassurance that my dilemma wasn't mine alone. We were both losing the battle to stay proper and professional.
But someone really had to push for the breakthrough.
What Winter didn’t know was that I wasn’t really a quitter, not when I’d set my sights on something.
Yes, at first, I’d been drowning in doubt, convinced we were impossible, with a pile of uncrossable obstructions separating us.
But something had changed.
Day by day, that impossibility started to feel less like a wall and more like a real shot.
And the more I thought about it, the more palpable it became. The more I could touch it, taste it, the more desperately I wanted it to materialize: me and him.
Deep down, there was this untamable, electricpullin me, a force I couldn’t name or stop.
It dragged me toward him like gravity.
All I needed was a little more time.
***
Finally, the last workday before the holidays arrived. I had finished my project, informed Manager Lorens, and he told me that if everything was ready and Werner had approved it, we should present it to Winter so he could review it before his planned trip to Japan.
For the past few days, I’d been trying to give Winter a bit of space to process everything.
I knew we needed to have a more private conversation, in less… emotionally turbulent circumstances.
