Chapter 10 — What Silence Sounds Like

It is almost midnight over here again.

The apartment is dark except for the thin straight line light that comes from under her door.

I tell myself I am not waiting for it to go off, but I am not sure that is the case. I have been up for the last hour looking towards the direction of the light from her room.

There is a report opened on my desk that I need to glance through and confirm things, but here it is half read. I keep moving the same line as if the numbers might start to mean something. They do not.

I hear her footsteps once, soft against the floor, then nothing. I kept imagining different things that she might be doing.

It is strange how aware I am of the littlest sound she makes. A drawer closing. The faint click of a cup on the counter. Her presence moves through the air like a current.

I close the laptop and push back from the desk. The silence stretches. I think about pouring a drink, then decide against it. It would only make my thoughts more louder.

She came home earlier than usual, and said the meeting went well. Her eyes were bright in a way I have not seen in a long time. She smiled not at me, not really but the kind of smile that belongs to someone who has remembered something interesting about herself.

I told her that I was glad it went well. That was true. It also hurt a little more than I expected, I wanted her to want me for help and I also wanted to help her badly.

There is a comfort in being needed, even if it is for the wrong reasons. When that comfort starts to disappear, you are left standing there, wondering if the story you built around yourself still makes sense because I myself am now in doubt.

I walk to the window. The city outside looks the same as it always does, but it feels different tonight.

She is changing.

Or maybe she was always this way, and I am only now paying good attention to her, but I think she is changing this is not the person I used to know.

I think about the way she looked at me this morning, calm and direct. No fear, no hesitation, no shivering or bowing of head. As if she had already decided who I am and what I mean to her.

That should make things easier.but It does not.

There was a time in life when control meant certainty to me. Deals. Schedules. Plans that fit together like glass. Now control feels like a door that keeps closing too fast for me.

I can still hear her voice from earlier.

“Then make it simple.”

If only she knew how hard that is for me to “make it simple” as she said.

I try to remember the first time I saw her after everything fell apart between us and we stopped talking. It was in the boardroom, months ago, when she came to negotiate the contract that started this entire arrangement.

I remember thinking she looked just like a ghost that I had not finished mourning or I do not want to stop mourning. She spoke without emotion, clear and sharp, and I told myself it did not matter. That it was better this way.

But sometimes when she speaks now, I can hear the echo of the girl who once laughed at my terrible jokes, who painted my hand because she said skin was a better canvas than paper. These memories bring a warmth feeling inside me.

I do not know where that memory hides during the day, but it waits for me at night, every single day.

My phone buzzes once. A message from my assistant about tomorrow’s meetings. I ignore it, not important right now.

For a while now, I just stand there, watching the lights blink on and off in distant buildings. People leaving, arriving, living.

She used to tell me that cities are made of stories stacked on top of one another. I did not believe her then. I do now.

Every window has someone pretending to be fine behind them.

The sound of water starts from her bathroom. A shower.

I close my eyes. I try not to picture her, but imagination does not care about rules.

There is a moment when the water stops. Then quiet again.

I sit on the couch because standing feels like pretending I am not waiting for something I try to tell myself. I do not know what that something is.

I think about calling my father. He has been asking about the company merger, about numbers, about everything that is safe to discuss. But if I call now, he will hear the hesitation in my voice. He will know that something has shifted. That I am avoiding at the moment.

He would tell me to fix it quickly, to keep personal and professional separate. He has spent his entire life believing that emotions are debts you can never repay.

Maybe he is right.

But when I think of Lia, I do not think of debt. I think of air, life. Of the way a single honest look can make everything else feel heavier.

There is a small sound at the doorway.

I look up.

She stands there in one of those loose shirts she wears to bed, hair still damp, a towel in her hands. She hesitates when she sees me awake.

“I thought you went to bed,” she says.

“I could not sleep.”

She nods slowly. “Neither could I.”

For a moment, neither of us speaks. She walks closer, just enough that the space between us feels charged for different reasons but not dangerous.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she says. “For the ride this morning.”

“You do not need to thank me.”

“I know. But I wanted to.”

Her voice is quiet, careful. She looks tired but lighter somehow.

“How was the meeting?” I ask, though I already know she told me earlier.

“It went well.”

I nod. “I am glad.”

She studies me, as if searching for something, hesitated but said. “You work too much.”

“You have told me that before.”

“You never listen.”

“Some habits are difficult to change or let go of.”

She smiles, faintly. “Goodnight, Adrian.”

“Goodnight, Lia.”

She turns and leaves. The door to her room closes softly.

I sit there a while longer, staring at the empty hallway.

It is ridiculous how quiet the place feels once she left.

I think about her smile just now small, tired, real. It was not for the cameras, not for the contract. It was for me, or maybe in spite of me.

I rest my head against the back of the couch and let out a slow breath.

The truth is simple.

I wanted this arrangement to make sense. I wanted control, predictability, distance.

But tonight, in the silence she left behind, none of it feels worth as much as the sound of her voice saying my name.