On Friday morning, Avery stepped off the elevator with the uneasy awareness of someone bracing for something she couldn’t name. She told herself not to expect the box. Expecting it felt dangerous, like inviting something closer that she wasn’t ready to face. But the thought had settled in her mind overnight and refused to leave.
She reached her desk.
The box was already there.
No sound, no footsteps, no glimpse of whoever delivered it. Just the white container, perfectly centered at the edge of her workspace, her name printed on top in the same sharp typeface. Avery’s pulse slipped into a faster rhythm, one she couldn’t slow down no matter how steady her breathing tried to become.
She set her bag down, touched the lid lightly with the tips of her fingers, and exhaled.
Four days.
Four meals.
Four times her name printed like a decision.
She opened it carefully. Today’s meal was roasted chicken with farro and vegetables, a small cup of berries on the side. Balanced, colorful, expensive-looking. Nothing accidental about it. Nothing random.
Before she could take a bite, her chat pinged.
Jenna: Morning, Collins. You good?
Avery typed: Yes! Just getting started.
Jenna replied so fast it felt like she’d been waiting.
Jenna: Meeting at 10. Just listening again. Bring your notes.
Avery’s stomach tightened. Another meeting? Another room she wasn’t supposed to occupy? She tried to tell herself she was being dramatic, that someone probably just needed extra hands to record action items.
But that wasn’t true. Not after yesterday.
Not after the way he looked at her.
She took a bite of the chicken just to give her hands something to do. It tasted warm and perfectly seasoned, the kind of thing that made her feel taken care of, which only made her more unsettled. She reminded herself—firmly—that she did not want to be taken care of by a program she didn’t ask for.
The office slowly filled with people. Normal voices, normal footsteps, normal rhythms. And still, Avery couldn’t shake the awareness that something about her days had stopped being normal.
At 9:58, she headed toward the meeting room. The hallway buzzed with conversations she couldn’t follow, numbers and timelines and deadlines tossed between colleagues who had been here longer than she had been dreaming about working here. She slipped into the room, found a seat along the edge, and opened her notebook.
One minute later, the door opened.
Alexander Reed walked in.
No announcement. No greeting. Just presence. Enough to subtly shift the room into a sharper focus. He took his seat at the head of the table, tablet in front of him, posture relaxed in a way that still felt precise.
Avery looked down at her notes even before he began speaking.
For the first twenty minutes, she managed to stay invisible. Or at least she thought she did. She took careful notes, nodded when Jenna explained something quietly beside her, kept her shoulders tucked in as if that would reduce her chances of being noticed.
But then—
A pause.
His voice stopped mid-sentence, almost imperceptibly. Avery didn’t look up immediately, but she felt something shift, a subtle weight on her skin.
She lifted her eyes only slightly.
He was looking at her.
Not questioning.
Not in confusion.
Just aware.
As if she were part of the landscape of the meeting, not an extra seat in the back.
Her pen slipped slightly between her fingers. She tightened her grip and forced her gaze back to the page. The meeting pushed forward, but the air felt different, charged in a way she didn’t know how to manage.
When the meeting ended, people stood quickly, gathering laptops and papers as they drifted toward the hallway. Avery waited again—deliberately—before rising. She stepped carefully between the chairs, grateful for the familiar anonymity of cleanup.
She was two steps from the door when someone spoke behind her.
“Collins.”
Her heart jumped so violently she almost dropped her notebook. She turned slowly.
Alexander stood a few feet away, tablet in one hand, expression unreadable. The room was mostly empty now, the voices outside muffled behind glass. Avery’s breath hitched in her chest, stuck somewhere between surprise and disbelief.
“Yes,” she managed, her voice too soft.
He glanced at her notebook. “You were taking notes.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but she nodded anyway. “Yes. For—just in case they were useful to Jenna.”
Alexander looked at her more directly then, the kind of attention that felt sharper up close. For a moment, she thought he might ask something else—why she’d been added to the meeting, what she thought of the numbers, whether she understood any of it.
But instead he said, “Good.”
Just that.
A single word, quiet but surprisingly firm, as if he’d already made an assessment and this was the final mark. Before she could respond, he shifted his tablet, nodded once, and walked out into the hallway.
Avery stared at the door he’d disappeared through, her breath stuck in her throat.
Not an illusion.
Not imagined.
Not misread.
He had spoken to her.
Outside of her department, outside of any reason he should know her name.
She gathered her things slowly, grounding herself with the familiar weight of her notebook. She told herself to think logically. It was polite. It was leadership. It meant nothing.
And yet.
As she walked back to her desk, she saw the empty meal box where she’d left it, the label with her name still sitting in the corner.
A pattern.
This wasn’t coincidence.
Not anymore.
And as much as she wanted to ignore it, her heartbeat insisted on reminding her that something was unfolding around her—whether she was ready or not.
Avery returned to her desk with the faintest tremor still running through her fingers. She set down her notebook carefully, almost afraid the sound might draw more attention than she could handle. The office around her had fallen back into its normal rhythm—calls, typing, quiet conversations—but none of it felt normal anymore. Not after this morning. Not after he’d said her name.
She sat down, exhaled slowly, and reached for her mouse. Her hands were still unsteady. She tried to type a short message to Jenna—something simple, something neutral—but she deleted it immediately. There was no version of the sentence “Your boss talked to me for no reason” that didn’t sound unhinged.
Instead, she opened a spreadsheet and forced herself to focus. Numbers, at least, didn’t look back at her.
For several minutes she typed, recalculated, reorganized, but the quiet around her only made everything louder inside her mind. The way Alexander had paused before speaking. The subtle way the room shifted when he looked at her. The simple, concise weight of the word good coming from someone like him.
She closed her eyes briefly. “Stop,” she whispered under her breath. “It was nothing. He was being polite.”
Except she knew it hadn’t felt polite.
It had felt intentional.
Her computer pinged.
Internal Message — Supervisory Notes
From: Jenna Hart
To: Collins, A.
Avery blinked at the screen, then clicked it open.
Great job in the meeting. Keep taking notes the same way next week.
We’ll talk more about your role in these sessions.
Her heart tripped.
Next week?
Her role?
She leaned back, trying to absorb the words. She hadn’t realized this was a recurring thing. She hadn’t realized she had any kind of “role” in anything involving executives. She barely had a role in her own department.
She typed a quick reply:
Of course. Thank you.
Jenna answered almost instantly:
You’re doing really well. Don’t doubt that.
Avery stared at the message until the letters blurred.
She wanted to believe it.
She just wasn’t sure she did.
Before she could sink deeper into her thoughts, movement to her right caught her attention. She looked up and saw one of the senior analysts passing by. He glanced at her desk, at the empty meal box she hadn’t yet thrown away, and slowed.
“You’re part of the program?” he asked casually.
Avery froze. “Sorry?”
He pointed at the box. “The lunch program. I heard they’re only assigning it to select people again. Internal flagging or whatever.” He shrugged. “Must be nice.”
A flush crawled up her neck. “Oh—I don’t really know much about it.”
“Yeah,” he said, half-smiling. “You probably wouldn’t. It’s not exactly… public.”
Avery didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t like the implication. She watched him walk back to his desk, then slowly pushed the empty container toward the corner, out of sight.
She opened a new email draft, then closed it. Opened another spreadsheet, then minimized it. Her mind felt like it kept slipping sideways, unable to catch on any one thought.
The elevator dinged faintly in the distance.
She ignored it.
Footsteps followed—steady, purposeful, growing closer. She forced her eyes downward, pretending to reread the same line of text again and again.
Then—
Her peripheral vision caught a dark, familiar silhouette.
Her breath hitched even before she could stop it.
Alexander Reed walked past her row.
He wasn’t supposed to be on this floor.
Executives rarely came down to fourteen unless there was a reason—an inspection, a departmental issue, a meeting with managers. But today there were no scheduled visits. No alerts. Nothing that should bring him here.
Avery sat perfectly still, spine straight, hands folded carefully on the desk as if movement might call attention.
He spoke quietly to someone near the end of the aisle, his voice low and even. She couldn’t hear the words, just the cadence—measured, deliberate. The same voice she’d heard in meetings, on company videos, in passing.
The air in the office tightened.
Then, impossibly, he turned.
And walked in her direction.
Avery forced herself to look at her screen, pretending she hadn’t noticed. Her heartbeat climbed steadily, drumming hard enough she wondered if someone nearby could hear it.
He walked past two desks.
Then three.
Each footstep felt sharper than the last.
And then—
He paused.
Next to her cubicle.
She didn’t look up. Couldn’t look up. Her lungs refused to expand, stuck somewhere between dread and disbelief.
He didn’t speak immediately.
The silence stretched.
Then she heard his voice—quiet, close, unmistakable.
“Collins.”
Her hand flinched on the mouse.
She turned slowly, carefully, as if any sudden movement might shatter the moment.
“Yes?” Her voice sounded too soft, almost breathless.
Alexander looked at her desk briefly, then at her. His expression was unreadable—not cold, not overtly warm, simply focused. Intent in a way that made her feel suddenly, acutely visible.
“I reviewed notes from yesterday,” he said. “Yours were included.”
Avery blinked. “Oh—yes, Jenna asked me to—”
“They were clear.” He paused, eyes steady. “Useful.”
Useful.
The word landed harder than it should have, sinking into a place she usually kept shielded. She swallowed, unsure how to answer.
“Thank you,” she managed.
He nodded once, efficient as always, and added, “Continue.”
Then he walked past her cubicle and down the hall, his stride precise, leaving behind a silence that felt electric.
Avery sat frozen for several seconds, staring at the empty space where he’d been. Her pulse throbbed in her ears. She knew—knew—that people in the office didn’t get moments like that with him. Not without reason. Not without some kind of significance.
She closed her notebook slowly.
Four days.
Four meals.
Two meetings.
And now this.
A pattern.
Growing clearer.
Harder to dismiss.
Something was happening.
Something she couldn’t name.
And for the first time, she wasn’t sure she wanted to run from it.
Comments (0)
See all