Chapter 10 Sep 15, 2025 The aftermath arrived in waves-exhilaration cresting into panic, triumph dissolving into fear. I dressed with fingers that wouldn't quite steady, aware of Aiden watching me from the leather chair where he'd collapsed. His shirt still unbuttoned, belt undone and papers scattered around us like evidence. "Someone might have heard," I said, smoothing my dress for the third time. "No one's here this late except security, and they don't patrol this floor for another hour." His voice carried that post-coital roughness that made my stomach tighten. "Relax, Ruby." "You can't know for sure." I turned to face him, needing to see his certainty. "I can promise you locked the door." He studied me then, his gaze sharpening from satiated to analytical. "The main thing is that my boyfriend doesn't find out." I kept my voice level, clinical. "But Alex was too drunk at the club to even remember you existed." Something shifted in Aiden's expression, a recalibration of understanding. "That was your boyfriend? The one who dragged you away?" "It's... complicated," I added, softer than I meant. "I don't want to hurt him." The words came out louder than intended, bouncing off his office walls. "I assumed he was a friend with unrequited feelings." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, reading me like one of his case studies. "Especially given how you were looking at me that night." "Does it matter what he is?" I turned to the mirror behind his door, fixing hair that didn't need fixing. "He's not here. He's not part of this." Aiden's reflection watched mine, and I saw him choose not to push-a tactical retreat I both appreciated and resented. "I should have asked before." His voice had gentled, become something almost careful. "About complications." "No." I met his eyes in the mirror. "You shouldn't have. This is exactly what it needed to be." I changed the subject with practiced ease, the way I'd learned to redirect conversations at family dinners. "I'm sorry I never got to see you dance that night." His expression cooled, professionalism reasserting itself like armor. "I wouldn't have danced with you." "No?" I let the corner of my mouth lift, a challenge and dismissal combined. "Well, we'll never know now. It belongs to the past." I finished with my hair, shouldered my bag, and walked to the door with the posture my mother had paid thousands to perfect. Spine straight, shoulders back, every movement deliberate and controlled. "Ruby." His voice stopped me at the threshold. I turned, one hand on the doorframe, waiting. "This changes things." Not a question, just acknowledgment of shifted physics. "Everything changes things." I left before he could respond, the corridor receiving me like an old friend, bright and neutral and asking nothing. For a heartbeat, walking that familiar hallway, I felt an odd flicker of sympathy for Alex. There was something almost pitiable about being someone's first everything. The way it made you responsible for their entire understanding of intimacy, their whole vocabulary of desire. He'd never know what I'd just discovered, this other language written in rougher hands and desperate mouths. But sympathy, like guilt, was a luxury I couldn't afford. * * * Aiden's lectures became exercises in composure. I sat three rows back, center-left, fixing my attention on him with such intensity I was certain he felt it like heat. Yet I disappeared into the crowd of graduate students doing the same-all of us watching him pace the stage, hands cutting air as he dissected corporate failures with surgical precision. The memory of those same hands on my body hummed beneath every PowerPoint slide, every theoretical framework. When he discussed hostile takeovers, I thought of being lifted onto his desk. When he analyzed risk management, I remembered the sound he made when his control finally shattered. After class, I was always too wired to focus, energy crackling under my skin like electricity seeking ground. Sometimes I solved the problem by texting Alex, pulling him into my bed for an hour of careful intimacy that dulled the edge without touching the root of my hunger. He always came when I called, grateful for any sign of thaw. "I love how you're letting me back in," he whispered once, mistaking desperation for forgiveness. I didn't correct him. The weeks folded into each other and Alex became unfailingly sweet. Good morning texts at exactly seven, coffee left outside my door, dinners he insisted on cooking while narrating his day with the enthusiasm of someone who believed I was listening. That's what I loved about him-the predictable kindness-but now I was drawn to what refused to be predicted. But boredom crept in like fog, obscuring the edges of everything until life felt muffled and gray. His gestures began to loop, the same words in the same order, the same touches in the same places. As if we were walking a circular track and pretending it led somewhere. Tuesday morning, I ran the university track alone-Alex had stopped joining me, apparently deciding that synchronized exercise no longer fit his strategy for redemption. The air was sharp with approaching winter, my breath visible in small clouds that dissipated like unspoken thoughts. At the pull-up bars, I saw him. Aiden was mid-set, his body rising and falling with mechanical precision, sweat darkening the collar of his gray t-shirt. The sight hit me with indecent force-the bunch and release of muscle, the concentrated expression, the way morning light caught the sheen of exertion on his skin. I walked over before I could think better of it. "I didn't know you did this." I kept my voice light, casual, as if we were colleagues who happened to share a gym schedule. He dropped from the bar, wiping his palms on his shorts. The gesture was unconsciously graceful, economical. "Old habits." "From?" "Baseball." He said it almost offhand, like mentioning the weather. "High school, college. Batting cages on weekends, drills every morning-muscle memory that never quite goes away." I pictured him younger, in uniform, all that controlled aggression channeled into sport. "You were serious about it." "Serious enough for scouts to notice." Something flickered across his face-not quite regret, but its cousin. "Shoulder injury junior year ended that particular dream." "So you traded athletics for academics?" "Traded one competition for another." He grabbed the bar again, ready to resume. "What about you? Shopping for a new sport besides running?" "Besides running?" I stepped closer, close enough to smell sweat and soap and something uniquely him. "I like swimming. Tennis occasionally." "Very country club." "Very prescribed." I watched him prep for another set. "Actually, besides running, I mostly like sex." The air between us went still, charged with the weight of admission. We held each other's gaze long enough for honesty to burn through the banter. A moment where neither of us looked away, neither of us pretended this was anything other than what it was-hunger, barely leashed and entirely mutual. I felt my love for Alex and my pull toward Aiden stretch me in two directions-both true.