Author's Preface
[Cont.]
[Annie]
The car is completely silent except for the heavy rain beating against the roof as we lock eyes.
And for a moment, all I can hear is a faint ringing in my ears.
"What do you even mean? When did I ever say anything like that?"
"Years ago." His voice is cold, but there's a hint of emotion underneath it. "You pushed me away that time too."
I look at him, trying to understand what he actually means, but I feel completely confused.
"Are you talking about the university? You're speaking as if we had something going on."
Something flickers across his face before I can make sense of it.
"Do you hate me, Annie?" His voice almost sounds pleading.
"Of course not." I'm completely thrown off by the sudden turn in the conversation. "Where is all this even coming from? I'm just asking you to maintain a professional distance so neither of us ends up with our reputation smeared around the office."
A spike of bottled-up frustration rises in me, and I speak before I can think.
"For some reason, everything feels weird. Your sudden transfer to my office, your move right next door to my apartment. Today it's just my friends being suspicious about us. Tomorrow it'll be other colleagues. I don't want my hard-earned reputation dragged through the mud because of cheap, false narratives."
Kai doesn't argue or offer any sharp comeback.
He doesn't even try to defend himself.
He just looks at me for three long, agonizing seconds, his dark eyes searching my face, completely unreadable, before he simply nods.
Without another word, he turns his eyes back to the windshield.
Neither of us says anything after that.
The only sound between us is the rain beating against the car roof.
He doesn't attempt to make any small talk or try to break the ice.
He gives in to my demand so completely and immediately that my own cold words begin echoing in my head, sounding far harsher than I intended.
Outside, the downpour shows no sign of stopping.
Kai quietly unbuckles his seatbelt and opens his door.
A gush of cold air sweeps into the cabin instantly as he steps out into the mud and pulls out a heavy umbrella from the back.
A moment later, my door opens.
Kai stands in the pouring rain, holding the umbrella above my head.
He doesn't say 'get out' or 'come on', instead, he just holds it steady, keeping the rain off me while it completely soaks his own shoulder.
I step out, my heels sinking slightly into the soft earth.
But before I can lose my balance, he extends his forearm.
He doesn't grab my hand or my waist.
He simply offers a steady surface for me to brace against if I choose to.
I awkwardly place my fingertips on his arm just long enough to reach the concrete hut.
The moment we cross the threshold, he steps back, cutting off the physical contact entirely.
He takes a key from his jacket pocket and unlocks the large iron lock.
We head inside the dim, dusty, and cold hut.
Kai immediately goes to work without looking at me.
He pulls out a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wipes down the surface of a wooden bench in the corner.
Then he takes out a small emergency flashlight, clicks it on, and sets it on a high shelf, angling it towards the wall so the reflected light softly illuminates the room without glaring directly into my eyes.
He places a small, sealed thermos of warm water—one he had packed before we left—on the bench beside me.
He doesn't sit or take the space beside me.
Instead, he walks over to the drafty, unsealed doorway on the far side of the room and sits on an upturned plastic crate.
He pulls out a small leather notepad, uncaps his pen, and begins reviewing project notes by the dim light, his expression entirely focused, calm, and detached.
I sit on the bench, clutching my bag in my lap, watching him.
The silence between us somehow feels heavier than any argument we could have had.
And it makes me feel worse, making me wish that he would say something instead.
At the end of the day, Kai is my manager.
And even though he holds all the authority here, he's still making sure I'm comfortable, handling my hostility with a quiet restraint I didn't expect.
He hasn't asked for a thank you or made a single passive-aggressive comment.
A cold gust of wind sneaks through the cracks in the window frame, and despite myself, a small shiver runs through my shoulders.
Kai doesn't turn his head.
He doesn't interrupt his writing, but with a smooth movement, he unbuttons his heavy wool jacket, slips it off, and stands.
My eyes follow him as he makes his way across the room, his footsteps quiet against the concrete.
He doesn't lean over me or drape it around my shoulders.
He simply lays the warm jacket neatly on the bench beside me, well within my reach, before turning around and walking back to his spot by the drafty door.
I look down at the jacket, and a faint scent of his cologne drifts up from the fabric.
My throat feels tight all of a sudden.
Sitting alone in the dim light, wrapped in a silence of my own making, something twists unpleasantly in my chest.
Was I too rude?
I look across the shadowed room at Kai.
The soft light of the flashlight catches the edge of his jaw, his posture straight and his expression unreadable.
He's respecting every boundary I drew, yet every one of his silent actions feels louder than anything he could have said aloud.
[ *** ]
The storm outside hits its peak with a sharp, crackling roar as the wind tears a loose sheet of tin right off the hut's high window frame.
I watch as cold rain sprays directly down into Kai's corner.
I expect him to move but instead, he simply shifts his plastic crate a few inches to the side, wipes a drop of water off his notepad, and resumes writing, his long fingers pale against the dark leather of his book.
He is actually going to sit there and get soaked just because I've asked him to keep his distance.
Guilt prickles through me, quickly followed by frustration.
I grab his heavy wool jacket off the bench, the fabric still holding a faint trace of his body heat, and march across the room.
"Move," I say, my voice cutting through the drumming rain.
Kai looks up.
Up close, in the dim flashlight glow, his dark eyes are steady, completely unbothered.
But there's something in them that makes my breath catch for a fraction of a second. "I'm fine, Annie. The roof overhead is solid."
"You're getting soaked," I say, holding out the jacket like a shield between us. "I told you to maintain boundaries, not get soaked to death to prove a point. Get off the crate."
He looks at the jacket, then up at my face.
"I'm not trying to prove anything," he says, his voice steady.
His gaze stays on my eyes for a second, dropping briefly to my mouth before shifting back, as if measuring whether arguing would disturb the peace more than obeying would.
Then without a word, he stands up.
He's a lot taller than he lets on when seated.
His presence suddenly fills the tight space between us.
And as he takes the jacket from my hands, his knuckles brush mine.
It's a brief, accidental touch, but a soft shock of warmth radiates up my forearm.
He quietly follows me back to the bench, slipping the jacket on as he sits on the far right edge, leaving a measured, polite gap between us.
I sit down and unzip my tote bag to check my iPad, hoping to pull up the project files offline just to give my hands something to do.
That is when I see it—the printed site clearance form sitting right at the top, flagged with bright red ink.
"Kai," I say, holding out the page. "Look at the inspector's signature on the marshland clearance. This isn't the final sign-off."
He looks over, his eyebrows drawing together as he leans in.
"That's the preliminary review stamp. If this didn't get secondary approval before the heavy rain started, the ground team is going to pour concrete over unverified soil at dawn."
"And if the drainage fails, the whole foundation sinks," I finish.
I slide over so he can see the document clearly under the flashlight and our shoulders bump.
But for the next twenty minutes, the awkwardness just disappears.
His sharp, logical mind naturally meshes with my eye for detail and we work through the site documents in sync, barely needing to finish our sentences.
At one point, we both reach for the red pen at the same time, his hand lightly brushes over mine.
For a second, neither of us pulls back.
The silence between us suddenly feels heavy, the sound of the rain dropping into the background.
Then Kai lets go, letting me take the pen as if nothing has happened.
By the time we draft the emergency amendment on his notepad to hand over to the site supervisor, my mind is clear of the lingering frustration.
With the work solved, the silence returns, but the cold distance between us is gone.
Sitting side-by-side on the narrow bench, I am hyper-aware of how close he is.
I pull my hands into my lap.
I am the one who has demanded boundaries and even accused him of indirectly fueling the false narrative.
He is doing exactly what I've asked him to do, respecting every line I've drawn.
And yet, sitting next to him in the dark, I can't ignore the unsettling realization that keeping those boundaries is going to be much harder than I thought.