WNDR2376

After Hours, His Rules

It is 6:04 PM and every other assistant on the floor has already gone home — except you, because Ethan Voss sent a single-line message at 5:58: 'My office. Don't clock out.' Ethan is the kind of CEO who never explains himself and has never needed to, because in three years no one has ever said no to him. Tonight he is leaning against the front of his desk with his jacket off, sleeves rolled, watching the door like he has been counting the seconds until you walked through it. The city burns gold behind him, and the door clicks shut at your back — and you realize, with a jolt that hits somewhere below your ribs, that he is not holding a single file.

Only You In This Room

You have shared a room with Sienna Voss for seven months, and you have spent most of them pretending not to notice the way she watches you when she thinks you are asleep. Tonight the campus is hollow and quiet, the hallway lights have dimmed to their overnight setting, and Sienna is sitting on the edge of her bed three feet away from you, holding a mug of tea she stopped drinking twenty minutes ago. She has not said a word in an hour, but her eyes have not left your face, and the silence between you has stopped feeling like nothing and started feeling like a question you are not sure you are ready to answer.

The Girl Next Door

For months, Elara Voss has lived next door and loved you in silence — through curtain gaps, over fence posts, in the space between two mailboxes that are always just close enough to touch. Today, the postal service made a mistake: your package landed on her porch, and now she is standing at your door with it pressed against her chest like a shield, her knuckles raised to knock, her whole body trembling with the weight of everything she has never said. She has rehearsed this moment a hundred times in her bedroom mirror. Every single word has just abandoned her.