The office smelled faintly of paper and fresh coffee, the kind of scent that clung to the walls long after the morning rush had passed. Outside the tall glass windows, the city moved in its usual rhythm—cars blurring by, sunlight flickering against mirrored buildings. Inside, it was quieter now, just the soft clicking of keyboards and the occasional ring of a desk phone.

Yara sat at her desk, head bowed over her monitor, though her eyes weren’t really reading the report in front of her. From where she sat—directly opposite the glass-walled cabin of her boss—she had a perfect view of him whenever she lifted her gaze.

Laird Morgan.

The name itself carried weight in the office. He was the kind of leader everyone wished for: firm when needed, but fair; confident, but never arrogant; and most of all, unfailingly kind. He was the one who would stay back with the team when deadlines loomed, who would sign off on maternity leaves without hesitation and, when budgets were tight, quietly contribute from his own pocket to make sure his employees were taken care of.

He carried himself with a quiet dignity, his voice calm even when chaos erupted around him. To everyone else, he was approachable, dependable… and strangely untouchable.

To Yara, he was everything.

It had started slowly—an admiration for his work ethic, the way he listened to people without rushing them, how he treated the janitorial staff with the same respect he gave the senior managers. But somewhere along the way, admiration had deepened into something else. Something she hadn’t planned. Something she couldn’t stop.

The problem was… Laird never looked at her the way he looked at the others.

He had a word of encouragement for almost everyone—except Yara. When the team gathered for meetings, he acknowledged each member with a nod or a small smile… except Yara. When she spoke up in discussions, his eyes slid past her, moving to someone else.

At first, she thought she was imagining it. Maybe he was just distracted. But over time, she realized—it wasn’t her imagination. He was deliberately keeping his distance.

She didn’t know why.

And yet, she couldn’t help herself. She noticed things about him that no one else seemed to catch. How he leaned back slightly after long meetings, a subtle hand pressing against the small of his back as if easing a dull ache. How he pinched the bridge of his nose during late-night work sessions, his shoulders heavy with fatigue. How he skipped lunch on particularly stressful days, surviving on black coffee and determination.

Yara started carrying small things in her drawer for him—painkillers, herbal tea packets, a small jar of peppermint balm. She told herself it wasn’t stalking. She wasn’t pushing herself into his life. She was just… prepared. For when he might need something.

Sometimes she acted on it.

Like the time she overheard him telling a colleague he had a pounding headache. Without a word, she walked to the pantry, brewed his coffee just the way she’d seen him take it—two sugars, no milk—and left it on the counter outside his cabin with a discreet note: Thought this might help.

He didn’t thank her. In fact, when she looked up later, she caught a flash of irritation in his eyes before he turned away.

Still, she didn’t stop.

It wasn’t as though she expected anything in return. She didn’t want grand gestures or even acknowledgment. She just… wanted to be of some small use to him, to make his day a little easier. Even if he never knew it was her.

But he knew.

He noticed her glances—the way her eyes followed him when he walked through the floor, how she straightened in her chair when he stepped out of his cabin. And instead of softening him, it hardened him further.

Laird wasn’t a man who welcomed romantic attention. Not anymore. There had been a time, years ago, when he’d believed in it—when he’d given his trust to someone who’d sworn she loved him, only to watch her walk away the moment things became difficult. Since then, he had built walls high enough that no one could climb them.

And here was Yara—persistent, quiet, watchful. The kind of attention he didn’t want.

Sometimes he caught himself wondering why she looked at him that way. Did she think he was one of those bosses who blurred professional boundaries? Did she think she could charm her way into his trust? The thought irritated him more than he cared to admit.

But she didn’t stop.

One Tuesday morning, when he walked into the office looking unusually tired after an early client call, there was already a steaming cup of black coffee on his desk. No note this time. He didn’t need one to know who had left it there.

By lunchtime, his patience was wearing thin. He didn’t say anything, though. Not yet. Something—he didn’t know what—kept him from confronting her. Maybe it was because she never crossed the line into obvious flirting. Maybe it was because her actions, while unwanted, weren’t loud. They were… quiet. Almost invisible to anyone else.

But to him, they were impossible to ignore.

That afternoon, Yara caught him rubbing his temple during a meeting. She hesitated only a moment before sliding a blister pack of headache pills across the table toward him, careful not to draw attention from the others.

His eyes met hers for the briefest moment. There was no gratitude in them. Only a kind of tired annoyance, as if she had given him something he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. He pushed the pills back toward her without a word.

Her cheeks warmed, but she said nothing. She simply tucked them back into her bag and looked down at her notes.

The rest of the day passed in silence between them.

But that night, lying in bed, Yara thought about him again. About the weight on his shoulders, about the guarded way he moved through the world, as though he was always braced for disappointment. She didn’t know what had made him that way. She only knew she wanted to be someone who didn’t add to that weight.

Even if he never saw her.

Even if he kept hating her for it.

And Laird, in his own apartment across the city, thought briefly of her too—of the girl at the desk opposite his cabin, who kept watching him when she thought he wouldn’t notice. He told himself it was irritation he felt. Nothing more. But irritation didn’t usually linger this long.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, he found himself wondering what she would try next.

Six months had passed, and nothing had changed.

At least, not in the way Yara had hoped.

She was still at her desk opposite his cabin. The same view, the same glass wall, the same impossible distance. She still noticed the small things—the faint shadows under his eyes after a restless night, the way his tie sometimes loosened by mid-afternoon when stress pressed too heavily on him.

And she still tried.

When he had a headache, she sent the assistant in with a strip of paracetamol. When he skipped lunch, she had coffee sent in, strong and steaming. When she knew he’d been working late, she left a small snack by the assistant’s desk, tagged for him.

And every single time, the reply came back. Not through words directly to her, but through the same impersonal route:

"I don’t want it."

She read those four words over and over sometimes, as if searching for a hidden meaning. But there was none. Just blunt rejection.

The kindness that might have softened someone else only seemed to harden Laird further.

Colleagues had noticed her persistence, too. There were whispers in the pantry when she walked in, glances traded behind her back. But Yara didn’t care. It wasn’t about office gossip. It wasn’t about being noticed by him in a romantic way. It was about… being there, even if he never asked for it.

But on a Thursday afternoon in early March, the air shifted.

It had been a long day. The team had just wrapped up a tense presentation to a client, and everyone had retreated to their own desks to breathe. Yara was scanning through a set of follow-up tasks when her office phone buzzed.

"Laird wants to see you," the assistant said.

Her heart skipped. He rarely spoke to her directly unless it was work-related, and even then, it was brief. She smoothed her skirt, grabbed her notepad, and walked toward his cabin, her mind already spinning with possibilities. Maybe he had finally acknowledged her efforts. Maybe…

She didn’t knock.

She had knocked countless times before, waited outside, been told to come in. This time, with the door closed but no sound from inside, she rapped lightly, waited, heard nothing, and—thinking he might be alone—pushed the handle down.

The door swung open.

And everything inside her froze.

Laird was in his chair—but he wasn’t alone. A young woman, strikingly beautiful with honey-blonde hair and flawless skin, sat perched on his lap as if she belonged there. Her arm was around his neck, her other hand holding a glossy black bowl from which she was feeding him cherries, one by one.

The laughter between them was soft but intimate. The kind of sound that made Yara’s stomach knot without warning.

Her steps faltered. For a second, she thought about stepping back out. Pretending she’d never entered. But her movement must have caught his eye, because Laird’s expression shifted instantly.

From casual amusement to cold irritation.

"You don’t have basic work manners?" His voice was sharp, slicing through the moment. "Before coming into someone’s cabin, knock!"

Her fingers tightened on the notepad she still held. Her throat felt tight, but she forced her voice to stay steady.

"I knocked," she said quietly. "No one replied, so I came in."

"Whatever," he muttered, dismissive. Then, as if she wasn’t even standing there, he turned slightly toward the woman on his lap.

"Eva, show her your sandal."

The girl—Eva—slipped one dainty foot out of a designer heel, her manicured toes wiggling against the plush carpet. Without looking at Yara, Laird continued,

"Take Eva’s sandal and buy her a new pair. Same size."

Yara didn’t move. She just stared at him. Not with anger, not with pleading—just a stillness that was harder than either.

"Go now," he ordered, his tone clipped. "Don’t waste my time."

Slowly, she stepped forward, picked up the sandal from Eva’s foot, and turned to leave.

Her hand was on the door handle when his voice drifted after her—low, meant only for the woman still on his lap, but sharp enough to slice straight through Yara’s composure.

"Don’t let her come in here again."

The door clicked shut behind her.

She didn’t drop the sandal. Didn’t break her stride as she walked past the assistant’s desk. But her steps felt heavier than they had in months.

There was no scene. No tears in the restroom. No crumpling in some quiet corner. Yara simply returned to her desk, placed the sandal beside her bag, and opened her browser to search for the exact same pair.

Her hands moved mechanically, but her chest felt hollow. Not because of Eva. Not because of the cherries or the casual intimacy she had just walked in on.

But because, in that moment, she realized something she hadn’t wanted to admit before—

Laird didn’t just dislike her attention.

He wanted her gone from his world entirely.

The shopping bag felt oddly heavy in her hand.

It wasn’t the sandals—they were light, delicate things, their leather straps coiled neatly inside a glossy box. The weight came from somewhere else entirely.

The walk from the store back to the office had been quiet. She had stopped twice at traffic lights, not because the red light was on, but because she couldn’t seem to move forward. And yet, here she was, standing outside Laird’s cabin once again.

The door was closed. She hesitated a second, then knocked—firmly this time.

A deep voice came from inside.

"What is it?"

Pushing the door open, she stepped in, holding the bag like it was something fragile.

"I came to give the sandals," she said.

He didn’t even look up from the file in his hands.

"Okay. Keep them here and leave."

She set the bag down on the edge of his desk. She was about to turn when his voice came again—sharper now, like a sudden crack in the air.

"Yara."

She looked at him.

His eyes finally lifted from the papers, fixing on her with a cool precision that felt more like an interrogation than a glance.

"Maybe you should stop looking at me like that," he said. "And stop giving me so much attention."

Her fingers curled slightly at her sides, but she stayed still.

"Stop taking care of me," he continued, his tone unflinching. "I don’t need it."

The words landed heavily, stripping the moment of any pretence. She didn’t answer. There was nothing to say—not when everything she wanted to express would only sound like defiance. Instead, she simply nodded once and walked out, the echo of his voice following her into the corridor.

---

But Yara didn’t stop.

Maybe it was habit. Maybe it was stubbornness. Maybe it was because she knew, deep down, that care wasn’t something you gave only when it was wanted—it was something you gave because you couldn’t help it.

Two mornings later, she noticed his hand lingering on his lower back again after a meeting. That afternoon, a fresh cup of strong coffee appeared on the corner of his desk. She didn’t deliver it herself—the assistant did—but she saw him glance at it before continuing with his work.

The next day, during another long discussion, she noticed him rubbing his temple discreetly. Without a word, she slid a blister pack of painkillers across the table toward the assistant to pass on.

He didn’t thank her. He didn’t even acknowledge her. But she kept going.

---

Three days after the sandal incident, her desk phone rang.

It was his voice again—low, steady, giving nothing away.

"Come in."

She entered his cabin, closing the door behind her. This time, there was no Eva. No cherries. No casual laughter. Just Laird at his desk, pen in hand, eyes on her the moment she stepped forward.

"Tell me the truth, Yara," he said without preamble. His tone was the same one he used when questioning vendors—direct, unyielding. "You’re working so hard because you think I’ll give you a promotion?"

She froze for half a second, then her gaze steadied on him.

"So you think I’m using you for my career?" she asked, her voice quiet but clear.

Something flickered in his expression—whether irritation or something else, she couldn’t tell.

The air between them was taut, stretched too thin for comfort. Outside the glass wall of his cabin, the rest of the office moved on with its usual rhythm—calls being made, emails being typed, the hum of productivity filling the space. But here, inside this room, it was just the two of them, standing at the edge of an unspoken cliff.

Her face remained unreadable. She wasn’t angry, though his words could have cut like a blade. She wasn’t hurt—not visibly. But there was a weight in her gaze, as if she were silently asking him something he couldn’t bring himself to answer.

He leaned back slightly, studying her as if trying to decide whether she was telling the truth. But the truth wasn’t the point anymore. The point was that he wanted distance. And she refused to give it to him.

"Yara," he said finally, his voice softening just a fraction, "you need to understand something. I don’t mix… personal feelings with work. Whatever you’re doing—it’s unnecessary."

Her lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. More like an acknowledgement of a truth she already knew.

"Noted," she said, and turned toward the door.

But as she reached for the handle, she heard him exhale—quiet, controlled, as if letting out a frustration he hadn’t meant to reveal.

She didn’t look back.