Part 2 — Six Months Later

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.

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