Terms and Specific Conditions - Chapter 9

 

Morning After & Work Crimes

Penelope woke up tangled in a shirt that didn’t belong to her and a body she suddenly had full access to.

For a second she didn’t know where she was. There was just warmth, and cotton that smelled like detergent and boy, and the heavy weight of sleep pinning her down.

Then her brain caught up.

Jack’s bed.

Jack’s shirt.

Jack’s everything.

Oh.

Oh, last night.

Her eyes snapped open.

She was half sprawled across his chest, one arm flung over him, fingers curled into the soft fabric of his T-shirt. Her knee was hooked over his thigh, blanket twisted around both of them in a mess that said you absolutely did not just kiss once and go to sleep like saints, congratulations on the lies you tell yourself.

His hand rested low on her back, fingers splayed.

Penelope lay there, very still, and let the realization roll through her in a wave.

They’d done that.

Her and Jack.

Her friend Jack, office Jack, stolen-lunch-break Jack, “we’re just like this” Jack.

She closed her eyes again and groaned quietly into his chest.

“Regretting it already?” His voice rumbled under her cheek, rough and amused.

She jerked, looking up. He was awake, one eye cracked open, hair flat on one side and sticking up wildly on the other. He looked unfairly good for someone who’d barely slept.

“I thought you were asleep.” 

“I was,” he said. “Until my shirt started having loud emotional thoughts against my sternum.”

She poked his rib lightly. “Shut up.”

He grinned, the corner of his mouth hitching up. “Morning, Pen.”

God, she was in trouble.

“Morning,” she echoed, way too soft. She cleared her throat, tried again with more sarcasm. “So, uh. We definitely crossed a line.”

“Nah.” Jack shifted a little under her, arm tightening around her waist. “We just… heavily underlined it.”

A laugh snorted out of her before she could stop it. “You’re so annoying.”

“Mm.” He brushed his nose through her hair, obscenely casual. “You didn’t seem to mind last night.”

Heat flashed down her spine. “Okay, bold, sir.”

He just smirked, eyes shutting again like he was perfectly content to be her mattress until the end of time.

She let herself look at him properly, now that she was apparently allowed. His lashes, the faint shadow on his jaw, the tiny scar near his eyebrow she’d always noticed in meetings and never gotten to stare at from this close.

She’d been around this man for months. She knew his coffee order, his “I’m about to roast this engineer” face, the way his whole body tilted when he laughed in his chair.

But this? Him rumpled and warm and holding onto her like she was the default setting?

New. Dangerous. Highly addictive.

“You’re staring,” he murmured, eyes still closed.

“You’re imagining things,” she shot back, tracing a vague circle over his chest through the shirt. “I’m just… visually processing my life imploding.”

“That bad, huh?”

She hummed. “On one hand, best decision I’ve ever made. On the other hand, I have to look you in the eye at work and not think about your… everything.”

“‘Everything,’” he repeated, cracking an eye open. “That’s very specific feedback. I’ll put it on my performance review.”

She bit her lip, trying not to smile and failing. “You’re ridiculous.”

She shifted, the blanket dragging, and caught sight of his wheelchair parked beside the bed. A flash of last night hit her–the practiced ease of his transfer, the way he’d cracked some stupid joke right before she’d climbed into his lap and derailed both of them completely.

Her stomach swooped.

Jack followed her gaze, then looked back at her, something softer in his expression now. “You good?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little too fast. “Just… updating the mental Pinterest board. Adding new angles.”

“That sounds threatening,” he said. “I’m into it.”

She exhaled a laugh and let her head drop back to his chest. His heartbeat thudded steady under her ear, weirdly grounding.

For a while, they didn’t move. She traced invisible patterns on his shirt. He drifted his fingers up and down her spine, slow and lazy, like he had nowhere else to be.

This was the part that felt most illegal–how easy it was. No immediate panic, no post-mortem analysis, just… them. The same stupid rhythm they always had, except now she’d seen him fall apart under her hands and he’d seen her absolutely lose her mind over him and somehow the planet was still spinning.

“Hey,” she said quietly after a minute. “Just… checking in.”

“On what?” he asked, voice equally low.

“On you,” she said. “On, like… are we okay? You okay?”

He didn’t hesitate, which did alarming things to her chest. “Yeah. I’m good.” He tipped his head a little so he could see her better. “You?”

She thought about lying. About making a joke and sliding away from the honesty sitting between them.

Instead she said, “I am catastrophically into this and I don’t know how to be normal about it.”

His whole face softened, that slow, private smile she’d only ever gotten hints of before last night. “Cool,” he said. “Same.”

Her breath caught. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he went on, like they weren’t casually reformatting her entire nervous system. “You’re not exactly… mild, Nelson.”

She made a face. “Full name? Rude.”

“You earned it,” he said. “You climbed me like a tree, what am I supposed to do, call you ‘ma’am’?”

“That was your fault,” she argued, flushing. “You’re the one who wheeled back from the door all smug like ‘come here.’”

“In my defense,” Jack said, “you looked like you wanted to commit a crime, and I’m a supportive manager.”

She laughed, losing the fight to stay cool. “You’re an idiot.”

“Your idiot,” he said, almost under his breath.

She froze.

He did too, eyes flicking to her face like he’d just heard himself.

The air went soft and strange around them. Penelope’s brain did the equivalent of a Windows error noise.

“Is that–” she started, then stopped. “Do you… is that… how we’re–”

“Too early to put that on a mug?” he offered, because he was Jack and of course he bailed himself out with a joke.

“Way too early,” she said, heart pounding. “But also, tragically, no notes.”

He let out a breathy laugh, relief brushing through his expression. His hand slid up to the back of her neck, thumb stroking there once, gentle.

It settled over them then, the newness of it. Like someone had thrown a blanket over the room that said you two did something irreversible, congrats. Everything felt slightly heavier and softer at the same time.

Her phone buzzed loudly on the nightstand.

They both flinched.

Reality, the rudest invited guest.

Penelope twisted, stretching an arm out to grab it without totally dislodging herself from him. The screen lit up with a calendar notification.

9:30 AM – Sprint Review – Conf Room B.

She stared at it like it had personally wronged her.

Jack angled his head. “Is that…?”

“Work,” she said, grim. “Remember that? Our other toxic relationship?”

He groaned, letting his head fall back against the pillow. “No. I quit. I live in this bed now.”

“Perfect, I’ll move my stuff in,” she said automatically, then realized what she’d said and winced. “Kidding. That was a joke. Mostly. Shut up.”

He was grinning, eyes closed. “Already penciling you into the floor plan, it’s fine.”

Her phone buzzed again. This time it was a text from Miles.

[Miles]  

you’re coming to standup right?

jack’s apparently in already, tyrant turned it into 9:15 now

Her stomach dropped. “You’re in already?”

Jack blinked. “What? No.” He squinted at the clock on his own phone on the nightstand. “Pen, it’s eight-fifteen. I moved standup earlier yesterday so we could get the conference room before finance steals it.”

She stared at him, horrified. “So you did this to yourself.”

“And you, apparently,” he said, wincing. “Didn’t really plan around the whole ‘getting wrecked by your coworker in the evening’ thing. My scheduling app doesn’t have that button.”

She dropped her face back onto his chest with a muffled groan. “I hate you.”

“You very clearly don’t,” he said into her hair.

She exhaled, then lifted her head, meeting his eyes. “Okay. So. We have to go in.”

“Allegedly,” he said.

“And we have to pretend,” she added.

“Do we?” he asked. There was the briefest flicker of something serious in his eyes. “We could… tell people at some point, you know. We’re adults. Mostly.”

She chewed her lip. The idea of walking into the office and everyone knowing she’d spent the night wrapped around her boss like a koala gave her full-body hives. The idea of walking in and acting like nothing happened… not much better.

“I don’t know what we are yet,” she confessed. “Just that I like it. A lot. And if Miles makes one comment I will throw myself down the stairwell.”

“Okay, no stairwells,” Jack said, instantly. “That’s my side of the access issues.”

She laughed, tension cracking.

He smiled, but his thumb kept moving at the back of her neck, thoughtful. “Look. We don’t have to label anything before coffee. We just… go in. Do our jobs. Try not to accidentally make out in Conf Room B.”

“Emphasis on ‘try,’” she said.

“Right,” he agreed. “And then after work”–his gaze caught hers, steady–“we talk. Properly. Without Outlook third-wheeling.”

Something in her eased at that. Not a brush-off. Not a “that was fun, anyway.” Just… a next step.

“Okay,” she said. “After work.”

“Cool.” He nodded once, then ruined it by adding, “In the meantime, we could be late.”

“We cannot be late,” she said, appalled. “We hooked up once and you’re already corrupting me as an employee.”

“You’re late everyday,” he pointed out, “and anyway, standup is my meeting. If I’m late, it’s just… aggressive team-building.”

She huffed a laugh, pushing herself up on her elbows. The blanket fell, his shirt riding up a little, and his eyes tracked the movement with clear, greedy appreciation before flicking back to her face.

Dangerous. Again.

“Five more minutes,” she bargained.

“Deal,” he said, immediately pulling her back down.

Five minutes turned into ten, then fifteen, because he kept kissing her in these slow, lazy passes that made time feel fake. It wasn’t frantic like last night, just… indulgent. His hand in her hair, her fingers sliding under his shirt, both of them smiling into it more than they probably would have admitted to.

Eventually she had to physically peel herself off him with a dramatic sigh. “I hate productivity. I hate capitalism. I hate clothes.”

“I love all of those things for you,” he said, watching her with frankly obscene fondness as she climbed out of bed and hunted for yesterday’s jeans. “Especially the clothes part. Very pro that being optional.”

She flipped him off over her shoulder.

By the time he transferred into his chair and wheeled into the bathroom, she’d mostly convinced her face to stop looking like she’d just discovered religion. Mostly.

His toothbrush noises drifted out. Her phone buzzed again.

[Miles]

plz tell me you’re bringing coffee

i can feel jack’s management energy from here

She snorted.

[Penelope]

on my way.

if he’s unbearable it’s your fault for letting him schedule meetings before 10

She shoved the phone into her bag, heart still pounding stupidly. This was fine. They were fine. They’d just… slept together for the first time and now they were going to go sit in a conference room and talk about ticket statuses like that wasn’t the most deranged thing two people could do.

Jack rolled out, hair now tamed into something vaguely presentable, fresh shirt on.

“Ready?” he asked.

No. Absolutely not. “Yeah,” she said.

He hesitated. “Pen?”

“Hm?”

His gaze caught hers, playful but with that new underneath. “Just so you know, I’m going to be completely normal today.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Define ‘normal.’”

“Not normal at all,” he admitted. “But I’m going to say I’m being normal, which is what matters.”

She laughed, tension breaking again. “Okay, same.”

⸻

The office was aggressively fluorescent and smelled faintly of burnt coffee and printer toner. It felt like someone had taken the soft, glowy morning and put it through an industrial dryer.

Penelope followed Jack into the bullpen, desperately trying to remember how her legs worked and what her job was.

Their desks were across the pod from each other, as always. Usually she liked that. It gave her an excellent vantage point for mocking his management posture.

Today, it felt like standing on opposite sides of a stage.

“Morning,” Miles called from near the whiteboard. “Wow, Penelope, look at you actually on time. Did someone threaten your life?”

She almost choked. “Just my ability to function,” she said, sliding into her chair.

Jack had parked at the group table and was booting up his laptop, expression infuriatingly neutral. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d just slept eight peaceful hours alone and not been used as a very enthusiastic jungle gym.

She did know better. Which was the problem.

Their eyes met across the room, just for a second.

It was nothing, objectively. A flicker. A half-second pause.

But she felt it like a hand closing around her ribcage.

There he was: work Jack. Project manager Jack. Chair angled toward the whiteboard, ready to herd everyone through the sprint review. And layered over him, like double exposure, was the Jack from an hour ago, sprawled under her, saying your idiot without meaning to.

Her phone buzzed on her desk.

[Jack]

normal. we are being normal.

She bit down on a smile.

[Penelope]

so normal. might throw up.

He glanced at his screen, fighting a laugh, and then looked away, mask sliding back into place as people started drifting toward the conference room.

Reality, creeping in.

Not hard. Not dramatic. No one screamed. The floor didn’t open up. They just… moved through the motions. Standup, tickets, blockers.

But every time his hand brushed past her on the way to the marker. Every time someone said his name and he turned his chair slightly and she got a flash of his profile. Every time he made some dry comment and the table laughed–

There it was. The wobble.

This tiny shift inside her that went he’s not just Jack from work anymore and no one else in this room knows what he sounds like when he forgets to breathe.

She caught him looking at her once, mid-discussion about an API change. Just a quick glance, checking in, the smallest question sitting in it.

You good?

We okay?

Still us?

Penelope straightened in her chair, heart kicking, and gave him the faintest, most grounding thing she had: an eye-roll and a ghost of a smirk that said obviously.

His shoulders loosened a notch. He turned back to the whiteboard, picking up the marker.

They didn’t fall apart. Work kept being work. People kept being people. The world stubbornly refused to rearrange itself to match what had happened in his bed.

But under the hum of projectors and keyboards and fake plants, that new layer stayed wrapped around them.

Soft. Warm. A little precarious.

Just enough to make them both, in their own heads, quietly, separately, ask:

Okay. But what are we now, out here?

⸻

By ten-thirty, it was clear that “being normal at work” had been an ambitious, actually delusional, goal.

Penelope had reread the same three lines of code so many times they no longer looked like words. Her screen was just vibes and semicolons.

Across the bullpen, Jack was in his chair, angled toward his monitors, pretending to be a functioning manager. Every once in a while he’d drag a hand over his jaw or tip his head back, and her brain would helpfully supply: you have licked that jaw and you have bitten that throat.

Absolutely useless.

Her Slack pinged.

[Jack]

status check: being normal going great over here, how about you

She squinted at him over her monitor, because he absolutely knew it wasn’t.

[Penelope]

i just tried to concatenate a sandwich, so.

A pause. His shoulders moved like he was laughing.

[Jack]

what type of sandwich

this is important data

[Penelope]

panini of shame

She watched his hand move as he typed.

[Jack]

sounds spicy

11:00 – quick 1:1?

A calendar invite popped up a second later.

Event: 1:1 – project sync

Location: Huddle Room 3

Organizer: Jack Darcy, Tyrant

She stared at it.

[Penelope]

is this business or pleasure

His reply came fast.

[Jack]

strictly professional. going to circle back re: that thing you did with your--

She choked and slapped her trackpad like that would make the message stop loading.

A second later, another ping.

[Jack]

typo

i meant: circle back re: feature branch

She bit down on a grin so hard her cheeks hurt.

[Penelope]

dangerous. hr can see these you know

Across the room, he lifted a brow at her like: and whose fault is that.

Her stomach swooped. Right. They were doing this.

She accepted the invite.

⸻

She made it to the kitchen first, because if she didn’t find caffeine, her brain was going to leak out of her ears.

The office coffee machine wheezed like it was three bad days away from a worker’s comp claim. She shoved a mug under the spout and pressed the button, watching dark liquid drip out at an offensively slow pace.

“Hey, stranger.”

Jack’s voice floated in behind her. She didn’t have to turn to know exactly where he was; she could feel him, which was disgusting, and she hated it.

She turned anyway.

He rolled up beside her, close enough that his forearm brushed her hip. Fresh shirt, sleeves shoved up, lanyard hanging crooked around his neck. He looked like a LinkedIn thirst trap and she wanted him fired for it.

“You know,” she said, “when you put ‘1:1’ on the calendar, people assume it’s about work and not your ongoing campaign to destroy my nervous system.”

He reached for his mug on the shelf, glancing up at her with that infuriating, private little smile. “Everything’s about work if I say it very confidently in a meeting.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“Disagree,” he said. “Watch.” He cleared his throat, affecting his “manager voice.” “We should circle back offline to align on last night’s… cross-functional collaboration.”

Her jaw dropped. “You cannot say that out loud.”

“Which part?” he teased. “Cross-functional?”

“Oh my God.”

The machine sputtered, then finally committed to filling her mug. She reached up for the sugar, stretching a little, and felt his gaze drop automatically.

Heat crept up her neck. “Eyes up, Darcy.”

“Absolutely not,” he said.

Her heart executed a full backflip. This was unfair. Men should not be allowed to be hot and funny and in charge of her performance reviews.

He reached across her with his mug, and leaned to press the start button. The angle made his shoulder brush into her arm again, casual and familiar in a way that made her whole body remember the feel of him under her earlier that morning.

She was not thinking about climbing into his lap in the break room. She absolutely was.

“I booked Huddle 3,” he said, voice dropping to something quieter, less for the room and more for the tiny radius around them. “We can… actually talk. If you want.”

She swallowed. “Right. The debrief.”

His mouth twisted. “Please don’t call it a debrief. I’m having enough of a day.”

“We can… what,” she said airily, “put together an action plan? Deliverables? KPIs?”

He let out a half-laugh, half-groan. “You’re going to get us both fired.”

She looked at him over her mug, suddenly a little too honest. “Yeah, but. I do want to talk.”

His eyes softened. “Me too,” he said. “Promise.”

And for a second, the rest of it fell away. It was just them, plus a terrible coffee machine and some buzzing fluorescent lights, and the quiet knowledge that last night hadn’t just been a glitch.

Then the door swung open and someone from finance came in and the spell broke.

Jack rolled back, professional face snapping on like a light.

“We’ll, uh,” he said, lifting his mug, “sync at eleven.”

The guy headed for the fridge, humming quietly along to whatever was in his AirPods.

“Hey.” Jack’s voice dropped. “You good?”

“Yep. Totally. I’m going to go sit at my desk and pretend I don’t know what your chest hair situation is.”

He laughed then winced like the words physically hurt him. “Never say ‘chest hair situation’ again.”

⸻

The problem with “we’ll talk at eleven” was that her brain decided eleven was Christmas.

Every time she looked at the clock, it was still not eleven.

At ten-fifty-eight, Miles thunked into her guest chair like a falling armoire. “Standup got moved to after lunch,” he said. “Jack’s in a meeting till twelve. Which means I get you for, like, thirty minutes of uninterrupted complaining. Go.”

Penelope blinked. “What? No. Jack’s–”

She cut herself off, eyes snapping to Jack’s desk.

Empty. Chair gone. Laptop closed.

Her stomach plummeted. Calendar: updated. The 1:1 she’d been clinging to as her little emotional life raft now said Rescheduled: 3:30 PM.

“What,” she said flatly.

Miles squinted at her. “Whoa. Okay. I thought you liked when meetings were cancelled.”

“I do,” she said faintly. “I’m a huge fan. I’m just. Adjusting my expectations.”

“Of what,” he asked, “your life?”

Yes.

She forced a shrug. “Of the number of times a day I have to hear the phrase ‘moving the needle.’”

Miles snorted. “Okay, that’s fair. What are you working on, anyway?”

She stared at her screen, which may as well have been hieroglyphics. “Existential dread in React.”

“Cool, cool,” he said. “I’ll file a ticket.”

He kept talking. Penelope nodded in what she hoped were convincing intervals, while her brain ran a loop of where the hell Jack had gone and whether or not rescheduling meant anything and also the exact way his mouth had felt on her throat.

At eleven-twenty, she got a text.

[Jack]

do not panic

chaos meeting with product just ended my will to live

3:30 is happening

She exhaled so hard Miles looked over.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just remembered I’m fragile.”

⸻

They failed at “being professional” around two in the afternoon when Jack, for reasons known only to him and God, decided to roll into her code review like he wasn’t the biggest distraction in the building.

The review was in Conf Room B, same one they’d used that morning. Four people were crammed around the table with laptops; Penelope had taken the seat closest to the wall so she could doodle in her notebook and pretend to be listening while silently judging everyone’s variable names.

Jack arrived late, spun his chair neatly into the space between her and the glass wall, and bumped the table with one wheel, making her pen skip.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

He was so close she could see the light dusting of freckles on his forearm.

Absolutely unfair.

The engineer leading the review launched into an explanation of their new authentication flow. Penelope tried to follow. Unfortunately, Jack existed.

He leaned back in his chair, arms crossing loosely over his chest, attention ostensibly on the big screen. She could feel his awareness flick toward her, though, like a heat source.

From the crook of his folded arms, a single fingertip slipped free and drew a slow line up the outside of her upper arm–from just above her elbow to the edge of her sleeve–before disappearing back into the fold like it had never left.

Her breath caught.

The conversation about OAuth kept rolling. Penelope nodded at something about token expiry; she could not have repeated a single word. Her focus had narrowed to the strip of skin where his finger had just dragged that slow, casual line, nerves still crackling like they hadn’t gotten the message it was over.

It was barely anything–a fingertip slipping out from the safety of his folded arms, one unhurried pass up the outside of her arm, gone before anyone at the table could’ve noticed.

But she felt it.

Not neutral. Not accidental. A quiet, outrageous reminder of last night.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

[Jack]

That was reckless

She didn’t look at him. Her thumbs moved under the lip of the table.

[Penelope]

Define reckless

A beat.

[Jack]

i’m trying to talk about auth flows and you’re over there short-circuiting because i moved one finger

It was insane, having this conversation in the middle of a discussion about login screens. Still, she typed.

[Penelope]

wow. cocky.

There was a very tiny, very dangerous silence between them.

Onscreen, someone asked Jack for his input. He straightened, arms still folded, expression smooth. With his free hand he gestured toward the code, answering in full sentences like his heart rate wasn’t doing whatever hers was doing, like he hadn’t just lit her up like a switchboard.

⸻

By three-twenty-eight, she was vibrating.

She’d given up on productivity entirely. Her commit history for the afternoon was just tiny, meaningless changes and one comment that said // TODO: stop being a disaster.

When the 3:30 reminder popped up–1:1 – Penelope + Jack – Huddle 3–her stomach did a nervous swoop.

Her Slack pinged.

[Jack]

you still good to talk

or do you want to punt to after work

She stared at the message.

[Penelope]

nope

we’re doing it

otherwise my brain will melt out of my ears and onto jira

[Jack]

ok

bring your brain

leave jira

⸻

By 3:30 she was basically static electricity in a cardigan.

Huddle 3 was tiny: round table, whiteboard, glass wall. Jack was already there, spinning a marker between his fingers like he was warming up for a TED Talk called How To Ruin Your Coworker’s Life In One Night.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

They stared at each other for a beat.

“So,” he tried, “actual conversation. Wild concept.”

“Disgusting,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

His mouth twitched. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. Not, like, waking up thinking ‘wow, terrible HR violation, one star, would not recommend.’”

She huffed out a laugh, tension easing. “I’m mostly mad I didn’t climb you sooner.”

He blinked, then laughed, full and helpless. “Okay. Good data.”

“And,” she went on, because if she didn’t put it on the table she was going to float into the ceiling, “for the record, you’re not just ‘Jack’ from work anymore, it’s very annoying.”

His head tipped. “No?”

“You’re also the guy who makes stupid jokes in the kitchen and lets me rant about CSS and looks at me like that.” She gestured vaguely at his face. “It’s… I like you. A lot. In a way that’s not just ‘wow, promotion opportunities.’”

His throat worked. “Yeah?”

She made a face. “Don’t make me say it again, my skin will fall off.”

He smiled, this ridiculous, uncontrollable thing that made him look younger and a little undone. “You’re not the only one who’s catastrophically into this, Pen.”

She stared at him. “Good. Great. Terrifying.”

He laughed, then sobered. “So, okay. Parameters.” He slipped back into manager mode for a second, but now it was weirdly hot. “We tell HR, eventually. There’s a thing we have to sign so nobody gets sued. I stop being your direct report’s direct report or whatever. We keep it professional in front of people.”

“Define ‘professional,’” she said.

“Not making out in conference rooms,” he said.

They both glanced at the glass wall at the same time.

Jack grimaced. “Okay, we try not to make out in conference rooms.”

“Better.”

“Also,” he added, “we don’t have to define every label today. We just… keep showing up. At work. And at… my place. Hypothetically.”

“Very hypothetical,” she said. “Purely academic. What time should I be there?”

He laughed again, shoulders loosening.

Their eyes caught and held.

The air shifted.

“Okay,” she said, voice going thin. “We did the responsible talk. We earned, like… thirty seconds of being irresponsible.”

“How are you measuring that?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

He was already moving.

One push on his wheel and he slid around the edge of the table, closing the gap between them in a neat roll. Before she could register it, his hand was on the arm of her chair, and he’d hooked his other hand around the back of her neck, tugging her in.

Everything in her went oh thank God.

She went, instantly, hands fisting in his shirt, the little office chair rolled toward his frame with the force of it. It wasn’t as wild as last night, more like they’d been holding their breath all day and were finally allowed to exhale directly into each other’s mouths.

Then she made a tiny, involuntary noise in the back of her throat, and he lost the plot.

He angled the chair with practiced ease, turning so he could get closer without smashing his wheel into the table. Her knees bumped the frame of his chair; he made a pleased sound and slid the hand from her chair to her waist, fingers digging in just enough to make her brain short-circuit.

“This is,” he murmured against her lips, “deeply unprofessional.”

“You booked it,” she whispered.

“Yeah, that’s on me,” he admitted, kissing her again.

Footsteps passed right outside. The handle jiggled once; whoever it was saw them through the glass and kept walking.

Penelope clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes huge. “We are going to get fired.”

Jack stared at the door, then at her, thoroughly wrecked and also clearly amused. “If anyone asks, this is… conflict resolution.”

“I’m writing ‘alignment exercise’ on the whiteboard,” she said.

He let out a laugh. “Okay,” he said, nodding like this was all very official. “My place at six. We talk more. Properly. With less risk of my team watching me kiss you through a glass wall.”

Her lips twitched. “You’re not going to be able to focus all afternoon now, you know that, right?”

“Oh, now?” he echoed. “As if I was just nailing it before?”

She grinned outright. “You seemed pretty manager-y in that code review.”

“Yeah?” he said. “That’s because I could feel you buzzing and my brain was trying not to think about it.”

She swallowed, warmth flooding her.

“Come on,” he said softly, glancing at the clock. “We should go before someone actually tries to book this room and witnesses us failing at policies.”

“Yes, boss,” she said sweetly.

He winced. “Absolutely not. Never call me that again.”

“Noted,” she said. “Saving it for emergencies.”

She stood, grabbing her water bottle. He spun his chair back toward the door, hand darting out at the last second to catch hers, a quick squeeze before he let go.

It was barely anything. A blink of contact. But it anchored her all over again.

He slid the door open and they stepped back into the hallway, their faces rearranging themselves into “colleagues who definitely do not make out in huddle rooms.”

They walked back toward the bullpen, a safe foot of distance between them, every cell in her body very aware that it was a lie.

They weren’t falling apart. They were still doing their jobs. Meetings, code, coffee, Slack.

But they were absolutely not behaving.

And under all the noise, the question from that morning was still there, humming quietly between them.

What are we now, out here?