Chapter 143: Chapter 143: Distraction
Elliot is already in the elevator when I step inside, holding the door open with one hand, his portfolio tucked under his arm.
My face is still completely on fire, and I am trying as hard as possible to look like a normal person who just got out of a car.
"Morning," he says, the moment the doors click shut, he looks over at me. His eyes focus on my face, and his brows instantly furrow with actual concern. He steps a bit closer, looking directly at my cheeks.
"Runze? Are you alright?" Elliot asks, tilting his head. "Your face is very red. Do you have a fever?"
The question makes my chest slam hard against my ribs, and the heat on my neck instantly flares up even worse. I can feel my ears burning under my hair. If Elliot knew exactly why my face was red...because Wuchen Bael had just held the car doors locked until I spoon-fed him a kiss on the cheek right in front of my driver and security...
I’m suddenly glad the car window is tinted.
"I’m fine," I say quickly, my voice sounding a little tighter than I want it to. I look strictly at the digital floor numbers changing on the wall, refusing to meet his eyes. "The air conditioning in the car was just set really high. It’s just the sudden change in temperature."
Elliot looks at me for another second, clearly trying to see if I’m about to collapse, before he slowly relaxes his shoulders. "Alright. If you start feeling dizzy during the review, let me know. The layout alignment is going to take a few hours."
"I can handle it," I mutter, pressing my hands flat against my notebooks to keep my fingers from shaking.
He nods and goes back to his phone, and I stare at the elevator doors and will my face to cool down.
It does not cooperate.
***
Zhu Yi is already at the table when we walk in, and he doesn’t bother with good morning.
"The east elevation," he says, tapping his pen against the drawing. "Since you moved the entrance to face the road, the load path through this section changed. Structural ran the numbers again over the weekend, and flagged it."
I lean over the table. He’s right, the entrance revision from last week shifted more weight onto this corner than the original south-facing version ever carried, and nobody had gone back to check what that did downstream.
"How bad is it?" I ask.
"Not bad. But not nothing either." Zhu Yi traces the problem section with his pen. "Structural’s saying either reinforce here, or redistribute some of the load through the corridor wall. That part’s on you two."
Elliot’s already studying the same section, head tilted. "If we reinforce here, it might affect the column placement from the lobby."
"It might," I say slowly, working through it. "Which means we’re not solving one problem. We’re solving two, and they’re connected."
Zhu Yi nods, making a note. "I’ll get structural to run both scenarios overnight so you have numbers tomorrow." He glances between us. "Given what’s still open, I’d say you’ll want eyes on this every day until Friday. I can keep coordinating with structural in the background, but the design calls are yours."
"Daily sessions, then," Elliot says, looking at me.
I look at the drawing, at the small cascade of consequences that one good decision last week has quietly set into motion, and I feel something that isn’t quite dread. More like recognition. This is what real projects are like, nothing exists in isolation, and being right about one thing just means finding out what else that rightness touches.
"Daily sessions," I agree, and reach for my notebook.
The rest of the morning disappears into it... checking the corridor wall capacity, working through two different reinforcement options for the east corner, Zhu Yi making calls to the structural team while Elliot and I argue, productively, about whether the column from two weeks ago still makes sense given the new numbers.
It does, mostly. It just needs to move eight centimeters.
By the time we wrap, my notebook is nearly full and my back has that specific ache that comes from leaning over a drafting table for two hours straight. But it’s the good kind of tired, the kind that means something actually got done.
"Same time tomorrow," Zhu Yi says, already halfway out the door, tablet under his arm.
"Yes," I agree.
Elliot’s gathering his things slower than usual. "Four days of this," he says, not quite a complaint. "There should be enough time to catch everything."
"Yeah," I say.
We head out together, the way we usually do, and I pull out my phone in the elevator, thumbs already moving.
*Me: Session’s over. Heading down now.*
Elliot’s quiet beside me for a moment, and I can feel him about to say something... that particular pause before *coffee?*, the one that’s been automatic for weeks now.
Except the last time we did that, he asked me something else entirely, right outside that café, and I think we’re both aware that today might not just slide back into the old rhythm without either of us acknowledging it first.
"Runze..." he starts.
My phone buzzes against my palm. I glance down.
*Bael: Outside.*
"Bael’s here," I say, a little too quickly, looking up just as the elevator doors slide open onto the lobby. "He’s picking me up."
Whatever Elliot was going to say folds itself back down. "Of course," he says, easy, like it was nothing. "Tomorrow, then."
"Tomorrow," I say, and I’m already walking, faster than I need to, across the lobby and through the glass doors.
***
The car is really there.
Bael’s outside it when I push through the glass doors... not waiting inside, not on his phone, just standing there with his hands in his coat pockets, watching the entrance like he’s been watching it for a while.
Which, I realize with a small jolt, he probably has.
There’s no way he made it here three minutes after I texted. He must have left his own office before I even messaged, just stood here, doing nothing, waiting for the moment I’d walk out.
"You didn’t have to come out here," I say, my face warming despite the cold air, walking faster than I mean to.
"Is that how you greet your husband?" Bael says, and opens the car door himself before I reach it.
I ignore him and duck inside, sliding across the seat to make room. He gets in after me, the door shuts, and somewhere behind us the privacy glass slides up.
The car starts moving.
I look out the window for a second, at the people near the entrance who’d slowed down slightly when they saw Bael standing beside the car — that specific kind of slowing that isn’t about getting out of someone’s way, it’s about *recognizing* someone.
I think, distantly, about the last time this happened. The café on Fenglin Street, the hug...
I’d seen the headlines two days later. Mrs. Wen had shown me, very carefully, like she wasn’t sure if I’d find it funny or mortifying.
It had been both.
I glance sideways at Bael now, at the unbothered way he’s sitting there like skipping a meeting to stand on a public sidewalk is a completely normal use of his time, and I decide I genuinely do not have the energy to think about what tomorrow’s headlines might say.
"How was the session?" he asks.
"Long. We’re doing this every day now. Until the presentation on Friday." I shift slightly, trying to find a comfortable angle for my back against the seat. "There’s a structural thing from the entrance change last week. It’s not bad, just—"
I don’t get to finish.
His hand finds mine on the seat, and instead of just holding it, he lifts it slowly, his eyes never leaving my face, and presses his mouth against my knuckles.
My breath catches. "Bael—"
"Shh..." He doesn’t let me finish. He leans across the seat, his free hand coming up to the side of my face, and kisses me.
It’s slow. Unhurried, in a way that makes my whole body feel like it’s running on a different clock than the rest of the car. My hand comes up without my really deciding to, curling loosely against his chest, feeling the steady, heavy beat of his heart under my palm.
When he finally pulls back, just slightly, his forehead rests against mine.
"I sat outside that building for forty minutes," he says, quiet, a little rough. "Thinking about this."
"Forty minutes?" I repeat, my voice coming out thinner than I want it to. "Bael, that’s—"
"I know." His thumb moves slowly along my cheekbone. "I’ve been waiting."
