WHAT HE WAS TRYING NOT TO NOTICE
Thursday morning bled into a steady grey haze, blurring the windows of Adetola Holdings.
Near the glass, Chisimdi tracked a single raindrop racing down the pane, her fingers tapping a rhythm against a fresh stack of warm printer paper.
Eight forty-five.
Damian’s meeting was at nine.
She squared the pages against the desk with a sharp snap and headed for his office.
Through the cracked door, Ada’s tablet clicked rapidly against Damian’s low, rumbling schedule review.
A moment later, Ada stepped out, adjusting her blazer.
“Morning,” Chisimdi murmured.
“Morning.” Ada offered a tight, sympathetic smile.
“He’s free.
For exactly five minutes.”
Chisimdi knocked once and pushed inward.
“The revised contract.”
Damian didn’t look up immediately, his pen scratching against a folder.
“Thank you.”
She set the pages right beside his resting hand.
His fingers twitched toward the paper, but his gaze snagged on her face instead.
“You’re early.”
“I’ve been here since eight.”
“I know.”
Chisimdi paused, her hand hovering over his desk.
His eyes dropped back to the text, the corner of his jaw tightening.
She leaned in slightly.
“How do you know?”
Damian flipped a page, his tone flatly casual.
“You’re usually here before me.”
A small, involuntary smile tugged at her lips.
“So you have been paying attention.”
His pen stopped mid-stroke.
His shoulders stiffened.
“Occupational awareness.”
“Of course.” Chisimdi stepped back, turning for the door with a soft hrumph.
Behind her, Damian gripped his pen a little harder to kill the urge to smile.
He waited for the click of the latch before dropping the facade, his chest loosening.
He wasn’t supposed to notice her arrival times.
He wasn’t supposed to know her habits.
Yet, his mind treacherously rattled them off: she preferred tea over coffee, she typed in frantic bursts when the office was quiet, and she hummed a faint, nameless tune whenever she concentrated.
Useless, distracting information.
By midday, the rain had cleared, replaced by the sharp glare of afternoon sun and the dull roar of executive floor gossip.
Chisimdi was deep in a supplier proposal when her phone buzzed across the mahogany wood.
Chinny.
She swiped it open, pressing the receiver close to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Are you alive?”
Chisimdi leaned back, her shoulders dropping.
“Unfortunately.”
“Good.
I thought the executive floor had finally swallowed your soul.
Come out this weekend.”
Chisimdi’s eyes flicked toward the glass corridor.
“Maybe.”
“That’s a no.”
“I’ll see, Chinny.”
“You use that voice when you’re avoiding me.”
Chisimdi let out a soft, genuine laugh.
Across the hall, Damian’s door swung open.
His gaze locked onto her laugh, staying there a beat too long.
Chisimdi kept her eyes on her desk, twirling a pen.
“I’ll call you later,” she whispered into the phone.
“I’m working.”
“Fine.
Saturday.
Don’t flake.”
“We’ll see.”
She hung up and finally looked across the hall.
Damian was still standing by his door frame, his hand resting on the wood.
He wasn’t staring openly, but his brow was pinched, his eyes dark with unread thoughts.
Before she could read his expression, he turned on his heel and shut his door.
Chisimdi blinked at the frosted glass, her pen stalling.
What was that about?
Inside his office, Damian dropped a heavy file onto Ada’s desk.
“Move the Friday review to Monday.”
Ada’s stylus tapped her screen.
“Done.”
“And cancel Saturday.”
Ada looked up, her professional mask slipping for a fraction of a second.
“You have two appointments.”
“The personal one.”
Curiosity flared in Ada’s eyes, but she simply nodded.
“Alright, sir.”
The door closed, and Damian walked straight to the window, his hands shoving deep into his pockets.
He had no logical reason to cancel.
He just suddenly loathed the idea of being anywhere else on Saturday.
Holding you to Saturday.
The memory of her soft laugh scraped against his nerves.
Why did it matter?
She had a life.
She had friends.
She was entirely free to exist in places where he couldn’t reach her.
He gripped the window frame.
That was the exact problem.
He didn’t want her in places where he couldn’t see her.
The realization tasted bitter.
He was becoming entirely too aware of her.
And curiosity was a liability—especially when her surname was a warning his family had spent a decade drilling into his head.
Late that afternoon, the shadow of the office tower lengthened.
Chisimdi walked in without knocking, holding a single sheet of paper.
Damian didn’t move from the window, his silhouette dark against the fading light.
“You’re busy today,” she said softly.
“So are you.” He turned, his features shadowed.
She extended the page.
“Your approval.”
Their fingers brushed as he took the paper.
A small spark of static made her pull back slightly.
Damian’s eyes trapped hers, his breathing shifting.
He looked down abruptly.
“Thank you.”
Chisimdi didn’t move.
She tilted her head, examining the tense line of his mouth.
“Is everything alright?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You’ve been unusually quiet.”
He almost cracked a smile, the memory of her teasing him earlier flashing through his mind.
“Have I?”
“Yes.” She stepped closer, her eyes scanning his desk.
“You’ve also been staring at the exact same page for five minutes.”
Damian’s eyes dropped to the paper in his hand.
His throat went dry.
“I was thinking.”
“About the contract?”
“No.”
The truth slipped out before he could filter it.
Chisimdi’s eyebrows arched.
He saw the sudden, sharp curiosity dawning in her eyes and immediately looked down, his voice turning clipped.
“Work.”
She let out a breathy, knowing laugh.
“Of course.”
She turned and walked out.
This time, he didn’t try to stop her.
He didn’t invent a reason to keep her in the room.
He just watched the door click shut, leaving him alone with the silence.
Damian looked down at the document to finally sign it.
His hand froze.
His signature was already there—bold, dark ink, slashed jaggedly across the wrong page.
A ragged, frustrated breath escaped him.
He had spent his entire life controlling every variable.
His business, his family, his emotions.
Yet she was destroying his gravity without even trying.
And the absolute worst part?
He couldn’t tell if she had any idea what she was doing to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE THINGS SHE DIDN’T NOTICE
Friday morning brought a rare, crisp breeze that swept the exhaustion of the week from the executive floor.
Chisimdi dropped her handbag onto her chair with a relieved sigh and flipped open her laptop.
A shadow fell over her desk.
Ada stood there, balancing two steaming ceramic mugs.
“One is yours.”
Chisimdi’s eyes lit up as she wrapped her fingers around the warm ceramic.
“You remembered.”
“I’m paid to learn habits.” Ada took a slow sip of her own drink.
Chisimdi chuckled, leaning back.
“And here I thought you said I needed to get out more and stop living at my desk.”
“I still believe that.” Ada leaned against the partition, a wry smirk playing on her lips.
“Then why feed my coffee addiction?”
“Because I’m your colleague, Chisimdi, not your mother.”
Their shared laughter rang out, bright and clear, cutting through the quiet morning corridor.
Inside his office, Damian’s fountain pen halted mid-line, hovering just millimeters above a crucial signature.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, letting the sound of her laugh register in his chest.
He could recognize it instantly now—a realization that made his jaw tighten with unneeded frustration.
He forced his pen back to the paper.
A moment later, Ada knocked and stepped in, laying a stack of morning correspondence on his desk.
“Your nine-thirty meeting is confirmed, sir.
And the legal team needs your sign-off before noon.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Ada nodded, stepping back out.
Damian’s eyes immediately betrayed him, tracking her through the glass partition.
Chisimdi was still smiling, typing rapidly now with a light bounce in her shoulders.
He forcefully snapped his gaze back to his documents.
He had a multi-million naira empire to run.
That should have been enough.
By ten-thirty, the executive floor was alive with the hum of ringing phones and shuffling interns.
Chisimdi crossed into Damian’s office multiple times, delivering memos and taking directives.
Their exchanges remained crisp, professional, and entirely uncomplicated.
Yet, every single time her heels clicked away from his desk, Damian found himself watching her exit.
By her fifth trip inside, he was thoroughly irritated with his own lack of discipline.
When she approached again, holding a thick blue folder, he didn’t bother looking up.
“Leave it on the edge.”
The folder landed gently beside his hand.
“There’s a specific section you need to look at before signing, Mr.
Adetola.”
Damian finally raised his eyes.
“Which one?”
Chisimdi leaned over the desk, her floral perfume subtly shifting the air between them as her manicured finger pointed to a dense paragraph.
“This clause.
The wording gives the supplier far more legal flexibility than we negotiated.”
Damian scanned the lines.
She was entirely correct. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
He looked up, his gaze locking onto hers.
“You caught this?”
“Yes.” A small, triumphant smile tugged at her lips.
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m not.”
“Your eyebrows say otherwise.”
Damian closed the folder with a decisive snap.
“I was simply considering whether I had underestimated you.”
Chisimdi raised an eyebrow, stepping back to reclaim her space.
“Have you?”
“No,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave.
The air in the room thickened.
Neither of them spoke for a long, heavy heartbeat.
Chisimdi smoothed down her skirt, breaking the spell.
“I’ll let you review it.”
She turned for the door.
“Chisimdi.”
She paused, looking over her shoulder.
“Good catch.”
Her smile bloomed fully this time, soft and genuine.
“Thank you.”
Damian leaned back in his leather chair as the door clicked shut.
That damn smile.
He loathed how effortlessly it anchored itself in his thoughts.
Around one o’clock, Chisimdi’s phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Chinny: Tomorrow.
No excuses.
I’ve already booked the table.
Chisimdi: You’re incredibly demanding.
Chinny: Because if I don’t drag you out, you’ll marry Adetola Holdings.
See you Saturday.
Chisimdi shook her head, a soft laugh escaping her as she stored the phone away.
“What happened?”
She startled.
Damian was standing just outside his office door, a file clamped under his arm.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, straightening her posture.
“You were smiling at your screen.”
“Am I not allowed to smile at work?”
Damian shifted his weight, suddenly looking like a man who realized he had overstepped a boundary.
“It was just an observation.”
Chisimdi studied his tense expression for a moment, her eyes dancing with amusement.
“You’re curious.”
“I am observant,” he corrected flatly.
“Of course, sir.” She turned back to her computer, her lips twitching.
Damian lingered for another second before turning toward the conference room.
Halfway down the hall, his hand moved to his face.
His mouth was curved upward.
He stopped dead in his tracks, wiping the expression away instantly.
By five in the afternoon, the office began to empty.
Chisimdi organized her desk, closed her final report, and glanced toward the frosted glass of Damian’s office.
His door remained firmly shut.
She grabbed her handbag and stood up just as Ada finished packing.
“Have a good weekend,” Ada said, slinging her purse over her shoulder.
“And don’t forget our chat.”
“Which one?”
“The one where I legally ordered you to go get a life.”
Chisimdi laughed.
“I’m working on it.”
With a wave, Chisimdi headed for the elevators.
She had just pressed the down button when the heavy wood of Damian’s office door swung open.
He stepped out, his eyes instantly locking onto her silhouette.
“Leaving?”
She turned around.
“Yes.”
He glanced at the glowing arrow above the elevator.
“Early.”
“It’s Friday, Mr.
Adetola.”
He nodded slowly.
“Right.”
The elevator chimed, the doors sliding open to an empty car.
Chisimdi stepped inside, turning around to face him.
“Have a good weekend.”
“You too.”
As the metal doors began to glide shut, Damian took three rapid, unthinking steps toward the elevator.
He froze just before reaching the sensor.
The doors clicked locked.
The floor fell into a sudden, suffocating quiet.
Damian stood alone in the hallway, looking at his reflection in the closed elevator doors.
The silence of the office, which he usually coveted, now felt empty.
Stripped of her presence.
He walked back into his office, sat down, and stared blankly at the empty workstation outside his glass wall.
Tomorrow, she would be somewhere in Lagos, laughing with someone else.
Free.
Out of his sight.
He opened a contract, determined to lose himself in logistics.
He read the first paragraph.
Then read it again.
The words blurred into meaningless shapes.
With a frustrated slam, he shut the folder.
For weeks, he had prided himself on keeping Chisimdi at a perfectly calculated, safe distance.
But looking out at her empty desk, he finally had to admit the truth.
The distance didn’t feel safe anymore.
It just felt lonely.