Grant Mercer had a reputation long before Emery ever stepped onto his floor. He was the kind of man people moved out of the hallways for—tall, broad, built with the heavy shoulders of someone who never softened with age. His voice came out low and gravelly, his expression sharp enough to make seasoned employees stammer. Grant didn’t bother correcting them when they called him ruthless. He wasn’t friendly. He wasn’t patient. And he didn’t pretend to be anything else.

Grant Mercer had never been in a relationship—not out of inexperience, but because he never wanted the interference. He’d spent his entire life with his head down and his hands busy, running his world with the same rigid, unbending structure he demanded from everyone else. Gruff was his baseline; grumpy was his resting state. People tired him. Small talk irritated him. He woke before dawn every morning, arrived at the building before the lights were even on, and left long after the last employee had gone home. His schedule was precise, brutal, and unchanging. Work had always been the only constant he trusted, the only thing he let consume him. He didn’t take vacations. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t make room for softness, warmth, or anything that required emotional upkeep. Grant Mercer existed to work—and he liked it that way.

So when the new intern arrived, no one expected Grant to notice him.

Emery Vale was twenty, small, quiet, and unobtrusive. He kept close to the wall when he walked, always carrying a stack of reports or files, head bent slightly like he didn’t want to take up space. He’d been assigned to Grant’s floor to help with overflow, and most assumed Grant would snap at him within the first hour.

He didn’t.

The first day, Grant barely looked at him—a quick glance, a grunt, nothing more. But the days after that changed in small, precise ways. Grant made his rounds through the departments as he always did, barking at workers who were slow, correcting mistakes with hard-edged irritation. His tone could make an entire room freeze.

But when he reached Emery, it never sounded like that.

Emery would look up at him with those careful eyes, hands folded around whatever task he was working on, shoulders tense like he expected to be yelled at. Grant would stand over him, large enough to shadow the entire desk, and the only thing he’d say was something rough but steady.

“Good. Keep going.”

Or—

“That’s right. Don’t rush it.”

Sometimes he didn’t speak at all. He’d just rest a large hand on Emery’s shoulder—broad palm covering almost the whole thing—and knead gently, slow and deliberate. The pressure was heavy but never harsh, and Emery always startled just a little before settling under it.

Grant never did that to anyone else. He didn’t even come close.

At first, the other workers assumed it was some tactic, or that Emery had managed to avoid irritating him by pure luck. But Grant kept drifting toward him. Even when he finished checking the rest of the floor, he’d circle back, stopping behind Emery again as if drawn without noticing. He’d look over his work—leaning down just enough that Emery could feel the heat of him—then give another low murmur of praise.

“You did it right the first time,” he’d say when Emery worried aloud. “Don’t second-guess.”

No one had ever heard Grant Mercer talk like that.

Grant didn’t explain his behavior. He didn’t apologize for it either. He simply let it happen, as if it were natural—him, drawn toward the smallest person on his floor, softening in ways he never did for anyone.

He didn’t hate the pull. He didn’t resist it. He just didn’t name it.