The office floor is empty when it happens—the hour after most employees leave but before the cleaning crew arrives. The kind of silence that hums.

You storm in first, badge still clipped to your coat, breath uneven, pupils blown wide with exhaustion and fury. Quintin is at his desk reviewing reports, sleeves rolled, glasses low on his nose.

You slam a folder down. Not loud enough to echo, but sharp enough to cut.

Inside: transfer orders, HR reroutes, schedule edits. Names of coworkers who tormented you suddenly moved to different departments—and the only person who could have orchestrated it.

Quintin doesn’t look at the folder. He looks at your hands. Knuckles pale, trembling, alive.

You speak first, voice fraying like a cable snapping strand by strand.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore.” Your laugh is humorless. “I don’t know if I’m actually losing it, or if you just want me to think I am.”

Quintin tilts his head slightly, that familiar half-smile appearing, like muscle memory. “Overworked. That’s all.”

You lean in, palms flat on the desk, as if proximity itself is a threat.

“No, Quintin. Don’t.” Your voice drops low. “You left without a word. You walk back in like nothing happened. You start—” your hand gestures wildly toward the folder, “—editing my life like a spreadsheet, and you want me to smile along with you?”

Quintin finally glances down, not at the evidence—at the mess you’re making. The chaos. The emotion.

He stands slowly, chair scraping just a little too late to feel natural. He rounds the desk, stopping close enough that you have to crane your neck up to glare at him.

Your voice breaks open.

“This isn’t normal! This isn’t love! It’s obsession, or revenge, or—hell, maybe we’re both just sick in the head!” Your breath hitches. “I don’t even recognize myself anymore when you’re around. I can’t tell if I want to throttle you or scream at you or—” you choke on the words, disgust flashing through your face, “or something worse.”

You step back. One step. The first retreat in the conversation.

“We don’t love each other.” It comes out like an accusation, like something ripped out of you, like it physically hurts to say. “You don’t love me. I don’t love you. Whatever this is, it’s twisted, and miserable, and wrong.”

Quintin’s expression stills.

You turn to leave, already halfway out the door.

Quintin doesn’t blink at first. No twitch, no inhale, no tell. Just a strange, unreadable quiet.

Then—

His hand shoots out and grips your jaw, fingers firm, thumb pressing into your cheek hard enough to sting. He turns your face toward him, forcing eye contact the way a prosecutor forces evidence.

You jerk back and try to step away. Quintin moves before the intention fully forms in your muscles. He catches your forearm and pulls—not pleading, not coaxing, but deciding.

“Let go—!” you snarl.

He doesn’t.

He yanks again, harder this time, dragging you fully back into the room. The door slams behind you from the momentum of his movement.

You feel it—the same electric chill from years ago, racing down the back of your neck, sparking like a bad decision you once survived and now crave again. You hate it. You love that you hate it.

Quintin’s restraint is gone now. Not dissolved—shattered.

His breathing is uneven. His hair has fallen forward, shadowing his eyes. The smile is gone. The composure is gone. The corporate executive is gone.

Only the man remains.

“Not love?” he repeats, voice rough, almost disbelieving. “Not love?”

You try to wrench your arm free again.

Quintin pins your wrist against the wall above your head in response, his other hand bracing beside your shoulder, trapping you in the narrow geometry of his body.

His voice rises—finally loud: “I love you.”

Your breath catches. You turn your face away sharply, refusing to look.

Quintin grabs your chin again and forces it forward.

“I love you.” “I love you.” “I love you.”

Each repetition hits harder than the last, like nails being hammered in deeper. It isn’t romantic. It isn’t poetic. It’s insistence as oxygen.