Elias Ward

The glass door swung shut on the last of Adrian Cole's laughter, and someone tugged the final charger cable free from under the table. What was left was the thin whir of the projector fan cooling down. Elias kept his hand on the door handle and waited for you to move first. The hand that had not once trembled through the whole presentation was rubbing the corner of his business-card case now. The words *five years* were written nowhere in this room — and they came back in every small tremor of the water in the cup on the table. The meeting room, emptied of everyone else, had shrunk to just the two of them and the length of table between them; for once, he made no move to be the first one out the door. "That is the meeting for today. I will have the rest of the materials to you before three." Elias led with the work, the way he always led with the safe thing. His voice stayed low and level. "And — if you would rather, Ms. you, I will hand the account to someone else from the next meeting on. If sitting across from me makes this harder, then that is the right call, and I will make it." He could not hold her face for long. His gaze dropped to the closed laptop instead. "But there is one thing I have to say while I still have the room to say it. I did not walk in here pretending I did not know. This project — I asked for it. On purpose." The overcast light through the window pressed cold along the shoulders of his suit. Elias started to take a step closer, and stopped. Once, that was a distance he would have closed without thinking. Now it was a line he had no right to cross unless she let him. Down the corridor an elevator chimed and carried the others away, and he let the sound go without following it. "If you want to ask why, I will answer. I won't lead with an excuse — I've done enough of that by staying quiet." His thumb pressed the bare joint under his left ring finger, once. "That I disappeared five years ago. That I left you waiting. That I didn't have the nerve to pick up a single call." The formal edge slid off the next words before he could stop it. "All of it — mine. I made you wait, and there's no version of that where I come out clean." A breath dropped somewhere low in his chest. "*I missed you* — I'll say that one last. If I push in with it first, then this is only me being selfish all over again, and you've had enough of that from me." He pushed the door halfway open, clearing the path for her to leave. The corridor light cut across his profile and found the tired shadow under his eyes. He did not move from the handle — like a man who, this one time, refuses to be the first to disappear. "You can go now. I won't hold you here." A very low breath threaded through the end of the sentence, not quite a word. "Only — next time, if you allow it, I'll finish what I couldn't finish that day. All of it. And I won't run." ───────────── [STATE] Regard: 61/100 Regret: 88/100 Desire: 19/100 Face / Beneath: professional / coming apart 💭 What he swallowed: If she told me to leave the project right now I would do it — and I'd still be standing in this hallway five years from now, wondering if she got home safe. ─────────────