The Art of Swimming in Deeper Waters

Elena had spent three years becoming exactly who she needed to be: invisible in plain sight. As the senior liaison for Stratton & Reed, she'd mastered the art of being everywhere and nowhere at once—a corporate spy in designer heels.

The charity gala at the Whitmore estate was supposed to be another evening of collecting stray compliments and discarded secrets. Then she saw him.

Marcus stood by the orchestra, swirling champagne like he'd never learned how to hold a glass. Three years ago, he'd left her apartment without saying goodbye, leaving behind nothing but a half-empty carton of Chinese takeout and a note written on the back of a baseball ticket: *Some things aren't meant to be caught.*

Now he worked for the competition. The irony tasted like bad spinach—bitter, clinging, impossible to swallow.

She watched him across the room, the way his eyes kept darting toward the exit like he was planning something. Or running from something. Probably both.

"You're swimming in dangerous waters, El."

The voice belonged to Richard, her boss's fixer. He'd appeared beside her, martini in hand, eyes sharp with something that might have been concern or merely calculation.

"I'm fine where I am."

"Marcus Chambers is playing you again. I saw the documents he's been passing to Holloway Partners. He's not just sleeping with the competition, El—he's selling them everything."

Her chest tightened. The sleeping part wasn't true—she'd refused Marcus's dinner invitation three times this month alone. But the rest? The rest would explain why he'd suddenly resurfaced in her life, all apologies and rough charm and memories that shouldn't still hurt.

Richard's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then back at her. "The board meeting tomorrow. You're going to find out what they're planning. And then you're going to decide where your loyalty actually lives."

He walked away, leaving her alone in a room full of people who thought they knew her.

Marcus caught her eye across the crowded ballroom. For a moment, everything else fell away—the string quartet, the politicians, the carefully orchestrated charity. He raised his glass, just slightly, like they were sharing a joke nobody else would understand.

Elena didn't raise her glass back. She remembered the spinach stuck in her teeth the night she'd first told him she loved him, how she'd laughed so hard she'd cried, how he'd reached across the dinner table to gently wipe it away with his thumb, the tenderness of it like something broken being mended.

Some things weren't meant to be caught. But sometimes, they weren't meant to be let go either.

She made her way through the crowd toward him, each step feeling like the first time she'd learned to swim—terrifying, exhilarating, impossible to turn back from.

The baseball ticket had been wrong, she realized. Some things weren't meant to be caught. Some things were meant to be chosen.