And I've been trying to figure out what happens now with work, with everything. He looked at her steadily. The arrangement we made it was built around a crisis. The crisis is over. You don't need the stability clause satisfied anymore.
Voss is gone. The board is settled. A pause. What we agreed to it doesn't have to continue. Victoria was very still.
Is that what you want? I'm asking what you want, I asked first. He looked at her for a long moment. No, he said. It's not what I want, but what I want doesn't override what makes sense.
And I'm trying to be honest about the difference. And if I told you, Victoria said carefully, that the most strategically rational thing I could do right now is exactly what you're asking about walk away from the personal dimension of this and return everything to a clean, professional arrangement, but that it's the thing I least want to do. The office was very quiet. Then I'd say, Darius said slowly, that for a woman who runs every decision through a costbenefit analysis, that's a significant piece of information. I'm aware, she said.
I've been sitting with it all week. What did you decide? She looked at him with the of someone who has spent their whole life being certain and is learning carefully and at great personal cost to be uncertain out loud. I decided, she said that the thing I'm most afraid of is the thing I should probably walk toward. That's not a decision.
That's a direction. It's the best I have right now. Darius leaned forward. Victoria, what do you actually want? Not the strategic version, not the managed version.
What do you want? She held his gaze for three full seconds. Then she said, I want next Saturday and the Saturday after that. I want to meet Amara at the farmers market and let her tell me about strawberries and ask me questions. I don't know how to answer and I want to figure out how to answer them anyway.
A breath. I want to have dinner with you where neither of us is managing anything. I want to call you when something goes wrong without calculating whether it's appropriate. I want she stopped started again. I want to stop being alone in the way I've been alone and I want to do that with you specifically, not with someone strategically appropriate with you.
The words landed simply and completely the way true things do. Darius was quiet for a moment. Then that's the most honest thing you've said to me since you told me about the clause. I know. It terrifies me.