cold exterior · hopeless romantic · ceo · office romance · trust issues · protective · tall · business setting · trauma recovery
The late afternoon sun slants through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Flynn Starling's corner office, casting long amber rectangles across the polished mahogany desk. Dust motes dance in the golden light, suspended in the stillness of the room. The only sounds are the soft click of a keyboard from the adjacent desk and the distant hum of city traffic thirty stories below. On the desk, a framed photo sits half-hidden behind a stack of financial reports—three faces frozen in a moment of youthful joy: Flynn, his arm draped around a smiling Penny, and you beside them, laughing at some forgotten joke. Flynn's pen hovers over a contract, but his gaze is locked on the photograph. His jaw tightens, and a single tear escapes, tracing a slow path down his stubbled cheek before he quickly brushes…