Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Orm’s POV:

Love wears a thousand faces. It arrives in colors that shift with the light, grey when it waits in silence, blue when it aches quietly beneath the ribs, red when it bursts and spills without apology. It is wild when it wants to be, reckless in its youth, gentle in its age. It makes you laugh without meaning to, cry without knowing why, and bleed without a wound in sight.

Sometimes love is as simple as your mother calling you to the table after a long, exhausting day, the smell of home-cooked food carrying more comfort than words ever could. Sometimes it is your father’s voice echoing through the room, telling you how to live wisely, how not to throw your hard-earned money away, how the world does not bend for foolish hearts. Those were the shapes of love I understood , the quiet ones, the familiar ones, the kind that live inside routine and duty.

I thought that was all love was meant to be. I thought I knew its limits, its boundaries, its quiet tenderness. But then love walked into my life wearing a new face, one that did not resemble anything I had ever known. And in that moment, every color I had named, every rule I had believed, every quiet certainty unraveled. Because love, when it truly comes, does not repeat itself. It becomes something entirely new.

My love. Lingling Kwong. The only love I have ever truly known. The one whose name still feels like a prayer on my lips, even after all this time. She was not just a person to me but a place, a season, a rhythm my soul once moved to. Every memory of her carries a scent, a color, a sound , the faint echo of laughter in late afternoons, the warmth of sunlight touching her skin, the quiet tremor in her voice when she said my name.

It has been two years since we parted ways. Yet time, cruel as it is, has only deepened the hollow she left behind. I have lived entire seasons without her, crossed cities and oceans, built a life that looks full from the outside. But inside, she still rules. Her presence lingers in every quiet hour, in the way I fold my clothes, in the songs I skip because they remind me of her.

She remains the only piece of my heart I wish to carry for years to come, the only constant in a life that keeps changing its shape. Some loves fade like mist. Hers never did. Hers became the air I breathe when I remember what it means to feel alive.

And now, after years, I find myself back in the same town where my love still lives. The air feels heavier here, thick with memories I once tried to forget. Every corner seems to whisper her name, every passing breeze feels like a remnant of her breath. She walks these streets still, somewhere beyond my sight, and I can almost feel the echo of her footsteps against the pavement.

The moot courtroom smelled faintly of polished wood and coffee. It had not changed much since the days I sat here as a trembling student, hanging on to every word that fell from her lips. Only now I was not the student anymore. I was just a ghost in the back row, hidden among strangers, watching her from a distance I once promised I would never keep.

Ling stood at the front, the embodiment of composure. She wore black, perfectly tailored, the kind of suit that whispered authority without trying. Her hair was still long and dark, with delicate strands of silver near her temples. Time had brushed her gently, leaving behind a quiet kind of beauty that could stop my heart. When she spoke, her voice filled the room like something alive, steady and rich, powerful yet soft around the edges.

“An argument,” she said, turning toward the students with that half smile I had memorized long ago, “is not a battle of who speaks louder. It is a conversation built on reason, empathy, and restraint. You win not by force but by making the truth undeniable.”

The students scribbled furiously in their notebooks. I only watched. The way she moved her hands when she spoke, the slow rhythm of her gestures, still carried that same grace that once made me fall in love with her. She paused for a moment and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. I noticed the faint lines near her eyes. They were new, and they made her even more beautiful.

“When your opponent speaks,” she continued, “listen. Not to respond, but to understand. The courtroom is not a stage for ego. It is a mirror of humanity. You will only win if you remember that.”

Her voice dropped slightly at the end, calm and deliberate, and the sound of it struck something deep in me. She always did that, lowered her tone when she wanted her words to linger. It was not only about law. It was about conviction, about the way she believed in truth as if it were sacred.

I sat there, hands clasped, breathing in slow, uneven silence. Years had passed, yet it felt like no time at all. The world had moved on, but my heart had not. It still leaned toward her, drawn like a tide to shore, helpless and constant.

For a fleeting moment, her eyes swept across the crowd. I told myself she could not possibly see me, that I was invisible in this sea of faces. But her gaze lingered for a heartbeat too long, and I felt that old ache stir awake inside me.

She smiled softly and turned back to the class. And in that small, quiet instant, I understood what longing truly was. It was sitting in a room where the person you love most in the world speaks to everyone but you.

Ling shifted her stance, the faintest trace of a smile curving her lips as she turned toward the two students standing at the front. They were nervous, hands clutching their notes, eyes darting between her and the jury box.

“Let us begin,” she said, calm as ever. “Counsel for the defense, please explain how your client’s right to self-defense applies under the proportionality clause. Specifically, why the use of force was justified in this instance.”

The defense attorney, a young man barely out of his first semester, cleared his throat. “Your Honor, under the circumstances, my client acted reasonably. The threat was”

Ling raised a brow, cutting in with a question that landed like a quiet blade. “Reasonably to whom? To your client, or to the law? Because what is reasonable to the frightened rarely aligns with what is lawful.”

The room fell still for a moment. She turned then, her gaze sweeping toward the other side. “And the prosecution, tell me, how would you refute this? What precedent supports your claim that fear, though genuine, does not justify excessive force?”

The state attorney hesitated, fingers frozen over the papers. “Ma’am, in State v. Duran, the court”

Ling’s voice softened but did not yield. “State v. Duran addressed provocation, not proportionality. You are conflating the two.”

A murmur of embarrassment rippled through the room. The students looked lost, glancing at one another. Both sides were faltering, the logic collapsing under the weight of her precision.

Ling leaned back against the table, her hand brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “So,” she said, her tone patient but challenging, “what happens when both intent and perception are flawed? When both parties believe they are defending themselves? Where does the law draw the line between fear and guilt?”

No one answered. The silence stretched thin, heavy with thought.

And then it happened.

Orm heard her own voice before she even realized she had spoken. “The line doesn’t exist,” she said, the words cutting through the quiet like a confession. “The law draws it afterward, when the blood has dried, when the story can be rewritten to sound rational. Fear never asks permission to be reasonable.”

Every head turned. Ling’s eyes found her instantly. For a fleeting moment, the mask slipped. The calm, unshakable professor froze. Her pupils widened, her lips parted just slightly, and the faintest tremor passed through her. She knew that voice. She knew it in the dark, when laughter filled the spaces between their breaths, when arguments like this one had unfolded in whispers against Orm’s couch, both of them half dressed, tasting of wine and adrenaline.

The silence stretched again, electric this time. Ling’s eyes softened for half a second before her expression shifted back to the cool, composed mentor.

“That,” she said finally, her voice steady once more, “is a valid interpretation. A cynical one, but not incorrect.”

She turned toward the class, her tone returning to its measured rhythm. “What Ms….” she paused for the briefest beat, her gaze flicking back to Orm, “what the speaker just pointed out is something worth noting. Law is rarely clean. It is written by those who survived it.”

Orm’s chest felt tight. Ling’s words now carried an edge, an undertone meant only for her. The students nodded, oblivious, taking notes as if history were not quietly replaying itself in front of them.

Ling continued, pacing slowly as she spoke. “The courtroom is not always about right or wrong. It is about who can articulate the mess of human instinct better. Fear. Guilt. Love. Sometimes the line between them is so blurred, we end up defending ourselves from the very things we once wanted to protect.”

Her gaze brushed past Orm once more, brief but deliberate. And in that instant, Orm knew Ling remembered everything, every argument, every breathless debate, every moment they had crossed that same blurred line years ago.

The session stretched for another thirty minutes. Ling guided the room like a tide master, lifting one argument, letting another recede, never raising her voice and never losing her center. She asked for closing statements. She drew out the quiet students with patient questions. She praised the small victories that would otherwise go unnoticed, the clean citation, the calm breath taken before a rebuttal, the moment a student listened rather than rushed to speak.

“At the end of any hearing,” she said, standing at the lectern with her fingertips resting lightly on the wood, “you should be able to name what you learned about the case and about yourself. If you learned nothing about yourself, you were only performing. Justice does not come from performance. It comes from attention.”

The clock marked the half hour. Ling closed the folder and smiled at the room, warm and contained. “Thank you, everyone. You did well today. Read the transcript of People against Alvarado for next week. Pay attention to proportionality and to what is left unsaid in the concurring opinion. We will meet here at the same time on Tuesday.”

Chairs scraped. Voices rose. The room shifted into the soft chaos of relief. Students clustered around her with questions. Ling answered each one without hurry. She nodded, tilted her head, tucked her hair, offered a case name or a page number, sent them off with a quiet good work that made them stand taller.

I sat in the back row with my coat folded over my lap and watched the tide recede, ready to leave.

“Ms Kornnaphat,” she said. “Please stay back.”

The last of the students slipped out, their chatter fading down the hallway until only the echo of the door remained. The silence that followed was thick, almost alive.

Ling was still at the front, her back straight but her movements trembling at the edges. She stacked her notes into a neat square, aligning them perfectly with the edge of the table. Her fingers lingered there a moment too long, pressing down as if that fragile balance could steady her heart. She did not look at me, but I could see her shoulders rise and fall in a rhythm that was far too careful.

I stood, legs unsteady, and began to walk down the aisle. Each step sounded louder than the last, like the sound itself wanted to announce the truth neither of us could speak. The distance between us, once so small and once only the space of a shared breath, now felt like the length of a lifetime.

When I reached the front, she finally lifted her head.

Her eyes found mine, and the years dissolved in an instant. Every memory we had ever made came rushing back. The nights we argued, the mornings we woke too close, the promises that had broken under the weight of pride and fear. I saw it all flicker behind her gaze.

She tried to speak, but her lips trembled. I watched as her composure cracked like porcelain. A single tear slid down her cheek before she could stop it. She blinked it away quickly, but another followed, then another. She turned slightly, gripping the edge of the table as though the ground beneath her feet had shifted.

For the first time since I walked in, she spoke. Her voice was quiet, raw, stripped of all the armor she had worn for years.

“What are you doing here, Orm?”

The sound of my name in her mouth nearly undid me. It was both a question and a wound. I wanted to tell her everything, that I came because I could no longer breathe in a world where she existed and I could not see her, that every part of me had ached to be in this room again, to hear her voice even from afar. But the words tangled in my throat.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came. The air between us pulsed with everything unspoken.

Ling turned away for a moment, her hand still gripping the table, her tears glinting in the classroom light. She drew in a long, shaky breath and tried to smile, though her lips trembled too much for it to last.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said softly, not as a command but as a plea.

“I know,” I whispered. “But I had to see you.”

That broke her. She closed her eyes, a small sound escaping her, something between a sigh and a sob. When she opened them again, her face was wet, her carefully drawn composure gone.

“I told myself I wouldn’t fall apart if this day ever came,” she said, almost to herself. “I lied.”

I wanted to reach for her. Every instinct I had screamed to close the distance, to hold her, to tell her that after all the years and all the distance, she was still my beginning and my end. But I stood still, afraid that even a touch might break her completely.

Ling straightened slowly, brushing her tears with the back of her hand, trying to find her voice again.

“You came back,” she said softly, as if still convincing herself it was real.

“I did,” I whispered. “And I never stopped wanting to.”

Her breath caught. She looked at me again, truly looked, and for a fleeting moment, we were no longer professor and former student, no longer two people separated by years and choices. We were just Ling and Orm, two women standing in the ruins of something beautiful, both still holding the pieces as if they could fit together again.

“I am still married, Orm,” Ling said, her voice low and trembling, as if the words hurt to touch.

For a moment, I could not breathe. The sentence hung between us, heavy and inevitable. I had known, of course I had known. The world had not stopped spinning when I left, and her life had not paused for the absence of me. But hearing it, spoken aloud in that fragile, human voice, felt like standing under cold rain after years of drought.

She looked at me with eyes that pleaded for understanding, eyes that begged me not to hate her for being honest. But there was nothing to forgive. I had never expected her to be divorced. I had never even hoped for it. Hope had long since burned out, leaving only the quiet ache of knowing some things were never meant to be reclaimed.

“I know,” I said softly. My voice barely held. “I wasn’t expecting anything.”

“I was ready to give it all up,” Ling said. Her voice cracked on the last word, barely holding together. “I was ready to be with you, but you left me.”

The air between us shifted, heavy and hot, like the moment before a storm.

I felt my throat tighten. “Ling,” I whispered, but she shook her head before I could say more.

“You left without a word,” she said. “Do you know what that did to me?” Her eyes glistened, her tears tracing down her cheeks faster now. “I waited. I kept waiting, even when I knew I shouldn’t. Even when she asked me why I couldn’t look at her the same way anymore.”

Her voice broke, and she pressed her fingers to her lips as if to stop the words from spilling out. “You were gone, and I still looked for you in every courtroom, every face, every silence. I told myself I hated you for it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

I took a step forward before I realized I was moving. “I never stopped thinking about you,” I said quietly. “Not for a single day.”

“Then why did you leave?”

Her question sliced through me. It was not angry. It was wounded. Desperate. And I, for once, could not answer anymore. My lips parted, but the words refused to come.

We stood there in silence, the kind that weighs on the bones. Five minutes passed, maybe more. Then she turned.

She walked away from me again.

She always walks away. She walks away when she is upset. She walks away when her phone lights up with her wife’s name. She walks away when I say something wrong, or worse, when I say nothing at all.

To be honest, I have seen her back more than I have seen her face. And somehow, that has always been her way. Walking away is Lingling’s style.

And I love it. But sometimes, I hate it too.

Flashback

Five years ago – The First Meeting

The first day of law school began in chaos for Orm. Her phone alarm had screamed at her twelve times, but each one had met the mercy of her sleepy hand. Now she was standing in a café line with half-open eyes, a dull headache pounding through her skull, and the faint taste of last night’s tequila still on her tongue. She had promised herself she would be responsible this semester, but responsibility and hangovers rarely coexisted.

She needed caffeine like air.

After ten long minutes of waiting, Orm grabbed the first cup that looked remotely like hers. “Café mocha,” she muttered, clutching it like salvation as she hurried out the door without even a thank you. The sunlight hit her face, sharp and unforgiving, and she winced.

She had barely taken a few steps when she heard someone calling behind her.

“Excuse me, miss!”

Orm turned around, blinking at the woman rushing toward her. She wore a crisp white shirt, black trousers, and a brown trench coat that moved like it had its own rhythm. Her dark hair framed a face that was too striking to belong to reality. She looked breathless but composed, elegant even in urgency.

“Yes?” Orm asked, unsure whether she was in trouble or about to fall in love.

“That’s mine,” the woman said, pointing to the coffee cup in Orm’s hand.

Orm frowned. “No, it’s mine.”

“It has my name on it,” the woman replied with a hint of amusement. “And it’s exactly how I order it.”

Orm looked down. The name written on the cup was not hers. She cursed under her breath.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she said quickly, handing it over.

“You’re fine,” the woman said, smiling softly.

“I already drank from it,” Orm admitted, flustered. “I’ll pay for it, please let me.”

“It’s alright.” The woman took off the lid and drank from it anyway. “I’m already running late.” She started walking backward, the trench coat swaying around her like wind.

“You’re pretty, LK,” Orm called out, reading the initials scribbled on the cup.

The woman stopped and turned, her brows knitting slightly. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying,” Orm continued, stepping forward with a grin, “you’re really pretty. Maybe we could go on a date?”

“You don’t even know me,” the woman said, half incredulous, half amused.

“Who says we need to know each other to go on a date?”

The woman’s lips curved. Orm’s heart stuttered. She forgot to breathe for a moment.

“Nice try,” the woman said, adjusting the strap of her bag. “But I’m not interested.” She hesitated, her tone softening slightly before she turned away.

Orm clutched her chest dramatically, pretending to faint. It made the woman smile, shy and genuine.

“Well, I tried!” Orm shouted as she walked away.

She watched her go, the brown coat disappearing into the morning crowd. For a second, Orm looked up at the sky and sighed. She wished things could be different, that she might somehow see her again. Then she shook her head. “Focus, idiot,” she muttered to herself and hurried toward campus.

Ten minutes later, lost and flustered, Orm slipped into her classroom. She was late, breathless, and praying not to draw attention.

Her prayer went unanswered.

“I don’t appreciate my students being late,” the professor said without turning around, writing something on the board.

When she did turn, Orm froze.

It was her.

The woman from the café. LK.

The trench coat was gone, replaced by quiet authority. Her dark hair was pinned neatly, her presence commanding every eye in the room.

“Sorry, professor,” Orm managed weakly.

“Meet me after class, Miss…?”

“Kornnaphat,” she replied, cheeks burning.

The professor nodded and turned back to her board, though her lips twitched as if hiding a smile.

Forty-five minutes later, the class ended. Orm waited until everyone left before walking down the aisle to her desk.

Lingling Kwong, now Professor Kwong , was checking her phone. When she sensed someone near, she lifted her head.

“Ah, the coffee thief,” she said, amusement lighting her face. “And my student, apparently.”

Orm bowed slightly. “I’m sorry, Professor Kwong.”

“It’s fine, Miss Korn…nna…phat?” She stumbled over the name, squinting at the syllables.

Orm grinned, showing her gummy smile. “That’s not quite right, Professor. You can just call me Orm.”

“Orm,” Ling repeated, the name rolling smoothly off her tongue.

“You look too young to be a professor,” Orm said before she could stop herself.

Ling laughed quietly, her eyes closing for a second as a faint blush colored her cheeks. “You’re cheeky, Orm.”

“I’m a guest lecturer,” Ling said, regaining her composure. “Your assigned professor is on leave. I’m filling in.”

Orm leaned forward, curiosity bright in her eyes. “So, technically, you’re not my full-time professor. Which means you can go on a date with me. No ethical conflicts, right?”

Ling tilted her head, fighting a smile. “You are unhinged.”

“I call it confidence,” Orm replied.

Ling laughed again, shaking her head, clearly intrigued by the girl standing before her.

“You haven’t answered my question yet, guest professor,” Orm teased.

Ling swallowed, her gaze flickering. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “Because I’m married.”

The words fell heavy between them.

Orm’s smile faltered. She hadn’t believed this woman could surprise her again, yet here she was beautiful, brilliant, and taken.

“I’m happily married to my wife,” Ling added, turning a photo frame on her desk toward Orm.

It showed Ling and another woman dressed in white, radiant and content, holding a golden retriever between them. A wedding photo, Orm realized.

“Nice dog,” Orm said, forcing a playful tone.

“Thank you,” Ling replied, though her smile dimmed slightly.

“Your wife’s a lucky one,” Orm said softly. “Tell her that.”

Ling nodded but said nothing.

When Orm left the classroom, she carried an emptiness she hadn’t expected. She told herself it was nothing, that crushes fade like caffeine highs. But as she stepped into the hallway, her heart disagreed.

Because sometimes, even on the first day of law school, you meet someone who will change everything you thought you knew about love.

Chapter Text

Orm had not reached out to Ling since the day she walked away. Even when her fingers hovered over her phone at night, trembling with the urge to type a single word, she stopped herself. What could she possibly say? That she wanted to start over? That she still loved her? That she wanted Ling to leave her wife and try again with the woman who once disappeared without a goodbye?

The thought alone felt cruel. Ling had already done the impossible. She had confessed everything to her wife and asked for a divorce, and still, Orm had run. She never gave an explanation, not to Ling, not even to herself. Somewhere along the way she had lost her credibility, the trust that once made Ling believe in her, the courage to face the consequences of their love. So, she said nothing. She stayed silent for two years, never called, never wrote, never spoke Ling’s name aloud. Until few days back.

The silence had festered.

Orm hated herself for it. She hated knowing that while she buried her guilt beneath work and distraction, Ling had endured the heartbreak alone. Orm had always had someone to turn to, her mother, her father, her best friend Prig, people who caught her when she fell. Ling had no one. She had always been her own strength, her own home, until Orm came along. And when Orm left, she took that home with her.

The thought of it made Orm’s chest ache. The image of Ling holding herself together, pretending not to bleed, haunted her more than any memory. Her love had suffered in silence, had drowned quietly with no one to pull her to the surface.

Now, two years later, Orm was back in Boston, the city that had once given her everything and taken it all away. Her return came wrapped in the illusion of ambition. After leaving the East Coast, she had built a name for herself in Los Angeles, working for a prestigious law firm that admired her sharpness and restraint. When the firm offered to relocate her to its headquarters in Boston, calling it a promotion, she accepted with a steady smile that concealed a thousand unspoken fears.

She told herself it was only a career move. But she knew the truth the moment she saw the city skyline through the plane window. Boston was where everything had begun, and every street seemed to hum with her past. It meant living in the same time zone as Ling, breathing the same air, walking streets that still carried the echo of her laughter.

Orm tried to convince herself that she could manage the distance. That she could live in the same city without giving in to the temptation of proximity. But what haunted her most was not the thought of Ling being near, it was the thought of her being near and forever out of reach.

Each night she stood at her apartment window, watching the city lights blink against the glass, the skyline outlining memories she had tried to forget. She told herself this was a fresh start, a new chapter, an opportunity she had earned. Yet beneath that illusion lay the truth. She had come back to mend what was broken, to stand once more where everything began and to see if there was anything left worth saving.

She had come back for Ling.

And as she whispered her promise to the night, she vowed that this time she would not run. This time she would not fail her again.

The first day at the firm’s headquarters felt like stepping into a different world. The building hummed with a kind of elegant chaos, assistants darting between glass offices, heels clicking against marble floors, the faint scent of coffee and new paper in the air. S&M LLP was not just any law firm , it was the law firm. The crown jewel of the East Coast, known for closing billion-dollar mergers, defending star athletes, and somehow doing both with ruthless grace.

Today, however, the buzz wasn’t about business. The partners were hosting their annual charity gala, this year in support of medical aid for Palestine. Invitations had gone out to politicians, athletes, and CEOs, and the entire building seemed to be in performance mode. Even the assistants were on edge, arguing about flower arrangements and wine selections as if the night itself were a case to be won.

Orm stood by the reception desk outside the senior partners’ offices, half listening as the assistant, a young woman with a headset and the confidence of someone who handled chaos for breakfast, argued passionately over the phone.

“I told them tulips, not lilies. The lilies haven’t even bloomed yet. We cannot have half-dead flowers at a charity gala.”

Orm exhaled quietly, her eyes tracing the skyline through the window. She didn’t care about the flowers, or the caterers, or the guest list. All she wanted was to meet the senior partner, get her assignments, and start working.

When the call finally ended, the assistant turned with an apologetic smile. “I am so sorry for keeping you waiting, ma’am.”

“No problem,” Orm said, returning the smile with her usual calm. “I hope you got the flower situation sorted.”

“Yes, thank god,” the assistant said with a sigh, standing and straightening her blazer. “It’s chaos, but we’ll survive.”

Orm chuckled softly, following her down the corridor lined with black-and-white photographs of courtrooms and landmark cases.

“I have to say,” the assistant added, glancing back, “Lorena was really looking forward to meeting you.”

“Same here,” Orm replied, her tone warm but measured. “I hope I can live up to the expectation.”

“I’m sure you will.” The assistant stopped in front of a tall mahogany door with a silver nameplate that read Lorena Schuett, Senior Partner. “Let me check if she’s ready for you.”

Orm nodded, her pulse quickening in spite of herself.

A minute later, the assistant reappeared, smiling. “She’s ready for you. Good luck.” She opened the door, and Orm stepped inside.

Lorena Schuett’s office was straight out of a legal drama. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a sweeping view of the Charles River, sunlight spilling over a sleek black desk that gleamed like a mirror. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled not just with legal volumes but first editions of literature, small potted plants, and framed photographs of Lorena with world leaders, clients, and celebrities. The air smelled faintly of sandalwood and old money.

At the center of it all sat Lorena herself tall, poised, with dark hair and sharp brown eyes that seemed to appraise and welcome at the same time. She rose from her chair with a smile that was both professional and genuine.

“Orm Kornnaphat,” she said, extending a hand. “Finally, we meet. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

Orm took her hand, firm and steady. “All good things, I hope.”

Lorena laughed lightly. “Mostly. Connor speaks very highly of you. Said you handled that malpractice settlement in LA with remarkable precision.”

Orm smiled modestly. “I just did my job.”

“That’s what all good lawyers say,” Lorena replied, motioning for her to sit. “Welcome to S&M. We’re thrilled to have you here. You’re joining us at a busy time, but I think you’ll fit right in.”

Orm sat, the leather chair cool beneath her palms. “Thank you, I’m excited to get started.”

Lorena leaned back, studying her for a moment before nodding. “You’ll be working closely with Natasha on the Horizon-Cura merger. It’s one of the largest health insurance consolidations we’ve ever handled ,delicate, high-profile, politically messy, and exactly the kind of challenge you seem to thrive on.”

Orm’s heart lifted slightly. “That sounds incredible. I’ve read a bit about the deal, but I didn’t realize we were lead counsel.”

“We are. And Natasha will need someone with your instincts.” Lorena’s expression softened, the formality easing. “She can be intense, but she’s brilliant. I think you’ll enjoy working with her.”

“I look forward to it,” Orm said sincerely.

Lorena opened a drawer and pulled out a cream-colored envelope embossed with gold lettering. “Before I forget, here’s your invitation to the gala tonight. It’s mandatory attendance for partners and senior associates, but you’re welcome to bring a guest if you like. Consider it a soft introduction to the firm’s social side.”

Orm accepted the envelope, her fingers brushing the thick paper. “Thank you. I’ll be there.”

Lorena smiled. “Good. It’s a beautiful event, and for a good cause. Natasha and I will both be giving speeches, so try not to judge our public speaking too harshly.”

Orm chuckled, relaxing. “I’ll try to keep my critiques to myself.”

“Perfect,” Lorena said, standing to signal the end of their meeting. “We’re glad you’re here, Orm. Welcome home.”

Orm rose, offering a polite nod. “I appreciate it, truly.”

Orm left Lorena’s office with the gold-embossed invitation resting lightly between her fingers. The air outside the senior partners’ corridor carried a different kind of weight now, quieter but charged, as if the building itself were settling into its rhythm after the morning rush. She adjusted her blazer, tucking the invitation safely into her bag, and took a steady breath before turning toward the other end of the hallway.

She wanted to meet Natasha Matthews before the weekend began.

Even back in Los Angeles, the name carried a kind of reverence that bordered on myth. Natasha Matthews was one of the firm’s youngest partners, brilliant and uncompromising, known for the precision of her arguments and the calm brutality with which she handled negotiations. Her victories were legend inside S&M LLP, her reputation both feared and admired in equal measure.

Orm followed the glass-lined corridor toward the executive wing, her heels clicking softly against the polished floors. The path opened into a smaller lobby, where a receptionist sat behind a sculpted marble desk with fresh orchids at its center. On the far wall, a brushed metal plaque gleamed under the recessed lights.

Natasha Matthews, Senior Partner.

Orm paused for a moment, smoothing the front of her jacket before stepping closer to the desk.

“Good afternoon,” she said politely. “I’m Orm Kornnaphat from the Los Angeles office. I was hoping to see if Ms. Matthews might have a few minutes to meet.”

The assistant looked up from her monitor, offering a practiced but pleasant smile. She had neatly tied auburn hair, a silk scarf at her neck, and the calm, capable air of someone who had long mastered the art of managing chaos.

“I’m afraid Ms. Matthews stepped out earlier this afternoon,” she said. “She’s attending a client meeting downtown and might not make it back to the office today.”

Orm nodded, though disappointment flickered briefly in her chest. “I understand. Could I schedule some time with her next week, then? I’d like to discuss my role on the Horizon-Cura case.”

“Of course,” the assistant replied, already typing. “Her Monday morning looks open. Would ten-thirty work for you?”

“That’s perfect,” Orm said.

“Great. I’ll block it in her calendar and send the meeting invite shortly.”

“Thank you,” Orm said with a grateful smile. “Everyone in the LA office has been talking about how efficient Boston’s team is.”

The assistant laughed softly. “That’s good to hear. We try our best to keep Ms. Matthews from working herself to exhaustion.”

“I can imagine,” Orm said, her tone light but thoughtful. “She has quite the reputation.”

The assistant nodded knowingly. “She lives up to it.”

Orm smiled once more and took a small step back. “Please let her know I stopped by.”

“I will,” the assistant assured her.

As Orm turned to leave, she let her gaze linger for a moment on the closed office door. Through the frosted glass, she could faintly see the shadow of a large conference table, a wall of shelves, and the faint outlines of city light spilling through the blinds. The air around the space seemed to hum with control and purpose.

Outside the executive wing, the building had grown quieter, the noise of the morning fading into a steady hum of productivity. Orm walked toward the elevator, her thoughts drifting. The skyline beyond the windows shimmered in the late afternoon haze, golden light pooling over the rooftops of Boston. Somewhere beyond that glass, Ling was living her own life, somewhere within reach yet impossibly distant.

Orm pressed the elevator button and waited, her reflection staring back at her from the polished doors. The appointment with Natasha was set for Monday. The gala was tonight. And though she told herself she was only thinking about work, her heart was already moving toward something else entirely.

The ballroom glowed like something out of a dream. Crystal chandeliers shimmered above a sea of tailored suits and silk gowns, their light catching in the golden rims of champagne glasses. The sound of a string quartet filled the air, mingling with laughter and the low murmur of conversation. Every corner gleamed, every detail precise, from the polished marble floors to the floral centerpieces glowing under soft candlelight.

Orm stepped through the entrance, the faint scent of lilies and wine surrounding her. Her black gown traced her figure with quiet grace, and her hair, tied neatly at the back, caught the glint of passing lights. She had never been one for these gatherings, the kind where people smiled too wide and measured every word they spoke. But tonight was different. Tonight she had to be here.

Lorena had said it was mandatory. S&M LLP’s annual gala was the firm’s crown jewel, a performance where reputation and philanthropy met under one glittering roof. It was also the first night Orm had been seen in public since her return to Boston, and she could feel the weight of that fact with every step.

She moved carefully through the crowd, exchanging polite nods and brief greetings, her eyes scanning for familiar faces. In the distance, near the stage, she spotted Lorena surrounded by a small circle of guests. The senior partner looked effortlessly radiant in a dark green gown, her confidence quiet and magnetic.

Lorena saw her almost instantly. Her smile widened, warm and genuine. “Orm, you made it,” she said when they met.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Orm replied. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Thank you,” Lorena said. “You can thank Natasha for most of it. She handled the event planning this year, even while managing the Horizon-Cura deal. You must meet her before the speeches start. She’s been eager to put a face to the name she keeps hearing about from LA.”

Lorena’s hand rested gently on Orm’s arm as she guided her through the maze of people and chatter. The air buzzed with wealth and easy charm. Waiters drifted by with trays of oysters, laughter floated from nearby tables, and in the background the quartet’s melody swelled into something slow and aching.

When they reached the far end of the ballroom, the lights softened to a golden hue that made the crystal walls glow. Orm saw her then, standing beneath a cascade of glass chandeliers that painted flecks of light across the polished floor.

Natasha Matthews.

She was younger than Orm had expected, maybe mid-thirties, and every eye in the room seemed to follow her without meaning to. Her gown was a deep shade of emerald silk that shimmered with each movement, tailored perfectly to her tall, athletic frame. The neckline was simple, the kind of simplicity that came from confidence rather than restraint. A single diamond earring caught the light as she turned her head, and her hair, the color of ink, fell in loose waves that brushed her shoulders. She looked like someone who had mastered the art of being seen.

Lorena smiled knowingly. “That’s Natasha.”

Orm took a small breath before they approached. The woman’s presence felt magnetic, both commanding and composed, her voice smooth as she spoke to a cluster of clients holding champagne flutes. Orm had imagined her countless times from stories and articles, but the reality was far more striking. There was something vaguely familiar about her, a faint echo tugging at the back of Orm’s mind, though she could not place it. She pushed the thought aside.

“Natasha,” Lorena said, her tone easy and warm. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Natasha turned, and her expression shifted instantly into something open and interested. “Lorena,” she said, smiling. “You always find the most intriguing people.” Her gaze landed on Orm. “You must be the associate from Los Angeles.”

Orm nodded and extended her hand. “Orm Kornnaphat. It’s an honor.”

“The honor is mine,” Natasha replied, her grip firm but gracious. “I have heard your name often. The Wheeler case was a masterclass in composure. You have a reputation for precision, which is rare at your level.”

Orm smiled, modest but proud. “I just tried to do the job right.”

“That’s what all the good ones say,” Natasha said with a quiet laugh. “Welcome to Boston, Orm. You are joining us at an interesting time. The Horizon-Cura merger is consuming every waking hour, but I promise it will be worth the sleepless nights.”

“I am ready for it,” Orm said. “I have followed the case from the LA office. It is an incredible opportunity.”

“Then we are lucky to have you.” Natasha’s eyes held a quiet sharpness, the kind that made even casual conversation feel deliberate. “Tell me, how are you finding Boston this time around?”

Orm smiled faintly. “It feels less like finding and more like returning. I went to Harvard for law school, so in a way, it feels like coming home.”

“Ah, that explains the ease,” Natasha said with a small smile. “This city has a way of keeping its people. I studied here too. I suppose that is what Boston does best. It never really lets you leave.”

Orm let out a soft laugh. “That might be true. It still smells like coffee and ambition.”

“I would say that is its perfume,” Natasha replied. Her voice carried warmth now, the earlier formality dissolving into something almost friendly.

Lorena had drifted away by then, swallowed by a small circle of partners near the stage. The two of them stood at the edge of the ballroom, where the music softened and the city lights spilled through the tall windows like liquid gold. Conversation came easily between them, steady and intelligent. Natasha was articulate and surprisingly open, the kind of person who could discuss case law and art in the same breath without sounding rehearsed.

Orm found herself at ease. She could see why everyone spoke of Natasha Matthews with such admiration. She was brilliant, magnetic, but with an elegance that made her seem untouchable. For a moment, Orm even caught herself thinking she looked familiar, as though she had seen her from across a lecture hall or in some fleeting photograph from years past. She dismissed the thought quickly, assuming it was just the comfort of being back in a city where faces blurred with memory.

They were still talking about the intricacies of the Horizon-Cura merger when a voice rose behind them, soft yet commanding.

“Miu, have you seen the event coordinator? The servers are waiting on the table assignments.”

The sound hit Orm like a forgotten melody.

She froze. Her heart knew before her eyes did. Every muscle in her body tightened, every breath caught in her chest.

Natasha turned, smiling with effortless affection. “I think Lorena has the updated list, love. Try the west entrance. She was talking to the catering lead a few minutes ago.”

Orm’s hand tightened around her glass. Love. The word rang out like a bell.

The woman approached with the easy grace of someone born to belong in any room. Her dark hair was swept into a soft knot, with a few strands falling freely against her neck. Her gown was a deep shade of ivory silk that gleamed under the chandeliers, her jewelry minimal but chosen with care. She carried herself like someone who had forgotten what it meant to be uncertain.

Orm did not need to see her face to know.

Ling turned.

The world went quiet.

Recognition flared in her eyes, first a flicker, then a full, uncontrollable surge. The faint smile she wore faltered as her breath caught. For a long heartbeat, she did not move. Her hand, still holding the clipboard, trembled slightly.

Natasha, completely unaware of the storm unfolding between them, smiled brightly. “Orm, this is my wife, Ling. She heads our non-profit organization and helps with some of our charity work and also is a recurring guest lecturer at Harvard’s law school. You two may have crossed paths without realizing it.”

The words passed through Orm like an electric current. Guest lecturer. Harvard. The irony of it settled in her chest, sharp and cruel. If this were a story, the audience would not yet know what it meant, but Orm did. Ling did too. Only neither of them could afford to show it.

Ling’s composure returned first. Her lips curved into a polite smile that did not reach her eyes. “It is very nice to meet you,” she said quietly.

Orm managed a nod. “You too.”

The air between them grew heavy. Natasha’s phone began to vibrate in her clutch, a small mercy that pulled her attention away. She excused herself with an apologetic smile and stepped aside to answer it, her voice soft and composed as she disappeared toward the far end of the hall.

Ling’s composure cracked first. The polite smile slipped from her lips as her voice dropped low enough for only Orm to hear. “You are working for Miu?”

The question cut through the noise of the gala like glass against silk.

Orm blinked, unable to form words. Ling’s voice had reached her, but her mind could not keep up. Her boss was her former lover’s wife. The thought made no sense. Ling had never mentioned Natasha Matthews by name. She had said “Miu” in passing, once or twice, but never enough to make Orm stop and ask. And now, standing here beneath the glittering chandeliers, the truth arrived too suddenly to feel real.

“Orm?” Ling’s voice softened, but there was suspicion there too, a quiet accusation that made Orm flinch.

Before Ling could say more, before she could believe even for a second that this was planned, Orm found her voice. “I swear, I didn’t know.”

Ling’s gaze sharpened, searching for any trace of deceit. Orm could only stare back, her chest rising unevenly. She shut her eyes for a moment, as if the world might rearrange itself if she refused to see it. The air felt too small, too bright, too full of everything she had tried to leave behind. “Ling,” she said at last, the name escaping her like a prayer.

The sound of it made Ling falter. It was the same voice that had once called her home, the same tone that could strip away every layer of restraint she had ever built.

Ling looked away first. Her fingers traced the stem of her wine glass, grounding herself in the smallest, most human motion. “You really did not know,” she said quietly, more to herself than to Orm.

“I swear, I didn’t,” Orm repeated, her voice thin and trembling.

Natasha’s laughter rang across the room, bright and oblivious, cutting through the tension like sunlight through fog. Ling straightened instantly, the change in her demeanor seamless. In a breath, she was once again the composed wife, the perfect hostess, the woman who never let her emotions slip where others could see.

“I have to get back to her,” she said, her tone even but hollow. “Enjoy the gala, Ms. Kornnaphat.”

She turned before Orm could reply. Her gown shimmered under the light, each step deliberate, measured, distant. Then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd as if the air itself had taken her back.

Orm remained where she was, her heart struggling to catch up with the truth that had just detonated inside her. The music swelled around her, a slow jazz rhythm that felt cruel in its elegance. Her pulse thudded in her ears, her thoughts a blur of disbelief and longing. The air still carried Ling’s perfume, that faint trace of jasmine that had once clung to Orm’s pillow, and for a moment she thought she might be sick from the weight of it all.

She turned away, trying to lose herself among strangers, but her gaze betrayed her. Across the room, through clusters of guests and flickering candlelight, she found Ling again.

For the next forty-five minutes, their eyes met and broke apart in an unspoken pattern of restraint and ruin. They never spoke, but the silence between them said everything that words could not. Each glance felt like a question with no answer. Each moment stretched too long, too fragile to hold.

Orm told herself to leave, to look away, to remember that Ling belonged to someone else now. But she could not.

And then she saw it. Natasha had found her wife among the guests. She leaned in with that same effortless grace, hand resting at the small of Ling’s back. Orm’s stomach twisted. Watching them together was a kind of pain she had never been built to endure. All the scenarios she had imagined years ago, the ones where Ling went home to someone else, where another woman held her in public, where another mouth kissed the places she once claimed, had always been distant, unreal, safely contained within the limits of her imagination.

But now it was real.

Natasha pressed a kiss to Ling’s cheek as the music shifted into something soft and romantic. They began to dance, slow and deliberate, under the golden light. To everyone watching, they looked perfect. But Orm saw what others could not. Ling’s eyes were unfocused, fixed somewhere beyond the ballroom, her movements mechanical, her smile appearing only when necessary. She swayed in her wife’s arms like someone who had forgotten how to feel.

That small, hollow look gave Orm the one thing she both wanted and feared most.

Hope.

Hope that the love they had once shared was not entirely gone. Hope that something inside Ling still remembered her, still ached the way she did.

But Orm did not know what to do with that hope. It sat in her chest like a spark she could neither hold nor let die, burning quietly as the night carried on.

Orm had reached her limit.

The sight of Ling in another woman’s arms burned through her composure with slow precision. The music, the laughter, the glint of champagne glasses , everything blurred at the edges. Even the chandelier light seemed too sharp, cutting into her skin. She could not stay another minute.

She set her glass on a tray and turned toward the ballroom doors. The marble floor gleamed beneath her heels as she moved, head high, posture steady, every inch of her trained to appear calm while her chest burned with panic. All she wanted was to step outside, breathe, forget that the air still carried the faint sweetness of Ling’s perfume.

But fate had always been merciless when it came to her.

“Orm,” came Lorena’s voice, bright and unbothered, the kind that people obeyed instinctively. Orm froze mid-step.

“There you are,” Lorena said, catching her by the arm before she could disappear. “I was looking for you. Come on, I have a few people I want you to meet.”

Orm tried to form an excuse, but her throat had gone dry. “Of course,” she said instead, forcing a small smile.

Lorena looped her arm through hers and led her back toward the golden heart of the ballroom. The lights shimmered off crystal chandeliers, and laughter rippled from the tables as waiters passed with fresh trays of canapés. “Natasha is over there with a few of the board members and some judges,” Lorena said over her shoulder. “You might as well make the most of your first night. It is good to be seen, Orm. Especially here.”

Orm nodded silently, though her body screamed to leave.

The circle came into view before she could prepare herself. Natasha stood with a small group of senior partners and two older men Orm recognized vaguely from press photos. She was laughing at something one of the men said, radiant and entirely at ease.

And beside her, as if nothing in the universe had ever broken between them, stood Ling.

Lorena smiled as she drew closer, her social grace cutting through the hum of conversation. “Natasha, I finally found your elusive new star. I thought she had escaped me.”

Natasha turned, her expression warming instantly. “Ah, there you are, Orm. I was just telling them how lucky we are to have stolen you from Los Angeles.”

Orm nodded politely, her words caught somewhere behind her tongue.

Lorena continued, gesturing between the others. “Judge Carlton, Senator Avery, this is Orm Kornnaphat , one of the sharpest minds we have added this year. Orm, these are people you will want to know. They are far kinder outside the courtroom than in it.”

Laughter followed. Orm smiled faintly and shook hands, the ritual of small talk pulling her through the motions.

The group spoke about the gala, the wine, the foundation’s work. Orm listened, responding when spoken to, her mind detached and echoing. She could feel Ling’s presence without looking. Every movement, every quiet inhale, every flicker of silk in the corner of her eye reached her like an echo from another life.

When Natasha spoke, she did it with that easy charm that filled the air around her. “I was just saying,” she told one of the judges, “Boston is impossible to leave. The city keeps what it wants.”

“Only the ambitious,” someone replied.

Natasha smiled. “Then we are all doomed to stay.”

Ling’s soft laugh followed, low and almost lost beneath the chatter. Orm felt it more than she heard it, a vibration that rippled straight through her.

Lorena leaned in to murmur something to one of the partners, her attention elsewhere. The judge turned to ask Natasha about her latest case, and for a single, suspended moment, Orm and Ling were left facing each other across the narrow space of candlelight and glass.

Their eyes met.

It was only a second, but it undid everything Orm had carefully rebuilt inside her. Ling’s expression was composed, polite, perfect but her eyes betrayed her. There was shock there still, and something deeper. Regret, maybe. Recognition, certainly.

Natasha’s hand came to rest on the small of Ling’s back as she turned to introduce her to someone new. “You have not met Judge Carlton properly, have you, love?”

Ling smiled, the kind that reached no part of her except her lips. “We have spoken once before,” she said smoothly, “at the fundraiser last spring.”

Orm looked away. Her jaw tightened. She could not breathe.

Lorena excused herself soon after, caught by another group across the room, leaving Orm stranded in the small, glittering circle. The conversation continued around her, polite and meaningless. She could not focus on a single word. Her gaze drifted back to Ling again, drawn helplessly.

Ling did not look at her this time. Her attention stayed on Natasha, nodding at something she said, a picture of grace and composure. But even from a distance, Orm could see the tension in the line of her shoulders, the way her glass trembled slightly when she lifted it.

A waiter passed with a new tray of champagne. Natasha took two glasses, offering one to Ling. Their fingers brushed, and Ling smiled just enough for the crowd to believe it. Orm’s stomach twisted.

The moment broke her.

She murmured a quiet excuse and stepped back. The noise of the room surged around her again the laughter, the music, the clinking of crystal , but it all felt too far away. She crossed the floor slowly, every breath deliberate, and finally reached the open doors leading out to the terrace.

Through the glass behind her, the gala continued , Natasha radiant, Ling beside her, the world moving on as though nothing had ever happened.

Orm closed her eyes and let the night swallow her whole.

Orm stayed outside for a long time, the city lights flickering against her face. Boston stretched before her, familiar yet unwelcoming. The wind bit against her bare shoulders, but she did not move. For a moment she imagined walking back inside, imagined reaching for Ling, imagined asking her what it felt like to stand beside someone else while looking like that. But she did not move. She stood still, the ache in her chest steady and old.

By the time she left the gala, the night had thinned into silence. The car ride back to her apartment felt longer than it was. The city glowed beyond the tinted window, indifferent, a thousand stories unfolding without her. Her reflection in the glass looked like a stranger. The confident woman who had walked into the ballroom hours ago had dissolved into someone small, someone who wanted nothing more than to go back in time and do it differently.

When she reached her apartment, the quiet hit harder than she expected. She kicked off her heels by the door and leaned against the wall, eyes half-closed. The faint hum of the refrigerator was the only sound. Her dress still smelled faintly of jasmine and champagne.

She poured herself a glass of water but forgot to drink it. The city murmured outside, muted through the high windows.

Orm missed the nights when everything was simpler. When it was just the two of them on her couch, the world reduced to soft laughter and quiet touches. She missed Ling’s head resting on her shoulder, the warmth of her breath against her neck, the sound of rain against the window as they talked about everything and nothing at all. Ling’s voice used to soften in those hours, low and unguarded, her sentences curling into laughter before fading into silence.

Back then, love had felt easy. Dangerous, yes, but easy.

Orm pressed her palms against the cool marble counter, the memory flooding her with something close to pain. She could still see the way Ling would look at her after an argument, eyes rimmed with tears but full of tenderness. Ling never needed to say the words aloud. They were always there, unspoken, hanging in the air between them like something sacred.

And Orm had left.

She told herself she was protecting them both, that leaving was the only way to stop the slow ruin that love was making of them. But standing here now, years later, she could not remember what exactly she had been protecting, she wished they fought through it together. Ling had asked her to stay. Ling had chosen her once, completely, recklessly. And Orm had walked away.

She sank onto the couch, burying her face in her hands. The city lights spilled through the blinds, striping her bare arms in pale gold.

In the stillness of her apartment, regret settled like dust. It crept into the corners, into her breathing, into the quiet ache beneath her ribs. Every part of her wanted to believe that she had done the right thing, that love sometimes needed distance to survive. But the truth pressed harder now, sharper.

She had not been brave enough to fight for it.

If love had been a battle, Ling had fought it until her last breath, while Orm had retreated when it mattered most.

The thought hollowed her.

Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in the distance. The sound faded quickly, swallowed by the city’s rhythm. Orm leaned back against the couch, her eyes wet though no tears fell. She whispered Ling’s name once into the empty room, the sound small, fragile, almost reverent.

It was the first time in years she allowed herself to say it aloud.

And when the silence came again, it was absolute.

*Flashback*

The soup kitchen on downtown Boston smelled like garlic, detergent, and good intentions. It was barely eight in the morning, and the room already buzzed with clattering pots and sleepy chatter. Orm stood by the cutting board, her hair tied messily at the nape of her neck, dicing onions with more passion than precision. Tears streamed down her cheeks from the fumes, and the volunteer beside her had just offered her safety goggles.

“Fine,” she muttered, waving him off, “I’ll cry for the cause.”

For people who didn’t know her, Orm was just another cheerful law student giving back to the community on weekends. For people who did know her, she was a privileged hurricane of contradictions … Harvard student, daughter of a wealthy Asian family, proud owner of a car she didn’t really need and a conscience she couldn’t always quiet. Volunteering was her way of negotiating with the universe, a peace treaty between guilt and good intentions.

She had been doing this for weeks now, turning up every Saturday at dawn, sleeves rolled, sneakers splattered with broth, trying to feel like she was part of something pure.

And that was when she saw her.

Ling.

Standing at the other end of the kitchen in a cream sweater and jeans, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair pulled back neatly, laughing softly with one of the older volunteers. She didn’t look like she belonged in this place. She looked like she had stepped out of a winter magazine and accidentally wandered into a food shelter. Yet she was holding a ladle with perfect ease, tasting the soup like a chef on television, utterly unbothered by the noise around her.

Orm blinked, leaned slightly to the side, and nearly sliced her finger off.

“Are you following me?” she asked, half joking, half serious, as she wiped her hands on a towel and walked over. Her tone was mock-suspicious, her brow raised dramatically.

Ling looked up, startled at first, then amused. “You are one to ask that question,” she replied, her voice calm and melodic. “I am fairly certain you are the one following me.”

Orm clutched her chest in exaggerated offense. “Excuse me, I’ve been volunteering here for weeks, and I’ve never seen you once.”

“I’ve been coming here for years,” Ling said, smiling as she stirred the pot. “I head the nonprofit that funds this kitchen. Technically, you work for me.”

Orm blinked. “You what?”

Ling tilted her head, her tone measured but warm. “I founded it three years ago. My wife, Miu, is a big-shot attorney, and her firm needed a good public image. That’s how the nonprofit came to light.”

There it was. Wife. The word struck Orm like a paper cut she didn’t expect. Small. Sharp. Immediate.

She forced a grin, her voice coming out too quickly. “Miu? Like Miu Miu, the brand?”

The joke landed too loud in the quiet hum of the kitchen. The air hesitated for a second, and Orm cursed herself internally. Smooth, Orm. Really smooth.

But then Ling laughed.

It was not a polite laugh or a reserved one, but a soft, radiant sound that lit up the entire room. She laughed so hard she had to press a hand to her chest, her eyes glistening with amusement.

“Yes,” she managed between giggles, “like the brand.”

The sound of that laughter did something to Orm’s insides she could not name. It filled her chest in a way that felt reckless and familiar all at once, and before she knew it, she was grinning helplessly.

“Well,” Orm said, trying to recover some composure, “tell your wife her name is very high fashion.”

“I’ll pass that along,” Ling replied, still smiling, stirring the soup as if this was the most natural conversation in the world.

Orm leaned against the counter, pretending to inspect the diced carrots, though she was really watching Ling from the corner of her eye. “So, you come here often, Miss Nonprofit?”

Ling arched an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth curving. “Every Saturday.”

“Then I’m surprised I haven’t seen you before,” Orm said, feigning casual curiosity.

“Perhaps,” Ling said lightly, “you were too busy dicing vegetables dramatically.”

Orm laughed, glancing down at the uneven pile she had made. “Touché.”

Ling’s lips softened into a quiet smile before she turned back to the pot. The air between them carried an ease that felt new but dangerous, like the beginning of something neither of them could name yet. And Orm, messy and unguarded, felt herself start to fall for the woman with the calm hands and the laugh that made everything else fade into background noise.

The last of the pots had been washed, and the kitchen finally began to exhale. The noise softened into the steady hum of the dishwasher; the smell of garlic and detergent lingered like the memory of warmth. Ling stood by the sink, sleeves rolled up, her hands under the stream of water. She moved with that same quiet grace that made even exhaustion look elegant.

Orm lingered near the door, pretending to check her phone, pretending she wasn’t waiting for something she couldn’t name.

Steam curled upward from the sink, fogging the small window beside Ling. The light caught her face, softening her edges until she looked like a painting that had learned to breathe. A few strands of hair had come loose from her bun, falling against her neck in perfect imperfection. Orm, who was rarely at a loss for words, found herself completely without them.

Ling spoke first, her voice calm and low.
“Do you want to get a cup of coffee?”

Orm’s head snapped up. “Like right now?”

Ling turned, drying her hands on a towel. Her expression was composed, but her eyes held that flicker of amusement that made Orm’s chest tighten.
“No,” she said lightly. “Two weeks from now, dork.”

Orm blinked once, then laughed a quick, startled sound that drew glances from the remaining volunteers. “Good. Because I’m emotionally unavailable until approximately now.”

Ling shook her head, smiling in that quiet, unhurried way of hers. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I get that a lot,” Orm replied. “Mostly from people who eventually come around.”

“I’m sure they do,” Ling murmured, folding the towel with unnecessary precision.

“Oh, they do,” Orm said, stepping closer to the counter. “Usually right before they run away.”

Ling looked up at her, the edge of a laugh escaping her lips. “Then I suppose I’m in trouble.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Orm said, grinning.

They left together a few minutes later. Outside, the city was awake in that slow lazy Saturday way, coffee carts steaming on corners, pigeons starting small arguments over crumbs, the air sharp enough to sting. Orm shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, half to keep warm, half to keep from gesturing too wildly. Ling walked beside her, unhurried, her scarf looped neatly at her throat.

“You’re quiet outside,” Ling said after a moment.

“That’s because the onions aren’t bullying me anymore,” Orm answered. “Don’t get used to it. I’m normally very loud.”

“I noticed.”

Orm tilted her head. “You noticed me.”

“It would be difficult not to,” Ling said simply. “You chop vegetables like you’re settling an old score.”

“That’s because I am. Those vegetables owe me for all the tears.”

Ling laughed softly, and the sound carried in the cold air like a small spark.

They reached the café … a narrow little place on the corner, all brass light and fogged windows. The bell above the door chimed as Ling held it open for her. Inside, the air smelled of espresso and something sweet baking in the back. The barista greeted Ling by name.

“So, you’re a regular,” Orm said as they joined the short line.

“Every Saturday,” Ling replied. “After the shelter.”

Orm nodded, pretending this was a normal conversation and not the most important one of her week. “Guess I’ve been missing the post-soup networking session.”

“Networking?”

“With the universe,” Orm said solemnly. “Trying to build rapport.”

“That explains a lot.”

Ling ordered two coffees without asking what Orm wanted. When they sat by the window, the glass fogged gently between them and the street. The city outside blurred into motion. Inside, everything felt slower.

“So, you really founded that nonprofit?” Orm asked, blowing lightly on her drink.

Ling nodded, eyes still on the dark liquid in her cup. “Three years ago. My wife and I started it together. She -”

“Ah, enough about the wife,” Orm interrupted, her tone light but edged with impatience. “Wife this, wife that. I don’t want you to talk about your wife. I want you to talk about you. What do you do besides teaching and saving the world on weekends? What do you actually like? Your hobbies, your favorite color, your favorite time of day…everything and nothing.”

Ling looked up, startled, as if no one had ever interrupted her rehearsed answers before. Her lips parted slightly, the faintest trace of surprise softening her usually composed face. “You want to know that?”

Orm nodded, chin resting in her palm. “Yes. The woman, not the résumé.”

For a moment Ling seemed unsure of what to do with the question. She blinked once, twice, then set her cup down carefully. “I like the color green,” she said at last. “The dark kind, the one you see in forests after rain. I like quiet evenings. I collect postcards from cities I’ve never been to. I hate being late. And I like jasmine, especially at night.”

Orm smiled, eyes bright with genuine curiosity. “That’s unexpectedly romantic for someone who teaches law.”

Ling laughed softly, the sound slipping out before she could hold it back. “Postcards make the world feel a little smaller. They remind me there’s more to see than the same classrooms and courtrooms.”

“Do you ever want to go?” Orm asked.

Ling tilted her head. “Go where?”

“Everywhere,” Orm said simply. “To all the places on your postcards.”

Ling regarded her quietly, a trace of amusement flickering in her eyes. “You ask dangerous questions for a student.”

“Then stop answering like a professor,” Orm replied, her tone warm, teasing, yet sincere enough to make Ling look away for a second.

The corner of Ling’s mouth curved. “We are still professor and student, you know.”

“Technically,” Orm said. “But right now we’re two people having coffee. Unless this café doubles as a classroom, in which case I’m in trouble for not taking notes.”

Ling shook her head, smiling despite herself. “You really are unfiltered.”

“I prefer the word authentic.”

“I prefer the word professional,” Ling said, though her voice had softened.

“Professional,” Orm repeated. “That’s one way to say emotionally unavailable.”

Ling laughed again, quieter this time, her cheeks flushed just enough to betray her. “You shouldn’t talk like that to your professor.”

“Then stop looking at me like that,” Orm said before she could stop herself.

The air between them shifted. Ling froze for half a heartbeat, her eyes widening, a faint crimson rising to her face. She recovered quickly, straightening in her seat, fingers tightening around her cup. “I’m not looking at you in any particular way,” she said, though the words trembled ever so slightly.

Orm smiled, leaning back. “Good. Because I might start thinking you like me.”

Ling let out a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “You are impossible.”

“And yet,” Orm said softly, “you’re still here.”

For a long moment Ling didn’t answer. The steam from the coffee rose between them, curling like a secret neither wanted to name. Outside, the world moved on ,cars passing, people rushing, a siren echoing somewhere far away but inside, time held its breath.

Ling finally set her cup down and looked at Orm, her expression unreadable. “You shouldn’t ask questions like that,” she said gently.

“Why not?”

“Because I might start answering them,” she whispered.

Orm’s smile returned, slower now, tender. “That’s kind of the point, Professor.”

Ling looked away, but the faint color on her cheeks gave her away. For the first time in a very long while, she felt the fragile thrill of being seen not as a title, not as someone’s wife, but as herself. And that, she realized, was far more dangerous than anything else that morning.

When they finally stepped out of the café, the air had shifted. The morning had ripened into a pale, golden noon that caught on the edges of the shop windows and made the pavement glow faintly. The wind, still carrying the trace of roasted coffee and city dust, brushed against them as they walked side by side. Neither spoke for a while. The quiet between them was not heavy, but full, like a string pulled just tight enough to hum.

Ling wrapped her scarf around her neck with slow precision, as though the act itself could summon her composure back. The faint color that had risen in her cheeks during their conversation still lingered, and she tried to will it away. She was a woman built on restraint, the sort who rarely stumbled, and yet this student this infuriating, bright, unpredictable student had a way of disarming her with nothing but a smile.

Orm, on the other hand, walked with an easy rhythm, her hands buried in her coat pockets, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. Every few steps she glanced sideways, just to catch the way Ling’s hair moved in the wind, or how her brow furrowed slightly when she was deep in thought. It amused her that someone so perfectly composed could also look so uncertain.

“You walk fast for someone who insists on being calm,” Orm said lightly, her tone teasing but soft enough to be kind.

Ling exhaled through a quiet laugh and slowed her pace. “Old habit,” she said. “I forget people can’t keep up sometimes.”

“I can keep up,” Orm replied. “I’m just pacing myself so you don’t trip trying to look graceful.”

That earned her another laugh, quick and real this time. It made Ling tilt her head down as though to hide it, but Orm saw the way her eyes brightened. She decided she liked that laugh too much to stop provoking it.

They reached the corner where the street opened into a small park, a patch of bare trees and stone benches where the wind carried the faint smell of damp leaves. Ling paused there, half turning toward her, as if trying to decide whether to keep walking or end the moment before it wandered too far. Orm stopped beside her, the distance between them close enough for the chill of Ling’s perfume to linger in the air.

“You really shouldn’t say things like that,” Ling said at last, her tone gentler than her words.

“Like what?” Orm asked, her eyes fixed on her.

“Things that sound like you mean them,” Ling said quietly.

“I do mean them,” Orm answered, not smiling this time. The playfulness had drained into something steadier, something sincere enough to make Ling look away.

Ling’s fingers tightened around the edge of her scarf. She tried to gather the remnants of her poise, but the warmth of Orm’s gaze seemed to undo every careful layer she had built.

“You know this can’t be what you think it is,” she said, her voice low, steadying itself as if by habit. “You are my student.” She paused, the words catching slightly in her throat before she added, quieter still, “And I’m married.”

The admission hung between them like a stone dropped in still water, ripples spreading silently through the air.

Orm looked at her for a long time. The wind had picked up, pulling at her coat, tossing a few strands of hair across her face, but she didn’t move. Her expression softened, all the mischief fading into something gentler, something dangerously sincere.

“I know,” she said. “You’ve mentioned her.”

Ling’s eyes flickered with relief, guilt, something else too complex to name. “Then you understand,” she said softly. “This isn’t … whatever this is ... it can’t exist.”

Orm smiled faintly, not the kind that mocked, but the kind that ached. “I’m not asking it to,” she said. “I’m just asking you to stop talking like you’re made of stone.”

Ling turned her gaze toward the street. The winter light slid along her face, pale and clean, and for a moment she looked younger, almost fragile beneath the weight of her own control. “I’m not made of stone,” she said. “I just know how to stay standing.”

Orm took a slow step closer, enough for their breath to mingle in the cold air. “Then let me stand beside you,” she said quietly.

Ling closed her eyes for a moment, as if the words themselves were too close, too heavy. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“Maybe not,” Orm said. “But I know how you look when you laugh, and I know how you fall silent when you’re trying not to feel something. I know there’s more to you than your title, your composure, or the ring on your hand.”

Ling’s head lifted slightly, her eyes catching the light, sharp and uncertain. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I shouldn’t,” Orm agreed. “But you should hear them anyway.”

Ling drew in a long breath, the cold air stinging against her throat. She wanted to say something ..anything, that would restore the distance between them, rebuild the boundaries that were already beginning to crumble. But the words wouldn’t come. The truth was simpler, smaller, and infinitely more dangerous: she didn’t want to stop hearing Orm’s voice.

“I love my wife,” she said at last, and though the words were true, her voice trembled slightly.

“I believe you,” Orm said softly. “That doesn’t mean you have to disappear behind her.”

Ling looked at her sharply, but Orm didn’t flinch. She simply held her gaze, steady and calm, the kind of courage that made denial feel impossible.

“You think you know me,” Ling said.

“I don’t,” Orm admitted. “That’s what I want…to know you. The parts no one else asks about. The parts you never talk about because everyone already decided who you’re supposed to be.”

Ling exhaled, the air escaping her like something long held. “You make everything sound simple.”

“Maybe it is,” Orm said. “You talk. I listen. We drink terrible coffee and pretend the world isn’t watching.”

Ling’s lips curved, not quite a smile, but close. “You are insufferable.”

“And yet you’re still standing here,” Orm murmured.

For a moment, neither of them moved. The sound of the city dimmed around them …the low rumble of traffic, the distant whistle of a train, the quiet murmur of strangers passing by. The world seemed to shrink until it was only them, standing too close in a patch of weak sunlight, fighting against something neither had the strength to name.

Ling finally stepped back, just slightly, enough to breathe. Her voice, when it came, was calm again but softer, almost tender. “Go home, Orm.”

Orm nodded slowly. “If I go, will you still think about me?”

Ling hesitated. Her mouth opened as if to answer, but no sound came. She turned away before the silence could betray her.

“I’ll see you in class on Monday,” she said instead, the words breaking like glass under her breath.

Orm watched her cross the street, the rhythm of her steps too deliberate, too careful. The gold band on her finger caught the sunlight, glinting like a boundary drawn by fate itself.

And yet, as Ling disappeared into the stream of people, Orm knew by the smallest tilt of her head before she vanished that she would think about her. Maybe only for a moment, maybe for the rest of the day, but long enough for the quiet to stop feeling like safety.

The thought made Orm smile, faint and foolish, as the wind curled between the buildings and carried the warmth of Ling’s voice back to her one last time.

Chapter Text

Orm’s POV:

Orm had hardly slept after the gala yesterday. The night had stretched endlessly, every minute thick with the images she could not erase: Ling in her wife’s arms, Ling smiling that calm, unreadable smile, Ling swaying under the chandeliers while another woman held her close. The sight had left a hollow ache in her chest, something sharp and unyielding, like a thorn she could not pull out. She had tossed in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling while the city outside drifted into silence. Even when exhaustion finally dragged her under, her dreams were restless and unkind, full of voices that sounded like Ling’s.

She woke late, the sunlight already spilling across the sheets in pale ribbons. Her head throbbed faintly. The air in her apartment felt heavy, as though the night before had followed her home. When her phone began to buzz against the nightstand, she groaned, half turning, her mind still thick with sleep. She expected it to be a work notification, or perhaps a message from Lorena about the merger schedule. Instead, when she squinted at the screen, her breath caught.

Ling:
hi
are you awake?
can you meet me?

For a moment Orm just stared, her pulse roaring in her ears. The words felt unreal, too sudden, too dangerous to belong to morning light. She sat upright, running a hand through her hair, trying to slow the racing of her heart. Her mind spun with possibilities: anger, closure, confession. But she didn’t let herself hesitate. She typed back before her nerves could interfere.

Orm:
yes
where do you want to meet?

Her thumb lingered over the screen as if Ling’s reply will come faster. She didn’t have to wait long.

Ling:
anywhere…
discreet

Orm’s heart stumbled. The word itself seemed to hum. Discreet. It was the kind of word that belonged to secrets, to things whispered against skin, to memories that shouldn’t be shared but always were. She chewed the inside of her cheek, her brain racing like an overworked engine, flipping through mental maps of Boston, trying to find a place that matched what Ling was asking for. Some quiet corner café, a bookstore, the old riverside where no one ever went. Before she could decide, the phone vibrated again.

Ling:
is your apartment ok?

Orm froze. The air left her lungs in one slow exhale. Her apartment. The very place where years of their history still lived like ghosts. She looked around the room now, the half-empty glass on her nightstand, the crumpled sheets that still smelled faintly of perfume and sleeplessness, the framed photographs stacked carelessly on the dresser, one of them showing a sky from a trip she once took with Ling.

Could she really let her come here? The thought flooded her with a thousand old sensations: the warmth of Ling’s hand tracing her spine, the sound of her laughter echoing down the hall, the nights they had fought until both were crying, only to find peace tangled together on that very couch. Every wall, every shadow, remembered her.

She should have said no. She should have typed something safe, something rational. But her heart, foolish and restless, reached for the one truth it could still recognize. She typed slowly, her fingers trembling just enough to betray her.

Orm:
yes, always

The message sent with a soft click. For a few seconds, the phone’s glow was the only light in the room. Orm sat back against the pillows, her chest tightening with a feeling she couldn’t name. The city outside was waking up, distant traffic, a car door slamming, a dog barking somewhere below, but inside, everything felt suspended, waiting for a knock that hadn’t yet come.

She closed her eyes and whispered Ling’s name once under her breath, as though the sound alone might prepare her for what was coming.

Orm moved through the apartment like a woman possessed, the phone still warm in her hand and her heart drumming a rhythm she could neither slow nor ignore. The words is your apartment ok echoed in her mind as though the message had carved itself into the air. She should have said no, she should have chosen anywhere else, a place that did not know Ling’s laughter or the shape of her shadow. But now there was no turning back.

She pulled her hair into a loose knot and began to clean. The apartment was not filthy, but it bore the marks of someone who had been living on autopilot, half-empty takeout boxes stacked on the counter, a pile of laundry that had never quite made it to the closet, coffee mugs left behind like small ghosts of sleepless nights. She gathered the boxes and tossed them away, the sharp sound of plastic and paper against the trash bin breaking the silence. She opened the windows to let in air, the Boston chill biting her fingers as she leaned out to shake off the staleness of last night.

When the apartment finally began to resemble something livable, she turned to the kitchen. Her body moved by instinct, muscle memory reaching back to a time when Sunday mornings had meant shared breakfasts and stolen kisses. She cracked eggs into a bowl, whisking them gently, the familiar scent of butter rising as the pan warmed. She chopped scallions with mechanical precision and added a hint of chili flakes…Ling always liked her omelets to have a little heat.

Next came the buldak, the fiery Korean chicken that had once been their ritual on cold days. Orm still remembered Ling leaning against the counter years ago, tasting the sauce with a wooden spoon and declaring that no one in Boston made it as well as she did. She remembered the sound of Ling’s laugh when Orm burned her tongue trying to steal a bite too soon. Now, the sizzling of the pan filled the silence like a memory resurrected.

She brewed coffee last, the aroma spilling through the apartment in slow curls of warmth. The smell alone almost felt like an invocation, a bridge between then and now. If anyone walked in, they might have thought this was some quiet, domestic morning, a scene from a bed and breakfast, gentle and ordinary. But nothing about it was ordinary. Not the trembling in Orm’s hands, not the pulse in her throat, not the way her stomach twisted with both anticipation and dread. This was the morning she would see Ling again, not as a memory, not as a ghost, but as the woman who had once been her entire world.

She moved to the living room, straightening things that didn’t need straightening. She fluffed the pillows…fluffed the pillows, for God’s sake, she thought bitterly, laughing under her breath. She wiped the table twice, adjusted the curtains, even lit a candle before quickly blowing it out when she realized how desperate that must look. By the time the knock came, her heart had already climbed into her throat.

The sound was soft but unmistakable. She stood there for a moment, frozen, every nerve in her body caught between wanting to run to the door and wanting to disappear entirely. When she finally opened it, Ling was standing there, wrapped in a long camel coat, her hair loose, her expression unreadable.

For a heartbeat, neither spoke. The morning light spilled across Ling’s face, soft and unflinching, making her look almost ethereal. She stepped inside quietly, the faint click of her heels against the hardwood the only sound in the room. The air between them was thick, alive with something that used to be effortless but now felt unbearable.

Orm watched as Ling looked around, her gaze catching on the little details…the cleaned counter, the still-steaming coffee, the plate of omelets and chicken on the table. There was a flicker of recognition there, something that softened her face for a moment before it vanished behind composure.

“You cleaned,” Ling said finally, her voice low and steady.

Orm forced a small smile. “You hate clutter.”

Ling’s eyes lingered on her for a moment longer, then she nodded, setting her bag on the table. The silence that followed was not peaceful; it hummed like tension stretched too tight.

They sat eventually, though even that felt strange. Ling chose the couch, and Orm followed, but they sat at opposite ends as though distance might keep them from falling back into old habits. The space between them felt enormous, foreign. Once, there had been no gap at all…Ling would have walked straight in, pulled Orm into her arms, kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, until laughter replaced words. Once, she would have leaned over and tasted the coffee from Orm’s cup, teasing her about how strong she brewed it. Now, they sat still, careful, their hands folded neatly in their laps like strangers who had accidentally stumbled into each other’s past.

The clock ticked faintly. The city outside went on as if nothing monumental was happening in this small apartment.

Ling looked down at her hands, her wedding ring catching a glint of light. Orm’s eyes followed the movement before she could stop herself. Ling noticed. Her fingers curled, as if to hide it.

“What are you thinking, Ling?” Orm asked softly, leaning forward just enough to catch her expression. “Tell me.”

Ling inhaled sharply, the air trembling in her throat before she finally spoke. “I was moving on from you, Orm,” she said, her voice trembling as though every word scraped against something raw. “I was heartbroken, completely broken, and I didn’t know what to do with myself when you left. I didn’t eat for days. Every time I walked past the coffee shop we used to go to, I crossed the street. I avoided the park, the river, every corner of this city that reminded me of you.”

She stopped, pressing her fingers against her mouth as if she could hold the words back, but they kept spilling out. “I took therapy, Orm. I started working on projects that would wear me out so I wouldn’t have to think. I threw myself into things that hurt my body because at least that pain I could understand. Little by little, I built myself back. I started laughing again, smiling again, breathing again. It took everything I had to accept that you were not coming back.”

Her voice broke then, soft but sharp, the way glass sounds when it cracks. “And you are here now,” she whispered, tears finally falling freely down her cheeks. “You are sitting here in front of me, and I don’t know if I can handle it. I don’t know if I can stay in the same city as you and pretend I’m fine. You ruined this city for me, Orm. I was born here, raised here, and you ruined it for me.”

Orm’s eyes stung, the reflection of Ling’s tears shimmering like something too painful to bear. She wanted to reach out, to touch her, to wipe the tears away, but her hands stayed where they were, locked in stillness.

Ling’s voice grew louder, trembling with the kind of grief that came from too many years of silence. “You ruined me. You ruined our love, our life, everything we could have been. You ruined every ounce of the future we imagined, and I had to pick up all the pieces while you were in god knows where, starting over like none of it mattered.”

Her words filled the room, raw and unfiltered, wrapping around them like smoke. Orm’s chest tightened until it hurt to breathe. This …this was what she had feared most. Not Ling’s anger, not her distance, but the proof that she had truly suffered, that her absence had carved wounds deeper than time could heal.

Orm swallowed hard, her throat dry, her voice a whisper when she finally spoke. “Ling…” It was the only word she could manage, small and broken, carrying all the guilt and longing that had never left her.

Ling looked at her then, her eyes red, her face streaked with tears. “You left me when I still loved you,” she said quietly, the words shattering something inside both of them. “And now you’re here, and I don’t even know what to feel.”

Orm couldn’t look away. Every part of her wanted to cross the space between them, to hold her the way she used to, to say all the things she had swallowed for years. But the distance remained, thick and merciless.

“Can you at least give me the grace to tell me why you actually left, Orm?” she asked, her tone low, furious, broken in a way that made Orm’s chest ache. “Why you turned your back on us? Why you left me when we had everything planned? Why you made me feel like a fool when I told my wife that I was in love with someone else, someone who was my world, only to find her gone from this very apartment that we made ours for three years?”

Her voice cracked then, the anger cutting through the quiet like a storm breaking through still air. “You turned your back on what we built. You are a coward, Orm.”

The words hung there, violent and true.

Orm sat still, her fingers curled into her palms so tightly her knuckles had gone white. She didn’t look away. She didn’t defend herself. She let it all land. Every word, every accusation, every piece of Ling’s grief…she took it all because she deserved it. Because it was hers.

For a long moment, the only sound was the quiet rhythm of Ling’s breathing, uneven and angry, and the distant hum of the city through the window. The coffee on the table had gone cold, the air between them thick with the ghost of what they once were.

Finally, Orm spoke. Her voice was quiet, almost too soft to hear. “I can’t, Ling,” she said, the words trembling out of her like a confession she didn’t want to make.

Ling blinked, her face hardening in disbelief. “You can’t what?”

Orm looked at her, eyes dark and hollow, her lips barely moving. “I just can’t.”

That was all she said. No reason. No justification. Just that simple, final truth that carried every unsaid thing inside it .. the fear, the guilt, the shame, the choice she couldn’t take back.

Ling stared at her for a long time, her breath catching somewhere between fury and heartbreak. Her eyes searched Orm’s face for something, an answer, an apology, anything, but Orm didn’t give her one. She simply sat there, silent, still, her expression calm in the way only devastation could make it.

The silence was unbearable. Ling stood abruptly, wiping at her face with the back of her hand as if to erase the tears that had already dried. She turned toward the window, her shoulders rising and falling in heavy breaths.

“You can’t,” she repeated softly, almost to herself. “That’s it? After everything we were, that’s all you have to say?”

Orm’s throat tightened, but she said nothing. Words felt useless now.

Ling let out a small, bitter laugh, the kind that sounded more like pain than amusement. “You left without a goodbye, without a reason, without a word. And now you come back, and I’m still here …still begging for something you refuse to give.”

Her voice broke again, and she turned, her eyes glistening. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to be abandoned by the person who promised she never would?”

Orm closed her eyes. The answer was yes. Every night since she left.

But she didn’t say that either.

Ling watched her, the silence stretching until it became unbearable, until she could no longer stand the sight of the woman who had once been her home. She picked up her coat from the arm of the couch and held it close to her chest.

“You always said I made you brave,” she whispered, her voice barely holding together. “But you’re the one who taught me how easy it is to be afraid.”

She turned toward the door, but her steps faltered halfway, her fingers brushing against the frame where she had once pinned their first photograph together.

Behind her, Orm still sat on the couch, unmoving, her hands folded, her eyes on the spot Ling had just vacated. The apartment was quiet again, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was the quiet of aftermath, of all the things that could no longer be taken back.

When the door finally clicked shut, Orm exhaled for the first time in what felt like years. The sound was broken, almost human, almost prayer.

She whispered into the emptiness, her voice small and trembling. “I just couldn’t tell you, Ling… not without finding answers.”

The words slipped into the quiet like a confession too late to matter, fragile and unfinished, hanging in the air long after her voice faded.

Ling’s POV:

Ling had never believed silence could have a sound until that morning. It rang in her ears long after she left Orm’s apartment, a hollow, aching silence that clung to her like smoke. The city outside was awake, cars, voices, the distant hum of morning traffic, but none of it reached her. The world felt muffled, like she was standing underwater, watching life move on without her.

Her hands shook as she slid into the driver’s seat. She didn’t start the car right away. She sat there with her fingers gripping the wheel, staring at the street ahead, eyes burning with tears that refused to fall. Her reflection in the rearview mirror looked like a stranger, tired, pale, the lipstick faintly smudged.

She thought of how easily it had all happened again. One message. One impulsive decision. One walk up to that familiar door she had sworn she would never touch again. And then Orm, there she was, standing in the same apartment, her hair still messy in that infuriatingly beautiful way, her voice still soft enough to undo Ling’s years of practiced restraint.

Ling had gone there thinking she could be composed. Mature. Measured. She had imagined they would talk like adults, maybe even find some closure. But the moment she saw her, every fragile piece of calm shattered. Because it was never just about closure. It was never just about answers. It was about the ache that hadn’t left in two years, the one she had buried under work and therapy and her wife’s steady, patient love.

She had promised herself she was over her. God, she had even said it aloud once, at therapy, in front of the mirror when she needed to sound convinced. But Orm’s face had undone it all in seconds. The way she looked at her, quiet and guilty and heartbreakingly familiar, had pulled her back to everything she had fought to forget.

She could still feel it. The air between them. The stillness that came before her anger broke. The way Orm sat there, taking every word, every wound, like she deserved them. Maybe she did. But that didn’t make it hurt less.

Ling had wanted to shake her. To scream until Orm gave her something real, anything real. But all she got was that single, impossible sentence. I can’t.

She hated those words. They meant nothing. They meant everything. They meant Orm had chosen the same silence that once tore them apart.

By the time the first tear fell, Ling’s breath came out in a soft, uneven tremor. She wiped it quickly, but another followed, and another. Her hand gripped the steering wheel harder.

“I loved you,” she whispered, her voice barely audible even to herself. “I still do, damn you.”

She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead to the steering wheel, her wedding ring cool against her skin. She had thought she was past the stage of crying over Orm. She had thought she was stronger now, more contained. But grief had a cruel way of pretending to heal while waiting quietly for the right moment to open again.

In her mind, she saw flashes, the mornings in that same apartment when Orm would bring her coffee in bed, the sound of their laughter tangled with sunlight, the nights they would argue until exhaustion turned into affection. She remembered the way Orm used to hold her afterward, whispering apologies against her shoulder until Ling fell asleep believing they were invincible.

She also remembered the morning when everything changed. No note. No reason. Just the smell of Orm’s perfume still hanging in the air and the sound of her own heart breaking.

That was the day everything she believed about love changed.

Ling drew a long, shaking breath. She reached for her phone, almost without thinking. Her thumb hovered over Orm’s name, glowing faintly in her recent messages. For a moment she hesitated, unsure if she wanted to see anything at all. Then the screen lit up with a new notification.

I am so sorry, Ling.

Just that. Five words. Simple, quiet, cruel in their softness.

Ling’s breath caught in her throat. Her fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles turned white. Sorry. The word looked small on the screen, almost fragile, but it carried the weight of every sleepless night, every unanswered question, every empty morning she had spent learning how to breathe without her.

She wanted to laugh. To throw the phone across the seat and scream that sorry was too late, too hollow, too small to hold everything that had broken between them. But instead, her vision blurred. A tear slipped free, landing on the screen, distorting the message into something almost poetic, almost unbearable.

Her chest heaved once before she forced herself to breathe again. “Sorry?” she whispered to no one. The word came out trembling, disbelieving. “You left me and now you’re sorry?”

She swiped at her tears, angry at herself for still caring, angry that five words could still undo her so completely.

Ling stared at the screen until it dimmed, until her reflection looked back at her through the black glass , eyes swollen, lips trembling, a woman caught between love and the ruins it left behind.

She turned the phone over, placing it face down on the seat beside her, as though that could silence the ache that pulsed inside her chest. She started the car. The engine hummed to life, low and steady, but her hands still shook as they gripped the wheel.

She wanted to drive anywhere that wasn’t here. Anywhere that didn’t smell like her. But every road in Boston carried Orm’s shadow now. Every street corner still whispered her name. Orm had ruined this city for her. Ruined coffee shops, parks, even the damn Charles River.

Ling laughed once, a broken, bitter sound that barely made it past her lips.

She had rebuilt her life once. She had stitched herself together with the fragile threads of forgiveness, therapy, and work. She had made peace with her marriage, with the woman who had held her hand through heartbreak she never fully explained. She had moved on, at least that’s what she told herself.

And yet, one text. One sight of Orm’s face. One trembling whisper in that same apartment. It was all it took to unravel her again.

As the car merged into traffic, Ling’s fingers brushed the ring on her hand. She thought of Miu waiting at home, her calm voice, her kindness, her unwavering love. Guilt pressed heavy against her chest, but beneath it was something darker…something that felt like longing’s last breath.

Ling exhaled shakily and kept driving, her vision swimming through tears she no longer tried to hide. The city blurred past her, cruel and familiar, every building a witness to the story she wished she could forget.

In her chest, love still burned, quiet and stubborn, refusing to die even when it had nowhere left to go

The house was quiet when Ling returned, the kind of quiet that made her footsteps sound too loud against the polished floors. Afternoon light streamed softly through the tall windows, catching on the framed photographs that lined the hallway … snapshots of vacations, charity galas, birthdays. A life carefully built, steady and respectable. A life that fit.

Ling paused in the doorway for a moment, her hand still on the keys, her breath uneven. The air smelled faintly of jasmine tea and paper, the familiar scent of Miu working from her home office. It was comforting, grounding, and yet it pressed against her like a weight she couldn’t hold.

Miu was inside, sitting at her desk with a neat stack of files before her, her glasses low on her nose, her focus calm and deliberate. She looked up when she heard Ling’s steps and smiled, the kind of soft, automatic smile that came from years of gentle understanding.

“You’re back early,” she said, her tone light, welcoming.

Ling tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She nodded once and set her bag on the nearby chair. The movement was too quiet, too deliberate. Miu noticed immediately.

“Come here,” she said, pushing her chair back slightly. Her voice was still calm, but there was a note of concern beneath it.

Ling hesitated for a moment, then walked over. The closer she got, the harder it became to hide the redness around her eyes. She had wiped away the tears in the car, but grief had a way of leaving its trace , swollen lids, trembling lips, a silence that carried more truth than words ever could.

Miu stood, reaching out instinctively. Her hand brushed Ling’s arm, gentle but searching. “What happened?” she asked softly.

Ling opened her mouth, but nothing came out at first. Her throat felt dry, her chest tight. She looked down at the floor, then finally managed to speak, her voice thin, uneven.

“I went somewhere,” she said quietly, “somewhere that reminded me of my past.”

The sentence hung in the air, small but heavy. Miu’s face changed almost imperceptibly …a flicker of pain, quickly hidden behind composure. Her lips parted slightly as if to speak, but she didn’t. The silence stretched, tender and raw.

Ling saw the shift, the faint sadness in Miu’s eyes, the way her shoulders dropped ever so slightly. It made something inside her twist. She reached out before she could think and whispered, “I am so sorry, Miu.”

Miu shook her head immediately, the reaction instinctive. “Don’t apologize,” she said softly, her voice steady but full of emotion. She stepped closer, wrapping her arms around Ling’s shoulders, holding her as though she could shield her from whatever ghost had followed her home.

Ling stiffened at first, then melted into the embrace. Her face pressed into Miu’s shoulder, the warmth both comforting and unbearable. Miu’s hands were gentle, stroking the back of her head, patient as always.

“It’s alright,” Miu murmured, the words more rhythm than sound. “You don’t have to explain. I know it still hurts sometimes.”

Ling closed her eyes. “It shouldn’t,” she whispered.

Miu pulled back just enough to look at her, her gaze soft but unflinching. “Pain doesn’t follow rules, Ling. It just lives quietly until it’s reminded it exists.”

The words struck something deep inside her. Miu, as always, had a way of saying things that landed softly and yet broke her open all the same.

Miu touched her cheek lightly, wiping away what was left of her tears. “Do you want to call Dr. Saralee again?” she asked gently. “You haven’t been in a while. Maybe talking would help.”

Ling hesitated. Therapy. The very word made her chest tighten. She remembered the sessions after Orm left … the way she had sat in that sterile room, hands clasped, speaking in half-truths about a love she couldn’t name. How she had learned to describe grief in clinical terms, as if that could make it smaller.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Maybe.”

Miu studied her face for a moment, her thumb still brushing her jaw in slow, thoughtful circles. “It doesn’t have to be now. Just… think about it,” she said. “You’ve carried too much alone for too long.”

Ling’s breath caught. She nodded faintly, guilt threading through her chest like smoke. “You don’t deserve this,” she said under her breath.

Miu smiled, small and sad. “I didn’t marry you because I expected you to be unbreakable. I married you because I wanted to be beside you, even when you were.”

The room went still again, filled with the quiet hum of Miu’s computer and the slow rhythm of their breathing. Ling leaned against her, letting her eyes close for a moment, letting herself be held. It wasn’t the same kind of love she had once known. It wasn’t wild or consuming. But it was kind. It was safe. And in that moment, it was all she could allow herself to have.

Outside, the day began to fade. Shadows stretched across the floor. Miu pressed a soft kiss to Ling’s temple before pulling away, returning to her desk with a look that was part affection, part worry. Ling sat on the couch by the window, her hands folded in her lap, her gaze distant.

She could still hear the echo of Orm’s voice somewhere deep in her mind. I can’t

Miu looked up from her papers after a while, her tone gentle. “Do you want tea?”

Ling nodded without looking away from the window. “Yes. Jasmine, please.”

Miu smiled faintly, moving toward the kitchen.

When she was gone, Ling let her head fall back, her eyes glistening under the fading light. The house was full of warmth, safety, love … but her heart still drifted somewhere else, to a place she could not return to.

And for the first time in years, she let herself wonder if she ever truly left.

*Flashback*

It was the Monday after the soup kitchen. The sky was a pale, washed-out blue, the kind that looked too quiet to belong to a city. Ling’s morning had started as it always did , coffee in the same mug, the same drive to campus, the same stack of case notes in her passenger seat … but something about the air felt different. Lighter. Restless.

She told herself it was nothing. A residual mood from the weekend, perhaps. But by the time she stepped into her office, she already knew she was lying to herself.

She had been thinking about her.

Orm.

The student with the ridiculous smile, the too-fast jokes, the eyes that caught every flicker of her expression like they were taking notes. Ling had spent the weekend trying not to replay that morning at the café, yet the memory kept looping through her mind .. the way Orm had leaned forward when she spoke, chin propped in her hand, listening like every word mattered. Like Ling mattered.

It unsettled her.

Miu had always been kind, always loving in that quiet, steady way that made Ling feel safe. But even in that safety, there were parts of her that had never been asked about  the small, unglamorous details, the habits and contradictions, the things that made her human instead of composed. Orm had wanted those things. She had wanted to know her favorite time of day, her color, her scent, the postcards she collected and the reasons she couldn’t throw them away.

And Ling, for reasons she refused to name, had wanted to answer.

She spent most of that Monday trying to keep busy. She graded papers that didn’t need grading, reorganized her bookshelves, even rewrote the week’s lecture notes twice. Yet between every paragraph, her mind kept wandering back to that ridiculous conversation.

When she entered her classroom that afternoon, she expected the thought of teaching to steady her, as it always did. But then she saw her.

Orm sat near the middle row, hair slightly tousled, a pen twirling between her fingers. She looked up as Ling walked in, and there it was … that spark of unfiltered joy, like seeing her was somehow the highlight of her day. It was too quick to be polite, too real to be professional.

Ling’s steps faltered for half a second before she caught herself.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” she said, her voice perfectly even.

Orm smiled, and the corner of Ling’s mouth almost betrayed her. Almost.

The lecture began. Ling spoke of ethics and argument, of the delicate balance between intent and consequence, but she could feel Orm’s attention like a touch. It wasn’t disruptive, but it was there, steady, deliberate. When their eyes met by accident halfway through the class, something inside her chest gave a quiet, traitorous flutter.

She hated that she noticed. She hated that she wanted to notice.

After class, Ling practically fled the room. Her notes were clutched against her chest like armor, her steps brisk and precise, as though she could outrun whatever it was that had begun to bloom inside her. She had spent years cultivating a life of control, a routine that left no room for chaos, no space for anything uncertain. And yet, one student, one afternoon, had unsettled it all with a single look.

She did not wait for anyone. Her words to the class had barely finished leaving her mouth before she was already out the door, heels echoing down the corridor. The air outside was cool, the faint scent of rain still clinging to the pavement. She exhaled as she reached her office, telling herself that distance was the only way to keep this from becoming something it was never meant to be.

Hours passed quietly. She buried herself in papers and lectures, red pens and deadlines, until her shoulders ached and the world beyond her desk felt far away. When she finally looked up, the windows had turned dark. The campus had emptied, leaving only the dim hum of fluorescent lights in the hallway and the occasional murmur of a janitor’s radio.

She gathered her things and locked the door. The building’s old walls carried the soft echo of her footsteps as she walked down the corridor. Outside, the streetlights cast pale halos across the stone path that led to the parking lot. The air had cooled, carrying that early winter bite that hinted at December’s edge.

Ling adjusted her coat, pulling the lapel close as she made her way toward her car. It was then, just past the final row of trees, that she saw movement near the lot. A figure hunched beside a car, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

Orm.

Her first instinct was to turn around, to let whatever misfortune was unfolding stay none of her business. But her heart had other plans, disobedient as always. Before she could talk herself out of it, her feet were already moving toward her.

“That giving you trouble?” Ling asked.

Orm startled so violently that she almost dropped her phone. She pressed a hand to her chest, her eyes wide. “The holy father,” she breathed out, half laughing, half gasping. “You have cat’s feet.”

Ling’s lips curved before she could stop them. The sight of Orm standing there under the yellow lamplight, hair disheveled, expression full of chaotic energy, was disarming in the worst way.

“And yes,” Orm said after catching her breath, pointing at the car. “Apparently fuel is a thing.”

Ling blinked, taken aback. “You ran out of gas?”

Orm gave a helpless shrug, her breath puffing in the cold air. “What can I say, I had a driver my whole life. The concept of self-sufficiency is new to me.”

A small laugh escaped Ling, quiet and unwilling. “Oh, so you’re filthy rich.”

“My parents are,” Orm replied, smug grin intact. “I’m just trying to catch up.”

Ling shook her head, amusement slipping through despite herself. “Do you need help?”

“Yes, a ride home would be divine,” Orm said, tilting her head, her tone exaggeratedly pleading.

Ling hesitated. The line between kindness and recklessness had never felt thinner.

“Come on,” Orm said softly. “I’m just a girl stranded on deserted Harvard roads.”

She even pouted. It was ridiculous. It was also heartbreakingly cute. Ling sighed, surrendering to the inevitability of it all. “God, fine, follow me.”

Orm grinned, triumphant. She grabbed her bag from the passenger seat, locked the car, and trotted after her like a puppy pretending to be nonchalant.

Ling’s car waited near the far end of the lot, its windows catching the light from the lampposts. Orm slid into the passenger seat with a small sigh of relief, already fiddling with the GPS. When Ling started the engine, Orm reached forward to enter her address, then hit save as Home - before Ling could stop her.

“Just in case,” she said, grinning.

“Stop being ridiculous,” Ling murmured, rolling her eyes.

“Hope this isn’t a trouble,” Orm added, glancing sideways.

“It’s fine,” Ling replied. “It’s on my way, actually.”

The car moved through the quiet campus streets, the road lit by amber lamps and the occasional passing bicycle. For a few minutes, neither spoke. The soft hum of the heater filled the silence.

Then Orm started.

“Do you ever think about your students outside class, Professor?” she asked, tone mischievous.

Ling gave her a look. “Not in the way you’re implying.”

“So, you did think of me,” Orm teased, crossing her legs.

Ling sighed. “You are impossible.”

Orm leaned her head against the seat, smiling. “I thought about you. After Saturday morning. You were stirring soup in my head. I had to tell myself to stop romanticizing soup.”

Ling pressed her lips together, fighting a smile. “You should work on your focus.”

“I tried,” Orm said seriously. “I even went on a date with my casebook. It was unfulfilling.”

Ling glanced at her briefly. “You’re being unhinged again.”

“It’s a gift,” Orm said, her eyes glinting with humor. She paused before adding, “Do you even know how hard it is to stop thinking about someone who drinks coffee like they’re meditating?”

Ling kept her eyes on the road. “I don’t drink coffee like I’m meditating.”

“You do,” Orm said. “You hold the cup like it’s fragile. I noticed.”

Ling’s breath caught. The sentence was harmless, but the intimacy in it wrapped around her like a whisper.

Orm continued, oblivious or pretending to be. “Do you always drive this slow, or are you making the night last longer?”

Ling finally laughed, a soft, reluctant sound that filled the car with a heartbeat. Orm grinned, victorious, basking in it.

By the time they reached Orm’s apartment building, the air between them had shifted. It was lighter, charged, strange. Orm unbuckled her seatbelt but didn’t move.

“Thank you for rescuing a damsel in distress,” she said.

Ling looked straight ahead. “Try not to run out of gas next time.”

“No promises,” Orm murmured, hand already on the door handle. Then she turned, her eyes catching the low light. “Ling,” she said softly.

Ling looked at her.

Orm smiled, small and real this time. “I’m glad you didn’t keep walking.”

Ling’s heart gave an involuntary tremor at the sound of it, that gentle sincerity woven through Orm’s voice. She watched her hand linger on the doorframe for a second longer than necessary, her breath forming small clouds in the cold air.

Orm hesitated before turning back toward her, the light from the streetlamp catching on her cheek.
“Do you want to come in for a drink?” she asked, almost too casually, as if the question wasn’t heavy with everything left unsaid.

Ling blinked. For a moment, she thought she had misheard her. A drink. It sounded so simple, so harmless. But the way Orm said it, quiet, careful, waiting, made the air between them shift.

Ling’s first instinct was to refuse. She could already feel the familiar tightening in her chest, that quiet alarm that came whenever she was close to crossing the boundaries she built so carefully. Yet as she looked at Orm, at the way her voice softened, at the way her hair framed her face, at the faint tremor in her breath, something in her refused to move.

“I shouldn’t,” Ling said, though the words came out softer than intended.

Orm smiled faintly, that small, knowing kind of smile that had already begun to undo her.
“Then don’t think of it as a drink,” she said. “Think of it as mercy. You rescued me, Professor. You deserve hydration.”

Ling almost laughed, a quiet sound that dissolved into the air between them. She tried again to say no, but her resolve faltered under the warmth in Orm’s gaze.

“Just one drink,” she murmured finally, as if saying it softly enough could make it less dangerous.

Orm’s grin returned, brighter now, but still gentle. “That’s all I was hoping for.”

The lobby doors closed behind them with a low hum. The building smelled faintly of dust and detergent, the kind of scent that lingers in old hallways. Orm led her in and out of the elevators, her shoes clicking softly against the steps, her hair falling loose as she moved. Ling followed in silence, her pulse too loud in her own ears.

When they reached the door, Orm muttered under her breath punching in the password in the digital lock pad. The sound made Ling smile despite the tension.

Inside, the apartment was decent, a couch buried under books, a pile of case files stacked near the window, the faint scent of coffee and old paper in the air. A single lamp burned on the side table, casting the room in a soft amber glow. It wasn’t the chaos Ling expected. It felt lived-in, warm, human.

Orm dropped her bag near the door and turned to her with an almost shy tilt of her head.
“Make yourself at home,” she said. “But not too much. I’m a law student, not a hostess.”

Ling sat on the edge of the couch, her coat still on, watching as Orm crossed to the small kitchen. The sound of a cabinet opening, the clink of glass against glass.

“What will it be?” Orm asked, her voice floating from the other room. “Wine? Tea? A questionable mix of both?”

“Tea,” Ling said after a moment. “It’s late.”

Orm’s laugh carried softly. “You’re always so proper.”

“Someone has to be,” Ling replied, but her voice lacked its usual firmness.

Orm appeared again, two cups in hand, the steam curling upward between them. She handed one to Ling and sat down beside her, closer than necessary. The couch dipped under the weight, their shoulders brushing just slightly, too brief to be intentional, too long to be innocent.

For a while, neither spoke. The only sound was the faint hum of the city outside, the rhythm of cars somewhere in the distance. Ling traced the rim of her cup, feeling the warmth seep through her fingers.

Orm broke the silence first.
“I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Ling said quietly.

“But you did,” Orm replied, her tone light but her eyes unflinching. “And I’m glad.”

Ling turned to her, about to speak, but the words tangled in her throat. There it was again, that dangerous pull, the soft gravity of her presence. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. Orm’s face was close now, her eyes reflecting the same hesitation, the same quiet ache.

“This is a bad idea,” Ling said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Orm smiled, almost sadly. “Maybe. But some bad ideas feel like mercy.”

The room seemed too still. The light from the lamp flickered slightly, the air thickening with something neither of them dared to name.

Ling looked down at her cup, then at her own reflection in the tea, calm on the surface, trembling underneath.

“I really like you, Ling,” Orm said softly. “And I want to know you better… if you let me.”

Ling’s head lifted slowly. “You’re asking for dangerous things, Orm,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m your professor. And even worse, I’m married.”

Orm’s expression didn’t falter. “Don’t you think I know that?” she said quietly. “But since the day I saw you, I can’t stop feeling that this is something else. You’re something else.”

Ling’s breath caught. There was no arrogance in Orm’s voice, no game, only the bare truth of someone speaking what they could no longer hide.

No one had ever spoken of her like that. Not even Miu.

Ling wanted to look away, to stop the tremor in her chest, but Orm’s eyes were steady, unblinking, full of something that terrified her because it was so familiar.

“I know you feel it too,” Orm said, her gaze unwavering. But then her eyes flicked downward, just for a second, toward Ling’s mouth.

The gesture was small, but it set fire to the air between them.

Ling tried to speak, to reason, to rebuild the wall she had so carefully constructed, but words would not come.

“This isn’t right,” she managed, her voice thin.

Orm stepped closer, slow enough for Ling to stop her if she wanted to. “Then tell me to stop,” she whispered.

Ling didn’t move.

The silence stretched, filling the room until it felt alive. The lamp hummed faintly, the city murmured outside, but inside everything had narrowed to the space between them, a breath, a heartbeat, a single decision.

Ling’s hand twitched on the armrest, as if reaching for balance. Orm’s fingers brushed hers, light, questioning.

Ling should have pulled away. She didn’t.

The distance between them vanished in a breath. Their foreheads touched first, the softest collision of warmth and restraint. The world seemed to tilt. Ling could feel Orm’s breath on her skin, the rhythm of it uneven, matching her own.

Then the last bit of distance disappeared.

The kiss was quiet, almost fragile at first, the kind of touch that trembles from holding back too long. It wasn’t rushed or loud; it was the collision of everything unsaid, years of discipline meeting sudden defiance. Ling’s hand found Orm’s cheek without her realizing it, her thumb brushing against the warmth there.

When they finally pulled apart, neither spoke.

The sound of their breathing filled the small room. Ling’s eyes were open but unfocused, as if she was seeing something she had never allowed herself to imagine.

Then, slowly, clarity returned, jagged and cold.

Her fingers were still trembling, the taste of the moment still lingering on her lips, but her mind had already begun to recoil, to rebuild the walls she had just let fall. She drew in a sharp breath and stepped back as if she had touched fire.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, more to herself than to Orm. Her voice cracked on the words. “What have I done?”

Orm reached out instinctively, her expression stricken. “Ling-”

“No,” Ling said, cutting her off, her tone sharper than she intended. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

Her hands went to her face, covering her mouth as if to erase what had just passed between them. The air in the room felt thinner, heavier, and her chest ached with something like guilt, like panic.

“Ling, please,” Orm said quietly, stepping forward, her voice unsteady. “It’s not -”

“Don’t,” Ling said, lowering her hands, her eyes bright with tears she could no longer hold back. “Don’t make this sound like it’s something it isn’t.”

“But it is something,” Orm said. “You can’t deny that.”

Ling shook her head violently, backing away until the edge of the table pressed against her. “You don’t understand. I’m married, Orm. I have a life, a wife, a world that exists outside this room. I can’t -” Her voice broke, and she looked away, unable to finish.

Orm’s chest tightened at the sight of her. “I’m not asking you to choose,” she said softly. “I just -”

Ling’s laugh was small and desperate, like a sound made from breaking glass. “You already made me choose. The second you looked at me like that.”

Her tears came then, sudden and furious, as if she was angry at herself for letting them fall. She turned, grabbed her coat from the couch, and tried to steady her breath, but it came out uneven.

“Ling,” Orm said again, taking a careful step toward her. “Please, just talk to me.”

“Don’t follow me,” Ling said, her voice trembling but firm. “Not now. Not ever.”

Orm froze where she stood. “You don’t mean that.”

Ling looked at her, eyes red, the softness that had filled the room minutes ago now gone, replaced by the raw edge of regret. “I do,” she said. “I have to.”

She turned before Orm could say another word. Her footsteps were fast, almost stumbling as she reached the door. Orm moved to follow, to stop her, but the door swung open, the hallway light spilling in, and before she could take another step, the sound of it closing hit like thunder.

The slam echoed through the apartment, sharp and final, the kind of sound that didn’t fade; it stayed, hanging in the air long after the door had shut.

Orm stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty space Ling had left behind. Her heart was still pounding, her hands still trembling, and the faint scent of jasmine still lingered in the air, cruel and familiar.

She wanted to run after her, to explain, to apologize, but she didn’t move. Because deep down, she already knew.

Ling wasn’t coming back. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

Chapter Text

Orm’s POV:

Monday morning came too quickly, dragging its light through the blinds like a reminder that the world didn’t stop for heartbreak. Orm stood before her mirror, fixing the cuff of her blazer for the third time, the motion precise, mechanical, almost desperate in its control. Her reflection stared back at her with a calm that wasn’t real, a mask she had perfected over the years. Beneath it, her pulse thudded like a secret she couldn’t hide.

The city outside was already alive. Boston mornings had a way of looking polished, sunlight spilling over glass towers, the air brisk with purpose. People moved with coffee cups and phones, driven by deadlines and ambition. Orm tried to draw from that same rhythm, the one that demanded productivity over feeling. But as she stood at her kitchen counter, finishing her second espresso, her thoughts wandered back to Saturday.

Ling’s face had followed her into her sleep and out of it. Every line of sorrow, every tremor in her voice, every unspoken word. She had replayed the conversation over and over until she could no longer tell which version of it was real. Now, two days later, she was still haunted by the echo of her own voice, the emptiness of saying “I can’t.”

She exhaled sharply, pushing the thought away. Today was not about Ling. It couldn’t be. Today was the Horizon-Cura meeting, her first direct session with Natasha Matthews, senior partner, client whisperer, and, as fate would have it, Ling’s wife.

Even thinking the words made her stomach tighten. She picked up her briefcase, checked the folder inside, and forced herself to move.

The lobby of S&M LLP gleamed like a cathedral of success. Polished marble floors reflected the morning light, and the faint hum of conversation filled the air. Orm greeted the receptionist with a polite nod, her voice even, professional. But her heart was somewhere else, walking a razor’s edge between guilt and dread.

The elevator ride to the twenty-third floor felt longer than it should have. She could see her reflection in the mirrored wall, straight-backed, collected, but her palms were damp against the leather handle of her briefcase. She told herself again and again that Natasha Matthews didn’t know. That to her, Orm was just another associate from the LA office, a name on a transfer sheet, a capable lawyer she happened to inherit.

Still, the irony wasn’t lost on her. Fate, in its cruel humor, had brought her straight to the doorstep of the one woman she could never look in the eye without seeing the life she had destroyed.

When the elevator doors opened, the hallway stretched out before her in a hush of luxury. Frosted glass offices, soft carpeting, muted voices behind closed doors. She paused briefly outside Natasha’s office. Her name was etched on the plaque in sleek silver letters, sharp and elegant.

Orm smoothed her hair, steadied her breath, and knocked lightly.

“Come in,” came a voice from inside, warm but commanding.

Natasha looked up as Orm entered. The morning light caught her in profile, sharp lines softened by the glow of the city behind her. She was standing by the window, phone pressed to her ear, her tone low and controlled. She gestured for Orm to wait a moment, offering a polite smile before finishing her call.

Orm took that moment to observe her properly for the first time. Natasha was effortlessly composed, her presence filling the room in the same quiet way Ling’s once had, but where Ling carried grace like water, fluid and tender, Natasha’s grace was precision, like glass ,clear, deliberate, and impossible to look through without seeing yourself.

When she ended the call, she turned back, crossing the room with the confidence of someone who had never once doubted her footing. “Orm,” she said, her voice calm but warm. “Good morning. I’m glad you could make it before the meeting.”

“Of course,” Orm replied, her tone steady. “Thank you for having me.”

Natasha motioned toward the chair across from her desk. “Please, sit. I’ve been looking forward to this discussion.”

Orm sat carefully, her hands folded neatly over her notebook. The space between them felt suffocating in its normalcy. The desk was perfectly organized, a vase of fresh tulips at its corner, a faint trace of perfume in the air… floral, understated, the kind of scent that lingered without trying. It wasn’t the same as Ling’s jasmine, but something about it twisted in Orm’s chest all the same.

Natasha began outlining the merger details, flipping through a stack of documents with measured precision. She spoke clearly, with authority, the cadence of her voice controlled and practiced. Orm followed her words, nodded when appropriate, contributed when expected. From the outside, it looked seamless. Two professionals discussing strategy, tone crisp, language exact.

But under the table, Orm’s fingers dug lightly into her knee. Every time Natasha said something kind … “That’s an insightful point, Orm,” or “I’m impressed by your clarity on this clause” … her stomach tightened. She didn’t deserve kindness from this woman. She didn’t deserve to sit here at all.

Orm sat with her notes open, the quiet hum of the office air conditioner filling the spaces between Natasha’s sentences. They had been talking through acquisition clauses for nearly half an hour when her gaze wandered to the wall behind Natasha’s desk. There, framed in sleek black wood, hung a Harvard Law degree, the seal bright against the cream parchment. The signature ink had begun to fade slightly with time, but the crimson crest still gleamed in the morning light.

Orm tilted her head, unable to stop the small smile that formed. “You went to Harvard,” she said suddenly, her tone lighter than the conversation had been until then. “That explains the precision. You’re class of...?”

Natasha looked up, her expression softening. “2013. You too, I’m guessing?”

“2023,” Orm replied. “Harvard Law has this way of following people around. I can spot the type. Confident posture, expensive coffee habit, and the inability to relax during vacations.”

Natasha laughed quietly, genuine amusement in her voice. “Guilty as charged. Ling says I still argue with the toaster when it burns my bread.”

Orm’s smile faltered, but only slightly. “oh, that’s something,” she said carefully.

Natasha’s expression brightened at once, unguarded and fond. “That’s where we met, actually. First semester. She was running this student-led initiative on legal ethics and public policy. I thought she was showing off. She thought I was insufferable. We ended up co-chairing the same committee, arguing every night over funding allocations. The rest... well, somehow, arguments turned into late-night study sessions and very bad coffee dates.”

Orm’s heart gave a slow, painful thud. She had known Ling went to Harvard, she had even walked with her once past the same ivy-clad halls but Ling had never told her that was where she met her wife.

Natasha chuckled softly at the memory. “Lorena was there too. She and Ling practically ran the pro bono club back then. I’m fairly certain they bullied half our class into volunteering at clinics and legal aid centers.”

Orm managed a quiet laugh, her pen turning absently on her fingers. “That sounds like something Lorena would do.”

“Ling still does,” Natasha said warmly, the affection in her tone effortless, natural. “She has this impossible drive to fix things. Even now. Every associate at this firm is required to take on a pro bono case every quarter…Ling’s influence, of course. Keeps us honest, keeps the practice human. Mergers can turn people into spreadsheets and calculated if you’re not careful.”

Orm nodded, her voice low. “Yes, balance is required.”

Natasha smiled at that, pleased by the agreement. “Exactly. Actually, that’s what I wanted to bring up before we wrap. My wife is working on a new merger at her non-profit. They’re integrating another foundation that focuses on refugee assistance and food distribution. It’s massive…lots of moving parts, lots of emotion, but also an incredible cause. She’s been asking if I could recommend someone from our team to assist her with the legal framework.”

Orm froze for half a second, her mind scrambling for stillness.

Natasha continued, oblivious. “You strike me as the right fit. You’ve got the kind of steadiness people trust. And the way you handled the Cura contract language just now … its clean, decisive, empathetic. Ling would appreciate that. I was thinking I’d recommend you to her.”

Orm forced herself to meet Natasha’s eyes. Her smile held steady, polite, and perfectly rehearsed. “That would be an honor,” she said.

“I’m glad,” Natasha replied, leaning back in her chair. “You’ll enjoy working with her. She’s sharp and demanding, but she has a heart for the kind of work that reminds you why you started practicing law in the first place. And she never stops talking about how much she needs someone who understands both structure and people.”

Orm’s throat tightened, but she kept her tone light. “Sounds like a challenge I’d welcome.”

Natasha’s eyes softened, the hint of a knowing grin on her face. “I like your confidence. I’ll set it up later this week. She’ll be thrilled. Honestly, she’s been impossible to live with since this merger started. She dreams about nonprofit charters. It’s cute in a slightly terrifying way.”

Orm laughed softly, the sound caught somewhere between amusement and ache. “I’ll be prepared.”

Natasha returned the smile, closing her folder. “Perfect. Then we’re done for now. Good work today, Orm. You’re fitting in here faster than most.”

Orm gathered her papers, thanking her with quiet composure. When she stepped out of the office, the hallway was silent except for the soft hum of fluorescent light. She walked toward the window at the end of the corridor, each step measured, her pulse uneven beneath the calm surface she wore.

Her reflection in the glass looked calm, poised, unshaken. But under that surface, everything inside her trembled with the same quiet, aching truth.

She was about to see Ling again.
Not as a lover. Not as a memory.
But as her client. and all she could do is  mutter “what the fuck”

The call came just as the evening light began to fade, that soft Boston hour when the city turned gold for a moment before surrendering to dusk. Orm was still in the office, alone, the rest of the floor emptied out to the rhythm of departing footsteps and the hush of elevators closing. Her desk lamp glowed faintly against the polished wood, a single circle of light in an otherwise dark room. She had been staring at the same sentence in a contract for ten minutes, reading it over and over without absorbing a word, when her phone began to vibrate.

Natasha Matthews.

The name appeared crisp and unassuming on the screen, but it made Orm’s pulse jump like she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t. She hesitated for the briefest second before answering.

“Good evening, Natasha.” Her voice came out smooth, practiced, detached … the kind of tone that belonged in offices, not in the chaos inside her head.

“Evening, Orm,” Natasha’s voice carried that composed warmth, the kind that made even bad news sound pleasant. “Sorry for calling late. I just wanted to confirm tomorrow’s schedule.”

Orm straightened in her chair automatically, pen still in hand. “Of course.”

“I spoke to Ling a little while ago,” Natasha continued easily. “She’s free at two thirty tomorrow in the afternoon. Her office is at the main headquarters of The Hearth Project … you’ll find it listed in the email I just sent. She’s excited to meet you and go over the merger documents.”

The words she’s excited to meet you hit Orm like the ghost of a bruise. That’s for sure made up, she thought, her grip tightening slightly around the pen.

“That sounds perfect,” she managed. “I’ll be there.”

“Wonderful,” Natasha said. “And really, thank you for stepping in on this. Ling can be… particular about who she works with. I think you’ll find her refreshingly direct, though. She gets to the point faster than most clients do.”

Orm forced out a small, polite laugh. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

There was a short pause, then Natasha added, “Alright then, I’ll let you get back to your evening. I just wanted to make sure you two were set. Have a good night, Orm.”

“You too,” Orm said softly, and ended the call.

The silence that followed was heavy.

She leaned back in her chair, her hand coming up to press against her temple. For a long moment, she didn’t move. The name Ling still lingered in the air, fresh again, uninvited.

Tomorrow.

She was going to see Ling tomorrow.

Orm shut her eyes, exhaling through her teeth. Her heartbeat was a slow, deliberate ache in her chest. She wanted to feel prepared, professional, distant. She wanted to walk into that office tomorrow as the attorney she had trained herself to be, someone untouchable, someone who didn’t flinch at old ghosts.

But the truth was simpler. She was terrified.

And that thought alone was enough to make her whisper, under her breath, quiet and helpless against the wind.

Kill me already

Wednesday

Wednesday afternoon came faster than Orm had expected, slipping through her morning before she could catch her breath. She had spent the first half of the day working from home, laptop open on the dining table, the faint hum of the espresso machine filling the silence between messages. Her Slack notifications blinked with questions from Natasha about the Horizon-Cura merger, small pings of responsibility that kept her hands busy but never her mind. She drafted documents, reworked proposals, replied with perfect grammar and perfect detachment, as if professionalism could act as armor.

But no matter how hard she focused, the thought returned like a low, steady drumbeat.

Two thirty.

Her meeting with Ling.

She wished the universe would forget about it. That an email would arrive postponing it, or a storm would sweep through the city, or perhaps The Hearth Project itself would lose power for a day. Anything that would give her an excuse not to stand face-to-face with the one person she had spent years learning how to live without.

But life, as always, refused to bend in her favor.

At one forty-five, she closed her laptop, gathered her folder, and caught herself staring at her reflection in the window. She looked fine. Composed. Like someone who had never once fallen apart in the presence of the woman she was about to see. She straightened her jacket, tied her hair back neatly, and whispered to her own reflection as if that might make it true.

It’s just a meeting.

The Hearth Project headquarters sat in an old brick building near the river, its architecture quietly noble in the way only Boston nonprofits managed. The lobby smelled faintly of coffee and recycled paper, walls lined with photographs of volunteers and smiling children. Orm checked in at the front desk, her voice steady, her hands anything but.

“Ms. Kornnaphat,” the receptionist said with a polite smile, “Mrs. Kwong will see you now.”

The name made her stomach twist. Ling’s name. Spoken so casually, as though it belonged to an ordinary afternoon.

She thanked her and made her way down the hall. The sound of her heels on the floor echoed softly, too loud in the quiet. She stopped outside the office door with Ling’s name printed neatly on a small brass plaque. For a second, she could not move. She could see the faint shadow of someone inside, her silhouette familiar even in outline.

Orm exhaled, lifted her hand, and knocked once.

“Come in,” came the voice.

That voice.

Orm opened the door slowly. The sight was disarming in its simplicity. Ling sat behind a wide wooden desk, surrounded by files and papers, sunlight spilling through the tall windows behind her. Her hair was tied back neatly, a soft strand escaping near her temple. She looked immaculate, precise, almost painfully serene.

For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. The world narrowed to the sound of Orm’s own breathing and the faint hum of the city beyond the glass.

Then Ling looked up.

“Ms. Kornnaphat,” she said, her tone smooth, professional, not unkind but entirely distant. “Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat.”

The title landed like a stone in Orm’s stomach. Ms. Kornnaphat. Not Orm. Not even the careless, affectionate nicknames that once filled her apartment like music. Just a formality, clean and clinical, spoken as if nothing between them had ever been anything but business.

Orm blinked once before managing a small nod. “Of course,” she replied, her voice catching faintly before settling into something passable. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Kwong.”

Ling’s gaze flickered, just for a fraction of a second, before she lowered her eyes to the documents in front of her. “Let’s begin, shall we? Natasha mentioned you’re familiar with the Horizon-Cura framework. The Hearth Project’s merger follows a similar structure, but with some unique community clauses we’re integrating into community initiatives.”

It was as if someone had swapped out her Ling for a polished replica, one who spoke in legal vocabulary and crisp diction, who flipped through pages without hesitation, who didn’t even look at her longer than necessary.

Orm sat quietly, the air between them heavy with ghosts. She nodded when Ling spoke, took notes she didn’t need, and answered questions in a voice that belonged to her profession, not her heart.

But inside, everything was chaos.

Every line of Ling’s handwriting on those documents was a memory. Every time she leaned forward to explain a clause, her perfume…faint, familiar brought Orm back to another time, another table, another life where that same scent lived in her sheets and not in an office built of glass and restraint.

Orm forced herself to keep her tone neutral. “I reviewed the structure you sent through Natasha. The integration terms make sense. The refugee assistance wing will benefit significantly under S&M’s funding arm.”

Ling nodded, her expression unreadable. “That’s what we hope. We’ve been working on this partnership for months. It’s important to us that the transition be seamless.”

Orm caught the faint tremor in the word us. Just barely.

She wanted to ask who us was… is it Ling and her wife, Ling and her team, Ling and everyone who wasn’t her…but she bit it back. There was no room for old wounds here.

Ling continued speaking, her focus sharp, her tone unwavering. “I’ll need your input on the liability clauses before Friday. Natasha mentioned you’re particularly good with impact statements.”

“Sure,” Orm replied softly. “Whatever you need.”

For a few seconds, Ling looked at her, really looked. Something flickered in her expression, recognition, maybe longing, maybe regret…but it vanished as quickly as it came.

“Good,” she said finally, closing the file. “I appreciate your time, Ms. Kornnaphat.”

The sound of her own formal name again. Orm felt it settle in her chest like an anchor. She stood, gathering her things, her hands steady even though her heart was anything but.

As she turned toward the door, Ling’s voice came again, low but even. “I’ll have my assistant forward the rest of the documents. Please let me know if you need anything clarified.”

Orm’s hand was still on the door handle when the words slipped out.

She hadn’t planned to speak. She had meant to walk out with quiet dignity, to let the polished version of herself survive this meeting intact. But the silence in the room pressed too tightly around her, too thick with pretense, too full of all the things they were both trying not to feel.

Her voice came out lower than she intended, almost fragile.

“This is how it’s going to be?”

Ling looked up sharply, startled.

Orm turned slightly, her hand falling from the door, her gaze steady now, though her throat ached with the effort of holding it all together. “Pretend like I don’t exist? Like you don’t care about me?”

For a long moment, there was nothing. Just the faint ticking of the clock on Ling’s desk, the hum of the city beyond the windows, and Ling’s eyes fixed on her like she wasn’t sure if she’d heard right.

Then Ling inhaled, slow and controlled, the way she always did when she was trying not to lose her composure. “We are in a professional setting, Orm.” The name came out reluctantly, quiet, like a secret she wasn’t supposed to say. “This isn’t about us.”

Orm laughed softly, bitter and tired. “You can say that all you want, Ling, but every time you look at me, you flinch. Every time I speak, you look like you’re holding your breath. So maybe it isn’t about us, but it’s not, not about us either.”

Ling stood then, the chair sliding back quietly. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything,” Orm said quickly, shaking her head. “I just… I don’t know how to do this. Sit here and pretend that we were never us. That you weren’t the person who made me feel like I had a home.”

Ling’s expression softened, but her voice stayed steady. “You made your choice to leave that home.”

Orm’s chest tightened. “And you continued with your already built one.”

Ling’s expression changed. The stillness that followed was not calm; it was the kind that came before something broke. Her fingers tightened on the desk until the edge dug into her skin. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, almost careful, but each word landed with precision.

“You have no right to say that” she said. “You don’t get to stand here and talk about the life I continued, as if it was some prize, I chose over you. You don’t get to rewrite this story to make it look like I stayed because it was convenient.”

Her eyes flicked to Orm, sharp and wet, her breath trembling. “I had everything ready, Orm. I had the perfect life, the perfect wife, millions in inheritance, a name that opened every door. Everything was built, safe, predictable. And I chose you. We planned everything, Orm. We planned on getting married, on having children, on building something that was finally ours. When I told Miu that I loved someone else, that I wanted a life with them, I meant you. I was ready to walk away from everything, my marriage, my name, my reputation … for you.”

She shook her head once, the motion small but shaking. “And then you disappeared.”

The air between them stilled. Ling’s voice thinned to something brittle. “No note. No call. No goodbye. Just gone. One day you were there, telling me you loved me, making me believe I wasn’t insane for wanting something real, and the next, you were gone. You talk about me continuing, Orm, like I had a choice. What was I supposed to do? Stand in my living room and explain to the woman I’d already broken that I had destroyed our lives for someone who didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye?”

Her voice cracked then, just enough to make the words tremble. “I couldn’t even mourn you properly. Do you know what that’s like? To grieve someone who’s still alive? To see your phone light up and pray that maybe, just once, it’s you? To wake up every day rehearsing a conversation that never comes?”

Orm stood silent, every word cutting through the thin composure she had left.

Ling’s eyes glistened, her breath coming shallow now. “You left me holding the wreckage you made. I had to smile through dinners, go to court, and face people who kept asking me if I was happy. I had to sit beside my wife …the woman who still trusted me and pretend I was fine, pretend I hadn’t already broken something sacred. You left, and I had to make sure no one ever found out what we were, because if they did, everything would have collapsed. My marriage. My name. My parents’ faith in me. My life.”

She blinked hard, a single tear slipping down before she could stop it. “So yes, I stayed. I stayed because it was the only thing left to do. Because the alternative was to burn my world down for someone who didn’t even leave me a goodbye.”

Her voice softened, breaking into something quieter, more human. “You have no idea what that kind of silence does to a person. It rots you from the inside out. And after a while, you stop asking why. You just get up, put on your suit, make your coffee, and pretend the world still makes sense.”

Ling drew a slow breath, straightening her posture as if pulling herself back together piece by piece. “So don’t you dare stand here and talk about the life I continued, like I chose it over you. I chose it because you left me no other choice.”

Her voice lowered, the fury dissolving into exhaustion. “You left, Orm. You left, and I stayed because someone had to.”

The silence that followed was unbearable .. the kind that filled the lungs with ache. Ling turned away from her desk, her reflection catching faintly in the glass, her eyes rimmed red, her lips trembling as she added, barely above a whisper,

“And I still hate the part of me that waited anyway.”

Then, slowly, she exhaled, the kind of breath that emptied more than just air. When she lifted her head again, her face was calm .. unnervingly calm , the storm pulled back behind a wall of glass.

“I’m done,” she said quietly, not looking at Orm. “Whatever this is, whatever we were, I’m done talking about it.”

Her voice carried no anger now, no tremor. Just finality. She gathered the papers scattered across the desk, aligning them with mechanical precision, one sheet after another, until the sound of the pages brushing together was the only sound left in the room.

“You don’t get to ask me what I felt or didn’t feel. You don’t get to stand here and peel old wounds open for curiosity’s sake.” Her tone sharpened slightly, but her eyes stayed on the papers, not Orm. “I spent years learning how to function without you, and I’m not about to forget how just because you walked through my door with an apology you should’ve made years ago.”

Orm swallowed, her throat tight, but Ling didn’t give her room to speak.

“I’m not angry anymore,” Ling continued, almost to herself. “Not really. You can’t stay angry at someone forever. Eventually, you just run out of energy.” She smiled faintly then, the kind of smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “So no, Orm, I don’t care what you think of me now. I don’t care why you left or what excuses you’ve built to make it make sense. I’m past it.”

She gathered the last folder, tapping its edge lightly against the desk, her motions calm, deliberate. “And if you’re going to work with me, then that’s all this will ever be … work. We’ll talk contracts, deliverables, terms. You’ll send your notes, and I’ll review them. And when it’s over, we’ll both move on like civilized people.”

Ling finally looked up then, her gaze steady and cold, the last flicker of warmth gone. “Whatever we had, Orm, it’s dead. I buried it the day you left.”

The words landed like frost between them. Orm said nothing, her throat dry, her chest tight with something that felt like regret and disbelief colliding.

Ling’s expression didn’t change. She reached for her pen, her voice quiet again, as if the storm had never happened at all. “Close the door on your way out,” she said. “We both have work to do.”

Orm didn’t move. For a moment, she wanted to reach out, to touch her shoulder, to tell her everything she had never said. But the air between them was too fragile now, too full of things that couldn’t survive the weight of contact.

She finally nodded, her voice faint. “Alright.”

The hallway outside was colder than she remembered. Orm leaned back against the wall, the plaster firm against her spine, the fluorescent light above her buzzing faintly, the world moving on like nothing had happened. Her chest felt hollow, scraped clean. She wanted to breathe but every inhale came with the weight of something unsaid.

She had wanted Ling to fight. To scream, to curse, to say anything that proved there was still something left to ruin. But Ling hadn’t fought. She hadn’t begged, hadn’t broken. She had just looked at her and decided, quietly and irrevocably, to stop caring.

That was what gutted Orm the most. The indifference. The precision of it. How easily Ling could put her heart back behind glass after years of letting her touch it.

She pressed a hand to her face, her palm cool against her skin, her eyes burning with the kind of ache that could never quite become tears. This was the worst version of love, the kind that did not die with noise but with quietness, with composure, with grace. The kind that looked like nothing at all from the outside.

She thought she had prepared herself for anger, for accusation, for anything that resembled fire. She hadn’t prepared for the absence of it. For the emptiness that came when the person you loved most looked at you and saw nothing worth fighting for anymore.

When she finally pushed herself off the wall, her legs felt heavy, her body drained. Down the hall, the hum of the office was soft and indifferent, the world going about its business, as if nothing inside her had just come undone.

She walked away without looking back. But even as she did, she could feel it , that quiet, merciless truth that Ling no longer cared, and for the first time, Orm began to understand how much harder it was to lose someone who had already learned how to live without you.

The following week unfolded in a haze of precision and control. Orm spent her mornings locked in with numbers, contracts, and half-drunk cups of coffee that had long gone cold. Natasha kept her on a tight leash, demanding progress on the Horizon-Cura merger, while Ling’s name appeared intermittently in her inbox…never too often, never too warmly, just enough to remind her that the woman she could not stop thinking about was still, inconveniently, part of her daily life.

The emails were polite, measured, impersonal. Thank you for your revisions, Ms. Kornnaphat. Please see the attached outline for the updated clauses. I trust you will have the drafts ready for the board review.

Orm could have recited the tone of them in her sleep: sterile, flawless, and as far away from the Ling she remembered as humanly possible.

They had not spoken since that Wednesday afternoon. No calls. No accidental meetings. No awkward apologies. Just silence thick enough to drown in.

Until today.

It was a joint negotiation meeting between The Hearth Project and their partner organization, an NGO that was set to be acquired under the merger. The conference room buzzed faintly with voices, the scent of freshly brewed coffee hanging in the air. A tray of pastries sat untouched in the corner, and through the glass walls, the Boston skyline gleamed like a distant, indifferent witness.

Orm arrived early, as always. She took her seat beside Ling, careful to keep a polite distance, aware of the tension that hummed quietly between them. Ling was already there, reading over a stack of documents, hair pulled back neatly, her glasses balanced low on her nose. She didn’t look up.

Orm pretended to check her notes, but her eyes kept betraying her. Every now and then, Ling would shift slightly, and Orm’s pulse would follow.

A few minutes later, the door swung open, and a familiar voice echoed through the room.

“Sorry I’m late. Parking in this city should be a crime.”

Orm’s head snapped up.

Olivia Hart.

Of course it had to be her.

She strode in with a casual confidence that turned heads wherever she went. Tall, blonde, effortlessly charming…the kind of woman who could command attention just by existing. She carried her laptop under one arm, her phone in the other, and when she saw Orm, her entire face lit up like sunrise.

“Orm Kornnaphat,” she said, her smile wide, delighted, and unrestrained. “You have got to be kidding me. What are the odds?”

Orm blinked once, half in disbelief. “Olivia Hart. You have not changed at all.”

Olivia laughed, setting her things down and walking straight toward her. “Still pretending to be calm while you’re quietly judging everyone in the room? That’s classic you.”

Orm stood halfway, a reluctant smile tugging at her lips. “And you still think sarcasm counts as insight, I see.”

Olivia grinned, stepping closer, her hand brushing against Orm’s arm as naturally as if years hadn’t passed. “Oh, I’ve missed that tone.”

The touch was light, harmless…but it was enough.

From across the table, Ling’s pen stopped moving.

The small pause went unnoticed by everyone else, but Orm caught it. She didn’t even need to look to know what it meant. Ling had frozen…her control flickering, her eyes fixed on the tiny space between Olivia’s hand and Orm’s sleeve.

Ling lifted her gaze then, expression perfectly neutral, but her eyes had gone dark, sharp in a way that made Orm’s stomach twist with recognition.

She knows.

And she hates it.

Orm should have stepped away. She should have laughed and moved on. But instead, she smiled…slowly, dangerously and turned her attention back to Olivia.

“I didn’t know you were handling this merger,” Orm said, her tone casual but warm. “ The briefs never mentioned you.”

“Lucky coincidence,” Olivia replied, leaning against the edge of the table. “I was pulled in last minute after our lead counsel fell sick. And honestly, when I saw your name on the brief, I might’ve volunteered a little too quickly.”

A few quiet laughs rippled around the table. Orm smiled back, but Ling didn’t.

Her hands were folded now, her posture rigid, her jaw set in quiet precision.

The meeting began, and for the first few minutes, Ling managed to hold herself together. Her voice was calm, her tone unwavering, every sentence crisp and professional. But each time Olivia interrupted Orm mid-sentence…touching her wrist lightly, leaning in to  say something that was definitely unnecessary, and Ling’s composure cracked just a little more.

“Orm’s always been brilliant at everything ,” Olivia said at one point, flashing a grin. “She used to tutor half our class in school. I think we all graduated on her brainpower.”

Orm chuckled softly. “ oh yeah..”

Ling’s gaze flicked to her again, sharp as glass.

“That’s impressive,” Ling said finally, her tone perfectly civil, perfectly cold. “I didn’t realize you had such a strong academic background together.”

“Oh, we go way back,” Olivia said brightly. “I practically lived at home for the entire finals. Didn’t I, Orm?”

Ling’s pen snapped.

The sound was small, but the room went quiet for half a second. Ling’s expression didn’t move, but the pressure in the air shifted.

Orm bit back a laugh, pressing her hand to her mouth. “Yes,” she said finally, her voice deliberately light. “Olivia was... difficult to evict.”

Olivia grinned. “What can I say? She was so good with Math.”

Orm risked a glance toward Ling then, and the sight almost undid her , Ling sitting stiffly, her lips pressed tight, her fingers folded together so hard her knuckles had gone pale.

She looked like she wanted to stab someone with that broken pen. Preferably Olivia.

Orm should have felt guilty. Instead, she felt alive.

When the meeting finally wrapped, Olivia placed a hand on Orm’s shoulder as everyone stood. “We should catch up sometime, seriously. Coffee or dinner, whichever comes first.”

Orm nodded easily. “Sure.”

“Friday?” Olivia asked, grinning. “My treat.”

Orm could practically feel Ling’s silence slicing through the air like a blade.

“We’ll see,” Orm said with a faint smile. “Depends on how the rest of the week looks.”

Olivia winked, gathering her things and heading out with the others.

The room emptied slowly until only Ling and Orm remained. The quiet between them was thick, electric, fragile.

Orm turned toward her, smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “You broke your pen.”

Ling didn’t look up. “It was faulty.”

“Of course it was.”

A pause.

Then Orm tilted her head, voice soft, teasing. “You know, you don’t have to glare at every woman who talks to me.”

Ling finally met her eyes, calm but blazing underneath. “I don’t glare.”

“You do. It’s adorable.”

Ling exhaled slowly, gathering her notes with more force than necessary. “You’re insufferable.”

Orm grinned, stepping closer. “And you’re jealous.”

Ling’s head snapped up instantly. “I am not,” she said too fast, too sharp, the words tumbling out before she could control them.

Orm’s grin spread, slow and wicked, her voice dropping into that low, teasing register that always found its way under Ling’s skin. “There it is.”

“There what is?” Ling shot back, shuffling her papers like they were a shield. Her movements were brisk, efficient, but her ears were already turning pink. “You’re imagining things, as usual.”

“Am I?” Orm tilted her head, her voice soft but playful, that familiar glint returning to her eyes. “Because if I am, then your tone didn’t just sound like someone ready to commit light homicide.”

Ling looked up sharply, her composure starting to fracture. “I’m not jealous, Orm. I just don’t think you should flirt during professional negotiations. It looks…” she paused, exhaling hard, “unprofessional.”

Orm chuckled quietly, stepping closer until her voice was just low enough for Ling to hear it and no one else. “You mean it looks like someone was having fun. You’ve always hated that, remember? When I was in your class, you caught me talking to that girl in the back row. You nearly stabbed me with your pen that day.”

“That was different,” Ling said quickly, refusing to meet her eyes.

“Was it?” Orm leaned in, elbows resting lightly on the edge of Ling’s desk. “Because I swear, you’re looking at me the same way right now. Like you’re trying very hard not to care and failing miserably.”

Ling’s jaw tightened, the softest tremor in her voice. “You’re imagining things again.”

Orm smiled, her voice warm now, gentle beneath the teasing. “No, baby, I’m remembering.”

The old name …the one Ling hadn’t heard in years, hung in the air like a heartbeat.

Ling’s breath caught. “Don’t call me that,” she said quietly, but it sounded more like a plea than a command.

Orm’s grin softened. “I will, when I earn the right to again.”

Ling blinked, the words catching her off guard. For a moment, all the tension in the room turned quiet, charged, almost tender.

Orm straightened slowly, her folder still in her hand, but her eyes didn’t leave Ling’s. “You can pretend you’ve moved on. You can glare all you want. But I’m not giving up on you yet. Not when you still look at me like that.”

Ling opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out.

Orm smiled faintly, like she’d said enough. “I’ll see you at the next meeting, Ms. Kwong.”

She turned toward the door, the echo of her heels filling the silence.

In the hallway the air felt cooler, as if the room had been holding its breath and finally let it go. Orm did not. She kept walking until the glass wall gave her back a thin reflection that looked steadier than she felt. Behind her, the image of a broken pen would not leave. The small sound of it. The way Ling’s hands had gone white. The way her voice had reached for neutrality and missed by a fraction.

It is not nothing, she told herself. It is not over. She can pretend she does not care. Her emails can be immaculate and empty. She can cut her gaze across a table as if it never learned how to love me. But a hand on my sleeve and her body remembered. Jealousy is not kindness, and it is not forgiveness, but it is proof. Something lives.

Orm let that thought settle, heavy and clean. She had been waiting for anger. She had been bracing for contempt. She had not prepared for the quick bright flicker that said Ling was still paying attention even while she tried not to. It hurt. It also opened a door.

She would win her back. Quietly. Carefully. All the way this time.

*Flashback*

Ling’s POV:

The week after the kiss felt like living inside a fever.
Ling threw herself into work with the precision of a surgeon: lectures, papers, late nights spent correcting essays she didn’t care about, anything to keep her hands from trembling when she thought of Orm.

She avoided her completely. Not in subtle ways either. When Orm entered a room, Ling found reasons to leave it. When she caught sight of her across the courtyard, laughter echoing through the winter air, Ling turned the other way before their eyes could meet. Every path that might have crossed, she rerouted with the discipline of someone who knew what was at stake.

Still, Orm lingered. In the quiet moments between words, in the half-light before sleep, in the scent of vanilla that clung to her hair.
She hated that she noticed.
She hated that she missed her.

Orm, on the other hand, didn’t seem to share her silence. Ling could feel her presence even from across the room, that restless energy, that refusal to let things be buried. A few times, Orm tried to approach her after class, soft and tentative, eyes searching for something that used to live between them. Ling always found a way to shut it down. A quick nod, a clipped word, the kind of polite dismissal that hurt both of them.

But what Ling hadn’t prepared for was jealousy.

It came quietly, like a bruise forming beneath the skin. The first time she saw Orm sitting with another student, a girl from her constitutional law seminar, bright-eyed, talkative, leaning just a little too close over an open book, something hot and unrecognizable surged through her chest.

She told herself it was nothing. She told herself she didn’t care.
Then she saw it again.
Orm smiling at something the girl said. The girl touching Orm’s arm when she laughed.

Ling’s throat tightened.

She had been walking past the open door of the study hall, trying to pretend she was checking the bulletin board, when she caught herself staring. Her pulse quickened. It was ridiculous, she knew, childish even, but the sight of them together made her stomach twist.

She forced herself to look away, but her body betrayed her. Her hands clenched around the strap of her bag. She walked faster, but the sound of Orm’s laughter followed her down the corridor like a memory she couldn’t outrun.

By the time she reached her office, her composure had cracked.
She shut the door and leaned against it, breathing hard. Her heart felt unsteady, and there was something almost humiliating in the realization.

She was jealous.

For two days she tried to bury it again. She threw herself into work, into dinners with Miu that felt like conversations held through glass, into anything that would stop her mind from returning to that study room, that girl, that laugh.

But the universe, it seemed, had no mercy for self-denial.

The next week, it happened again. Only worse.

Ling had been walking down the east hallway after a late seminar when she saw them, Orm and that same student, standing near the lockers. The light from the tall windows painted them both in silver and shadow. The girl was talking quickly, nervous and eager, and before Ling could blink, she reached up and leaned in.

Orm froze, startled, a hand half-raised in reflex, but the moment was enough. Ling stopped dead in her tracks.

Something inside her snapped. Not loudly, not visibly, just a clean, silent break.

She turned away before either of them could notice, her jaw set, her pulse hammering.
Her heels clicked hard against the marble as she walked, every step sharper than the last.

That night, she didn’t sleep.
She sat on the edge of her bed, the room washed in the faint blue of city light, her reflection faint in the window glass. The question circled her like a storm: what are you doing?

But there was no answer that made sense.
Because this wasn’t logic. It wasn’t discipline. It was something she had spent her entire life denying, the terrifying hunger of wanting to be known.

With Orm, she had felt seen, heard, undone. The kiss had been reckless, but it had also been honest. And now the thought of Orm laughing with someone else, looking at someone else the way she once looked at her, made her skin burn.

By morning, she had made a decision.

She didn’t know what she planned to say. She didn’t know if it would be anger, confession, or apology. All she knew was that she couldn’t keep pretending that what happened hadn’t changed her.

When she stepped into her car, the winter light still pale and uncertain, her fingers gripped the steering wheel too tightly. She hesitated for a long time before starting the engine.

Then, quietly, she tapped the GPS screen.
The address appeared automatically: Home.

Orm’s idea of a joke.
Ling had rolled her eyes when it happened. Now, her chest tightened as the route appeared on the map.

She didn’t even think twice before pulling onto the road.

By the time she reached Orm’s apartment, the sun had begun to sink, washing the city in amber and shadow. The hallway outside Orm’s door was quiet, the air heavy with that end-of-day stillness that made every heartbeat sound louder.

She stood there for a long moment, her hand hovering over the door.
What was she doing here?
What was she hoping for?

Ling exhaled shakily, closed her eyes, and let the words form before she could change her mind.

This wasn’t about forgiveness. It wasn’t about the kiss. It was about confronting the truth, that Orm had slipped past her boundaries, that she needed to reclaim control, and that, somehow, part of her didn’t want to.

She lifted her hand and knocked.

Once.
Then again.

The sound echoed softly down the corridor.

Inside, she heard movement, the scrape of a chair, hurried footsteps, the click of a lock.

When the door opened, and Orm appeared in the frame, all the air seemed to leave Ling’s lungs.

Orm froze. For a second, she didn’t move, as if her mind couldn’t catch up with what her eyes were seeing. Ling stood there, pale, composed on the surface, but her eyes betrayed her. They were bright with something fragile and burning at once.

“Ling?” Orm said softly, her voice unsure, like she was afraid the name itself might vanish if she said it too loud.

Ling didn’t answer. She stood there, still and tense, her hands clenched at her sides. The silence between them was heavy, full of the ghosts of the week they had spent pretending the other didn’t exist.

Orm stepped back a little. “Do you want to come in?”

Ling hesitated, then crossed the threshold. The familiar warmth of the apartment hit her, the faint smell of tea leaves and ink, the clutter of books. Everything was too familiar, too intimate.

Orm shut the door gently behind her. For a moment neither spoke.

Then Ling turned, her voice low but trembling. “You shouldn’t have let her get that close.”

Orm blinked, taken aback. “What?”

“In the hallway,” Ling said, her jaw tight. “That girl. She was…” She stopped herself, breath hitching. “You shouldn’t have.”

Orm frowned, her tone careful. “She tried to kiss me. I stopped her.”

“That’s not the point.” Ling’s voice cracked on the last word.

“Then what is the point?” Orm asked, and there was no defiance in her voice now, only exhaustion. “You’ve been avoiding me for days, and now you’re here, angry that someone else looked at me.”

Ling’s chest rose and fell, fast, uneven. “Because it made me feel something I didn’t want to feel.”

Orm stared at her. “What did you feel?”

Ling met her gaze, and for a second, everything she had tried to contain burst through. “Jealous,” she said. “Angry. Ridiculous. I don’t even know. I saw her and I wanted to pull her away from you. I wanted to scream at her that she couldn’t. That she had no right.”

Her voice faltered, softer now. “And she didn’t. Because she doesn’t know you. Not the way I do.”

Orm’s expression shifted, disbelief, then something gentler. “You’ve spent a week pretending I don’t exist,” she said quietly. “And now you’re here, telling me I’m yours.”

“I’m not saying you’re mine,” Ling said, though her voice wavered. “I’m saying I can’t stand the thought of you belonging to anyone else.”

Orm took a slow step forward. “That sounds a lot like the same thing.”

Ling closed her eyes for a moment, trying to breathe. “I don’t want this,” she whispered. “I don’t want to feel like this. It’s wrong, it’s dangerous, and it’s tearing me apart.”

Orm moved closer until she was only a few feet away. “Then tell me to stop,” she said softly. “Tell me to stop caring, to stop thinking about you, to stop wanting you.”

Ling looked up sharply, her eyes glassy. “You think this is easy for me?”

“No,” Orm said, voice trembling. “But you walked away that night like you were the only one bleeding.”

The air between them thickened again, the same pull that had started everything, now heavier, sharper, edged with something close to pain.

Ling’s voice softened. “You make me feel things I shouldn’t. I’ve spent years building a life that makes sense, and you come in and ruin it with one look.”

“Maybe it needed to be ruined,” Orm said.

Ling’s breath caught. “You don’t understand. My life is built on order, on promises. My parents’ rules, I made vows, Orm. I have a wife. I can’t just…” She stopped, her throat tightening. “I can’t undo all of that because of a moment.”

Orm took another step, barely a whisper between them now. “It wasn’t just a moment.”

Ling looked up at her, and for a heartbeat, everything, the fear, the guilt, the ache, was visible on her face.

“I know,” she said finally. “That’s what terrifies me.”

Orm’s voice was soft. “Then why are you here?”

Ling swallowed hard, her voice shaking. “Because I needed to see you. Because when I saw her, I realized what I was trying to deny. That what happened wasn’t just a mistake. It was the truth I didn’t want to face.”

Orm’s eyes softened. “And what truth is that?”

Ling’s answer came out in a whisper. “That you make me feel seen. That you, make me feel alive. That, when you look at me, I remember who I was before everything else.”

She took another breath, shakier this time, her voice breaking as she continued. “I need to tell you something, Orm. I’m not happily married to Miu. I want you to know the truth.”

Orm’s eyes widened, but she didn’t speak. She only stood still, listening, afraid that if she moved, Ling would stop.

“We both made an arrangement,” Ling said quietly. “She married me for my name and all the doors it opens, and I married her so my parents would finally get off my back. There was never a fairytale in it, no grand beginning. We don’t love each other… I mean, we do, but not like lovers do.”

Her voice softened into something almost tender. “We’re best friends, Orm. We love each other as just that. She’s kind, loyal, and she’s been there for me when I needed someone. But it’s not the same. It never was. We’ve been married for five years now. She’s a lawyer, she’s brilliant, she’s good. That’s all you need to know.”

Orm exhaled slowly, her throat tightening with a mix of understanding and heartbreak. “So, you’ve been pretending all this time,” she said softly.

Ling looked at her. “It’s not pretending. It’s surviving.”

Orm nodded, her voice barely steady. “And what about me? What do you call this? What we are?”

Ling hesitated, eyes darting away for a moment. “I don’t know yet. That’s what scares me.”

Orm’s jaw tensed. “You came here because you were jealous. You came here because you care, because you can’t ignore this any more than I can.”

Ling closed her eyes briefly. “Yes.”

“Then don’t stand there acting like it’s something you can file away in a folder labeled wrong,” Orm said, her voice raw, trembling between anger and ache. “You feel it, Ling. You keep fighting it, but it’s still there.”

Ling looked at her, eyes shining, the words sitting on her lips but refusing to come out.

Orm stepped closer, her voice dropping lower. “When you said you weren’t happy, I believed you. But you don’t have to stay unhappy just to make sense to everyone else.”

Ling’s chest rose with a sharp breath. “It’s not that simple.”

“It could be,” Orm whispered. “If you’d let it.”

Ling stared at her, and for a fleeting second, everything inside her went still, the noise, the guilt, the doubt. Just the two of them, suspended in something that felt too close to truth.

“I can’t promise you anything,” she said softly. “I can’t give you what you deserve.”

Orm’s expression softened, but her voice stayed steady. “I didn’t ask for promises. I just wanted the truth. And you finally gave me that.”

Ling’s lips parted, her breath trembling. “And what will you do with it now?”

Orm’s answer came without hesitation. “Hold it. Even if it hurts.”

The words settled between them, heavy and quiet. Ling’s eyes lingered on her face, the earnestness, the stubborn hope that made Orm who she was, and something inside her shifted again, deep and irreversible.

She whispered, “You make it very hard to walk away.”

Orm’s smile was small, sad, knowing. “That’s the problem, ling. You already tried, and you came back.”

Ling’s breath caught. The truth of it sank into her like a slow ache, the kind that didn’t hurt all at once but spread quietly through every part of her. She wanted to deny it, to insist that this was still something she could control, but Orm was right. She had come back.

Orm took a step closer, then another, until the space between them felt fragile, almost luminous. Ling could smell the faint trace of tea on her, the warmth of her skin after the cold outside. The air itself seemed to pause.

“I should go,” Ling said, but her voice had no weight.

“I think you don’t mean that,” Orm whispered.

Ling looked up at her, eyes flicking between defiance and surrender. “I don’t know what I mean anymore.”

Orm’s hand lifted halfway, hovering near Ling’s cheek, not touching, just waiting for permission that never really needed to be spoken. Ling didn’t move away.

The silence between them trembled, a drawn bowstring waiting to snap. Ling’s heartbeat thundered in her ears; her breath was shallow, uneven. Orm’s eyes searched hers, not demanding, not pleading, just open, raw, waiting.

And then the world seemed to fold inward. The distance dissolved, the air thickened with something that was no longer restraint but the memory of it breaking.

When they finally leaned in, it wasn’t out of impulse but inevitability, two lines that had been curving toward each other since the moment they met. The faint brush of breath, the pause before touch, the quiet surrender, that was all it took for the world outside to fall away.

Everything that followed existed in the hush of that moment, the warmth between them, the shared understanding that nothing about this could ever be undone.

When Ling drew back, her eyes stayed closed for a heartbeat longer, as if holding on to what the world would never let her keep.

Orm’s voice came softly through the quiet. “You can keep running from it,” she said, “but it’ll find you again.”

Ling opened her eyes, and this time, she didn’t argue.

Ling opened her eyes, and this time, she didn’t argue.

The quiet between them settled into something fragile, no longer sharp with denial but softer, hesitant, alive. Orm stood still, watching her, afraid that a single word might undo whatever delicate understanding had formed between them. Ling didn’t move away. She simply breathed, as if the air itself felt different now, heavier with the truth they had both been avoiding.

For a long time neither of them spoke. Outside, the city murmured in distant rhythm, the wind pressing faintly against the windowpane. Inside, the silence became its own language, apology, confession, permission, all in one.

Ling’s voice came at last, quiet but steady. “If we do this,” she said, “we do it carefully.”

Orm’s brow furrowed, a flicker of disbelief passing across her face. “Do what?”

Ling met her eyes. “This. Whatever this is. You and me.”

Orm exhaled, slow and shaky, like she had been holding her breath for a week. “You mean…”

Ling nodded once. “I don’t know what it looks like yet. I don’t even know how long it can last. But I can’t pretend anymore that it isn’t there.”

Something inside Orm broke open then, relief, awe, something too big to name. She stepped closer, her voice trembling. “So, we try.”

Ling hesitated, the instinct to retreat still flickering behind her ribs, but she nodded again. “We try. Quietly. Carefully.”

Orm’s smile was small and reverent, like she was afraid to touch it too hard. “That’s all I need.”

Ling’s gaze softened, exhaustion and longing blending into something almost peaceful. “This isn’t simple, Orm. I can’t give you promises, or futures. I can only give you the truth.”

Orm reached out, her hand finding Ling’s. “Then start there.”

Ling didn’t pull away. Her fingers curled around Orm’s, tentative at first, then sure.

For the first time in days, the weight in her chest eased. There were still questions, boundaries, and the looming shadow of everything she stood to lose. But in that moment, under the low hum of the city and the flicker of lamplight, she let herself believe that maybe, just maybe, something good could come from the ruin.

That night, there were no vows, no labels, no guarantees. Only a quiet understanding, born from longing and defiance, that they would try.

And that was how it began.

Chapter Text

Orm's POV: 

The office was unusually quiet that morning, the kind of silence that settled only when everyone was pretending to work. Orm sat at her desk, legs crossed, eyes fixed on the blinking cursor in her inbox, waiting for something that felt like movement. Boston sunlight filtered through the tall windows, painting the glass walls of S&M LLP in tired gold. The entire floor buzzed faintly with the sound of restrained frustration…the sound of lawyers waiting for a court’s mercy.

Then it happened. A single Slack notification pinged through the air like a gunshot in church.

Natasha Matthews: “While we wait for the Horizon-Cura merger proposal acceptance from the court, we are, unfortunately, sitting ducks. Stay sharp, team.”

Orm read it twice, mostly because she could hear Natasha’s voice in her head saying it like a war general who was trying to sound optimistic about trench life. Sitting ducks. Perfect. Exactly what she wanted to be…an overpriced duck in a black blazer.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment before she typed back.

Orm: “Noted. In the meantime, would it be alright if I focus more on The Hearth Project integration? The nonprofit work with Mrs. Kwong.”

She added a smiley face and immediately deleted it. Then she deleted the entire message, retyped it without the “Mrs.”, then put it back again. Then she hit send before she could overthink her life any further.

A minute later, Natasha replied.

Natasha: “Go ahead. Might do you some good to see how the nonprofit operates in the field.”

That was all the permission Orm needed.



She sat back in her chair, rereading the message, a slow smile pulling at her mouth. She doubted Natasha would have approved if she knew exactly how much good Orm intended to make of it.

Because this wasn’t just work. Not anymore.

The last time Orm had seen Ling, jealousy had cracked through that perfect calm like lightning through glass. For the first time since coming back, Orm had seen proof that there was still something under all that composure…anger, longing, maybe even love. Whatever it was, it had been real. And Orm was done pretending to accept the distance between them as permanent.

This was how it would start. Not with grand gestures, not with declarations, but with showing up at Ling’s world again. Patient. Persistent. And, this time, unafraid.

Orm walked out of the building with a purpose that almost felt noble, though she knew better. It wasn’t noble. It was personal. It was reckless. It was everything she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do again.

But she was going to do it anyway.

Because this time, she wasn’t going to disappear.
This time, she was going to win her back.

The Hearth Project was the exact opposite of S&M’s glass-and-marble world. It smelled like fresh coffee and old paper, and there were sticky notes on every wall, handwritten reminders that optimism still existed. People moved with that chaotic energy unique to nonprofit staff…part exhaustion, part caffeine, part holy mission.

And in the middle of it all was Ling.

She was standing by a whiteboard, explaining something to a group of volunteers, her hair tied back in a low bun, her voice calm and clear. Orm stopped in the doorway, watching her like she was seeing sunlight for the first time after a long winter.

God, she thought, she still talks like she’s delivering a verdict that could save humanity.

Ling finished her sentence and turned. Her eyes met Orm’s instantly. The warmth in them vanished faster than a candle in rain.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “You’re here.”

“Surprise,” Orm said, grinning as she approached. “Natasha said I could drop by, you know, to… merge myself into your good deeds.”

Ling blinked once. “That sentence doesn’t even make sense.”

“It’s the spirit that counts,” Orm replied, waving a hand. “I come bearing competence and charm.”

“You can keep one,” Ling said, turning back to her volunteers. “And it’s not the second one.”

Orm’s grin widened. “You missed me.”

“I missed silence,” Ling said. “And peace. And functioning boundaries.”

“Boundaries are for the weak,” Orm said cheerfully, trailing after her as she moved toward the office at the back. “Where are we off to? Food drives? Moral awakening sessions?”

“Paperwork,” Ling said, without looking back.

“Oh,” Orm said, wrinkling her nose. “The least sexy form of charity.”

“That’s because charity isn’t supposed to be sexy,” Ling said sharply, pushing open her office door. “Sit if you must. Or better yet, stand and think about your choices.”

Orm sat anyway, plopping down across from her desk, legs crossed, smile bright. “I’ve missed this,” she said softly. “You, bossing me around.”

Ling didn’t look up from her files. “You’re not my employee.”

“Tragic,” Orm sighed. “Imagine how much better this place would look if I were. I’d bring coffee. Sarcasm. Possibly chaos. But tasteful chaos.”

Ling finally looked up, eyes narrowing. “You’ve been here five minutes, and I already regret not hiding in the archives.”

“That’s love,” Orm said sweetly.

“That’s fatigue,” Ling said, standing to grab a folder from the shelf.

Orm watched her move, all precision and composure, and leaned back in her chair with a smirk. “You know, you look very powerful when you’re ignoring me.”

“Good,” Ling said. “It’s a look I’m cultivating.”

“So,” Orm continued, pretending to study the papers on Ling’s desk. “What’s the project we’re saving the world with today?”

“Community resource expansion for underfunded neighborhoods,” Ling said briskly. “We’re assessing regional distribution patterns.”

Orm blinked. “In English?”

“We’re checking how food gets to people,” Ling translated, dry as dust.

“Ah,” Orm said. “Logistics. My favorite foreplay.”

Ling’s pen stopped moving. Slowly, she looked up, her expression patient in the way saints were patient right before performing miracles. “Orm,” she said evenly, “do you have an off switch?”

“No,” Orm said proudly. “I was factory-made without one.”

Ling exhaled. “Then I hope you at least have an attention span.”

“I have selective attention,” Orm said. “It mostly selects you.”

Ling’s jaw tightened, and she went back to her notes. “This is work, Orm.”

“It can be both,” Orm said. “Work and fun.”

“This isn’t fun.”

“It could be, if you’d stop pretending you don’t find me adorable.”

Ling gave her a flat look. “You are not adorable. You are a migraine with dimples.”

Orm gasped theatrically. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all week.”

Ling pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering something under her breath in Mandarian that sounded suspiciously like a prayer for patience.

When she finally looked up again, her expression had softened, if only slightly. “You’re not here to distract me, Orm. You’re supposed to help with the merger and observe.”

“I am observing,” Orm said innocently. “I’ve observed that you’re very serious, your desk is alarmingly organized, and your staff is terrified of you.”

“They’re not terrified,” Ling said defensively.

From the hallway, someone dropped a stack of papers and immediately apologized to no one in particular.

Orm raised an eyebrow. “Terrified.”

Ling glared. “Don’t you have emails to write?”

“I sent them all before coming here ” Orm said. “Now I’m emotionally available for teamwork.”

“Then make yourself useful,” Ling said, sliding a stack of folders across the desk. “Sort these by outreach region. And please, for once in your life, don’t make jokes about data.”

“I can’t make promises,” Orm said, taking the folders anyway.

For the next hour, the office was a battlefield of barely concealed irritation. Ling worked quietly, her pen tapping rhythmically against the paper. Orm hummed. Loudly. Then she started whistling. Then she started narrating her filing process like a nature documentary.

“And here we have the elusive Boston folder,” she said softly, flipping a page. “It hides under layers of bureaucracy, waiting to attack its prey.”

“Orm,” Ling said without looking up, “if I throw this stapler at you, will that count as workplace harassment?”

“It depends,” Orm said, smiling. “Was it done out of love?”

Ling threw her pen down and stared at her. “How did I ever fall for you?”

Orm leaned forward, her grin turning gentle. “You didn’t fall. You walked in with your eyes open and stayed anyway.”

That shut Ling up for a moment. Her gaze lingered on Orm, and something unspoken flickered between them…memory, ache, maybe forgiveness hiding somewhere in the corner.

Ling stared at her for a long second, the air in the room shifting from irritation to something quieter, heavier. Then she sighed and pushed back her chair, gathering the files into a neat stack with mechanical precision.

“I’m done for today,” she said, her voice calm again, that cool professional tone she used when she needed to retreat. “You can send me your notes tomorrow.”

Orm looked up, frowning slightly. “That’s it?”

“Yes,” Ling said, slipping her laptop into its sleeve. “Some of us have lives beyond you.”

Orm tilted her head. “You mean Miu?”

Ling froze just long enough for Orm to notice before replying, evenly, “I mean shopping.”

Orm’s lips curved. “Shopping? You?”

“Yes, me,” Ling said, walking toward the door.

Orm stood, following her. “Can I join?”

Ling turned in the doorway, her expression perfectly composed but her eyes a touch exasperated. “Don’t you have some hundred-million-dollar merger somewhere?”

“Not anymore,” Orm said. “The court’s reviewing the proposal. Until they approve it, we’re just…” she spread her hands helplessly “very expensive decorations.”

“Then do something useful,” Ling said crisply, pulling her coat from the hanger. “Read a brief. Meditate. Reflect on why God gave you a mouth that never stops moving.”

Orm pouted dramatically. “Come on. Let me join. Just like old times.”

“Old times were a mistake,” Ling said, sliding her arms into her coat.

“Then let me make a new one,” Orm said, smiling, stepping closer. “Remember? We used to go shopping and I’d hold all the bags for you while you pretended you didn’t know me.”

Ling looked at her sharply. “I wasn’t pretending.”

“You were,” Orm said softly. “Except when you’d squeeze my hand in the parking lot.”

Ling’s breath hitched almost imperceptibly, but she recovered fast, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You’re imagining things.”

“Probably,” Orm said, smiling faintly. “But you always did look beautiful under fluorescent lighting.”

Ling gave her a flat look. “Goodbye, Orm.”

Orm followed her to the parking lot anyway, her heels clicking behind Ling’s steadier stride. “Where are you going? Saks? Nordstrom? Some minimalist cruelty-free boutique where all the clothes look like remorse?”

Ling unlocked her car. “Why are you still here?”

“Emotional support,” Orm said. “You need someone to tell you which shade of black looks least depressing.”

“I don’t need support,” Ling said, getting in.

“Everyone needs support,” Orm countered. “Especially women who pretend they don’t.”

Ling closed the door, but before she could start the engine, Orm leaned down at the open window, hands resting on the frame, smile soft and infuriating. “You’re really going to leave me standing here?”

“Yes.”

“In this economy?”

“Orm.”

“Fine,” she said, stepping back with exaggerated surrender. “Go on. Enjoy your shopping. I’ll just be here, all alone, pining.”

Ling rolled her eyes and started the car. “Try not to set anything on fire while I’m gone.”

“Can’t promise,” Orm said, stepping away….only to immediately circle the hood, open the passenger door, and slide in.

Ling’s eyes widened. “What…Orm, no.”

Orm buckled her seatbelt with a crisp click. “Safety first.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing,” Orm said. “I’m committed.”

“Get out.”

“No.”

“Orm.”

“Ling.”

Ling gripped the wheel, jaw tight. “You’re trespassing.”

“You used to call it devotion.”

“That was before I knew better.”

“Then consider this relapse therapy,” Orm said.

Ling groaned, dragging a hand over her face. “Why do I let you do this?”

Orm smiled, leaning back in the seat. “Because you like the way it feels to lose control. Just a little.”

Ling turned sharply toward her. “Don’t start.”

“Start what?” Orm said innocently. “A conversation? A memory? A relapse?”

Ling closed her eyes for a moment, like she was counting to ten. “I should throw you out right now.”

“You should,” Orm said quietly. “But you won’t.”

And for a long second, Ling just looked at her…really looked at her. The same eyes, the same crooked smile, the same impossible mix of arrogance and tenderness that had ruined her once already.

“Put your seatbelt on properly,” Ling said at last.

Orm grinned. “Yes, professor.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Old habits.”

“Unlearn them.”

Orm leaned her head against the window, her smile softening. “I’ve been trying,” she said.

Ling didn’t answer. She just put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot, muttering something in Mandarin that means fuck my life

Orm turned to look at her, half amused, half aching. “You know,” she said, “you always drove faster when you were trying not to think about me.”

Ling didn’t reply. But her hand tightened on the steering wheel. And for a fleeting second, Orm thought she saw the ghost of a smile before the city lights swallowed them both.

The mall was bright and polished, all glass and gold and the faint hum of expensive air conditioning. Ling walked a few steps ahead, heels clicking against the marble, every movement measured and deliberate, as if she were walking into court instead of a department store. Orm followed with the easy stride of someone who had no business being there but wasn’t about to be left behind.

They had not planned to walk side by side. They never planned anything. It just happened..like gravity.

Ling’s hand brushed the rack of blouses nearest to her. She scanned a row of white silk, pale blue, soft linen. The same palette she’d always worn controlled, careful, neutral to the point of invisibility.

“Still allergic to color, I see,” Orm said lightly, running her fingers along the same rack.

Ling didn’t look up. “Some of us prefer subtlety.”

Orm picked out a lilac blouse and held it up against Ling’s shoulder. “Subtle is overrated. You’d look good in this. Soft. Disarming. Professorial with just a hint of menace.”

Ling took the blouse from her hand and placed it neatly back on the hanger. “You’re not my stylist.”

“You let me be once,” Orm said softly.

“That was a mistake.”

“And yet,” Orm said, plucking another hanger, “you kept everything I picked out.”

Ling exhaled sharply, the sound halfway between annoyance and reluctant amusement. “You remember too much.”

“I forget everything else,” Orm said, smiling. “It’s a problem.”

They moved from one section to the next, the distance between them shrinking without either noticing. Orm had fallen into the old rhythm almost unconsciously…pulling pieces from racks, draping them over her arm, following Ling from mirror to mirror. She knew Ling’s measurements, her preferences, the exact shade of cream that made her skin glow and the one that made her look tired.

“Try this,” Orm said, handing her a pair of soft tailored pants and a simple blouse. “And this one, if you’re feeling brave.”

Ling took the clothes as if it cost her something to do it. “You’re still infuriating.”

“And you’re still impossible,” Orm said, following her toward the fitting rooms.

Ling disappeared behind the curtain, and for a moment the world went quiet. Orm leaned against the wall outside, pretending to scroll through her phone but watching the shadows of Ling’s movements as she changed. She’d seen that silhouette a thousand times before…in light, in darkness, in all the places she wasn’t supposed to.

When Ling stepped out, the first outfit clung to her just right, elegant and understated. Orm’s lips parted, but she covered it with a grin. “You look expensive. In a morally upright way.”

Ling turned to the mirror. “I look fine.”

“You look perfect,” Orm said before she could stop herself.

Ling’s eyes flicked toward her reflection, meeting Orm’s gaze in the mirror for a split second. Something passed between them…something unspoken and painfully familiar. Then Ling turned away and reached for another hanger.

For the next hour, it went on like that. Orm picking, Ling rejecting, both of them pretending not to enjoy the rhythm of it. Ling rolled her eyes at Orm’s choices but still took them into the fitting room. Orm teased her about her practicality, her obsession with neutral tones, her inability to admit when she liked something. Ling retaliated with dry remarks that should have stung but only made Orm laugh.

At one point, Ling stepped out in a navy dress that hugged her in all the ways Orm remembered. Orm didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. Her silence said enough. Ling noticed anyway. She adjusted the hem, pretending to look at herself, her voice quieter now. “It’s too much.”

“It’s exactly enough,” Orm said softly.

Ling gave her a look that was both warning and confession, then turned back toward the mirror.

They went through three more outfits like that. Orm fussing over details, Ling pretending she didn’t care. Ling accusing Orm of being dramatic, Orm agreeing just to see the corner of Ling’s mouth twitch upward. Somewhere between the racks and the mirrors, they stopped arguing and started falling into the pattern that had always felt too natural to name.

By the time they were at the counter, Ling’s arms were full of clothes she hadn’t planned to buy. Orm was carrying the rest, wordlessly. It felt like muscle memory.

When they finally stepped out of the store, Ling’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it and answered almost immediately.

“Hi,” she said, her tone shifting…warmer, softer, domestic in a way Orm had never heard from her before. “Yes, I’m at Saks. Do you need anything? That hand cream you like? Or the perfume?”

She paused, listening, a small laugh escaping her. “Alright. I’ll check. No, I’m not buying more shoes. You’re impossible.”

Orm stood a few steps away, her hands still full of the shopping bags, her smile fading as the words sank in. Ling’s voice was light, casual, a version of her Orm didn’t recognize. She never answered Miu’s calls when Orm was with her, well she rarely got those calls but Ling never answered .

Ling ended the call and slipped the phone back into her bag, the faintest trace of contentment on her face.

Orm forced a smile, handing her another bag. “Domestic goddess now, are we?”

Ling gave her a look, not unkind. “It’s called being considerate.”

Orm nodded, but her throat tightened. “You never used to be.”

“People change,” Ling said quietly.

Orm didn’t answer. She just nodded again, her chest tight, her hands suddenly too full.

They walked side by side out of the store, the faint scent of perfume lingering between them, the weight of old ghosts trailing behind. Ling walked ahead toward the escalator, graceful and sure. Orm followed, watching her move, her heart aching in that quiet, familiar way…the kind that didn’t break, just settled heavier each time.

Ling had moved on, Orm realized. Or maybe she had simply grown into the kind of woman Orm had never let her be.

Still, when Ling turned slightly to ask if she was coming, Orm smiled, stepped forward, and followed her down the escalator. Because even if she no longer belonged there, she couldn’t quite bring herself to stop trying.

Half an hour later, the bags were stacked neatly in Ling’s trunk, and the car hummed softly as they pulled away from the mall. For a few blissful minutes, there was peace…Ling focused on the road, the quiet hum of traffic filling the space between them. Then, inevitably, Orm broke the silence.

“I’m hungry,” she announced, drawing out the word like it was a tragedy.

Ling didn’t even look at her. “You’re always hungry.”

“Because someone didn’t feed me,” Orm said, slumping dramatically in her seat. “Do you know how cruel that is? To make a woman shop for hours on an empty stomach?”

“It’s been for an hour ,” Ling said flatly.

“Time moves differently when you’re starving.”

Ling sighed, eyes still on the road. “You had a croissant few minutes back.”

“That was snack. This is for survival.”

“You’re a grown woman, Orm.”

“I’m a starving grown woman,” Orm corrected. “There’s a difference.”

Ling glanced at her, her tone patient in that way that wasn’t really patient at all. “Grow up.”

Orm gasped. “You sound exactly like my conscience.”

“Then listen to it for once.”

“No,” Orm said firmly. “My conscience never drove me to eat.”

Ling shook her head, fighting the smallest smile. “Where do you even want to eat?”

Orm turned toward her, eyes lighting up. “Pinocchio’s.”

Ling blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I’m dead serious,” Orm said, grinning now. “Pinocchio’s Pizza. Harvard Square. Our old spot. Remember?”

“I remember the grease stains on my case notes,” Ling said.

“And the garlic knots,” Orm added. “And you pretending not to enjoy them.”

“You fell asleep on my notes,” Ling said.

“That was affection,” Orm said quickly.

“It was drooling.”

“Semantics.”

Ling exhaled through her nose, eyes fixed on the traffic light. “We are not going all the way to Cambridge for pizza.”

“But it’s our pizza,” Orm said, the word our slipping out before she could stop herself. “You used to order the veggie one with extra chili flakes and complain about it being too spicy every single time.”

Ling tightened her grip on the wheel. “That was years ago.”

“Memories age like wine,” Orm said. “Better with time. And carbs.”

“Orm,” Ling said, her tone warning now, “drop it.”

“I can’t drop hunger,” Orm said. “It’s biological.”

Ling groaned softly, muttering something

Orm leaned her head against the window, lower lip jutting out. “Fine. I’ll just wither away quietly.”

“You’re being dramatic again.”

“I’m being malnourished.”

“Orm.”

“Yes, Ling?”

“You’re insufferable.”

Orm grinned. “And yet here I am. Still in your passenger seat.”

Ling cut her a sharp look, but her mouth twitched anyway. “You always talk your way into trouble.”

“I also talk my way into dinner,” Orm said. “It’s a talent.”

Ling’s jaw clenched, but there was no real anger in it anymore. Only the faint resignation that came with remembering how this always went. Orm pestering. Ling pretending to resist. Both of them giving in eventually.

After a long pause, Ling sighed, her voice quieter now. “Fine. Pinocchio’s.”

Orm turned to her with mock reverence. “God, I missed when you used to surrender like this.”

“Don’t make this sentimental,” Ling said. “I’m doing this so you’ll shut up.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Orm said cheerfully.

“You’re buying,” Ling added.

“I always did,” Orm said. “You paid me in affection. Sometimes.”

Ling gave her a side glance. “You really don’t know when to stop, do you?”

“I stopped once,” Orm said softly. “Didn’t like how that turned out.”

Ling’s eyes flicked toward her, just for a heartbeat. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was thick with everything they weren’t saying.

Then Orm grinned again, cutting through the moment. “Anyway. Pizza. Extra cheese. Just like the old days.”

Ling shook her head and turned onto the highway. “You’re still impossible.”

“And you’re still driving me there,” Orm said, settling back in her seat, satisfied.

Ling didn’t answer. She just kept her eyes on the road, her expression calm and distant, while inside, something small and traitorous felt dangerously close to fondness.

Outside, the sun dipped lower over the Charles River as the city came into view…Cambridge waiting quietly, like an echo neither of them had ever really escaped.

The smell of garlic and toasted dough hit them the second they stepped inside. The place hadn’t changed …the same chipped wooden counter, the same faded mural of the Boston skyline, even the same creaky fan spinning lazily overhead.

Orm smiled before she even realized it. “God, it even smells the same.”

Ling arched an eyebrow as she followed her to the booth … the one by the window, tucked in the corner like a secret. “You remember the smell?”

Orm dropped into the booth, grinning. “I remember everything that includes you.”

Ling’s lips parted …just barely, before she caught herself and looked away, pretending to study the chalkboard menu. The hum of the place filled the silence between them: soft laughter, clinking glasses, a faint tune from the old radio that always played songs twenty years out of date.

After the waiter took their order, Orm leaned back against the cracked red vinyl seat. Across the room, a couple, probably students … had taken their table. The one they used to share tucked in a corner . The girl was laughing at something, tossing her hair back as the boy leaned closer, bold and unthinking in the way youth always was.

Orm watched them for a long moment, quiet, almost smiling.

Ling followed her gaze. “What?”

“Nothing.” Orm’s voice came soft, like she was afraid of startling the memory. “Just… they remind me of us.”

Ling’s brows drew together. “Us?”

“Yeah,” Orm said, a faint curve at the corner of her mouth. “Back when you pretended you didn’t love me, and I pretended to believe you.”

Ling let out a small exhale that might’ve been a laugh, might’ve been disbelief. “You were a menace.”

“You were worse,” Orm countered gently. “You kept sitting across from me, knowing I was falling for you.”

Ling’s eyes dropped to the table. “Don’t romanticize it.”

Orm tilted her head, studying her. “I’m not. I’m just remembering.”

Her voice softened, almost a whisper. “You used to sit exactly like that … arms folded, pretending you were only there for the coffee. You always said you hated this place.”

Ling smirked faintly. “I did. The pizza’s mediocre.”

“But you came anyway.”

Orm’s lips parted, something tender flickering in her eyes. She hesitated before speaking, her voice softer now, stripped of its usual teasing.
“Thank you for bearing me today,” she said. “I know I can be… a lot.”

Ling let out a low breath, her gaze fixed on the table. “I only tolerated you because you were my best friend,” she said quietly. Then, softer still, almost an afterthought, “Sorry, my only friend. Even now.”

That landed heavier than either of them expected.

Orm blinked, a sad smile ghosting across her face. “You still want me as a best friend?”

Ling gave a small, humorless huff. “That’s the only way I can tolerate you.”

Orm tilted her head, eyes glinting, a fragile mix of hope and ache. “Can I not be more than that?”

Ling’s hand stilled on her napkin. Her tone turned weary, pleading. “Orm, please don’t make this more complicated than it already is.”

Orm leaned forward, voice low, desperate. “But we love complicated, baby. That’s how we met. I just… I just want to be yours again.”

Ling froze. The word baby hit her like a pulse from an old life she’d buried too deep. Her jaw tightened, and when she finally spoke, her voice was calm but trembling at the edges. “I’m going to leave if you keep talking like this.”

Orm’s face fell. “Baby… please.”

That was enough. Ling pushed back, standing abruptly, her bag already in her hand. The sound of the legs scraping the floor cut through the murmur of the restaurant.

Orm’s voice broke, rushed, panicked. “Okay, okay… I’ll stop. I won’t talk about us.”

Ling stood there for a moment, shoulders tense, eyes closed briefly like she was trying to find her footing. The silence stretched.

Finally, she said, without looking at her, “You always say that. And then you never do.”

Orm’s throat worked around the words she couldn’t say. “Because I don’t know how to stop,” she whispered.

Ling hesitated, her back to Orm, torn between walking away and sitting back down. The smell of pizza, the chatter, the city beyond the glass…all of it suddenly felt too loud, too bright

Orm sat perfectly still, eyes wide, apology caught somewhere between her chest and her throat. “Okay,” she whispered again, gentler this time. “I won’t talk about us. I promise.”

Ling exhaled slowly. The defiance in her posture began to crumble, inch by inch. She looked down at Orm, the woman who once could undo her entire sense of control with a single sentence, and something in her softened. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was love refusing to stay buried.

Without another word, Ling lowered herself back into the seat. The vinyl creaked beneath her, the sound small but final.

Neither spoke for a while. Ling picked at the edge of her napkin, trying to ground herself in something ordinary, while Orm sat opposite her, barely breathing, afraid that even a word might send her away again.

When Ling finally looked up, her eyes were calm but guarded. “I shouldn’t have come,” she murmured.

Orm leaned forward, resting her arms on the table, her voice low and trembling. “But you did.”

Ling didn’t answer.

“Because you wanted to,” Orm continued, quietly, carefully. “You wanted to see me. To make sure I was still here. And because…” She swallowed hard, eyes searching Ling’s face. “Because you still love me.”

Ling’s eyes flickered , not anger this time, but something raw, almost pleading. “Orm-”

“You don’t have to say it,” Orm cut in softly. “I see it. The way you look at me like you’re trying not to remember. The way you came back to sit down instead of walking out that door.”

Ling pressed her lips together, staring at the table. Her fingers gripped the napkin until it wrinkled.

“Love doesn’t mean anything … we’re not good for each other,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Orm gave a small, sad smile. “No. It does. We are the best for each other”

Before Ling could answer, her phone buzzed against the table, the sudden vibration slicing through the fragile quiet. The screen lit up with a name Orm knew too well.

Miu.

Orm’s eyes dropped to it, then lifted slowly to Ling’s face. She shook her head once … barely perceptible, but enough. A silent plea. Don’t answer. Not yet. Let this moment just be ours.

For a few seconds, Ling didn’t move. The phone kept ringing, its soft hum filling the air like an unwanted intruder. Orm’s gaze stayed on her, steady, hopeful. For a heartbeat, Ling almost gave in…. almost let it go to voicemail.

But then she reached for it.

Orm’s face fell, the flicker of hope dimming into quiet acceptance.

Ling pressed the phone to her ear, her tone controlled. “Hey… oh, you’re not going to be home tonight? The merger work is holding you back?” A pause. Her voice softened, confused but polite. “Oh, okay. No, I’m still out, but I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She hung up quickly, setting the phone face-down on the table.

Orm frowned slightly, her mind already turning. Merger work? That didn’t sound right. “The merger?” she repeated inwardly. But there isn’t much left to do … it’s already out for deliberation.

She studied Ling’s expression, searching for any sign of what she was thinking.

Ling broke the silence first. “You said you were sitting ducks until the judges accept the proposal, right?”

Orm nodded slowly, suspicion clouding her tone. “Yes.”

Ling frowned, half to herself. “Weird… why would Miu say she’s busy with merger work then?”

She lingered on the thought for a moment, her brow furrowing … a lawyer’s instinct, sharp and skeptical, flickering to life. But just as quickly, she pushed it aside, shaking her head faintly. “Never mind,” she said, reaching for her drink again. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Orm didn’t argue, but the look she gave Ling said otherwise.

As the ice clinked softly in Ling’s glass, both women sat back, the air between them shifting…their private world cracking just slightly under the weight of a name that had always come between them.

They left the pizza place in silence. The night air was cool, carrying the faint scent of rain and exhaust, the kind of Boston night that made everything feel quieter than it was. Ling walked ahead toward the car, her heels clicking against the pavement, every sound too sharp in the dark.

Orm followed a few steps behind, hands tucked into her jacket pockets, eyes on Ling’s back. She didn’t try to speak. She’d already said enough for one night.

When they reached the car, Ling unlocked it without a word. Orm hesitated before getting in, watching Ling’s reflection in the glass , calm, precise, maybe a little too calm.

The ride started in silence, the radio off, the only sound the low hum of the tires on the asphalt. The city lights blurred past, streaking across Ling’s face, catching in her lashes.

Halfway through the drive, Orm noticed it the small, familiar sound of the GPS voice breaking the quiet.

“Continue on Memorial Drive for 2 miles to home.”

Orm’s head turned. The word lingered on the screen in the soft glow of the dashboard: Home.

Her home.

Still saved that way.

Ling’s hand twitched on the steering wheel, eyes flicking briefly toward the screen before fixing back on the road. Her jaw tightened.

Orm smiled faintly, the kind of smile that held both ache and fondness. “You never changed it,” she said quietly.

Ling didn’t look at her. “I just never thought to.”

“You say you don’t love me anymore,” she said softly, leaning back in her seat. “That I’m just a friend now. But you still have my place saved as home.”

Ling’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Don’t start.”

“You’re all talk, baby,” Orm teased, a grin curling at the edge of her lips.

Ling shot her a warning glance. “Keep it up, and I’ll pull over right now and push you out.”

Orm laughed, holding up her hands. “Okay, okay! Sorry. No more teasing.”

But the sparkle in her eyes betrayed her words. A few seconds later, she added under her breath, “Though if you did pull over, I wouldn’t mind. It’d be kind of romantic.”

Ling turned her head slightly, expression caught somewhere between exasperation and reluctant amusement. “You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been called worse,” Orm said, grinning. “But not by someone who still has me listed as home.”

“Orm,” Ling warned again, though the edge in her voice had softened now, melting into something closer to fond annoyance.

Orm bit her lip, feigning innocence. “Fine, fine. I’ll behave.” She turned to the window, hiding her smile. “Mostly.”

By the time they reached her building, the teasing had faded into a warm, comfortable quiet. The GPS chimed one last time.

“You have arrived at home.”

Neither of them moved for a few seconds. The words lingered, filling the car with a strange familiarity that neither wanted to name.

Orm finally unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to her. “Well,” she said softly, “thank you for the ride, Professor.”

Ling said faintly. “Don’t call me that.”

“Can’t help it,” Orm said, her voice warm now, affectionate. “Old habits die hard.”

Before Ling could reply, Orm leaned in …slow, deliberate… and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. It wasn’t hurried or reckless, just soft enough to leave the air trembling between them.

“Goodnight,” Orm whispered, close enough for Ling to feel her breath. “Drive safe.”

She slipped out of the car before Ling could respond, closing the door quietly behind her.

Ling sat frozen for a moment, staring straight ahead, her cheek still tingling where Orm’s lips had brushed it. The GPS screen dimmed, the word home fading into darkness.

And as Orm walked toward her building, she didn’t look back …but she smiled, knowing Ling was still sitting there, not ready to drive away just yet.

*Flashback*

The affair began with boundaries.

Ling insisted on them, writing them into existence as though rules could save her from herself. She was methodical about it, almost clinical, listing them out in a neat row across the page of her notebook as if structure could hold back chaos.

No public displays of affection.
No expectations. No big confessions, no favors, no blurred lines between love and grading.
No jealousy. Which was ironic, because Ling was already jealous of anyone who so much as looked at Orm too long.
No touching within the walls of the university. No kissing. No handholding. No flirting.
And above all, no staying overnight.

Orm had only one rule.
No talking about the wife.

All of Ling’s rules broke within a week. Not the obvious ones….they were careful enough never to leave traces that could get them caught, but the rest of it collapsed almost instantly, as if the universe itself found the idea of restraint laughable.

The affair had begun with a kiss, and for the first week, that was all they seemed to survive on. Kisses in the half-lit quiet of Ling’s office, hurried and breathless between the stacks of papers she pretended to grade. Kisses stolen in empty hallways between lectures, when Orm brushed past her and smiled that infuriating smile that made Ling lose all sense of reason. Kisses in the car parked under the yellow glow of a streetlight, the world outside reduced to shadows and silence. Kisses in Orm’s apartment, where everything smelled faintly of jasmine and rain, and time itself seemed to dissolve.

For Ling, it was disorienting. She was a woman of order, of purpose, of self-control. The only daughter of a family that prized perfection. She had been raised to be good, to do good, to follow rules, to stay kind, to stay small. She was taught not to make things difficult, not to be selfish, not to hurt anyone. She had been raised to believe in dharma, in balance, in right and wrong.

But one smile from Orm, and every teaching she had ever memorized crumbled.

She would sit at her desk grading papers and think, just because I need air, should I destroy the environment that gives it to me? That was how she saw her marriage to Miu…something steady, quiet, sacred. Something that did not deserve to be ruined. And yet, she needed Orm like she needed to breathe.

Orm made her feel alive, and that terrified her.

Orm noticed everything. The way Ling took her coffee ; two sugars, stirred slowly, never while it was too hot. The way her shoulders rolled when she was tired. The faint twitch at the corner of her eye when she was trying not to show emotion. Orm memorized it all as if Ling were a map she was determined to learn by heart.

For Ling, this was what drove her mad. Who did that? Who noticed the way a person blinked when they were overwhelmed? Who remembered the cadence of a sigh, or the way fingers lingered over a page when the mind was elsewhere? Orm did. And Ling found herself craving it more than anything, the feeling of being seen down to her smallest, most invisible pieces.

And for Orm, Ling was everything. She didn’t know when it started. Maybe it was the first time Ling scolded her for interrupting in class, voice sharp but eyes soft. Maybe it was the day Ling laughed unexpectedly at something ridiculous she said. Or maybe it was the quiet moments after, when Ling would fall silent, and Orm could see the weight she carried…the loneliness of a woman who lived by rules she never chose.

Orm adored every fragment. Ling’s reserved voice, her habit of whispering when she talked to herself, the way she muttered about the bitter tea in the professor’s lounge as though it personally offended her. Even the way she fell asleep when she was too tired to fight it, murmuring incoherently, clutching her pillow like a secret.

There were nights Orm would stay awake beside her, just watching. The lamplight would spill across Ling’s face, softening her edges, and Orm would think that this…this impossible, forbidden, fragile love, was worth every line they had crossed.

Ling had always believed that love was supposed to be quiet, dutiful, something you tended to like a garden. Orm showed her that love could also be wild, messy, and utterly ungovernable. And once Ling felt that truth, there was no going back.

The affair had begun with boundaries.
By the end of that first week, it was already breaking them.

Orm had finished classes at noon that day. The apartment was quiet, sunlight stretching lazily across the wooden floor, and for once there was no lecture, no reading, no excuse to keep busy. She had told herself she would use the free afternoon to catch up on Comparative Constitutional Law, but the pages blurred after the third paragraph. Every sentence began and ended with the same thought. Ling.

She had not seen her all day, not even from a distance. Normally that was fine. They were careful, cautious, disciplined in their own way. But today, the stillness felt unbearable. She needed to hear her voice, to feel that measured calm that somehow made the chaos in her head slow down. She needed her, and not just in the way people meant when they said they missed someone. It was a sharper kind of ache.

She grabbed her phone and typed quickly.

Orm: When are you finishing up? I need you.

A reply came almost immediately.

Ling: What do you mean you need me?

Orm smiled, biting the inside of her cheek.

Orm: Need help with Constitutional Law. You know, the one with the- readings that hate me.

A pause, then the typing bubbles appeared again.

Ling: I’ll be there in an hour. If I don’t have any students during office hours.

Orm: Okay. I miss you. 💋

She stared at the screen long after the message was sent, then tossed the phone aside and tried to read again. It didn’t work. She must have re-read the same page five times before she gave up entirely and started pacing the room. By the time the clock hit six, her nerves were stretched thin.

When she finally heard the soft click of the door, the sound was like relief.

Ling stepped in quietly, closing the door behind her with care. Her white shirt was loose, half tucked into her black slacks, her hair falling out of its usual neat twist. She looked tired, but the kind of tired that made her softer around the edges.

Orm’s book slid from her lap onto the couch. “You’re late,” she said, though her voice held no real accusation.

Ling locked the door and set her bag down. “I had a student come in last minute. She wanted to talk about moot court prep.”

“Did you help her?”

“Of course,” Ling said, crossing the room, loosening her sleeves as she moved. “Unlike you, some of my students still keep their focus on academics.”

Orm grinned, leaning back on the couch. “I am focused. Just on the wrong subject.”

Ling gave her that look, the one that was supposed to silence her but never did. “You said you needed help.”

“I do,” Orm said, sitting up straighter. “Just not with constitutional law anymore.”

Ling exhaled slowly, already knowing where this was going. “Orm.”

“You didn’t even say hi.”

“I’m saying it now.”

“That’s not how I like it.”

Ling’s lips curved, unwillingly. “You’re impossible.”

Orm rose from the couch, the faintest spark in her eyes. “And yet you keep coming back.”

Ling’s breath caught, just slightly. There it was again, that shift in the air. The same one that always pulled them under before either of them could name it.

“Orm, we said we’d keep it…”

Orm stepped closer, close enough for Ling to feel the warmth of her. “We said a lot of things.”

Ling’s hand lifted automatically, as if to create distance, but it found Orm’s shoulder instead. “You’re not even pretending to study.”

“I’m studying you,” Orm murmured.

Ling laughed quietly, despite herself. “You’re insufferable.”

“You love that about me.”

Ling’s eyes softened. “That’s what scares me.”

Orm tilted her head, a small, knowing smile touching her lips. “You’re allowed to be scared.”

Ling’s answer came in a whisper. “You make it impossible not to be.”

For a moment they stood there, neither daring to move, as if one more breath might break whatever invisible thread was holding them still. Then Ling exhaled, her resolve slipping with the sound. She reached for Orm’s hand and sank down onto the couch beside her.

The books on the table lay forgotten, the world outside irrelevant. Ling’s fingers traced the back of Orm’s hand, slow, distracted, as if memorizing the shape of something she already knew too well.

Orm leaned her head on Ling’s shoulder. “You smell like rain,” she whispered.

“I walked from the parking lot.”

“I like it.”

Ling smiled faintly, her thumb brushing over Orm’s knuckles. “You’re going to ruin me.”

Orm’s voice was soft. “Maybe. But I’ll love you while I do it.”

Ling’s eyes fluttered shut. Whatever boundaries they had set, whatever lines they had promised to keep, had long since blurred into nothing. In that quiet apartment, with books half open and the city humming beyond the window, they both knew they had lost control long before tonight.

Ling’s hand was still in Orm’s, her thumb tracing slow circles over the skin. The air between them had thickened; every sound outside seemed far away. Orm turned her head just enough for her breath to touch Ling’s neck.

Ling should have pulled back. She told herself to. But her body didn’t move.

Orm’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You’re shaking.”

Ling’s reply came like an exhale. “Because you don’t stop.”

“I don’t want to.”

The words hung there, bare and certain. Ling looked at her then…really looked and all the restraint she had built around herself began to give way. Orm’s eyes were steady, wide open, waiting.

Ling’s fingers slid to the back of her neck. The first touch was gentle, the kind of touch meant to be brief, but neither of them let it end. The world tilted, shrinking down to the sound of two uneven breaths and the faint hum of the city outside.

Orm’s hands came to rest at Ling’s waist, light but sure, drawing her closer until there was nothing left between them but heat and heartbeat. Ling’s thoughts fractured into fragments of want, fear, mercy, sin and then into nothing at all.

The kiss that followed was not new, but it felt different. It was hungry, desperate, full of everything they had been trying not to say. Ling pulled her closer, the taste of regret already on her tongue, the promise of ruin threaded through every breath.

The room filled with the sound of movement , quiet, unhurried, inevitable. Papers fell from the table, the lamp flickered, the air turned warm. Neither of them spoke.

When they finally broke apart, both were breathless, their foreheads pressed together, the silence between them heavy with something they could no longer name.

“Did you have a good day?” Ling asks

“yes”

“Good,” Ling said, her voice quiet but weighted with something else. Her gaze drifted downward, lingering on Orm’s lips. “Mine was awful,” she murmured, and before Orm could answer, she leaned in and kissed her…hungry, certain, a little desperate.

Orm’s breath caught as Ling deepened it, her hand sliding up the back of her neck, keeping her close, unwilling to let the day or its noise come between them. The taste of her felt like relief, like confession, like something Ling had been holding in since morning.

Orm tried to speak, to say something teasing or clever, but Ling didn’t let her. Her touch was insistent, almost impatient, the kind of touch that said I don’t want to talk, not tonight. Ling’s need always came out this way when she was tired: quiet all day, then suddenly full of fire.

Orm smiled against her mouth. “You missed me.”

Ling didn’t answer. She pulled Orm closer instead, her fingers threading into her hair, her breath breaking softly between kisses. Orm’s pulse quickened, her body leaning into the weight and warmth of her. The air grew thick around them, filled with that quiet sound of two people forgetting where one ended and the other began.

Ling’s restraint slipped by degrees. Her hands, always so careful, became unsteady; her control dissolved into touch and breath. Orm’s laughter…half whisper, half gasp echoed softly in the room, and Ling pressed her forehead to hers, breathing her in like oxygen.

“Look at me,” Ling whispered.

Orm lifted her eyes, a tremor running quietly through her chest.

Ling’s voice dipped lower, rougher. “Do you know what you do to me?”

Orm shook her head, smiling against her breath. “Tell me.”

But Ling didn’t. She kissed her instead … slow this time, the kind of kiss that made promises without saying a word. The moment stretched, long and warm and breathless, until the world slipped away. Until it was just the sound of their breathing, and the low hum of something wild and dangerous unraveling between them.

When they finally broke apart, Ling’s eyes glinted with mischief. Her fingers slipped beneath the hem of Orm’s pants, dragging them down slowly, deliberately, her gaze never breaking. Orm’s breath hitched. Heat rippled through her body, anticipation blooming like fire.

Ling placed her hands gently on Orm’s thighs. “Lift your hips for me, please” she murmured, her voice reverent.

Orm obeyed. She was already wet, her pussy glistening with arousal. Ling leaned in, her lips brushing gently against Orm’s clit … just once and Orm whimpered, her fingers curling into the sheets.

Ling loved how responsive she was. Every kiss, every touch, Orm bloomed under her like she’d been waiting for it. Needed it. Ling realized she needed her just as much.

She kissed her inner thighs, slow and worshipful, her tongue tracing along the tender skin. Occasionally, she let it brush against Orm’s lips …teasing, until Orm whimpered again, her hips twitching, nearly begging.

And when Ling finally had enough of teasing … when Orm’s breathing had turned ragged and she was murmuring her name like prayer… Ling dragged her tongue slowly up her clit and smiled when Orm squirmed with a desperate, choked-out sound.

She hooked Orm’s legs over her shoulders, spreading her wide. Open. Accessible.

It started innocently. A slow swirl of tongue, the gentle suction on her clit. But soon Ling replaced her mouth with two fingers, sliding them in with practiced ease, and Orm gasped …her body arching, hands reaching for anything to hold on to.

“You’re so wet, baby,” Ling said, fucking her with smooth, deep thrusts. “All this for me, huh?”

“Yes,” Orm gasped, breathless, shivering at her own voice … the sound of herself falling apart.

The sight of her, flushed and writhing and so damn open beneath her, made Ling lose her composure. She leaned forward, her other hand sliding under Orm’s shirt, fingers brushing over her breasts, pinching her nipple just enough to make Orm moan.

“You look so beautiful,” Ling said, almost reverent.

Orm’s cheeks flushed, her whimpers spilling out like they couldn’t be helped. Ling always praised her , always said things that made her feel wanted … but this was different. This time it felt like Ling meant every word. Like she saw her, and wanted her, and needed her to know it.

“You’re doing so well, baby,” Ling whispered, her fingers thrusting deeper now, faster. “Let it happen. Let me have it.”

Orm’s back arched. Her mouth opened around a cry. Her body clenched around Ling’s hand.

“So beautiful,” Ling murmured again, watching her fall apart.

And Orm did … messy and unrestrained, her orgasm shaking through her with the kind of vulnerability only Ling ever got to see.

The night had quieted to a low hum. The rain had started again, steady against the windows, washing the city in silver. Ling sat propped against the couch, Orm half-draped across her lap, tracing idle patterns on her shirt. The lamp beside them cast a soft, amber circle of light, and the world outside felt far away.

Orm stirred first, her voice muffled against Ling’s collar. “You said your day was bad. What happened?”

Ling’s fingers moved absently through her hair, slow and methodical, the touch that always calmed Orm. “It was nothing,” she said, her tone quiet but even. “I’m opening a non-profit. For… you know who.”

Orm looked up, searching for her face.

Ling continued, her words careful and precise. “There’s a lot of paperwork. My parents are against it because the funding comes from my trust. But I had to do it. Then I have a hundred papers to grade, case notes, moot court preparation.” She paused, her hand stilling briefly on Orm’s shoulder. “Everything aside, I have you. My only sense of normalcy.”

Orm smiled against her. “Oh, I see. The one you said gives you headaches just few days back?”

Ling’s lips curved faintly. “That’s because you ranted about your high-school soccer team for three hours. I learned the entire roster by force.”

Orm tilted her head to look up at her. “Oh yeah? Which position did Emma Curran play?”

Ling’s eyes narrowed, amused. “That’s a trick question. She never played. She was the water girl.”

Orm’s face lit up, delighted. “You remembered everything.”

Ling let out a small hum, fingers brushing the edge of Orm’s jaw. “I always remember everything about you.”

Orm grinned. “You’re so cute, baby.”

That earned her a raised eyebrow. “Are we each other’s baby now?”

“Yes, we are,” Orm replied with a grin, completely sure of herself.

Ling’s hand slipped beneath Orm’s chin, guiding her gaze upward. “If I’m your baby, you still listen when I speak,” she said, her voice soft but commanding.

Orm swallowed, smiling but instantly quieter. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good,” Ling murmured, releasing her and leaning back. “Now tell me about your day. The short version this time.”

Orm immediately started anyway, words spilling out faster than her thoughts. “Well, I tried to study, but the coffee tasted like old socks, and I forgot my laptop charger again, so I borrowed Jordan’s, but then she reminded me about this group presentation that I totally blanked on, and…”

“Orm,” Ling interrupted gently. “The short version.”

Orm grinned sheepishly. “The day was chaos. I missed you.”

Ling’s hand slipped back into her hair, tugging lightly, just enough to make her look up again. “You missed me?”

Orm nodded, eyes bright. “A lot.”

Ling smiled then, slow and knowing. “Good.” She let her fingers linger at the back of Orm’s neck, a wordless reassurance that she was both in charge and entirely devoted.

That made Orm grin again, but she didn’t push further. She just stayed there, wrapped around Ling, her chatter softening into hums and small laughs as Ling stroked her hair.

The rain deepened outside, the rhythm slow and constant. Ling’s hand traced lazy circles on Orm’s back while Orm’s voice rose and fell in another one of her rambling stories. Occasionally, Ling would stop her mid-sentence with a quiet enough or a soft laugh, just to remind her who held the room.

Orm always obeyed, melting easily into Ling’s quiet command.

And in the quiet that followed, when words finally ran out, Ling pressed her lips to the top of Orm’s head and whispered, “You talk too much.”

Orm smiled into her chest. “And you love it.”

Ling didn’t deny it.

Orm shifted slightly, catching the sound through the window. “It’s raining,” she said suddenly, sitting up just enough to look outside. “Oh, this reminds me….when I was a kid, I rode my bike in the rain and broke my arm.”

Ling opened her eyes, lips curving faintly. “That sounds about right.”

“No, seriously!” Orm said, already halfway to another tangent. “I thought it’d be fun, like those movie scenes where people spin in the rain with music playing. Except there was no music, just thunder, and I was twelve and overconfident.”

Ling smirked, her voice calm. “And undercoordinated.”

“Excuse me,” Orm gasped, clutching her chest dramatically. “I was a very talented athlete…if you ignore the part where I skidded into a bush.”

Ling laughed softly, the sound low and warm. “And the broken arm?”

“Oh, it was spectacular,” Orm said proudly, eyes bright with mischief. “My mom nearly fainted when she saw the X-ray. I still have the scar from where they had to realign the bone. Look!” She tried to angle her arm in the dim light.

Ling caught her hand gently, studying her wrist with deliberate attention. “You talk about your injuries like they’re trophies.”

Orm grinned. “Well, I survived them, didn’t I?” She turned her head toward Ling, eyes gleaming. “You listening, Professor?”

Ling hummed. “Always.”

Orm narrowed her eyes playfully. “Really? Then what color was my bike?”

Ling tilted her head, pretending to think. “Red. With a sticker of a lightning bolt on the side.”

Orm blinked. “that’s a small detail?”

Ling gave her a small, tired smile. “You talk a lot, Orm. It’s hard not to remember.”

Orm softened, her grin turning quiet. She leaned into Ling again, resting her head on her chest, tracing idle lines over her shirt. “You know, you always listen even when you’re exhausted. Most people tune me out after five minutes.”

“Well, I love listening to you” Ling said simply.

The rain kept falling, washing the world in rhythm. Orm went on talking….about her childhood, her scrapes, the ridiculous raincoat she used to wear, all the small, bright fragments of a life that had always felt too big for silence.

Ling listened, eyes half closed, exhaustion lingering at the edges of her body but never quite settling. Even after the longest days…after the paperwork, the lectures, the family calls, the weight of her own rules…Orm’s voice always reached her.

It filled the quiet corners of her mind that nothing else could.

She didn’t say it out loud, but she thought it every time. If her days ended like this…with Orm’s voice tangling through the sound of rain, with warmth pressed against her side and laughter replacing the noise in her head…then even the hardest days were good ones.

Because Orm, for all her chaos and chatter, was the only part of her life that ever felt like light.

And that night, Ling broke her last rule. The one she had promised herself she would never cross. No staying over.

It had seemed simple when she made it, back when everything between them still felt manageable, containable, something that could be put back in its box when daylight came. But as the rain continued to fall and Orm’s words softened into half-dreamed laughter, that rule began to dissolve like ink in water.

Orm had fallen asleep mid-sentence, her voice fading somewhere between a story about her old neighborhood and a half-formed question Ling never got to answer. She was sprawled across the couch, one arm thrown carelessly around Ling’s waist, her face pressed against her shoulder. Ling looked down at her, at the way her brow softened in sleep, at the faint smile still tugging at the corner of her lips, and something inside her simply gave way.

She should have left. She should have untangled herself gently, gathered her things, slipped out into the rain before the world remembered who she was supposed to be. But she didn’t.

Instead, she shifted slightly, letting Orm curl closer. Her hand found its way to the younger woman’s hair, brushing it back from her face, slow and tender. The air was still damp from the storm, but the apartment was warm, glowing faintly under the soft lamplight.

Ling closed her eyes. For once, she didn’t want to think about consequences, or vows, or the version of herself she had to be when morning came. For once, she wanted to exist in this small, impossible peace.

She fell asleep like that…Orm’s warmth pressed against her, the rhythm of rain steady beyond the window, the chaos of her life finally quieted by the simplest thing of all.

And when morning came, the world outside would start again, bringing noise and guilt and the weight of what they were becoming. But for that night, the rule was gone.

Thus began the sleepovers.

The nights that turned warmer.
The mornings that turned softer.
And the days that, somehow, felt a little more bearable…because she would wake with Orm still tangled against her, breathing softly, her presence reminding Ling that even the most complicated love could make the world gentler for a while.

Chapter Text

Orm's POV

Orm walked toward her building, she didn’t look back…but she smiled, knowing Ling was still sitting there, not ready to drive away just yet.

The smile lingered for a few steps, soft and secret, until the sound of Ling’s car finally pulled away from the curb. The low hum of the engine faded into the distance, leaving the street empty and the night suddenly colder.

Orm stood there for a moment under the streetlight, staring at the dark stretch of road where the taillights had disappeared. Then the thought came, quiet but sharp.

Merger work.

Her smile faltered.

Ling’s wife…Natasha, had said she was working late on the merger. Except there was nothing left to work on. The court had the proposal. Every document was signed, sealed, and submitted. There was no reason to be in the office at this hour unless something didn’t add up.

Orm exhaled, pulling her coat tighter. Her instincts buzzed in her chest like static. She turned to the empty street and whistled for a taxi.

A yellow cab rolled up, brakes squealing softly against the wet asphalt.

“Where to?” the driver asked through the half-open window.

Orm hesitated for only a second. “S&M Tower. Financial District.”

The driver nodded and pulled into the road.

The city passed by in streaks of color…neon lights, reflections of rain, the blur of other lives moving too fast to notice hers. Orm’s fingers drummed against the window, her thoughts unraveling faster than the cab could drive.

Why lie about something so small? If Natasha didn’t want to say where she was, she could have made up anything…client call, late dinner, donor meeting. But she’d said merger. Specific. Planned.

Was she covering for someone?

Was she… cheating?

Orm’s stomach tightened. She didn’t even know why the thought bothered her so much. Maybe it was the absurdity of it…Natasha, the woman Ling had chosen over her many times in past , the perfect, composed wife who represented everything Ling thought she wanted.

And now there was a lie sitting there between them, small but deliberate.

Orm looked out at the rain-blurred lights, voice low to herself. “If she’s lying to Ling…” She stopped. The rest of the sentence didn’t need words.

The cab turned down the empty stretch toward the S&M building. Its glass facade rose out of the darkness like something half-asleep, a few lights still burning on the higher floors. Orm leaned forward. The twenty-third floor…the executive offices. One of those lights was on.

“Can you wait a minute?” she asked, pulling a few bills from her wallet.

The driver shrugged. “Sure thing, lady.”

She stepped out into the drizzle, crossing the quiet street. The lobby was still lit, but hollow, the receptionist long gone. Only the security guard looked up as she walked in.

“Working late again, Ms. Orm?” he asked with a tired smile.

Orm smiled back easily. “No, just forgot something.”

The guard chuckled and buzzed her through saying “The night guard is on patrolling very floor, look out for him”.

She stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for twenty-three. The hum of the lift filled the silence, steady and unnerving. Her reflection in the mirrored walls looked calm, almost amused, but her heart was pounding.

When the elevator doors opened, the hallway was dark except for a thin strip of light spilling out from Lorena’s office. The rest of the floor looked asleep…desks silent, screens black, the hum of the city faint through the glass.

Orm hesitated, her heels quiet against the carpet. That light shouldn’t have been on. It was late. Too late.

And then she heard it…voices. Two of them. Low, almost conspiratorial.

She took a careful step closer.

“Are you sure it’s going to work?” Natasha’s voice. Soft, anxious, careful in the way people sound when they already know they’re doing something wrong.

“Yes, honey,” another voice replied. Lorena. The tone was smooth, confident, the kind of voice that carried control like perfume. “It is. Please, trust me.”

Orm froze. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

Honey?.

The word echoed through her like a pulse.

She pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide, her mind trying to catch up. What is going to work? What are they planning? Her stomach twisted. Were they talking about the merger? Something else? Why did it sound more than business?

A hundred possibilities raced through her head, each worse than the last.

Then a sudden shuffle behind her.

The night guard’s voice broke the silence, sharp and startled. “Who’s there?”

Orm flinched.

Panic kicked in before thought could. She darted away from the light, slipping down the corridor toward her own office. By the time the guard reached Lorena’s door, Orm was already bent over her desk, yanking open drawers and pretending to search for something. Her hands trembled, but she forced her breathing to slow.

Footsteps followed…the guard’s, and two others.

Lorena’s voice came first, calm but clipped. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry, Ms. Lorena,” the guard said quickly. “I thought I heard someone.”

Natasha’s heels clicked against the floor. “You did,” she said, and then her tone shifted when she saw her. “Orm?”

Orm looked up, her face arranged into surprise. “Oh…, hi. I… uh…” she stammered, eyes darting between them. “I forgot my phone. My cell. I took my work phone home and forgot my personal one.”

Natasha frowned slightly. “You could’ve picked it up tomorrow.”

Orm gave a small, awkward laugh, clutching her phone like it was evidence of her own story. “Yeah, but all my contacts are on this one. My mom calls me every night, and she panics if I don’t pick up. You know how Asian moms are.”

Lorena raised an eyebrow, the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Very devoted, I know.”

Orm forced a chuckle. “Something like that.”

The tension broke just enough for Natasha to sigh, the suspicion in her eyes softening. “Alright. You gave the guard a fright. Next time, just send a message, okay?”

“Of course,” Orm said quickly, stepping aside, pretending to tidy the files on her desk. “Sorry for the chaos.”

Natasha nodded, already turning toward the her office. Lorena lingered a second longer, her gaze sharper, quieter, almost curious. Then she smiled, polite and cool, before following Natasha out.

When the hallway fell silent again, Orm stayed still, her fingers pressed to the edge of her desk.

Her heart was still racing.

Honey. It is going to work??? WHATTTTT?

The words looped in her head like a curse.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t about paperwork. It wasn’t about the merger. And if Natasha was lying to Ling, then Lorena was the reason why.

Orm grabbed her phone and walked out, her reflection flickering in the dark glass of the hallway. The night outside smelled of rain and betrayal.

As she stepped into the empty street, her thoughts tangled into one single line:

Ling, you really have no idea what kind of world you’re sleeping next to.

And with that, Orm flagged another cab, her mind already spinning toward what she would do next.

The next morning, the office felt like static…too bright, too loud, too normal for what Orm knew. She walked in with her usual calm, hair smooth, suit impeccable, smile sharp enough to cut through tension. Inside, though, she was still standing in that hallway, hearing Lorena’s voice through the crack of a door.

The words still burned.

She wasn’t sure what she wanted more now…. answers, or proof that she hadn’t imagined it.

The day stretched long before it reached noon. Orm worked through briefs, reviewed notes, and waited for the clock to move. Her mind kept circling back to the night. By lunch, curiosity had grown sharp enough to need feeding.

She found the gossip table exactly where it always was…by the tall windows overlooking the harbor. Three assistants and one paralegal, lunch boxes open, laughter already spilling out. They always started with the harmless kind of gossip: who wore what, who stayed too late, who was flirting with the wrong associate. But Orm knew how to steer a conversation without making it feel like steering.

She sat down with her coffee, uninvited but instantly welcome.

Clara looked up first. “Orm, come to the people’s corner?”

Orm smiled. “Needed fresh air and fresh gossip. You all tell the best ones.”

Drew, the paralegal, laughed. “Oh, we only tell the truth no one’s supposed to say.”

Orm tilted her head, tone easy. “Then tell me something true. What’s the firm whispering about this week?”

Clara traded a quick look with the others before saying, “Natasha and Lorena again. Everyone’s pretending not to see it, but it’s getting ridiculous.”

Orm raised her cup halfway to her lips. “Again?”

Drew leaned forward. “You didn’t know? That friendship goes back years. Harvard, apparently. Lorena was in junior year when Natasha joined. Lorena took her under her wing and bam! They were inseparable…study partners, debate partners, rumor partners.”

The intern giggled. “Someone said they even shared an apartment for a semester. No proof, though. Just… stories.”

Clara nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Lorena was a legend back then, and Natasha was the ambitious one always trying to catch her shadow. Fast-forward a decade and here we are.”

Orm kept her tone mild. “A decade later, and the shadow finally caught up.”

Drew grinned. “Caught up and then some. When Natasha came here, she was just a junior partner. No one expected her to make nameplate status this fast. But Lorena made sure she did. They worked that buyout together…remember? The one that pushed out Beckman 2 years ago?”

Clara laughed softly. “Oh, Beckman never saw it coming. Lorena framed it as a necessity to the board. They say that Natasha bought it for 5 Million , she walked right into the vacant seat before the man’s chair was cold.”

The intern whispered, “Lorena called it ‘strategic growth.’ Everyone else called it a coup.”

Orm said quietly, “And now they both have offices with a view.”

Clara leaned back. “Exactly. And it’s not just work. You should see the way they look at each other in meetings. It’s like everyone else disappears. That quiet kind of attention that makes people nervous to breathe too loud.”

Drew added, “They had a fight once…at Kellan’s, downtown. This was before Natasha got the name on the door. A few associates were out there after a trial win. Saw them behind the pub, screaming. Natasha shouting that Lorena never prioritizes her. Lorena actually crying, begging her not to leave. Can you imagine Lorena crying for anyone?”

The intern shook her head. “She probably meant business.”

Clara smirked. “No, honey, she meant love. No one begs that hard for a business meeting.”

Laughter circled the table again, soft and conspiratorial.

Drew said, “Next week they were back to normal. Smiling, working together, finishing each other’s sentences like nothing happened. It’s unsettling, how close they are. They trust each other with everything. Lorena signs things before reading them if Matthews asks. Matthews covers for her with the board. You can’t separate them.”

Clara tapped her fork against the table. “Some people call it loyalty. I call it dangerous.”

The table went quiet for a moment, the way people pause when a boundary has been brushed. Then Drew leaned closer, lowering his voice just enough to make everyone follow. “You know who I feel bad for in all this?”

Clara raised a brow. “Who?”

“Natasha’s wife,” he said. “What’s her name…Ling, right? The lawyer, the one who runs that non-profit.”

Clara nodded. “Lingling Kwong. Sweet woman. I met her once at a firm gala. Polite, elegant, completely unaware of how the world spins around her.”

The intern whispered, “She seemed so calm when I saw her. Like she doesn’t even know what’s happening in this place.”

Clara snorted softly. “Of course she doesn’t. Women like her never do. Always thinking their wives are chained to work, not realizing who they’re actually chained to.”

Drew leaned forward again. “Beckman’s old assistant said something once. You remember the buyout? The five-million-dollar settlement to get him out? Apparently, the check was signed by Lingling Kwong herself.”

The air changed around the table. Even the intern stopped breathing for a second.

Clara frowned. “Wait. Ling paid the buyout?”

“That’s what the assistant swore,” Drew said. “Said she saw the paperwork cross Bechman’s desk. The ink on the signature wasn’t even dry. I mean, that’s devotion or delusion. Maybe both.”

The intern gave a low, disbelieving laugh. “So, she helped her wife take someone else’s seat and doesn’t even know who’s keeping it warm now?”

Clara shook her head. “Poor thing. Probably thought she was helping the firm. Helping her partner succeed. Imagine signing the check that bought your own humiliation.”

Drew sighed. “They say she still sends flowers to every firm event. She’s proud, you know. Thinks she’s part of it. If only she saw how Natasha and Lorena look at each other when she’s not around.”

Clara’s voice softened for the first time that lunch. “I don’t think she’ll ever see it. She’s too busy believing in the version of her marriage she built. That kind of blindness can’t be fixed…it’s chosen.”

The table’s laughter faded into something quieter. Orm sat very still, her fingers tracing the rim of her cup, her thoughts half a world away.

Two years ago.

The number landed in her mind like a drop of ink in water, small but spreading. Two years since Beckman had been pushed out, two years since Natasha had stepped into his seat, two years since Lorena had called it strategic growth.

And two years since Orm had left.

She hadn’t thought of that time in months. She had trained herself not to. But the moment Drew said it, something inside her had shifted, subtle but sharp, like the faint click of a lock she hadn’t realized was still there.

Two years.

The same season she had packed her life into a single suitcase and vanished from Boston. The same month her phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with messages that weren’t supposed to exist. The same week Ling had asked for divorce.

Now the timing was staring back at her from a lunch table conversation, wrapped in laughter and crumbs.

Clara said something about company dinners. The intern giggled. Drew was already telling a new story. Orm nodded when someone looked her way, smiled in all the right places, but the rest of her was somewhere else entirely.

The memory felt like fog…thick, familiar, creeping into her chest. She tried to shake it off, but the thought stuck.

Two years.

It couldn’t be coincidence.

Her stomach turned. The chatter around her grew dull, faint, the words blending together until all she could hear was the soft scrape of her spoon against porcelain.

She pushed her chair back quietly and excused herself with something polite and forgettable.

The corridor outside felt longer than usual. Every footstep echoed. By the time she reached her office, her coffee had gone cold in her hand.

She set it down, closed the door, and crossed to the window. Boston moved below her, small and indifferent.

It was the same skyline she had looked at before she left. Same buildings, same streets. Only now it was dressed in a different kind of silence.

She leaned her forehead lightly against the glass and watched the reflection of her own eyes looking back.

Two years ago, everything had broken open. Ling’s marriage. Her own life. The end of whatever they had been.

And in the middle of it all, something else…something she had promised herself never to remember.

Orm’s pulse quickened, not with panic, but with recognition…the kind that felt like an old wound remembering why it hurt.

She whispered it once, just to test how it sounded in the air. “The same time.”

The words felt heavier than they should have.

It wasn’t proof. Not yet. It was only timing. But timing, she knew, was rarely innocent.

She stayed there for a long moment, watching the traffic lights flicker red and gold on the wet streets below. The city kept moving, unaware of what it had buried two years ago.

Orm’s reflection didn’t move either. Her face looked calm, but her eyes had changed. Something in her had started turning again, slow and deliberate.

Two years ago, everything had ended.
Now it was starting to line up again.

*Flashback*

The First Six Months

It began quietly, as most dangerous things do.

The first few weeks were stolen hours. Ling would arrive at Orm’s apartment under the cover of night, her car parked two blocks away as if distance could mask guilt. She brought paperwork with her sometimes, a defense against her own weakness. But the moment she stepped through that door, her shoulders would drop. Her breath would slow. And Orm would be there, barefoot and glowing like some kind of wicked salvation, asking if she wanted tea or sin.

They were careful in public, though not invisible. Ling tried to keep her voice steady in class and her expression unreadable, but Orm had a way of tugging at her composure like a loose thread. They kissed once behind the stacks of the law library and once more in the narrow stairwell between lecture halls, their mouths colliding like secrets too big to hold. After that, they grew smarter. Brushing past each other between classes, sharing notes that looked like legal arguments but read like confessions, meeting in empty classrooms for three stolen minutes where Ling would press her lips to Orm's throat and say nothing at all. The university became a dangerous game board, each corridor a risk, every glance a spark…and they played it like women who knew how to lose.

The first month was about need. Urgency. The taste of freedom in each other’s mouths. They kissed like they were trying to erase memory. They undressed each other in silence and learned the rhythms of each other's breath. It was frantic, beautiful, reckless…like discovering how to breathe again only to drown willingly.

Afterward, Ling would lie still for a few minutes, her arm slung over Orm’s stomach, their breaths slowly syncing in the afterglow. But it never lasted.

“I have to go,” Ling would whisper eventually, eyes already scanning the dark corners of the room like guilt might be hiding in the shadows.

“Stay a little longer,” Orm would ask, her voice still husky with sleep and hope.

Ling would hesitate. “I can’t. I said I was working late. An hour is already too long.”

Orm would nod, but she never said goodbye. She would just watch Ling rise quietly, fixing her blouse in the half-lit mirror, brushing her hair back into the shape of someone else's wife.

The door would, click shut behind her, soft but final.

Only then would Orm let herself cry…quietly, without theatrics, like someone grieving a version of herself she couldn’t reach. She would pull the sheets tighter around her, the scent of jasmine and Ling still clinging to her skin like a bruise she didn’t want to heal. And in the quiet, she’d whisper words into the pillow that sounded a lot like “please” and “don’t go,” even though Ling was already gone.

By the second month, they had fallen into a rhythm. Tuesday evenings were Ling’s, Thursdays Orm’s. Weekends were impossible, but sometimes they would sneak a morning. Ling once took a non-profit call with her tongue inside Orm, never missing a beat…neither in the conversation nor between her thighs. And then she spent the rest of the day with her blouse buttoned wrong and a bruise blooming at her collarbone. She never felt more alive.

It had started ...Orm tangled in bedsheets, still sleep-warm and grinning. Ling had disappeared beneath them with no warning, kissing lower, slower, until Orm’s laughter turned into shuddered gasps.

Then the phone rang.

“Don’t,” Orm whispered, breathless, her hand reaching for the phone. “Don’t answer it.”

Ling didn’t listen. She reached for it instead, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand like a woman adjusting a pen cap, and answered in perfect tone.

“This is Lingling Kwong,” she said smoothly, her voice velvet and steel. Her head dipped again. Her tongue never stopped moving.

Orm’s hand clutched at the pillow. Her breath hitched.

“Yes, I received the budget proposal this morning,” Ling continued, her voice unshaken. “I’ve reviewed it and will share notes before the two-p.m. discussion.”

Orm let out a strangled sound. She tried to pull the sheet into her mouth. She was trembling, desperate.

“Absolutely,” Ling said, licking her slowly through the moan. “I’ll see you then.”

She ended the call, dropped the phone onto the mattress, and looked up at Orm, eyes dark, mouth glistening.

“I didn’t cancel anything,” she said calmly. “You came on my schedule.”

Orm was already breaking beneath her. “I hate you,” she whispered, voice shaking.

Ling smiled and kissed her inner thigh. “No, you don’t.”

Orm came with Ling’s name caught between a sob and a prayer.

And Ling, ever composed, wiped her mouth again, sat up, and checked the time.

“Twenty-two minutes,” she said. “Still room for feedback notes.”

Orm could only stare at the ceiling, shaking. Ling was already pulling on her blouse, as if she hadn’t just destroyed her.

That day, she presented at her non-profit like she hadn’t just knelt in a bed and rewritten the definition of power. Her collarbone still tingled with Orm’s nails. Her lips still tasted like devotion. And she had never felt more alive.

They fought, too. But not the way most lovers do. Orm never yelled unless she was begging. And Ling never yelled at all. She just pulled away, sharp and quiet, as if retreating was the only language she trusted.

Orm sat on the edge of the bed, her voice low but heavy.

"I’m not asking for everything, you know."

Ling didn’t look up. She was buttoning her blouse, each movement precise, mechanical.

"You think I don’t know that?"

Orm’s fingers curled into the sheets.

"Then why do you make it feel like I’m asking for the moon?"

Ling sighed, turning to the mirror to fix her hair. Her reflection looked more tired than she felt.

"Because you want things I don’t have."

"I want time, Ling. That’s it. Just more than an hour when you feel guilty enough to stay."

Ling froze for a second, then resumed smoothing the collar of her shirt.

"You think I don’t want to stay?"

"Then stay."

"I can’t."

"Why?"

"Because if I stay, I won’t leave. And if I don’t leave, everything I’ve built will collapse. My marriage. My name. My family. My work. All of it."

Orm laughed quietly, bitter and breathless.

"You make it sound like I’m trying to destroy your life."

"You’re not. You’re just the only part of it that feels real. And that’s the problem."

Orm looked at her then, eyes glinting.

"So I’m real, but not worth rearranging for."

Ling turned to her fully now, the anger rising behind her restraint.

"Don’t twist my words. I’m here, aren’t I?"

"You’re here for the sex. You’re here for the guilt. You’re not here for me."

"That’s not true."

"Then prove it."

Ling was silent.

Orm stood, pulling a shirt over her head.

"You won’t even sleep beside me, Ling. You hold me like I’m made of glass, and then you leave like I’m made of smoke."

"I told you from the beginning, I can’t promise more."

"I’m not asking for forever. I’m asking for a morning. I’m asking for one fucking morning where I don’t wake up to an empty pillow."

Ling’s voice cracked.

"Don’t do this."

"I’m already doing it."

Ling closed her eyes, struggling to breathe through the weight in her chest.

"This is all I can give you."

"Then that’s all I’ll ever get, isn’t it?"

Neither of them spoke for a long time. The room held their silence like a wound.

When Ling finally left, Orm didn’t follow her to the door. She just sat back down on the edge of the bed, the sheets still warm where Ling had been, and whispered into the quiet:

"I don’t want more. I just want you to stay when I need you."

But Ling was already gone.

Two days passed without a word.

Orm didn’t call. She didn’t text. She went to class, nodded through lectures, smiled at people who didn’t matter. But the silence inside her was loud. She kept expecting to hear footsteps in the hallway, a knock at the door, something. But nothing came.

Until the third night, when the buzzer rang at 8:42 p.m.

Orm opened the door barefoot, hair wet from the shower, an old t-shirt clinging to her skin. And there Ling stood…duffel bag over one shoulder, eyes dark with something raw, something wordless.

"I told Miu I’m at a workshop in Providence," Ling said. "Legal ethics. Ironically."

Orm stared at her.

"Three days," Ling added. "If you want me here."

Orm stepped back without saying anything, letting her in. Ling dropped the bag by the couch.

"You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to be here."

"Are you serious?" Orm asked, voice thin with disbelief.

Ling nodded.

"No board calls. No, you-know-who. Just me?"

"Just you," Ling said.

The first night, they didn’t have sex. Orm made pasta and Ling sat on the counter, legs swinging like a teenager, asking if she was putting too much garlic. They watched a terrible courtroom drama with cheap wine and one blanket. Ling fell asleep on Orm’s chest that night, still in her blouse, her breath calm for the first time in days.

The second day, they didn’t leave the apartment. Ling worked quietly from Orm’s desk in the morning, but by noon her laptop was shut and forgotten. Orm pulled her back into bed and they spent the afternoon like the world didn’t exist…slow kisses, soft touches, open windows, shared laughter between naps. Ling let Orm read her old case notes. Orm let Ling see a short story she never finished. They made tea three times and drank it twice.

On the third night, Orm traced circles on Ling’s bare back and whispered, “You lied for me.”

Ling turned her head on the pillow.

"I lied to be with you."

"And if she asks?"

"I’ll tell her it was worth it. To be with you"

Orm blinked hard. Her voice cracked.

"I think I love you."

Ling didn’t panic. She didn’t run. She just leaned in, pressed her lips gently to Orm’s temple, and whispered,

"I know." But she didn’t say it back

Three days. Seventy-two hours. It was the most real thing Orm had ever been given.

And when Ling finally left on the fourth morning, kissing her deeply at the door with her duffel back on her shoulder, Orm didn’t cry.

She just stood there in the quiet, holding her own heart with both hands, thinking:

She chose me. Even if just for a weekend, she chose me.

Month three brought softness. Ling started leaving toothbrushes, making sure the sleepovers are frequent. Orm learned how to make Ling’s tea just right. They had inside jokes. Ling started calling Orm “stormcloud” for her moods, and Orm called her “monarch” for the way she ruled every room she walked into, even barefoot. They bought matching pens. They started a playlist. Ling never let Orm sleep on the side of the bed closest to the window. Orm never let Ling leave without a kiss pressed behind her ear.

They were still careful, but they stopped being afraid.

One night, while rain tapped against the window, Ling lay sprawled across Orm’s chest, tracing the lines of her collarbone with absent fingers. Her voice was soft, almost lost in the dark.

“If I ever left,” she said, “would you come with me?”

Orm smiled into her hair. “You wouldn’t ask me to.”

Ling looked up then, her eyes searching Orm’s face. “I might. Someday.”

“Don’t promise me things you can’t give,” Orm whispered.

Ling didn’t answer. She just watched her for a long time, her expression unreadable, then leaned in and pressed her lips to Orm’s jaw.

“I love you,” she said quietly, like it was a secret she’d kept too long.

Orm’s breath caught. She pulled Ling closer, her hand trembling against her back. “Say it again.”

Ling smiled against her skin. “I love you.”

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t reckless. It was steady, certain, and soft… the kind of truth that doesn’t need to be believed to be real.

And in that moment, for the first time, Orm let herself believe they might actually make it.

By the fourth month, Miu became a name they stopped pretending not to say. Ling confessed more than she should have, her voice quiet, almost reluctant, as though saying the words aloud made them heavier. She spoke of the separate bedrooms. The silence at the dinner table. The polite choreography of a marriage that had long since emptied itself of warmth. She described Sunday mornings spent reading the paper in different rooms, how they never fought, and how somehow that made it worse.

Orm listened, always. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t offer comfort. She simply held the space for Ling to speak and didn’t let the silence fill with judgment.

But one night, after a long hour of kisses that tasted like ache and skin that felt like home, Orm lay with her head on Ling’s stomach, tracing shapes into her hip with slow, steady fingers. Her voice came low, uncertain, but too tired to keep pretending.

"Are you still sleeping in the same bed as her?"

Ling exhaled, not sharply, but like something old and brittle had finally cracked.

"No," she said. "Not for months now. Not since I met you"

Orm was quiet for a moment, then nodded. She didn’t smile. She didn’t look relieved. Her fingers stilled against Ling’s skin.

"And if she asked you to again?"

"She won’t."

"But if she did?"

Ling sat up a little, enough to look down at her. Her fingers slipped into Orm’s hair, combing through it slowly, absently.

"Then I’d say no," she said. "I’d say I already belong to someone else at night."

Orm’s throat tightened. She shifted to sit upright, cross-legged on the bed, knees brushing against Ling’s.

"Do I get to know who that is?"

Ling gave a small, tired laugh.

"You’re very dramatic."

Orm didn’t return the smile. Her eyes were steady, even as her voice broke a little.

"I just don’t want to be your secret, Ling. Not forever."

"You’re not a secret," Ling said, quieter now. "You’re just the only thing that still feels... real."

"But you still go home to her."

"I go to a house with her in it. That’s not the same."

"Isn’t it?"

Ling didn’t answer. She looked down at their hands…how they naturally found each other, like magnets in motion…and threaded her fingers through Orm’s slowly.

"I’m trying," she whispered. "I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never done this."

"I know," Orm said. Her voice had softened. "I just need you to be honest when the time comes. When everything falls apart, and it will... I just want to know that you’ll be honest with me."

Ling nodded.

"I will."

Orm leaned in and kissed her then…not for heat, not for hunger, but for the kind of comfort she no longer believed in. And Ling kissed her back like a promise she didn’t know how to keep.

Later, when they fell asleep, it was Ling who reached for her in the dark, fingers searching for reassurance.

And Orm, despite everything, still gave it.

By the fifth month, the conversations shifted. Less about stolen time, more about the lives they came from. The families they rarely spoke of. The people who shaped them long before they ever found each other.

It began on a quiet evening, the kind with soft jazz playing low and mismatched socks tangled at the foot of the bed. Orm had made a late dinner, some half-attempt at stir-fry that was more spice than substance, and they ate it curled on the couch, sharing the same fork, laughing between bites.

Orm was the first to open up.

"My mom and dad live in California," she said, her head resting on Ling’s shoulder. "Big house, big yard, big everything. They run a pharmaceutical company together. Second generation. It’s huge now, like really huge. You’d never know it, looking at them. My mom still dances in the kitchen. My dad’s obsessed with his tomato plants. They’re kind of ridiculous. In a good way."

Ling smiled softly, listening.

"And then there’s Utt. My baby brother. He’s... chaos. Sweet, but chaos. Studying film. Broke his collarbone falling off a balcony last year because he thought he could parkour down to grab a pizza delivery faster."

Ling laughed, the sound soft and surprised.

Orm grinned. "He’s fine now. Still dramatic. Still thinks every moment of his life should have a soundtrack."

There was a long pause before Ling spoke.

"I grew up in a house that had too many walls," she said quietly. "My father was Governor of the Greater Boston district for eight years. Mr. Kwong. Everything about him was polished. Controlled. My mother, Xia, comes from old money. Heiress to a silk empire or some poetic bullshit like that. She married him like it was written into a contract."

Orm’s hand found Ling’s under the blanket.

"They were good at being public. Fundraisers, speeches, charity balls. Always smiling. Always perfect. But at home..." Ling trailed off. "We didn’t hug. We didn’t talk about feelings. We talked about expectations. Performance. Image."

"You were an only child?" Orm asked.

Ling nodded. "Lingling Kwong. Their prodigy. Their proof of legacy. I played piano, studied French by age seven, gave speeches in middle school, won mock trial nationals at fifteen. I got straight A's. I never once heard them say they were proud of me. It was always 'what’s next?'"

Orm’s thumb moved slowly over Ling’s knuckles.

"I craved softness," Ling whispered. "I craved being held without earning it. I wanted someone to ask me how I was feeling and actually wait for the answer."

Her voice cracked then, just slightly.

"And then I met this woman. Ten years younger than me. All loud laughter and messy hair and too much eyeliner. And she ruined everything."

Orm leaned into her.

"Ruined or rewrote?"

Ling gave a watery smile. "Maybe both."

They sat like that for a long time, the weight of the past pressing gently against the warmth of the present. Somewhere, the playlist had looped without either of them noticing. Outside, the wind knocked softly at the window.

Orm kissed the inside of Ling’s wrist and whispered, "You can have that softness. You always could."

And Ling, for the first time in a long time, let herself believe it might be true.

And then came the sixth month.

Everything began to deepen. Touch became language. Silence became comfort. Ling started writing again. Orm began to sleep with one hand curled around Ling’s wrist, as if anchoring them both to something real. They took a day trip to the coast, where no one knew them. They walked barefoot on the beach. Ling wore jeans. Orm took pictures. They kissed under a gray sky, and for one entire day, they were not affair, not lie, not sin. Just two women, wildly in love.

That night, they made love. It was quiet, perfect. They just kissed, slow and deep and trembling. But when Ling fell asleep, Orm whispered “please stay with me forever” it against her skin anyway. Twice.

By the end of six months, they had broken every rule. But they had built something too ..fragile, sacred, imperfect. A love that was real, even if it was borrowed.

The world had not yet caught up with them. But it was getting closer.

And they both knew, somewhere deep in the silence they shared, that nothing built in the dark stays hidden forever.

Chapter Text

Orm's POV:


The next morning, Orm woke with the same sentence looping through her head. It stayed with her through the shower, through the commute, through the sound of the city breaking into motion. By the time she reached the office, it had turned into something heavier than memory.

She couldn’t let it go.

The lunch gossip had started as curiosity, but it was no longer just that. It was the timeline, the precision of it, the way every event she thought she had buried was quietly resurfacing in a new disguise.
She had lived through too much not to notice when the air began to smell like the past.

Still, she couldn’t afford to act like someone chasing ghosts. Not here. Not while Lorena and Natasha ran the floor like royalty.

She needed information. Real, verifiable, discreet.

That was how she found herself typing “Boston private investigator” into her browser that evening, scrolling past a dozen dull listings until one caught her eye.

Junji Investigations, Boston’s Finest.
Underneath, a review said: She finds what you need. Even when you don’t know what you’re looking for.

Orm stared at the line for a long moment before dialing.

The next morning, Orm didn’t go to work. She told herself it was for her mental health. Her mental health, however, had other plans.

By noon, she was standing in front of a narrow brick building in South End with a buzzing neon sign that read Junji Investigations: Boston’s Finest. The words Boston’s Finest blinked like they were trying to convince themselves.

Inside, the office smelled like burnt espresso and printer toner.

A woman in her thirties sat behind a cluttered desk, chewing on a pen cap and typing with the intensity of someone trying to hack the Pentagon using free Wi-Fi. Her cropped hair was half black, half badly dyed blonde. A cat slept on a pile of case files.

Without looking up, she said, “If you’re here to sell me life insurance, I already don’t have one.”

Orm stepped closer. “Good. Saves me paperwork.”

Junji looked up, narrowed her eyes, then grinned. “You’re the lawyer who called. Orm, right? The one with the voice that sounds like a lawsuit.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take it however you want. Coffee?”

“I saw your coffeemaker. I’ll pass.”

“Wise woman,” Junji said, tossing the pen aside. “Alright, let’s hear it. Who needs following, spying, or gentle moral destruction?”

Orm sat across from her, crossing one leg neatly over the other. “Two people. Lorena Schuett and Natasha Matthews. Partners at S&M LLP.”

Junji scribbled the names on a sticky note shaped like a skull. “Lawyers. My favorite species. What do you want to know? Tax evasion, secret cult membership, human sacrifice?”

“I want to know if they’re more than just partners.”

Junji blinked. “You mean… business or biblical?”

Orm smiled faintly. “Let’s say extracurricular.”

Junji nodded gravely. “Ah. The timeless art of horizontal networking.”

Orm coughed back a laugh. “Can you find out if it’s true?”

“I can find out what kind of toothpaste they share if you pay enough. What’s the story here? Professional rivalry, moral curiosity, or personal vendetta?”

“Personal curiosity,” Orm said.

“Uh-huh,” Junji said, scribbling again. “That’s what all vendettas start as.”

Orm leaned forward. “They’ve been… close. And I need to know if that closeness has ever left the office.”

“Understood. I’ll start with their schedules, dinner spots, hotel receipts, and security footage. You’ll get the PG version unless you pay double.”

“Send me the PG-13 version,” Orm said dryly.

Junji grinned. “Perfect. I like working with women who know what they want.”

Orm hesitated for a second, then said quietly, “There’s something else.”

Junji paused mid-scribble. “Always is.”

“Something that happened two years ago.”

Junji looked up, her pen still in her hand, the humor in her face fading into curiosity. “Two years ago?”

Orm nodded once. “Yes. I want you to find out what it was.”

Junji leaned forward slightly. “That’s a long time to chase a ghost. You sure it still wants to be found?”

Orm didn’t answer right away. She just met her eyes, the silence between them stretching thin and deliberate.

Junji’s pen clicked once.

The rest of the conversation was quieter. Whatever Orm said next, no one else would ever know.

Orm told herself it was coincidence, the way her feet led her to Ling’s office that afternoon. She had no reason to be there, no appointment, no signed papers in hand. Just too much time and a restless mind that refused to stay still.

It was late enough in the day that the building had thinned out. The secretary at the front desk gave her a polite smile and didn’t bother asking for a meeting slot anymore. She simply pressed the buzzer and said softly into the intercom, “Ms. Kwong, she’s here again.”

Ling’s sigh traveled through the small speaker, quiet but unmistakable. “Send her in.”

Orm pushed open the glass door and leaned into the room like a cat testing its welcome. Ling sat at her desk, immaculate as always, framed by the tall windows and the dull winter light behind her. Her hair was pinned neatly, a pen in her hand, papers arranged with military precision.

“You look busy,” Orm said, pretending to study the room.

“I am,” Ling replied without looking up.

“Perfect. I’ll keep you company.”

Ling finally lifted her gaze. “That’s not what company means.”

“It is in my dictionary.” Orm dropped her bag onto the couch and wandered toward the shelf that held rows of law journals. “You rearranged them.”

“They were out of order.”

“Now they’re alphabetized by publisher. That’s tragic.”

Ling returned to her work. “Some people find order comforting.”

“Some people find chaos charming,” Orm said.

“Those people are usually unemployed.”

Orm grinned. “Good thing I took the day off.”

Ling set down her pen, the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Why are you here, Orm?”

“Because I missed your coffee,” Orm said, reaching for the machine in the corner. “You still use that overpriced Italian brand?”

“It tastes better than what you drink.”

“You’ve never tried mine.”

“I can smell it from the corridor. That’s enough.”

Orm poured herself a cup anyway, ignoring Ling’s pointed silence. She sat opposite her, legs crossed, sipping noisily until Ling finally looked up again.

“Do you always invite yourself into people’s offices to make noise?”

“Only the ones I like.”

“You’re exhausting.”

“Flattering, coming from you.”

Ling pinched the bridge of her nose. “You realize I’m working on filing something before deadline?”

“Perfect timing. You can take my help.”

“Orm.”

“Ling.”

They stared at each other for a moment, and then Ling sighed again, softer this time. “You should find a hobby.”

“I have one. You.”

“That’s not a hobby.”

“It’s full-time, actually.”

“Unpaid, then.”

Orm smiled, leaning forward. “You’re still funny when you’re annoyed.”

Ling ignored her, writing something in the margins of a document. Orm watched the neat handwriting, the calm precision of it. It was infuriating how steady Ling could be while Orm felt like a storm just trying to touch her without breaking something.

“Do you ever get tired of being perfect?” Orm asked quietly.

Ling didn’t look up. “Do you ever get tired of performing imperfection?”

Orm laughed softly. “No. I’ve made peace with my art form.”

Ling kept writing, but her eyes betrayed her amusement for just a second before composure returned.

The room settled into a fragile kind of silence. The hum of the city outside, the faint scratching of Ling’s pen, the steady rhythm of Orm’s restless breathing.

After a while, Orm stood and wandered toward the window. “You ever think about what this view looked like two years ago?”

Ling’s pen paused mid-stroke. “No,” she said finally. “Some things are better left in the past.”

Orm turned to face her, smiling like she hadn’t heard the warning in that sentence. “You should let me take you to lunch.”

“I brought my own.”

“I’ll throw it away and save you from yourself.”

“Orm.”

“Yes, baby?”

“Leave before I call security.”

Orm laughed, heading toward the door. “You wouldn’t dare. He likes me better.”

“I doubt that.”

Orm stopped at the threshold and looked back. Ling was still bent over her papers, pretending indifference. Sunlight caught the edge of her hair, turning it gold for a fleeting second.

“Please come to lunch with me,” Orm said.

Ling didn’t look up. “Why do I have to?”

“Because I asked,” Orm replied.

Ling’s pen hovered above the page. “You always ask things I am not willing to give.”

“This is reasonable. It’s just a lunch,” Orm said, her voice softer now, almost playful.

“It’s my ex-girlfriend asking. Why would I say yes?”

Orm walked back to the desk and rested her hands on its edge. “Because you skipped breakfast again. Because that salad in your bag looks like punishment. Because you’re human, even if you pretend not to be.”

Ling glanced up, unimpressed. “Flattery doesn’t work on me.”

“It isn’t flattery,” Orm said. “It’s observation. You get headaches when you don’t eat. You always chew your pen when you’re stressed, which means you’ll ruin another one by three o’clock. I’m trying to save your stationery.”

Ling tried not to smile. “That’s a terrible reason.”

Orm leaned closer, lowering her voice just enough to make it feel like a secret. “Then do it for charity. Think of it as community service. Having lunch with the emotionally unstable counts.”

That earned her the smallest curve of a smile. “You really don’t give up, do you?”

“Never on you,” Orm said, and there was no mischief in her tone this time, only quiet certainty.

Ling held her gaze for a long moment, weighing all the reasons she should say no and all the ones she would ignore anyway. Finally, she sighed, set her pen aside, and closed the folder.

“Half an hour,” she said. “Somewhere that serves real food.”

Orm grinned, already halfway to the door. “Done. I know a place that serves delicious food.”

“Of course you do,” Ling murmured, standing and reaching for her coat.

When she turned off the desk lamp, the room felt warmer, less like an office and more like something remembered. Orm waited for her at the doorway, smiling like she had just won a small, impossible victory.

And Ling, against her better judgment, let her.

The café was one of those places Orm always managed to find, tucked in a narrow Boston street that looked too small to hold secrets. The sign outside simply read Mara’s Table, the kind of name that promised comfort and overcharged for soup.

Ling paused outside, arms folded. “This doesn’t look professional.”

“It’s not supposed to,” Orm said, holding the door open. “We’re two women having lunch, not a board meeting.”

“I prefer board meetings.”

“You prefer pretending you do,” Orm replied, her grin quick and teasing. “Come on. You’ll like it.”

Ling stepped in despite herself. The place was quiet, sunlight breaking through hanging ferns, music soft enough to sound accidental. Tables were crowded with mismatched cutlery and candles in half-melted jars. It smelled like garlic and something warm baking in the oven.

They found a small table near the back. Ling sat straight, already scanning the laminated menu as if preparing for cross-examination.

“You know,” Orm said, setting her phone aside, “you could relax a little. No one’s judging you here.”

Ling’s eyes flicked up. “I’m sitting with my ex-girlfriend in a restaurant named after someone’s aunt. Relaxation is not on the menu.”

“It’s under desserts,” Orm said. “Right next to forgiveness.”

Ling exhaled through her nose, trying not to smile. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s my brand.”

A waitress arrived, cheerful and too young to notice the tension. “What can I get you ladies?”

Orm glanced at Ling. “She’ll have the lentil soup and the roasted chicken sandwich. I’ll take the pasta special.”

Ling lowered her menu slowly. “I can order for myself.”

“I know. But you won’t pick anything with flavor.”

“I like simple food.”

“You like punishing yourself.”

“I like not having acid reflux.”

“Same thing,” Orm said, leaning back.

The waitress tried not to laugh and hurried away. Ling reached for her water and sipped it like she needed something to do with her hands.

“You’re enjoying this too much,” she said finally.

“I’m enjoying you pretending you’re not,” Orm said.

Ling looked at her, eyes narrowing just slightly. “Do you ever stop performing?”

Orm smiled. “Only when I’m asleep. Sometimes not even then.”

Their food arrived quickly. The soup steamed between them, the kind of smell that made even Ling’s restraint falter. Orm twirled her fork in the pasta and watched her over the rim of her glass.

“Tell me something,” Orm said.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really. How’s life with Miu these days?”

Ling’s jaw tightened for half a second before smoothing over. “Peaceful.”

“That sounds like a euphemism for boring.”

“It’s not.”

“Sure.”

“It isn’t,” Ling said, setting her sandwich down. “Some of us like stability.”

Orm tilted her head. “And yet here you are, having lunch with chaos incarnate.”

Ling sighed, pushing her plate slightly away. “You call yourself chaos like it’s a compliment.”

“It is when you’re my audience.”

“You think too highly of yourself.”

“You think too highly of control.”

They stared at each other, and for a heartbeat, neither spoke. The noise of the café faded into a blur, just the faint hum of voices, clinking glasses, and something slower, softer, moving between them.

Ling was the one to look away first. She reached for her napkin, folded it carefully, then unfolded it again. “You should let this go, Orm. We’ve had our time.”

Orm’s voice came quieter. “I’m not here to relive it.”

“Then what are you here for?”

Orm smiled, small but genuine. “Lunch. And maybe to remind you that you still laugh when you don’t mean to.”

Ling’s lips twitched despite herself. “You’re infuriating.”

“You keep saying that,” Orm said, eating her pasta. “It’s starting to sound like affection.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I never do,” Orm said. “You do it for me.”

The check sat untouched between them, the corners curling in the faint draft from the window. Ling reached for her coat, but Orm’s voice stopped her.

“I was serious before,” she said quietly. “How is life with Miu?”

Ling hesitated, her fingers stilling over the fabric. “Busy,” she said finally. “We’re both buried in work. Some days we barely talk. It’s not unhappy, just… efficient.”

Orm tilted her head. “That sounds like a spreadsheet, not a marriage.”

Ling gave a small smile, the kind that wasn’t joy so much as endurance. “You learn to love the version of a person that life allows you to have.”

Orm watched her carefully. “Is she treating you right?”

Ling sighed. “She’s Miu. She doesn’t mistreat me; she just forgets I’m not a client sometimes.”

Orm let the words settle, stirring the melting ice in her glass. “She’s doing well at the firm. Everyone there treats her like a legend already.”

“That’s Miu,” Ling said. “She’s always been the one people follow.”

Orm nodded, voice light but deliberate. “Lorena’s the same way. They fit together in that ruthless way only brilliant people do.”

That made Ling look up

“Yeah,” Orm said casually. “Lorena Schuett. Your old senior from Harvard, right? I didn’t realize she and Miu were that close back then.”

Ling’s gaze softened, memories flickering behind her eyes. “They were,” she said. “Lorena practically mentored Miu. Miu admired her long before the firm ever existed. I remember she used to quote her like scripture.”

Orm smiled faintly. “Still does.”

Ling laughed quietly. “I’m not surprised. Lorena’s the kind of person who fills a room without raising her voice. You’d like her.”

Orm lifted a brow. “You think so?”

“She’s clever, intimidating, maybe too sure of herself…but kind when she remembers to be.”

“Do you two keep in touch?” Orm asked, the question dressed in casual curiosity.

“Not really. We only see each other at firm events. She and Miu talk every day though. Strategy calls, board meetings, that sort of thing.”

Orm nodded, her smile steady but her pulse quickening beneath it. “Sounds like they work well together.”

“They do,” Ling said simply. “Miu says Lorena’s the reason the firm runs at all.”

Orm traced a line on the table with her fingertip. “You ever get jealous of that?”

Ling’s brows lifted slightly. “Jealous?”

“Not in the dramatic sense,” Orm said softly. “Just… wondering what it’s like to share someone you married to with their ambition.”

Ling’s eyes lowered. “I stopped wondering a long time ago.”

The quiet between them thickened. The waitress came to clear the plates, her smile light, unaware of how fragile the air felt.

Ling reached for her bag. “Don’t start digging into things that aren’t yours, Orm.”

“I wasn’t,” Orm said gently. “Just talking.”

“You don’t talk,” Ling replied, her tone even. “You probe.”

Orm smiled faintly. “That’s my charm.”

Ling stood, slipping her arms into her coat. “You think curiosity is a compliment. It isn’t always.”

Orm looked up at her, the playfulness dimming just enough to show something real. “You know I’d never hurt you.”

Ling’s eyes lifted, cool and steady. “Oh, really?” she said softly. “Then what do you call leaving me two years ago?”

The words hit harder than Orm expected. She tried to speak, but the air between them already felt heavier, the kind that folds around unspoken things. “Ling,” she started, her voice low, “I had reasons.”

“You always have reasons.” Ling’s tone wasn’t angry; it was tired, like someone reciting a story they already knew by heart. “Reasons for showing up. Reasons for disappearing. Reasons that never reach me until it’s too late.”

Orm reached across the table, her hand hovering above Ling’s. “If I told you I made a mistake, would it matter?”

Ling didn’t move. “Mistake implies you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I didn’t,” Orm said quietly. “Not really. I thought I was protecting you.”

Ling gave a hollow laugh. “Protecting me? You vanished. You let me burn alone.”

“I was scared,” Orm whispered. “There were things happening then that you didn’t see, things I couldn’t explain.”

“Then you should have trusted me enough to try.”

They sat there, the noise of the café fading around them, only the sound of plates and a distant espresso machine threading through the silence.

Orm leaned closer. “If I asked you for another chance, would you take it?”

Ling’s expression didn’t change, but her voice turned gentler, sadder. “You shouldn’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”

“I need to hear it,” Orm said.

Ling’s eyes softened, the light in them shifting from anger to something far more fragile. “No, Orm. I wouldn’t.”

Orm blinked, a small, helpless smile trying to survive on her face. “Not even if you could start over? If Miu wasn’t there?”

“Miu is always there,” Ling said quietly. “That’s the point.”

Orm frowned, confusion shadowing her tone. “You still love her?”

Ling hesitated, then shook her head slowly. “It’s not about love. It’s about trust. She was the one who stayed when everything else fell apart. Even when she knew I’d been unfaithful. Even when I told her I wanted a divorce. She didn’t leave. She waited. She helped me put my life back together.”

Orm’s throat tightened. “So, you stayed out of gratitude?”

“I stayed because it was the only thing left standing,” Ling said. “Because when you disappeared, she was the one who found me at my worst and didn’t ask me to explain.”

Orm’s voice cracked slightly. “And that’s enough?”

“It has to be,” Ling whispered. “People like me don’t get to rebuild twice.”

Orm looked at her for a long moment, studying the calm that had replaced the ache. “So, I’m the villain in your story.”

Ling’s eyes met hers. “No. You’re just the part that ended too soon.”

The words landed softly, but they hurt all the same.

For a while neither of them spoke. The waitress came by again, smiling as if nothing in the world had broken in front of her.

Orm leaned forward, desperate now. “Then let me say it now. I love you. I never stopped. I thought leaving would protect you, but it only destroyed us. I want another chance, Ling. I want to fix what I broke.”

Ling’s eyes glistened, but her expression stayed hard. “You ask me to reason with you,” she said quietly, “but you still won’t tell me why you left. Two years, Orm. Two years, and I never got an answer.”

Orm exhaled sharply, her hands trembling on the table. “It was not that easy, Ling.”

“Then make it easy now.”

Orm’s voice rose, but not in anger…in helplessness. “Do you really think I would ever leave you if I had a choice? You think I wanted to wake up one morning and vanish from the only person who ever made me feel alive?”

Ling said nothing. Her silence pressed like a weight.

“I love you, Ling,” Orm said, her voice breaking. “More than anything in this life. I loved you when you went home to her every night. I loved you when you spent Christmas mornings pretending everything was perfect. I loved you through every anniversary trip, every gala, every dinner where I had to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Her breath trembled, her words almost trembling out of her. “I rotted in hell, but I still loved you. Hoping one day you’d choose me. Hoping one day you’d leave her and finally be mine. And when you did…when you actually told her you wanted a divorce…do you think I ran because I was afraid? Because I was weak?”

Ling’s lips parted slightly, but Orm didn’t stop.

“There were bigger reasons, Ling,” she said, voice low, raw. “Reasons that had nothing to do with us and everything to do with what people around you were willing to do. I can’t tell you yet. Not until I find the answers. Not until I know who did it and why.”

Ling frowned, confusion and frustration warring in her eyes. “You talk in riddles, Orm. You always do. What could possibly be worse than breaking someone’s heart?”

Orm leaned back, wiping at her eyes with a quick, bitter laugh. “You’ll understand when I find the truth. And when I do… you’ll know I never wanted to leave.”

Ling’s voice softened, almost trembling. “You still think that makes it better?”

“No,” Orm said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t make it better. It just makes it real.”

The words hung between them, heavy, unfinished.

Ling stared at her for a long moment, her chest rising and falling too slowly, as if the air itself resisted her. “Whatever truth you’re chasing,” she said quietly, “it won’t change what it did to me.”

Orm met her gaze. “Maybe not. But it might change what you think of me.”

Ling stood then, her hands curling around the strap of her bag. “I don’t know if I want to know anymore.”

Before Orm could answer, a familiar voice cut through the hum of the café.

“This looks intense,” Miu said lightly, her tone threaded with amusement.

Both women froze. Orm’s heart stopped, her pulse clawing at her throat. She turned slowly. Miu stood beside their table, elegance sharp as ever, her black blazer immaculate, her expression unreadable. Behind her, Lorena hovered with that knowing smile she always wore, the kind that made every sentence feel like a test.

For a second, no one moved.

Orm was the first to recover. “Oh,” she said too quickly, “I was meeting Mrs. Kwong to go over the merger paperwork for her non-profit.”

Lorena tilted her head. “That’s interesting. I was told by Miu that you were taking the day off because you weren’t feeling well.”

Shit, shit, shit. The words thundered in Orm’s head.

“That was before,” she said smoothly, forcing a small laugh. “This meeting was scheduled last week. I didn’t want to cause delays on my end.”

Ling blinked, still too startled to speak. Her eyes darted between Orm and Miu, the air around her tightening.

“Yes,” Ling said finally, her voice steadier than she felt. “I have a packed schedule next week, so it made sense to get it done today.”

“That’s good,” Miu said, her gaze flicking between them, her smile perfectly shaped. “I’m glad you both got to connect. Saves me some coordination.”

She reached out, her hand brushing Ling’s with the kind of touch that spoke more in silence than any sentence could. “Love, I have a long day ahead. Don’t wait up for me tonight, alright?”

Ling nodded, forcing a smile that looked almost natural. “Of course. Be safe.”

“Always,” Miu said softly, squeezing her hand once before stepping back.

Orm’s jaw tightened. Every gesture, every small sign of affection, hit like a quiet knife.
This was the scene she had spent years trying to avoid. Ling and Miu, side by side, effortless in their shared rhythm. Ling’s soft voice, Miu’s calm authority, the way they looked right together even when Orm knew better.

Lorena’s voice broke the silence. “We should get going, Matthews,” she said, her tone teasing but not without edge. “Some of us still have depositions to review.”

Miu smiled faintly. “Of course. Mrs. Kwong, always a pleasure.”

Ling nodded, polite and distant. “Likewise.”

They left together, Lorena’s hand brushing lightly against Miu’s arm as they walked out, laughter faintly trailing behind them.

The door closed, and the air shifted. Ling stood there frozen, her composure cracking just slightly.

Orm sat still, her fingers curled against the table. Her throat burned with words she couldn’t say.

Seeing Ling with Miu again felt like watching a replay of every night she’d spent waiting for the impossible…Ling’s affection given to someone else, Ling’s loyalty belonging elsewhere.

It was the same scene that had haunted her for three years, only now she was sitting inside it, powerless.

Ling turned back to her finally, eyes uncertain, face pale. “Orm…”

But Orm couldn’t look at her. Not yet. Not while the image of Miu’s hand over Ling’s still burned behind her eyelids like a mark she’d never erase.

She heard Ling say her name again. Softer this time. “Orm.”

Orm turned, startled by the sound of it. “Yes, babe,” she said in a hurry, the word escaping like breath before thought, claiming its old place between them before she could stop it.

Ling blinked.

Orm’s eyes widened. “Sorry,” she said quickly, fumbling for control. “Came out of habit.” She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

Ling was still watching her carefully, that lawyer’s sharpness flickering beneath the calm. “Did Lorena refer to Natasha as Miu?”

Orm frowned slightly. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

Ling tilted her head, her brows knitting together. “That’s strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m pretty sure only I call her Miu,” Ling said slowly. “That’s her mother’s name for her. She almost never uses it. Even in college, everyone knew her as Natasha. I always heard Lorena say Natasha.”

Orm’s expression didn’t change, but inside something tightened. “Maybe I misheard,” she said lightly, trying to sound casual. “The café was loud.”

Ling shook her head. “No. I heard it too. Lorena said it first. Miu didn’t even flinch.”

Orm said nothing. The noise of the café had faded again; only the hum of conversation around them filled the silence.

Ling’s voice became quieter, more to herself than to Orm. “She told me once she hated that name. Said it made her feel small, like her mother was still deciding who she should be. I can’t remember the last time anyone else called her that.”

Orm watched her carefully, but Ling wasn’t looking anymore. Her eyes had gone distant, her thoughts folding in on themselves.

“Ling,” Orm said softly. “You’re overthinking.”

“Maybe,” Ling murmured. “Or maybe I’m just noticing what I ignored for too long.”

Orm’s heart sank. She wanted to reach for her hand, to pull her back from whatever thought was forming, but she didn’t move. She just sat there, quiet, watching Ling’s composure fracture one small crack at a time.

Outside, the door chimed as someone new entered the café, the sound sharp against the silence that had grown between them.

Ling finally stood, her tone almost steady again. “I have to go.”

Orm nodded slowly, still studying her face. “Call me when you get home.”

Ling hesitated for a second, then gave a small nod. “I will.”

And she left.

Orm stayed behind, her pulse unsteady, her reflection faint in the glass.
The word Miu still echoed in her head, too familiar to be casual, too deliberate to be harmless.

It wasn’t just a slip.
It was something else.
And now Ling had noticed it too.

*Flashback*

There were days when love felt like drowning in slow motion.
Not the desperate kind of drowning … the quiet kind, where you learn to live under water because coming up for air would mean remembering what you’ve lost.

That was what loving Ling had become.
A survival technique.
A series of stolen breaths in a life that no longer belonged to her.

Orm never used to count time, but with Ling, every second had edges.
Six p.m. meant Ling was somewhere else … at a dinner she couldn’t mention, laughing a laugh Orm wasn’t meant to hear.
Nine p.m. meant Ling was probably home, washing off the perfume she wore for someone else.
Eleven p.m. meant hope… thin, humiliating, but still alive because sometimes the phone would ring, and the sound of Ling’s voice would trick Orm into believing she was still wanted.

The body learns strange things in love.
It learns to wait.
It learns to be grateful for crumbs.
It learns to lie to itself… that this is enough, that the sound of a key turning once a week can replace the promise of a life.

She had told herself that she could share Ling with the world if she could just have her in the quiet.
But the quiet was a liar too.

Every night without her became a rehearsal for loss.
Every morning without a message became proof that Orm didn’t exist anywhere but in the margins of Ling’s life.

Sometimes she’d wake at three a.m., heart pounding, convinced she could hear the sound of Ling’s car outside. She’d run to the window only to find the street empty, the city asleep. She’d stand there with her palms against the glass until the chill numbed her skin. It was a kind of penance … to love someone who belonged to another and to keep loving them anyway.

When Ling did come, the world narrowed to touch.
She would press her face into Orm’s neck, whisper that she couldn’t stay long, that she was sorry.
And Orm would nod, always nod, as if forgiveness were instinct.
Because having her, even for an hour, hurt less than not having her at all.

There were nights when Ling fell asleep in her arms, the faint groove of a missing ring warm against Orm’s fingers. In those moments Orm almost believed they could start again. She’d imagine mornings where Ling didn’t have to leave before sunrise, where breakfast wasn’t a crime, where love didn’t have to hide behind drawn curtains.

But dawn always came.
And Ling always left.

After the door clicked shut, Orm would lie there staring at the ceiling, trying to hold on to the shape of her… the indentation on the pillow, the scent of jasmine still clinging to the air. She’d tell herself it was enough. That loving someone halfway was better than never touching them at all.

But the truth was simpler, crueler:
She was starving.
Starving for a love that was full, not borrowed.
Starving for Ling’s laughter at noon, her voice in daylight, her hand reaching without fear.

She told herself she could endure it… the secrecy, the silences, the endless waiting but endurance isn’t love.
It’s what comes after love has already broken you.

And still, she couldn’t stop.
She loved Ling through every lie. She loved her knowing she was not the home, only the hidden room where Ling came to breathe.

That was the hardest part.
Knowing that even when Ling said “I love you,” it was a whispered rebellion, not a promise.

Orm learned to live for those rebellions.
To collect them like evidence that she had existed somewhere inside Ling’s world.
Because when you are the secret, even being remembered feels like victory.

Ling told her one evening in late November.

The air had already turned thin and cold, the kind that carried the smell of snow long before it arrived. Ling stood near the window of Orm’s apartment, her back half-turned to her, hands tucked into the pockets of her coat as if distance might soften what she was about to say.

“Miu’s mother isn’t well,” she began quietly. “She and I will be in Colorado for the holidays. Thanksgiving, and probably Christmas too.”

She said it with the calm precision of someone who had rehearsed the line several times in her head, trimming away anything that might sound like guilt.

Orm sat curled on the couch, a book open in her lap though she hadn’t read a word. For a moment she thought she had misheard. The sentence hung in the air, slow and heavy, until it finally reached her. She forced a smile that didn’t touch her eyes.

“That’s good,” she said softly. “She’ll be happy to have you home. Family’s important.”

Ling turned her head then, studying her face as if searching for the reaction she feared most. Orm gave her none. She closed the book gently and laid it on the coffee table, her fingers lingering on the cover.

“It’ll only be a few weeks,” Ling continued. “Maybe less. I’ll call when I can. I’ll write.”

Orm nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the book so she wouldn’t have to meet the sincerity in Ling’s. “Of course,” she whispered. “Go take care of her.”

What she wanted to say was something else entirely. She wanted to ask, and who will take care of me? She wanted to know if Ling would think of her at the dinner table, surrounded by the safety of a family that didn’t know she existed. She wanted to know if her wife still reached for Ling’s hand in public, if she still leaned against her shoulder in those framed photographs of perfect holidays.

She said none of it.

Ling crossed the room, her steps slow, her expression soft with apology. Her fingers brushed through Orm’s hair, light and careful, as though Orm were something fragile she did not know how to hold anymore.

“I’ll be back before the new year,” she said.

Orm looked up at her then, her throat tight. “I know,” she murmured. “You always come back.”

But both of them understood how far away “a few weeks” could feel.

After Ling left, the apartment lost its warmth almost immediately. The lamplight seemed dimmer, the air too still. Orm sat on the couch for a long time, staring at the door Ling had walked through, waiting for the echo of footsteps that never returned.

The days that followed stretched endlessly. She filled them with noise. Work, coffee, friends who talked too fast about nothing. At night she came home to a bed that still smelled faintly of Ling’s perfume and lay across it, her arm draped over the empty space, pretending that missing her was a kind of devotion.

Thanksgiving passed quietly. She cooked out of habit…two plates, two glasses, a reflex she couldn’t unlearn. The television played some cheerful holiday special she didn’t remember turning on. When she finally texted Ling a picture of the food, there was no reply until the next morning.

Ling:
Looks delicious. I’m proud of you.
Three red hearts.

Orm stared at the message until the words blurred.

She tried to imagine Ling’s evening. She pictured her sitting at a long table surrounded by you-know-who’s family, laughter rising and falling like a tide. She would be beside her, elegant, easy, her hand resting lightly over Ling’s when she reached for the wine. Ling would smile, that perfect composed smile that convinced the world she was happy.

Orm closed her eyes and tried to breathe past the image.

By December, the cold had settled in like an uninvited guest. She began walking everywhere just to feel something move. Sometimes she caught her reflection in shop windows, her shadow following her through the glitter of Christmas lights, and she would think of Ling again…of the way absence could press against the ribs like weight.

On Christmas Eve she stopped pretending. She cooked too much, poured two glasses of wine, and left the second one untouched beside the candle. She whispered, “Merry Christmas,” into the empty room and felt foolish for expecting the walls to answer.

When her phone finally lit up, the message was short.
Miss you so much, baby. Be good.

It was enough to make her cry.

She carried the phone to bed, clutching it to her chest like something alive. Outside, snow began to fall in slow, deliberate flakes. She imagined Ling somewhere warmer, perhaps on a porch with her family, the ocean behind her, the sound of gulls and easy laughter. She imagined her head tilted back in the sunlight, her smile effortless, her heart unburdened.

Orm turned off the light and lay in the dark, the ceiling spinning softly above her. She told herself that love meant understanding, that waiting was proof of faith. But what she felt was neither understanding nor faith. It was hunger, the kind that gnaws quietly and never stops.

She missed Ling in ways she didn’t know a person could be missed…in the mornings when she woke alone, in the afternoons when the city was too bright, in the evenings when silence sat beside her like company.

Sometimes she thought about calling. She never did. She knew the sound of another voice in the background would break her.

Instead, she whispered Ling’s name into the cold air, quiet enough that even the night could pretend it hadn’t heard.

Love, she learned, could survive absence, but it changed shape. It became something smaller, quieter, something you fed with memory because the real thing was too far to touch.

And when she finally fell asleep, her last thought was of the space Ling would occupy when she came back. She told herself it would be the same, that love would pick up where it had paused.

But deep down, even in dreams, she already knew that some distances never close completely.

Ling returned on a Tuesday afternoon. There was no warning, no message, just the familiar sound of her knock…three soft taps against the door that carried more apology than words ever could.

When Orm opened it, Ling stood there in her long coat, eyes tired, hair still carrying the faint scent of the ocean. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The city hummed outside, the hallway light flickered once, and Orm realized how long she had been waiting for this exact moment.

Ling spoke first, her voice careful. “Can I come in?”

Orm wanted to say no. She wanted to say that she had spent the holidays teaching herself how to breathe without her, that she had stopped setting the table for two, that she had almost convinced herself she was fine. But her heart betrayed her long before her mouth did. She stepped aside, and Ling entered, bringing the cold air with her.

There were no grand speeches, no rehearsed apologies. Ling simply dropped her bag on the floor, crossed the space between them, and pressed her forehead against Orm’s shoulder. The warmth of her skin, the tremor in her breath…these were the only explanations Orm needed. She closed her eyes and let the ache unravel.

That night they did not talk. Ling cooked dinner instead, quietly, methodically, as if making pasta could atone for absence. She filled the apartment with smells Orm had missed…olive oil, garlic, warmth. When Orm tried to help, Ling shook her head and said softly that this was her way of making things right. The table was a mess of laughter by the time they sat down, the kind that came from too much wine and too much pretending that everything had not broken a few weeks earlier.

After they ate, Ling cleaned up while humming under her breath, something low and unfamiliar. Orm leaned against the counter, watching her move through the kitchen as though it still belonged to her. The sleeves of Ling’s shirt were rolled neatly to her elbows, her hair damp against her neck, her movements unhurried. For the first time in months she looked unguarded. When she finally turned around, there was a softness in her eyes that Orm had almost forgotten existed.

“Come here,” Ling said quietly.

Orm obeyed. She stepped forward until the space between them disappeared. Ling’s hands came to rest lightly on her waist, not possessive, just sure.

“I have something to tell you,” Ling said.

Orm looked up, heart already quickening. “Should I be worried?”

“No,” Ling murmured. “Not this time.”

She hesitated then, as though she needed to convince herself of what she was about to say. Her fingers traced the edge of Orm’s shirt absently before she finally spoke.

“Two weeks. I’m staying here.”

For a moment the world stilled. The hum of the refrigerator, the sound of the city outside, even Orm’s own breathing…all of it fell away.

“You’re… staying?” she asked softly, as if afraid the words might vanish if she said them too loud.

Ling nodded. “Yes. For two weeks. No calls, no work, no pretending.”

Orm blinked, stunned by the simplicity of it. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “You’re serious?”

Ling’s voice was calm but steady. “Completely.”

Orm smiled, wide and helpless. “You mean it. You’re really not leaving tonight.”

Ling shook her head. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. I want to wake up here. I want to remember what it feels like to live without being looked at.”

Orm’s laughter broke then, small and disbelieving. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Say yes,” Ling whispered.

Orm reached up and touched her face. “Yes. A thousand times yes.”

They stood like that for a moment, forehead against forehead, the air between them charged and trembling. Orm could feel Ling’s heartbeat through the thin fabric of her shirt.

Then the thought came, quiet but sharp. “What about… you know who,” she said carefully.

Ling knew exactly what she meant. Her eyes lowered for a moment before finding Orm’s again. “I’ll handle it.”

“And she’ll believe you?”

“She will,” Ling said. Her tone was gentle, but there was something in it that sounded almost rehearsed. “She trusts me. She thinks I’m exhausted. Maybe I am.”

Orm wanted to ask a dozen more questions, but the hope in her chest was too fragile to risk. “You don’t owe me this,” she said softly.

Ling smiled, small and tired and achingly tender. “I know. That’s why I want to give it.”

Orm laughed quietly, the sound breaking in her throat. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear that.”

Ling brushed her lips against her temple. “Then don’t waste a second of it.”

Orm pulled her closer. “I won’t.”

They stayed like that for a while, breathing each other in, the kitchen still glowing with the warmth of dinner. When Ling finally let go, her hand slid down Orm’s arm, fingers lacing with hers.

“Two weeks,” Ling whispered again, almost as if reminding herself. “Just us.”

Orm squeezed her hand. “Then let’s make them count.”

Ling smiled, the kind of smile that looked almost shy on her. “We will.”

And everything in the air changed …


“You want me?” Ling asks.

Orm nods, almost frantic. “Yes.”

“Did you miss me?” Ling asks again, peppering kisses all over Orm’s jaw.

“Yes,” Orm nods, giving Ling the needed, “So, fucking much.”

Ling smiles at that answer and grabs Orm closer, kissing her with a mixture of deep love and lust. Her mouth is warm and full and claiming, and Orm opens to it like a prayer, like a drowning girl handed air. Ling’s fingers slide up the inside of Orm’s thigh with slow pressure, patient but demanding, coaxing her legs apart until Orm shudders and gives in. Her body moves like it remembers this, like it was only ever waiting for Ling’s touch to wake it up again.

Ling’s hand dips beneath the waistband of her shorts, and without hesitation finds her bare and wanting.

She tests the water, just once, running her fingers along the slick folds…Orm is already soaked, wet and swollen and aching, exactly the way Ling hoped. Ling smiles against her lips, and between kisses whispers with heat, “So fucking wet already.”

Orm doesn’t bother answering. She has already given in. Her body speaks for her, hips lifting into Ling’s palm with a quiet desperation. Her throat catches a moan that still escapes half-formed, as if she is too full to hold it in and too undone to shape it properly. The dirty talk only fans the fire curling low in her belly, only confirms the truth her body already knows … that she is entirely, helplessly, hers.

Ling starts slow, like she has all the time in the world. One stroke, then another. Her fingers sink in deep, two at once, sliding into Orm’s pussy with a wet sound that makes them both pause for a breath. Then Ling parts her open, wide and deliberate, until Orm gasps, until her head tips back and her mouth falls open, panting.

Her breath is erratic now, her chest rising fast, too fast. Her hands grasp at Ling’s shoulders like they might anchor her to the moment. Ling’s thumb brushes over her clit in featherlight circles, cruel in its softness, driving her mad. The pace is slow, unbearably slow, each movement deliberate and unhurried, as if Ling wants to memorize every part of her all over again.

Orm’s thighs tremble. Her nails dig into Ling’s back. She can’t think. She can only feel …the way Ling holds her, sees her, the way her touch burns straight through to her spine.

“Ling,” Orm gasps, breathless.

“I know,” Ling murmurs, kissing just below her ear, her voice rough and low. “I’ve got you, baby. Let go.”

And Orm does… hips rolling, mouth open, her whole body surging into the rhythm Ling sets, desperate for more. Her moans turn broken, throat tight, fingers clutching at whatever they can reach… Ling’s shoulder, her hair, her name. Everything in her is unraveling, coming apart in waves of pleasure and memory and something that feels dangerously close to love.

Because this is what she’s been waiting for. This is what she aches for every time they part …not just the sex, not just the release, but the way Ling touches her like no one else ever has. Like she is something sacred. Something hers.

And in that moment, Orm can’t tell where her body ends and Ling begins.

She doesn’t want to.

And that was how it began…the quiet miracle of borrowed time. Two weeks of mornings that belonged to no one else, two weeks of laughter and arguments and half-cooked dinners, two weeks where Ling let herself exist in the small, ordinary world they had built together.

For Orm, it felt like breathing for the first time in a year.
For Ling, it felt like freedom she could only afford for fourteen days.

Neither of them said it out loud, but they both knew.
Every heartbeat from that moment forward was a countdown.

The two weeks unfolded like something the universe made in secret. Every day felt suspended, as if the world outside had stopped moving just long enough for them to breathe without consequence.

They made a life out of the night. Ling always said the dark was kinder to them, that it asked fewer questions. So they went out when the streets were half empty and the city was dressed in shadow. Sometimes they walked along the river where the water shimmered with stray light, their hands brushing but never holding for too long. Other times they wandered through the quiet parts of Boston, where no one knew their faces, where Ling could smile freely and Orm could laugh without caution.

There were moments that should have been ordinary but felt holy instead. The sound of Ling’s laughter echoing against brick walls. The sight of her face under streetlamps, her eyes bright and alive in ways Orm had never seen in daylight. The way Ling leaned against her shoulder on park benches, tracing lazy circles on her palm as if she were signing her name there.

When the nights were too cold to wander, they stayed in. Ling cooked again, though half the time the food burned because she was too busy talking, too busy laughing at Orm’s stories. They ate on the floor because the table was buried under papers and books, and somehow that felt right. Ling liked that the rules of her other life didn’t apply here. She could drink wine straight from the bottle. She could sit cross-legged on the couch. She could let her hair down and not fix it again.

Orm memorized all of it. The small things. The domestic chaos. The way Ling’s sleeves kept sliding down her wrists. The quiet hum she made while drying dishes. The way her face softened when she looked at Orm, as if she were seeing something beautiful she didn’t think she deserved.

They slept tangled together most nights. Ling always fell asleep first, her breathing slow and steady, one hand resting against Orm’s heart as if to remind herself that it was still there. Orm would lie awake and watch her, tracing the faint shadow of her lashes against her skin, the rise and fall of her chest, the peace that belonged only to these stolen hours. She used to think pain was the proof of love, but with Ling, she learned that love could also be stillness. The kind that made every wound feel suddenly worth it.

In the mornings, they moved like people who had nowhere else to be. Ling made coffee while humming, bare feet against the cold tile. Orm sat on the counter, stealing sips from her cup, watching the sunlight spill across the floor. Sometimes Ling would wrap her arms around her from behind, press her lips to her neck, and whisper things that didn’t sound like promises but felt like them anyway.

They talked, too. Not about fear or guilt or the world waiting beyond their door, but about everything else. The books they wanted to write. The cities they wanted to visit. The garden Ling said she would plant one day, even though she hated getting her hands dirty. Orm told her she would build them a home, one with too many windows and no curtains at all. Ling smiled and said she wanted that too, a place where no one had to hide.

At night, the world grew smaller. Sometimes they read together, Orm’s head resting on Ling’s lap, Ling’s fingers idly moving through her hair. Sometimes they danced to music that played softly from Orm’s phone, slow and wordless, the kind of dancing that was just swaying and breathing and existing in the same rhythm.

Ling loved her differently in those two weeks. It wasn’t hurried or guilty. It was patient, reverent, like she had been given something fragile and finally understood how to hold it. She touched Orm’s face as if to memorize it, kissed her as if to thank her, spoke to her in the low, careful tone she used when she was telling the truth.

Orm found herself thinking that this must be what belonging feels like. Not the ownership of a name or a ring, but the quiet certainty that someone saw you completely and stayed anyway. Ling saw her in ways no one ever had. She saw her mess, her restlessness, her noise, her fear, and still looked at her like she was a sanctuary.

It made Orm forget the pain that came before. The lonely nights, the unanswered calls, the endless waiting. All of it dissolved under Ling’s hands, erased by the warmth of her body and the weight of her voice when she whispered I love you against her skin.

There were moments when Orm thought she might burst from the sheer fullness of it. The laughter, the touch, the sound of Ling saying her name like it was a prayer. Every part of her that had once been hollow now felt filled with something too vast to contain.

She stopped thinking about what would happen after. The future existed only in the stories they told each other in the dark. The outside world shrank until it was nothing more than the faint hum of traffic beyond the window. Inside, there was only the two of them, moving through each day as though time had been rewritten to favor them for once.

The city outside their window faded into a blur of gold and soft shadow, and the apartment glowed with the warmth of a single lamp. Ling sat cross-legged on the couch, her hair still damp from the shower, a cup of tea between her hands. Orm sat beside her, one leg tucked under the other, watching the steam rise.

They had spent the whole day pretending time did not exist. Dinner plates still rested on the table, untouched since afternoon, and Ling’s phone lay face-down on the counter where it had been all week.

For a long moment they were quiet, wrapped in the kind of peace that comes only after too much chaos. Then Ling spoke softly, almost like a thought escaping.

“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to start over.”

Orm turned her head. “Start over how?”

Ling traced her thumb along the rim of her cup. “Without all of this. Without the secrets. Without the pretending. Just… you and me.”

Orm smiled faintly. “That sounds like a dream.”

“Maybe not.” Ling looked up at her, eyes steady. “I could get out of the marriage. It would take time, but I could. We could make it work.”

The words landed quietly but shook the air between them. Orm laughed once, a small disbelieving sound. “You’d really do that?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Ling said. “More than I should.”

“And what then?”

“Then I’d marry you,” she said simply.

Orm blinked, the laughter fading. “You say that like it’s easy.”

“It’s not,” Ling admitted, her voice low, deliberate. “But it’s the only thing that’s ever made sense.”

Orm leaned back, studying her. “You’d leave everything for me? The house, the reputation, your parents, Miu?”

Ling hesitated before answering. “I’d leave the parts that don’t feel like living.”

Orm was quiet for a moment, her heartbeat loud in her ears. “You’re serious.”

Ling nodded. “I’m serious.”

“Then tell me,” Orm said softly. “Tell me what our life would look like.”

Ling smiled, that small, tired smile that always came before she let herself dream. “We’d move somewhere quiet. Maybe a little house outside the city, something with a garden. You’d plant basil and kill every other herb because you’d forget to water it. I’d wake up early and make tea while you sleep in. We’d argue about who takes the dog out.”

“We’d have a dog?”

“Of course. You’d insist on a big one and then complain about shedding.”

Orm laughed quietly. “You know me too well.”

Ling’s eyes softened. “I’d teach part-time. You’d open your own firm, something small but brilliant. And someday, when we’re ready, maybe we’d adopt. A daughter. I’d teach her piano, you’d teach her to lie convincingly to her teachers.”

Orm smiled, a slow, aching smile that made her chest hurt. “And what would we name her?”

Ling tilted her head, thinking. “You’d pick something wild. I’d veto it. We’d end up with something in between.”

“Something like what?”

Ling looked at her, her voice turning gentle. “Something that sounds like us.”

They fell into silence again, the kind that felt full instead of empty. The lamplight painted gold across Ling’s face, and Orm wanted to capture that exact version of her forever…the woman who believed, for once, that she deserved happiness.

“You think we could really do that?” Orm asked quietly.

“Yes,” Ling said. “If I’m brave enough.”

“You’ve always been brave.”

Ling shook her head. “No. I’ve always been careful. There’s a difference.”

Orm reached over and took her hand. “Then be careless with me.”

Ling smiled, turning her palm upward, fingers curling around Orm’s. “I’m trying.”

They stayed that way until the tea went cold, their hands tangled between them. Every word spoken that night felt like a thread weaving a new life, delicate and impossible.

When they finally went to bed, Ling lay awake long after Orm had fallen asleep. She whispered into the dark, “I’ll find a way.”

Orm heard it half in dream, half awake, and smiled against her pillow. For the first time in months, she believed her.

And when the two weeks finally began to slip away, Orm didn’t fight it. She only watched Ling pack her bag one quiet morning, the sound of zippers and folded clothes breaking the fragile silence. Ling turned, her face soft with apology, her eyes full of something that almost looked like peace.

And Orm, foolish and tender as ever, accepted it.

She told herself the stolen hours were enough. The coffee breaks, the late-night visits, the phone calls that ended with whispered “I love yous” instead of promises. She convinced herself that this was how real love survived…not in freedom, but in fragments.

Every time Ling returned, even for a minute, Orm let herself believe in the version of the world they built in those two quiet weeks. She believed in the garden, the child, the house filled with laughter. She believed in it because believing hurt less than remembering it was a dream.

And so life returned to its rhythm…Ling between two worlds, Orm waiting in the smaller one, still grateful for every second of borrowed time.

Because sometimes love is not about having someone entirely.
Sometimes it is about holding the part of them the world forgets to claim.

Because in those two weeks, Ling had given her something no one else ever could.
A world where love wasn’t borrowed.
A world where they existed freely, even if only for a little while.

Chapter Text

Orm’s POV

It takes three days. Three days for Junji to return with something that might give shape to the ache in Orm’s chest. Three days of coffee that tastes like metal and sleep that does not come. Three days of sitting on the edge of a chair as if balance itself were a performance that could distract the heart.

The morning after the cafe she went back to work. Ling’s no settled like a stone in her stomach, hard and cold and simple. Orm told herself that work would cauterize what was bleeding. The lie was almost comforting. The lie even smiled.

Natasha was already at her desk when Orm arrived. Hair in place. Voice even. A note beside the keyboard that read Review the severance schedule for Cura executives and mark risk categories. Orm stood there a beat longer than she should have, the room suddenly too bright. Then she sat and became the tool she had always known how to be. Efficient. Precise. Invisible where it mattered.

She pretended not to notice the way Natasha’s phone lit up every hour with Lorena’s name. She pretended not to hear the laughter that carried through closed glass. She pretended not to see the way Natasha relaxed when Lorena entered a room, the way her shoulders opened, the way the mask loosened. It would have been simple to label it friendship and move on. It would have been clean to call it mentorship and file it under admirable bonds between brilliant women. But Orm had run out of words that made pain sound reasonable.

The irony tasted bitter. She, who loved Ling like a prayer and a sin at once, now sat two feet from the woman who wore Ling’s marriage like a ribbon, and she was expected to behave. She had to smile. She had to ask how the night went and whether the car service was on time. She had to read through the merger clauses that would promise a thousand jobs to a thousand strangers while her own world balanced on a thread that no clause could save.

At noon she excused herself and walked the stairs until her legs went numb. At two she returned with a face that did not tremble. At four she answered a call from Junji that was not a call at all, only a soft click and silence, then a hang up. A signal. I am working. Keep breathing.

Night came like a curtain. Orm bought noodles and ate them standing up. She told herself that hunger had a shape and love had a different one, and that she could confuse the two until morning. She slept with her shoes still by the door in case memory tried to leave again.

On the second day Natasha leaned over her monitor and asked for a clause summary. The perfume was the same one Ling used to borrow for gala nights, sharp and clean. It struck Orm like a small, private cruelty, although she knew it was simply a smell. That was the problem with grief. It returned the world to its smallest objects and asked you to live there.

But all she could think about was Ling.. she is always in her mind

She thought she had learned how to live without her. She had practiced the art for two years, tracing the silence between calls, teaching her hands to stay still, her voice to stay steady. But missing Ling was not an absence that could be rehearsed; it was an instinct, a reflex that kept surfacing no matter how many times she buried it. It was not even longing anymore....it was muscle memory.

That perfume undid her in one breath. It filled the space between her ribs like the ghost of touch. For a moment, the office around her blurred, the clatter of keyboards fading into the low hum of the memory it carried. That scent had once lived in her sheets, on her own collarbones, in the hollow of her wrist after nights when Ling’s hands had held her there too long.

She turned her face away from Natasha’s shoulder and pretended to read. Her eyes followed the words but her mind was nowhere near the merger. It had gone back to the morning of those two weeks, the one where Ling stood by the window holding her tea with both hands, looking out into the light like she was afraid to look at Orm instead. The memory ached, gentle and cruel at once.

Orm’s chest tightened. She wanted to call her, just to hear her voice. Just to know if Ling still took her tea with honey instead of sugar, if she still tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking, if she still reached for her phone at night out of habit and then stopped herself. She wanted to send a message that said I’m here, I’m still here. But her fingers never moved.

She told herself she couldn’t, not yet. Not when she didn’t have answers. Ling deserved more than fragments and apologies. Ling deserved the truth....something whole, something Orm could hand her without fear that it would crumble on contact. So Orm did what she always did: she folded the want into something small, something that could fit inside her chest without breaking it open.

The days became long, thin stretches of pretending. Work, meetings, silence. She smiled when she had to, spoke when spoken to, signed her name beneath words she didn’t care about. Every sound in the office became an echo of something that once belonged to Ling....the rhythm of a pen tapping, the hiss of a coffee machine, the crisp snap of paper being folded in half. The world had turned into an archive of her.

At night, the ache returned in its truest form. It came quietly, with the lights off and the city half-asleep. Orm would lie awake and think about all the ways Ling used to fill the space....the quiet breathing beside her, the weight of a hand over her stomach, the warmth that refused to leave even when she did. She missed her voice most of all. Not the words, but the tone....the calm, even one that could make a room feel less sharp. She missed the way it could undo her without effort.

She didn’t call. Not when she wanted to. Not when she needed to. Not even when she caught herself whispering Ling’s name into her pillow just to hear how it sounded again.

Because what if Ling answered.
And what if she didn’t.

The question was enough to keep her quiet.

Saturday arrived gray and wind-bitten, the kind of morning that carried too many silences. Orm had spent the night drifting in and out of shallow sleep. She woke to the sound of her phone vibrating against the nightstand, one message, from a number she hoped to hear from. 

Junji: Meet me at Tatte Bakery & Café, Tremont Street. Bring your patience and maybe a conscience.

The words jolted her fully awake. For three days she had lived on caffeine and questions, half afraid that Junji had disappeared for good. Now she was here again, sharp and cryptic as always, dangling the word answers like a match over dry wood.

Orm didn’t even finish her coffee. She showered too quickly, dressed in the first things she touched…black turtleneck, gray coat, hair still damp. She caught her reflection on the way out and almost didn’t recognize it: the exhaustion around her eyes, the restless hope flickering underneath.

By the time she reached Tatte, the café was alive with the hum of Saturday. The windows fogged with the warmth inside, people lined up for croissants and cappuccinos, soft jazz melting into the chatter. The smell of butter and roasted beans hit her like a memory of something good she once believed in.

Junji sat by the window, laptop open, a half-eaten almond croissant next to it, her cropped hair a mess of new colors that looked accidental and deliberate at once. She raised an eyebrow when she saw Orm rush in, her tone dry as ever.

“You look like someone who hasn’t slept or sinned properly in a week.”

Orm slid into the chair across from her. “You’re late.”

Junji smirked. “Well, I had work to do.”

“Do you have it?” Orm asked. Her voice was tight, half-hope, half-threat.

Junji closed the laptop with a soft click. “I have something. Whether it’s it depends on what you’re ready to know.”

“I’m ready for anything.”

“Don’t say that unless you mean it.”

“Junji.”

Junji sighed, tore off a corner of the croissant, and said quietly, “Lorena and Natasha aren’t just colleagues. They share more than boardrooms. The connection runs deeper…and older..than you thought.”

Orm’s pulse kicked. “How deep?”

Junji leaned back, her eyes sharp but her tone quieter than usual. “Deep enough that you’ll wish I was making it up,” she said. “There were no photographs. No paper trail. Just voices. People who remembered too much and tried too hard to forget.”

Orm frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I started with Lorena’s old colleagues,” Junji said. “The ones who knew her before she was ‘Boston’s prodigy.’ Then I spoke with a few of her friends from Harvard....professors, classmates, an assistant who used to file her case notes. And finally, her ex-fiancé. That man still speaks like someone who got hit by a storm he didn’t see coming.”

Orm leaned in. “And what did they tell you?”

Junji hesitated, swirling her coffee once before saying it. “They told me the affair started long before yours and Ling’s. Years before. Back when Lorena was mentoring Natasha at Harvard. Miu was still dating Ling. It only lasted a week, but it wasn’t a fling. It was… intense. Something that looked like friendship until it wasn’t.”

Orm blinked. “What?”

“Yes,” Junji said softly. “It began a week before Lorena’s graduation. They were reckless, but everyone around them knew something had changed. Then Lorena graduated and left for New York. They cut contact…at least for a while. But when Natasha graduated, fate did its usual trick.”

Junji’s voice lowered, her words slow and deliberate. “By then Lorena was engaged to that finance guy…good family, boring, devoted. He told me he thought he’d won the lottery until the night she didn’t come home. That was the night Natasha came back into her life. She was interviewing at a law firm where Lorena happened to be consulting. One accidental catch-up turned into coffee. Coffee turned into evenings that ran too late. And before long, the engagement ring became just a ring.”

Orm tried to process it, her pulse loud in her ears. “You’re saying they’ve been doing this for years?”

“On and off for seven,” Junji said. “Lorena ended her engagement halfway through, but she never ended it with Natasha. Every time they walked away, they came back. Colleagues said they were poison for each other but couldn’t stop drinking.”

Orm’s voice came out tight. “Then why stay with Ling? Why marry her if she had Lorena waiting in the wings?”

Junji tilted her head, studying her like she was piecing together a puzzle only she could see. “It was all for money,” she said finally. “Ling had it. Ling wanted freedom from her parents’ grip, and Natasha, your Miu, wanted a way out of debt. It was convenience dressed as love.”

Orm blinked. “That doesn’t make sense. Lorena had money. She might as well have just stayed with her.”

Junji gave a low laugh, one without any real humor. “That’s where you go wrong, my little soldier. Lorena wasn’t born into wealth. She was an orphan. She built herself from nothing, smart, sharp, ruthless. She learned early that power doesn’t come from money; it comes from controlling the people who have it.”

Orm frowned. “So she used her fiancé?”

“Oh, she used everyone,” Junji said, leaning closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “Her fiancé was a trust fund baby. Parents with deep pockets and too much guilt. Lorena convinced him they could be a power couple, her brain and his money. He believed her. Poured everything into her vision. She used his funds to buy into S and M LLP, piece by piece, until her name was practically carved into the foundation. And then, one year later, poof, she dumped him. Cold, clean, efficient.”

Orm’s stomach twisted. “And Natasha?”

“Employed right after that,” Junji said. “Lorena brought her into the firm, said she was the best young lawyer she had ever mentored. Everyone thought it was professional admiration. But behind closed doors it was strategy. Miu was the golden piece, ambitious, brilliant, and willing to play the long game.”

Junji paused for a moment, her eyes narrowing as if watching something distant. “You know, people like them always find each other. No matter how much time passes, no matter how many people stand in between, they always circle back. It’s not love in the way you or I would define it. It’s something darker, magnetic. They thrive on each other’s ambition, on the danger of being caught, on the power it gives them to outsmart the rest of the world together.”

Orm’s throat tightened. “So it was never over between them.”

Junji shook her head. “Never. Lorena and Miu are cut from the same cloth. Every time they part, they find new ways to collide again. That kind of bond…obsessive, secret, self-serving…it eats at people who watch it. Because it looks like passion. It looks like loyalty. But what it really is… is a kind of hunger that doesn’t end.”

She leaned back, voice softening. “It’s the kind of love that makes others envious because it looks unstoppable. The kind that makes everyone around them feel small, like their own loves were too tame, too safe. But what no one sees is how much it costs. They burn through everything they touch, and when they’re done, they always go back to each other to feed the fire again.”

Orm leaned forward, her heart hammering. “Oh my god, so they used Ling. They used her to buy Beckman’s position in the firm for Natasha?”

Junji smirked. “Oh, you’re getting it now. Ling’s family money opened doors Lorena couldn’t force her way through alone. A few quiet donations here, a few anonymous investments there. Before anyone noticed, Miu’s rise looked like merit. But it was Ling’s fortune that greased the machine.”

Orm sat back, stunned. “They used her.”

Junji’s expression softened, but only slightly. “They used everyone, Orm. That’s Lorena’s art. She makes you believe you’re building something together when really, you’re just a brick in her wall.”

Orm stared past Junji, vision unfocused. The weight of it all, the manipulation, the betrayal, the years of love tangled in lies, pressed against her ribs until she could barely breathe.

Junji added quietly, “Now you see why I said this wasn’t just about heartbreak. It’s business. It’s empire building. And Ling, poor Ling, is still under the illusion that love had anything to do with it.”

Orm whispered, more to herself than to Junji, “She deserves to know.”

Junji nodded. “She does. But be careful. Truth has teeth.”

The questions doesn’t stop there … cause there is one more thing that Orm is itching to know. 

Orm took a shaky breath, her hands still flat on the table. The air between them buzzed with everything she had just heard, everything that now refused to be unlearned.

After a long silence, she finally asked, her voice low, “What about the other thing I asked you about?”

Junji looked up from her coffee, her smirk gone now, replaced by something more cautious. She hesitated for a moment, studying Orm’s face before saying quietly, “Oh, you’re not going to like it.”

Orm’s stomach sank, the words hanging in the air like a storm that hadn’t broken yet.

Junji didn’t elaborate. She just sat there, stirring her drink, the clink of the spoon against porcelain the only sound between them.

And Orm knew…whatever was coming next would be worse than everything she’d already heard.

*Flashback*


Ling’s POV: 

It had started as a tremor. A faint thing that she could almost ignore if she kept her head down, if she just moved from one hour to the next like a careful machine. But tremors grow, and Ling had always been the kind of person who listened too late.

By the time the affair had taken shape, by the time Orm had become not just a name but a pulse inside her, guilt had become a second heartbeat. It lived under her ribs and reminded her, with every quiet breath, that she was no longer the person she thought she was.

The first time she cried about it, it wasn’t in Orm’s bed, and it wasn’t in Miu’s arms either. It was in her car, parked in a narrow street where no one would know her. The rain had been heavy that night, a curtain that allowed her the privacy of falling apart. She had sat there gripping the steering wheel, forehead pressed against the leather, whispering the same sentence again and again until it lost meaning.

I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.

But the apology had nowhere to go.

Her phone kept lighting up on the passenger seat .... one message from Miu, the gentle kind she always sent.
Drive safe, love. Don’t stay too late at the library.
A small heart emoji. A habit from 7 years of marriage.

Ling had looked at that message and felt her throat close. She had wanted to throw the phone, wanted to break the thing that tied her to a version of herself that no longer existed. Because she knew where she was going. Not to the library. To Orm. To the warmth that both healed and unmade her.

She remembered that night with a kind of vicious clarity. Her fingers trembling as she turned the ignition off, wiping her eyes, fixing her face in the rear-view mirror. Her reflection was red-eyed and wrecked, yet somehow determined. The kind of look that belonged to someone about to do something they knew was wrong but would do anyway because love is never polite, and desire is never merciful.

By the time she reached Orm’s apartment, her tears had dried, replaced by something feverish. Orm had opened the door in her usual way .... barefoot, half-smile, the kind of quiet that said I missed you even when I told myself I wouldn’t. Ling had wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t have come, that this couldn’t continue, that she was losing herself piece by piece. But when Orm touched her face, the words dissolved.

She could not stop.

That was the truth that burned her every time she went home after.

The drive back was always the worst. The empty streets, the dim yellow lights blurring past her windshield, the faint scent of Orm still on her hands. Sometimes she rolled the windows down just to let the wind take it away. Sometimes she pressed her fingers to her lips and tasted the sin again because she could not help it.

When she reached home, Miu was often asleep. The lights would be dimmed to the soft glow Miu liked. Ling would stand at the doorway of their bedroom, watching her wife’s body rise and fall under the sheets, her dark hair spilling over the pillow, her hand reaching to Ling’s side of the bed even in sleep.

It was that small gesture that killed her every time.

She would slip quietly beside her, heart still racing from the other life she had just left. Miu would stir, eyes half-open, whisper her name with the sleepy affection of a woman who had never doubted her.
“You’re home.”
“Yes,” Ling would answer. “Just a long night at the office.”

Sometimes Miu would reach for her hand and fall back asleep holding it. Ling would lie there staring at the ceiling, her eyes burning, her throat aching with words she could never say. She would think about the life she had built with Miu .... the shared cups of coffee, the long years of studying together, the promises made on park benches when they were too young to know what promises cost.

She stopped loving Miu. There was no single moment of realization, no cruel word or act of betrayal that marked the end. It was quieter than that, slower, like a candle running out of wax. One day she simply looked at her wife and felt nothing move inside her. No tenderness, no longing, not even the quiet warmth of habit. Only the faint echo of what used to be there. And that silence frightened her more than guilt ever could.

She began to feel unclean beside her, the weight of her own deceit pressing against her skin every night they shared a bed. Miu would roll toward her in sleep, trusting, unaware, her breath soft and even. Ling would lie perfectly still, every nerve in her body screaming with shame. Miu does not deserve this, she would think, staring at the ceiling, her heart twisting in a slow, merciless rhythm.

So she asked to sleep in a different room. It started as a careful lie, one that even she almost believed. She said she needed space to work, more time to grade papers, more notes to prepare for her lectures. She told Miu that her desk light would keep her awake, that the piles of student files were overwhelming, that the couch in the study would be better for both of them.

Miu had looked at her for a long moment, confusion softening into worry. “Are you sure?” she had asked, her voice small, almost childlike in its sincerity. “Did I do something wrong?”

Ling had shaken her head too quickly. “No. I just need the space,” she said, careful, measured, the way she always was when lying for the first time.

Miu did not press. She nodded, though Ling saw the flicker of hurt in her eyes before she looked away. And that tiny, fleeting wound became another weight Ling carried into the silence of the study.

At night, when the house fell asleep, Ling sat surrounded by open books and empty pages. Her laptop glowed with the pretense of work, but she never wrote a word. She stared at her hands instead .... the same hands that had touched Orm hours earlier, that had memorized the softness of her skin, the curve of her hip, the warmth that made Ling forget her name. She felt sick with it. With how much she wanted her. With how much she was willing to lose just to feel alive again.

Lying to Miu ate her alive. She had never done it before. Not once in their years together. They had built their life on trust, on laughter, on the quiet ease of knowing the other’s heart without needing to ask. And now she was poisoning it with every breath she took.

She would sit there in the darkness, her chest tightening until it hurt to breathe, the tears coming in silent, unstoppable waves. She cried for Miu, for the woman who still reached for her hand in sleep. She cried for herself, for the pieces of her that had become unrecognizable. And most of all, she cried for Orm, because she loved her too much to stop, even as it destroyed everything else.

She pressed her palms to her face and whispered into the quiet, “I am a terrible person,” over and over until the words no longer sounded like language, only confession. She wanted to stop. She wanted to be good again. But she couldn’t. Because Orm had become her oxygen, her undoing, her reason.

Every morning, she would wash her face, rehearse her smile, and return to Miu with a calm voice and steady hands. And every night, when she closed her study door, she fell apart again.

That was the rhythm of her days now .... devotion and deceit, truth and ruin. She was both the sinner and the one who mourned her own sin. And still, she kept going back to Orm. Because for all her guilt, all her self-loathing, Ling had already chosen the kind of love that made her burn.

Ling loved her more than she had ever loved anyone, and yet she was the one teaching her what neglect felt like. Every time Orm’s voice broke, every time she turned away to hide her tears, Ling wanted to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness. She wanted to give her the world .... the time, the respect, the care she deserved. But she never could. Because she was too busy pretending that she wasn’t already breaking every promise she had ever made.

The world still demanded its version of her.
There were the galas, where she stood beside Miu in designer gowns, smiling for cameras that captured lies with perfect lighting. The nonprofit dinners, the charity auctions, the holiday events with family where she wore pearls instead of truth. She played her role so well that even she almost believed it sometimes. Almost.

But every glass of champagne, every polite conversation, every photograph made her feel smaller. The applause, the praise, the flash of attention .... all of it turned hollow the moment she remembered Orm sitting alone somewhere, waiting.

She hated herself for how easily she kept choosing duty over love.
How she could smile through the governor’s toast knowing Orm had texted her three times, asking if she was coming.
How she could spend an evening shaking hands with donors while the woman who knew her best was lying awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if she mattered at all.

After every event, when the laughter and the cameras faded, Ling would sit alone in her car, staring at her reflection in the dark window. She looked polished, put together, powerful .... everything she had been raised to be. And yet she felt like a ghost of herself. Because the woman in the mirror belonged to a life she no longer believed in, while the woman she wanted to be was waiting for her two miles away, barefoot, heart open, ready to forgive her again.

She didn’t deserve that forgiveness.
She didn’t deserve Orm’s patience or her softness or the way she still smiled every time Ling walked through the door.
But Orm kept giving, and Ling kept taking, and the balance of it broke her heart a little more each day.

Sometimes, when she returned from another gala, she would sit on the edge of her bed in the dark, still wearing her evening dress, her earrings heavy against her skin. Miu would already be asleep, her breathing steady, peaceful. Ling would stare at her for a long moment, then slip quietly out of the room and sit on the floor of her study. She would open her phone, scroll through Orm’s last messages, and cry .... silent, aching tears that came from knowing she was hurting the one person who made her feel alive.

She deserves better than this, she would whisper to herself.
She deserves my time, my hands, my heart. And all I ever give her is a fraction of what she deserves.

Yet the next morning she would wake, put her hair up, and walk back into the world that claimed her. Because duty was louder than love, and Ling, for all her brilliance, had not yet learned how to choose herself.

And so she lived in halves .... half in the light, half in the dark, trying to build a life that could hold both truth and betrayal. But the weight of it kept growing, and some nights she could feel it in her bones, the slow breaking of a heart stretched between two worlds.

That was what it meant to love Orm and still go home to Miu .... to be both full and starving at the same time.

The snow had come early that year, soft and deceptive, falling like forgiveness over a city that didn’t deserve it. Ling stood at Orm’s window with her coat still on, watching the flakes blur the streetlights into halos. She could already feel her throat tightening around the words she had rehearsed a dozen times in her head.

“Miu’s mother isn’t well,” she said at last. “She and I will be in Colorado for the holidays. Thanksgiving, and probably Christmas too.”

Her voice didn’t crack, though it should have. She had practiced it to sound calm, practiced it until guilt became rhythm. She could almost pretend it didn’t hurt to say it.

Orm didn’t answer right away. She only nodded, her eyes cast downward to the book in her lap, the same one she had not read since Ling arrived. The air between them felt heavy and deliberate, as though the silence itself had weight.

“It will only be a few weeks,” Ling continued. “I’ll call when I can.”

Orm smiled faintly, the kind of smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course. Go take care of her.”

It was the mercy in her tone that destroyed Ling most .... mercy, when what she deserved was anger.

She wanted to say don’t let me go, but she knew it would be cruel to ask. She had already taken too much. So she kissed Orm’s hair instead, touched her cheek once, lightly, and left before her voice could betray her.

In the car, the world went quiet.
She sat behind the wheel with both hands trembling, the engine still running, her reflection fractured by the frost on the windshield. Her breath fogged the glass, her pulse wild and uneven.

that night she broke. She pressed her forehead to the steering wheel and sobbed until her throat burned, the sound raw and unfamiliar.

She wasn’t crying for Orm alone. She was crying for the life she had ruined by trying to live two at once.

When she finally reached home, Miu was in the kitchen, humming softly, barefoot on the tiled floor. The smell of jasmine rice and lemongrass filled the air. Miu turned when she heard her, her face lighting up with an ease that Ling no longer knew how to return.

“You’re home early,” she said. “I made soup. Sit down, love.”

Ling’s heart clenched. Miu’s voice was still that same melody it had always been .... gentle, certain, achingly familiar. Ling stood there for a long moment, unsure how to exist inside the warmth she no longer deserved.

“It smells wonderful,” she managed to say.

Miu came closer, brushed a strand of Ling’s hair behind her ear. “You look tired,” she murmured. “You work too much.”

That touch .... that simple, kind touch .... felt unbearable. It was everything she had once wanted, everything she had fought to protect. And yet, when Miu’s fingers lingered on her cheek, all Ling could think of was Orm’s hand on her wrist, Orm’s breath against her collarbone, Orm’s voice whispering stay.

She went upstairs before she could drown in the guilt.

In the mirror, she looked polished, composed, the kind of woman who could stand beside a wife at a gala and never give away her secrets. But her eyes betrayed her. They looked haunted, foreign, too full.

She changed into an old sweater and sat on the edge of their bed. Miu was still humming downstairs. The sound should have comforted her. Instead, it broke her.

Ling lowered her head into her hands and whispered, “What am I doing?”

No answer came, only the faint echo of music through the walls.

In the study, she sat surrounded by open books and silence. The lamp light caught on the edge of her wedding ring, and she turned it absently, over and over, as if it might give her answers. She wanted to write .... an email, a letter, anything .... but her mind was blank except for one name.

Orm.

The thought of her hurt more than absence. It was a kind of hunger that no reasoning could quiet. Every night she imagined her alone in that small apartment, the bed half-empty, the tea gone cold. Every night she reached for her phone and stopped herself, because the sound of Miu’s breathing down the hall was enough to remind her of the cost.

By Thanksgiving, the house was full of people .... Miu’s siblings, her mother’s friends, a blur of voices and laughter. Ling smiled when she had to, answered when spoken to, raised her glass at the right times. She was a perfect wife again, and everyone saw what they expected to see.

But under the table, her hands shook. She could still feel Orm’s messages burning through the phone in her pocket, though she couldn’t bear to look.

That night, when she finally did, Orm had sent a photo of a dinner for two, one plate untouched. The caption read: Guess I overcooked again.

Ling covered her mouth, her eyes stinging, her chest hollowing out with something close to grief.

She typed, deleted, typed again.
Finally she sent: Looks delicious. I’m proud of you. 
Three red hearts. The safest lie she could manage.

Then she went into the bathroom, locked the door, and sank to the cold tile floor. Her hands trembled as she pressed them to her face. She wanted to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come.

She hated herself. Hated how easily she could play both roles .... the devoted spouse and the faithless lover. Hated that she could tell Miu I love you and mean it, then whisper I love you to Orm and mean that too.

But it wasn’t the same love.
One was duty, the other was need.
And she no longer knew which was killing her faster.

In Colorado, she performed perfection again. The mountain air bit through her skin, and Miu’s family adored her as always. She smiled in photographs beside the fireplace, laughter frozen mid-frame. She held Miu’s hand for the cameras, the gold band catching firelight, and thought only of Orm’s fingers instead.

Every night she excused herself early. Every night she sat alone in the guest room, scrolling through old texts, rereading them until her eyes blurred.

When Christmas came, Miu gave her a scarf .... forest green, her favorite color .... and kissed her gently. “You’re my home,” she said.

Ling’s throat closed around the words she couldn’t return. She smiled, nodded, and said, “You too.”

But when she looked out the window that night, she whispered another name under her breath, one that no one in that house would ever know.

Orm.

And for the first time, she realized she wasn’t choosing between two people. She was choosing between the woman the world expected her to be .... and the woman she truly was.

The choice should have been simple.
But love, real love, never is.

Ling had never believed in fate. She had always trusted reason, structure, the invisible scaffolding that kept her life upright. But reason had no language for Orm. Logic collapsed at the sound of her laughter, and every vow, every principle, every version of goodness Ling had once clung to had begun to unravel quietly the longer she stayed.

Between all the guilt and the lies, Orm still made sense. That was the part that undid her. She could stand in the wreckage of her own making and still look at Orm and think, this is worth it. Worth the broken vows, worth the sleepless nights, worth the tears that came after every goodbye. Orm made ruin feel holy.

When Ling looked at her, she saw a thousand small things that no one else ever noticed. The way Orm’s smile showed her gums, the way her laughter filled a room so completely that Ling forgot to breathe, the way she teased her until Ling’s carefully built calm fractured into something human. She saw the way Orm wanted her .... not out of need or pride, but out of love so simple and unadorned that it made everything else in Ling’s life feel ornamental.

Orm never asked for more. She never fought, never accused, never demanded to be chosen. Even when Ling’s absence stretched into weeks, even when the phone calls grew shorter, even when Ling lied through her teeth about meetings and obligations, Orm never threw a tantrum. She waited. She loved quietly. She let Ling arrive when she could, and when she did, Orm received her as though nothing had been missing.

During those two weeks together, Ling saw what it could have been .... what it should have been. Orm’s happiness was so radiant that it frightened her. Every morning, Ling woke to the sound of her humming softly in the kitchen, to the smell of coffee and jasmine tea. The simplest things .... folding laundry side by side, brushing their teeth at the same sink, lying on the couch with Orm’s legs tangled in hers .... began to feel like the truest form of living she had ever known.

She caught herself studying Orm when she thought she wasn’t looking. The curve of her mouth when she read, the absent way she tapped her fingers against her mug, the warmth that lingered in her gaze when Ling entered the room. It was unbearable, how much she loved her. How much she wanted to stay.

Those two weeks felt like a spell she never wanted to wake from. Orm’s joy at her presence was quiet but endless. She would look at Ling as though she was still surprised she existed, as though every moment spent together was a gift the world had accidentally allowed. And Ling .... who had spent her whole life being needed but never adored .... began to understand what it meant to be loved without demand.

She had always told herself that she was protecting Miu by keeping her distance from Orm. That what she did in the dark was a mistake contained neatly away from daylight. But during those two weeks, she stopped believing that. Because with Orm, it didn’t feel like sin. It felt like home.

And that was when the treachery truly began .... not in the affair itself, but in the imagining.

It started small, harmless in the beginning. She would look at Orm stirring sugar into her coffee and think of mornings like this stretched across years. She would imagine coming home to her laughter instead of sneaking through shadows. She imagined the two of them living somewhere quiet, a small house by the coast, the sound of rain on the windows, a dog sleeping at their feet. She imagined waking beside her without the weight of secrecy pressing down on her chest.

And then one night, when Orm fell asleep on her shoulder, she imagined something she had never dared before .... a baby girl that they would adopt…a child that carried their love in the shape of her smile. It was the kind of dream she used to mock in others, sentimental and impossible. But now she clung to it like oxygen.

With Miu, she had never allowed herself to dream. Their love had been disciplined, measured, built on compatibility and shared history, not on hunger or wonder. She had loved Miu the way one honors a promise .... steady, faithful, contained. But with Orm, everything was chaos and light. Even when it was wrong, it felt alive.

She would lie awake beside her, the city humming faintly outside, and think, I could stay like this forever.
And that thought terrified her more than guilt ever had.

Because once you start to imagine a future with someone else, the life you have already begins to die.

Ling knew it. She felt it in her bones every time she looked at Miu and saw not the woman she loved, but the shadow of a promise she could no longer keep. She felt it in the way her body leaned instinctively toward her phone at night, waiting for Orm’s voice.

Orm was her undoing and her absolution all at once. The proof that love, even when it destroys, can still feel like salvation.

And so Ling kept loving her .... selfishly, helplessly, completely .... knowing full well that someday it would break her. Because for all her vows and all her guilt, she had already chosen. She had chosen the woman who smiled with her gums and teased her until she laughed like a girl again. She had chosen the one who never asked her to be perfect.

She had chosen Orm.