Chapter 20

LISA POV:

The next morning, Lisa decided that corporate warfare required carbohydrates.

By 9:00 a.m., the kitchen island was entirely covered. There was a box of artisanal pastries from a French bakery down the street, a bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries, two different types of fresh juice, and the espresso machine was humming like a small jet engine.

Lisa stood in front of the stove, wearing a faded vintage band tee and loose cotton shorts. Her blonde hair was tied back in a messy knot, and she was aggressively whisking eggs in a ceramic bowl.

On paper, she was just making breakfast. In reality, she was drafting a counter-offensive.

She had spent the last seven hours staring at her bedroom ceiling, realizing that retreating behind a wall of sarcastic jokes was exactly what Jennie expected her to do. Jennie wanted parameters. Jennie wanted the safe comfort of their original contract because the alternative—actually acknowledging the tectonic shift between them—terrified her.

“The boundaries weren’t there to protect her from the board. They were there to protect her from herself.” Lisa wasn’t a corporate strategist, but she knew how to read a person’s eyes. And last night, right before Jennie pulled her executive mask back on, her eyes had been completely defenseless.

So, Lisa wasn’t going to play along anymore. If Jennie wanted to hide behind her legal fortress, Lisa was just going to have to dismantle it, brick by brick, with absolute normalcy.

The sound of soft, bare footsteps echoing down the hallway of Wing A made Lisa’s shoulders instantly tighten, but she forced her expression into an easy, unbothered grin before turning around.

Jennie walked into the kitchen, and Lisa’s breath caught in her throat. Jennie was wearing the massive, charcoal-gray NASA hoodie—Lisa’s hoodie. It drowned her completely, the sleeves falling past her knuckles and the hem reaching the middle of her thighs. Her dark hair was down, slightly tangled from sleep, and she looked so soft it felt like a direct hazard to Lisa’s heart rate.

“You’re making a significant amount of acoustic noise for a Sunday morning,” Jennie murmured, her voice raspy and thick with sleep. She didn’t look at Lisa directly, instead heading straight for the coffee maker like a heat-seeking missile.

“Good morning to you too, boss,” Lisa said smoothly, pouring the eggs into a hot skillet. “I’m just optimizing the morning caloric intake. The data suggested you were running on low fuel after yesterday’s execution of Minho Park.”

Jennie froze, her hand hovering over a coffee mug. The mention of last night made a faint, unmistakable pink hue creep up the back of her neck. “We discussed this, Lisa. Last night was a localized anomaly. We have already logged the event and returned to standard operational boundaries.”

“Right. Standard boundaries,” Lisa chuckled, turning off the heat on the stove.

Instead of staying behind the safety of the cooking range, Lisa scooped the eggs onto a plate, picked up a fresh glass of orange juice, and walked right over to Jennie’s side of the kitchen island.

She didn’t stop at a polite distance. She stepped right into Jennie’s personal space, setting the juice down next to her mug. She was so close she could smell the faint scent of the jasmine body wash Jennie had used, mixed with the familiar sandalwood of her own hoodie.

Jennie’s eyes snapped up, her cat-like gaze instantly narrowing in a defensive reflex. “Lalisa. Spatial awareness.”

“I’m just delivering the assets, Jen,” Lisa said, her voice dropping into that quiet, deep register she usually kept for the dark. She leaned one hand on the counter right next to Jennie’s hip, effectively trapping her against the island without ever actually touching her. “Is my hoodie comfortable?”

Jennie swallowed, her throat moving in a slow, tight line. She instinctively pulled the sleeves of the oversized charcoal fabric tighter around her hands. “It was… easily accessible. I am simply utilizing available inventory.”

“Uh-huh. Available inventory,” Lisa murmured. She didn’t back away. Instead, she tilted her head, her dark eyes locking onto Jennie’s lips for a deliberate, agonizing three seconds before rising back to meet her eyes. She let a small, teasing smirk touch her lips. “You know, for a CEO who’s so obsessed with proprietary rights, you spend a lot of time stealing my assets.”

“It’s a shared residential space,” Jennie stammered, her breath hitching slightly. The executive armor was cracking; Lisa could see it in the way Jennie’s chest was rising and falling a little too quickly beneath the heavy fabric. “The contract allows for mutual utilization of common property.”

“Does the contract allow for this, too?” Lisa whispered.

Slowly, deliberately, Lisa lifted her other hand. She didn’t go for a kiss. She didn’t push past the line Jennie had drawn. Instead, she just reached out and gently took the edge of a loose, dark strand of hair that was falling over Jennie’s face. Her knuckles brushed against the soft skin of Jennie’s cheek—a tiny, electric spark of heat—as she carefully tucked the lock behind Jennie’s ear.

Jennie completely froze, her eyes widening slightly. She didn’t lean away. For a split second, her head actually tilted infinitesimally into the touch of Lisa’s hand, a silent, subconscious surrender that she probably didn’t even realize she was doing.

“You’re working too hard, Nini,” Lisa said softly, her thumb lightly grazing the high curve of Jennie’s cheekbone one last time before she finally drew her hand back. She stepped back a single pace, giving Jennie room to breathe, but her expression remained completely steady, devoid of the usual sarcastic shields. “Eat the eggs. They’re hot.”

Jennie stared at her, looking completely dazed, her lips parted as her brain tried to find a legal clause or a corporate acronym to handle the sheer gravity of what Lisa was doing. There wasn’t one.

“I… I have a conference call with the European logistics directors in twenty minutes,” Jennie managed to say, her voice low and lacking any real authority.

“The directors can wait ten minutes for their leader to eat a strawberry,” Lisa said, sliding the plate toward her as she hopped onto the barstool next to her, completely reverting back to her casual, unbothered demeanor. “Pass the orange juice, wifey. Let’s see what the press is saying about our ‘standard operational boundaries’ on Twitter.”

Jennie looked from the plate of food to Lisa, who was already scrolling through her phone like she hadn’t just single-handedly destabilized Jennie’s entire psychological perimeter.

Slowly, a tiny, almost invisible dimple appeared on Jennie’s cheek. She reached out, took a strawberry from the bowl, and sat down on the stool next to Lisa.

The walls were still up, but as Lisa caught the faint, genuine smile Jennie was trying to hide behind her coffee mug, she knew the foundation was already starting to crumble. Five months was plenty of time to bring the whole fortress down.

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