Maya Collins woke to the sound of dripping water.
Not rain—she would have welcomed rain. This was the slow, taunting drip from her bathroom faucet, each drop echoing like a countdown. She lay still on her narrow bed, staring at the ceiling crack she'd named Frank sometime last winter, and calculated how many minutes she could afford to ignore the problem.
Three.
She rolled out of bed, feet landing on cold tiles, and twisted the tap tighter than recommended. The dripping stopped—for now. Victory felt temporary, but she took it anyway.
This was her life: small battles, temporary fixes.
She brushed her teeth while checking her phone. No new emails. No miracle payments. Just a notification from her bank reminding her of a balance she was trying very hard not to look at.
"Later," she said on the phone.
Her apartment was barely big enough to stretch both arms without touching something. A desk pressed against the window, stacked with notebooks, sticky notes, and printed drafts marked with red ink. This was where she worked. Where she dreamed. Where she worried.
Maya made coffee—carefully—and sat at her desk.
The image of Adrian Blackwood drifted into her mind without permission.
Annoying.
She hadn't meant to think about him again. He belonged to a category she'd learned to avoid early in life: men who lived in a different reality. Men for whom problems were solved with money, assistants, and influence.
And yet.
He hadn't treated her like a nuisance.
He hadn't looked at her like she was invisible.
That unsettled her.
Across the city, Adrian Blackwood's day was already underway.
The boardroom at Blackwood International was a cathedral of glass and steel. Sunlight reflected off the polished table, where men and women in tailored suits spoke in measured tones about acquisitions, projections, and risk mitigation.
Adrian sat at the head of the table, hands folded, listening.
Outwardly, he was composed.
Internally, his mind kept drifting—to a café table, to hazel eyes, to honesty that hadn't been strategic.
He shut that thought down.
Focus.
"Adrian?" one of the board members prompted.
"Yes," he said smoothly. "Proceed."
Numbers filled the screen. He absorbed them easily. This world made sense. Effort in, results out. Control rewarded.
And yet, something felt off.
During a brief pause, his gaze slid to his phone. A new email notification blinked on the screen.
From: Maya Collins.
He stilled.
She had sent him the cleaning bill. Nothing more. No commentary. No apology.
Just professionalism.
Adrian stared at the number.
Then surprised himself by smiling.
Maya spent the afternoon chasing deadlines.
She edited blog posts, rewrote taglines, and answered emails that all sounded the same. We love your voice. Not the right fit. Please keep us in mind.
By evening, her eyes burned.
She packed up her laptop and headed to the café again—not because she expected to see Adrian, but because the Wi-Fi at home had started flickering like it, too, was tired of trying.
Fate, however, had a sense of humor.
He was there.
Standing near the window, phone pressed to his ear, posture rigid. Even without sound, she could tell he was annoyed. Not angry—controlled annoyance, the kind that lived just beneath the surface.
She considered turning around.
Didn't.
When he saw her, something shifted. His shoulders eased. He ended the call.
"Maya," he said.
"Adrian."
They stood there, suspended between familiarity and distance.
"You look tired," he observed.
She laughed quietly. "I am tired."
Honesty again.
He nodded, as if that made sense. "Sit with me."
It wasn't a request.
She should have said no.
She didn't.
Their conversations became a pattern.
Short at first. Surface-level. Safe.
But safety was boring.
Maya talked about freelancing—the instability, the constant hustle. Adrian listened, genuinely listened, asking questions without trying to fix things.
In return, he spoke of pressure. Expectations. The weight of legacy.
Not money.
Never money.
She noticed that.
"You don't talk about being rich," she said one evening.
He looked surprised. "Is that unusual?"
"Yes," she said. "People with money usually want you to know they have it."
He considered that.
"Money is a tool," he said. "Not an identity."
She studied him. "Then why does it seem to define your life?"
The question landed harder than she intended.
Adrian leaned back, jaw tightening. "Because others define me by it."
Silence followed.
A crack.
From Adrian's perspective, Maya was a disruption.
She didn't defer.
She didn't flatter me.
She challenged him in small, quiet ways.
He found himself adjusting his schedule to accommodate chance encounters that were no longer entirely accidental. He noticed how easily she smiled when she forgot to guard herself. How fiercely she defended her independence.
She was not impressed by him.
That was dangerous.
From Maya's perspective, Adrian was a contradiction.
Cold, but not cruel.
Powerful, but restrained.
She caught glimpses of loneliness when he thought no one was looking. Saw how he stiffened when his phone rang with his grandfather's name.
"You don't like being controlled," she said once.
He looked at her sharply. "No."
"Yet you let it happen."
He didn't answer.
The distance between their worlds became impossible to ignore.
She rushed to meet deadlines.
He rushed to meetings that decided the fate of thousands.
She worried about rent.
He worried about ownership.
Still—
They kept finding each other.
The night everything shifted, it was raining.
They stood under the awning again, city lights blurring into reflections.
"I don't belong in your world," Maya said.
Adrian looked at her for a long moment. "No," he agreed. "You don't."
Her chest tightened.
"But," he continued, "you make me question mine."
That was worse.
She stepped back. "Adrian—"
"My grandfather has given me six months to marry," he said quietly.
The words dropped between them.
Maya stared. "You're joking."
"I don't joking."
Understanding dawned.
Worlds apart.
And suddenly, fate felt less romantic—and far more dangerous.
She shook her head. "Then whatever this is… it can't be anything."
Adrian didn't argue.
He watched her walk away, rain swallowing her figure.
For the first time in years, control slipped through his fingers.
And the terrifying part was—he wasn't sure he wanted it back.
Next: Chapter 4 — The Proposal That Wasn't Romantic
Fate kept bringing them together.
Reality was about to change everything.
Tonight | 11:30 PM – 12:30 AM