Consultant.
Such a clean word for someone whose presence made every nerve in my body tighten.
Celeste smiled.
It was not cruel. That almost made it worse. It was elegant, practiced, and unreadable.
“Maya,” she said. “I’ve heard wonderful things.”
I took the empty chair farthest from her. “Thank you.”
The meeting began.
For the first ten minutes, I barely heard anything. My attention kept drifting to Celeste’s hands folded neatly over her notebook, to the pearl buttons at her cuffs, to the way everyone in the room seemed aware of her without looking directly at her.
Then Julian pulled up the forecasting model.
Numbers filled the screen.
And the familiar part of my brain, the part that understood patterns better than people, came awake.
They were reviewing a revenue projection tied to a major infrastructure partnership. The model looked polished, but too polished. Certain assumptions had been smoothed out. Risk variables had been softened. A delayed deployment in two regions had been treated as unlikely despite evidence to the contrary.
I forgot Celeste for a moment.
I leaned forward.
“Can we go back one slide?” I asked.
Julian looked at me. “Of course.”
The slide returned.
I studied the quarterly breakdown. “The adoption curve assumes full integration by Q3, but the implementation reports from Logistics suggest the timeline is closer to Q4. Maybe late Q4.”
One of the senior analysts frowned. “That delay is considered low probability.”
“Based on what?”
He blinked.
I heard my own voice and was surprised by its steadiness.
He shuffled through his notes. “Prior vendor performance.”
“But this vendor is new in two of the regions,” I said. “And one of those regions has compliance approval pending.”
Julian’s gaze shifted to the screen. “Priya?”
Priya opened her laptop and typed quickly. “She’s right. Compliance approval is still pending.”
A quiet pause settled over the room.
Celeste looked at me with renewed interest.
Julian asked, “What would you adjust?”
I stood, because sitting suddenly made me feel too small.
“I’d run two alternate scenarios. One with partial Q3 integration and one with Q4 integration. Also, the churn assumption seems optimistic given the price increase scheduled at renewal.”
Aaron, the product lead, nodded slowly. “We’ve had internal concerns about that.”
The meeting changed after that.
Not dramatically. No one applauded. No music swelled. But the energy shifted. People began asking me questions instead of talking around me. I answered what I knew and admitted what I did not.
By the end, Julian had assigned me to rebuild the risk section of the model.
Celeste closed her notebook.
“That was impressive,” she said.
I could not tell whether she meant it.
“Thank you.”
Her smile remained. “Nathan has always had an eye for overlooked value.”
There it was.
Soft. Polished. Almost harmless.
Almost.
I met her gaze. “Denise assigned me because of my work.”
“I’m sure she did.”
The room had gone quiet again.
Julian cleared his throat and began gathering his papers. The meeting dispersed in a careful, uncomfortable flow. I packed my laptop slowly, refusing to appear hurried.
Celeste waited.
When we were alone near the doorway, she turned to me.
“I imagine this is all rather overwhelming,” she said.
“What is?”
“Being noticed.”
I looked at her calmly, though my heart was pounding.
“I was noticed by my department before I was noticed by anyone else.”
A faint flicker crossed her face. Amusement, perhaps. Or irritation.
“Good,” she said. “Hold on to that.”
I did not know what to do with the comment.
She stepped closer, lowering her voice.
“Nathan is not a simple man, Maya. People see the money, the magazines, the handsome face, and they invent whatever story flatters them most. But he is not a rescue fantasy.”
“I didn’t ask him to rescue me.”
“No.” Celeste studied me. “That may be why he likes you.”
The honesty of that sentence unsettled me more than an insult would have.
Before I could respond, she walked away, her heels quiet against the carpet.
I stood there long after she disappeared.
At lunch, I avoided the cafeteria and ate a granola bar at my desk.
By three o’clock, my head ached from staring at projections. By four, I had built the first alternate scenario. By six, most of the floor had emptied, leaving only the soft glow of task lamps and the distant murmur of the cleaning crew.
I was reaching for my bag when Nathan appeared at the end of the aisle.
He did not come straight to my desk. He stopped several feet away, as if respecting a line I had drawn.
“May I speak with you?” he asked.
His formality nearly broke my heart.
I nodded.
We went to a small glass-walled meeting room near the corner. The city outside had turned blue with evening.
Nathan closed the door but remained standing beside it.
“I heard Celeste attended the meeting,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know she would be there.”
“I believe you.”
His shoulders eased slightly.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the folder. “This was on my desk this morning.”
He opened it.
I watched his face as he saw the photograph.
Something cold moved through his expression, but he controlled it quickly.
“Maya.”
“I don’t want promises,” I said before he could continue. “Not the kind that sound protective but don’t tell me anything. I want honesty.”
He looked up.
“Did Celeste do this?”
“I don’t know.”
