Leena finished the lemonade in silence. She placed the glass back on the counter carefully, as if nothing inside her was trembling.
"Sorry for disturbing you," she said calmly.
Then, softer, almost formal, "Good night, Sami."
She turned to leave.
Sami didn't move at first. Something about her was wrong—no, different. The unsteadiness was gone. Her steps were straight. Her back was firm. She didn't look drunk anymore. She looked… deliberate.
"Leena," he said before he realized he was saying her name.
She stopped.
Slowly, she turned back.
The kitchen light fell on her wet hair, darkened by rain, clinging to her neck and collarbone. Her clothes were still damp, fabric sticking slightly to her skin. Her cheeks held a faint pink—not fragile, not shy—just alive.
Sami stood there in a simple grey T-shirt and sweatpants, sleeves pushed up, broad shoulders relaxed in a way they never were at the office. At 1.85 meters, he towered over her without trying. The sharpness he carried all day was missing—no files, no courtrooms, no black-and-white rules.
Leena looked at him properly.
For a long second, she said nothing.
Then, quietly, thoughtfully, she spoke.
"Clothes change more than appearance," she said.
Her eyes didn't leave his.
"They change how a person thinks… how they behave."
She took one step closer.
"You're rude in those black-and-white office clothes," she continued, almost casually.
A pause.
"But now…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
The air between them thickened.
Sami swallowed. He felt it—the shift, the pull. He took a small step toward her without meaning to, his body reacting before his mind could stop it. The space between them shrank to a breath.
Her wet hair smelled faintly of rain and citrus. His gaze dropped, just for a moment, to her lips—then back to her eyes.
Time slowed.
Leena lifted her hand.
With two fingers, she gently touched his eyebrow—slow, careful, as if testing something fragile. Sami froze. He didn't stop her. He couldn't.
She rose onto her toes, just enough to reach his ear.
Her voice was a whisper. Steady. Dangerous.
"I'm a gold digger," she murmured.
"I do everything to get your money."
Then she pulled back.
Her fingers dropped from his face. The spell broke—but the silence didn't. It stayed, heavy and unsettled, lodged somewhere between his ribs.
Leena stepped away, opened the door, and left.
Sami remained where he was, heart pounding, knowing one thing with unsettling clarity—
Nothing about Leena was accidental.
And whatever she was planning…
he had already stepped into it.
SAMI'S POV
She left.
The door closed, but the room didn't recover.
Sami stood still, shoulders squared, jaw locked, as if discipline could force the air back into order. It didn't. The silence was thick, contaminated. Her presence had soaked into the walls the way rain soaked into her clothes—slow, unavoidable.
He could still feel her.
Not physically. Worse.
The memory of her breath—close to his neck, not touching, but close enough to register. That near-contact burned longer than touch ever could. His body reacted late, treacherously, as if it had been waiting for permission it never received.
She had stood there wet.
Not careless. Not seductive. Just exposed.
Her clothes had clung to her in a way that felt almost unfair—fabric heavy with rain, outlining truths she hadn't offered and he hadn't asked for. The line of her shoulders. The quiet curve of her waist. Strength held together by exhaustion. There was nothing soft about it. Nothing inviting.
And that made it worse.
Her hair—dark, damp, slipping forward, trembling slightly when she breathed. He remembered noticing that. The way her lips weren't steady, not drunk, not fragile—controlled, as if every word had to pass through something sharp before being released.
He hated that he'd noticed.
He hated more that he still did.
Clothes change how a person thinks.
The sentence replayed with surgical precision.
In black and white, he was contained. Correct. Distant.
Tonight, stripped of that uniform, he had been readable.
And she had read him.
He pressed his palm against the counter, grounding himself. The urge rose anyway—violent in its restraint. Not lust. Not tenderness.
Need.
The need to reach out, to interrupt whatever momentum she carried inside her. To touch her not because he wanted her—but because he couldn't stand the idea that she could walk away untouched.
He hadn't moved.
That was the line.
That was the only thing keeping him intact.
She had stepped closer. Close enough to alter his breathing.
Close enough that the room felt smaller.
He remembered leaning in—just a fraction. No decision attached. His body had betrayed him before his mind could intervene.
Then her fingers.
Two fingers. Light. Intentional.
On his eyebrow.
That touch hadn't been accidental or affectionate. It had been diagnostic. As if she were checking something—his control, his weakness.
And then the whisper.
I'm a gold digger.
A statement designed to rot in the listener.
She wanted him to doubt her.
She wanted him to despise her.
Or worse—to desire her through that doubt.
His throat tightened.
He had spent his life believing truth surfaced under pressure.
Leena created pressure and vanished.
Now, alone in the apartment, he understood something he didn't want to name.
Whatever she was doing—whatever she was planning—was already in motion. And whether she intended it or not, she had dragged him into it without asking.
The most unsettling part wasn't the attraction.
It was the restraint.
The fact that he hadn't touched her—and still couldn't escape her.
Outside, the rain continued, indifferent.
Inside, Sami stood in the afterimage of a woman who had turned absence into a weapon.
And for the first time, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to stop her—
—or if it was already too late to pretend he wasn't waiting for her to come back.