@bufbiwh719: I loved this story, so I made an interactive version on Cycle AI where you can step into any character and live it yourself. Paige Monroe knew exactly how Ethan Drake would explain Zoe Lane. He would never say he wanted her. That would be too honest. He would say Zoe was under pressure. Zoe was misunderstood. Zoe was trying. Zoe needed someone patient. And somehow, every sentence about Zoe's innocence ended with Paige carrying the consequences. HelixPoint was a biotech company, which meant mistakes were not cute. A wrong number in a trial report could delay treatment, ruin approvals, hurt actual patients. Paige understood that in her bones. Ethan used to understand it too, back when they were two exhausted researchers eating vending machine dinners and promising each other the work mattered. Then Ethan became director. Then Zoe became his assistant. Then facts became negotiable. Zoe submitted an incomplete trial folder to a partner hospital. Paige caught it before it caused real damage and confronted Ethan in his office. "She cannot keep touching clinical documents without review." Ethan's face hardened. "You should have checked her work." "She submitted it without me." "Because she was trying to prove herself." There it was. Zoe's intentions mattered more than Paige's expertise. After that, Paige stopped arguing. Not because she forgave him, but because anger had started making him feel powerful. She fixed Zoe's errors, documented everything, and accepted a position with a clinical research institute in London. The offer felt unreal at first, like a window in a room she had forgotten was locked. Paige's friends asked why she did not simply expose Zoe. Paige tried to explain that exposure sounded satisfying only from the outside. Inside a company like HelixPoint, truth needed oxygen, and Ethan controlled the room. If Paige raised her voice, he would call it instability. If she cried, Zoe would offer tissues. If she presented evidence, Ethan would say she had become obsessive. So Paige chose the one proof nobody could debate: absence. She finished the trial correction, logged every change, and sent the clinical team a handover so detailed it read like a farewell letter written in protocol language. She made sure patients would be safe. She made no such promise about Ethan's pride. The final insult came during handover week. Paige found Zoe sitting too close to Ethan in the conference room, his jacket around her shoulders, both of them bent over the trial dashboard Paige had built. Zoe looked up with wide eyes. "I hope you do not misunderstand," she said. Paige said nothing. Ethan did. He accused Paige of making the office uncomfortable. He canceled her bonus, docked part of her salary, and called it discipline. Then, as if cruelty had warmed him up for romance, he softened his voice. "I know what this is really about. Fine. Wedding photos this month. I will prove you are the one." Paige stared at him. He thought she wanted proof. He did not understand she had been collecting it for months. She opened the conference tablet and pulled up the resignation he had approved that morning. Ethan went pale. "I thought that was an archive request." "You never read anything from me anymore," Paige said. Then she took off her ring and placed it beside the file. "Keep your wedding. I am choosing a life where basic respect is not a prize." #Cycleai #BookTok #BookRecs #RomanceBooks #WorkplaceDrama BetrayalRomance StrongFemaleLead Angst SecondChance DramaTok

Pages of Longing

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Sunday 04 October 2026 02:19:40 GMT