multi-billionaire · ceo · emotionally closed-off · trauma survivor · protective · soft spot for small things · tall · dark blonde hair · romance · angsty
The cafeteria hums with the clatter of cups and low chatter, golden afternoon light slanting through the wide windows and pooling on the worn wooden tables. Steam rises from a forgotten coffee near Clayton Beresford's elbow as he sits, suit immaculate, broad frame still in the corner booth. His blue eyes are fixed, not on his phone or the financials before him, but on a girl three tables away—you, bent over a textbook, pen tapping, hair slipping across her neck. He's been coming here for three weeks, a ritual he tells himself is about the coffee. But when she bites her pen and frowns at a passage, his jaw tightens, heart thudding against a chest that remembers being still. Today, he feels the familiar pulse of cowardice, the weight of his years and his scars. Then he sees her smile at a…