Chapter 13: Ice Cream & Instant Click
The white rose sat on Imani's desk like a dare.
She arrived at 7:01 a.m., braids still damp from the quick shower in Surulere, the same black pencil skirt and white blouse she'd worn yesterday because laundry day had been swallowed by sleeplessness. The flower was there—single stem, thornless, petals pristine and glowing under the fluorescent lights that buzzed like angry bees. No card. No note. Just the faint, sweet scent cutting through the office's recycled air and the distant smell of Lagos traffic fumes seeping in from the cracked window.
Damian's door stood open exactly as it had the evening before. He was already at the window, back to the room, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a black coffee. Watching the lagoon. Watching her reflection in the glass, she knew, because the rubber band between them had not snapped—it had only stretched tighter overnight.
Imani didn't hesitate.
She picked up the rose, twirled it once between her fingers as if it were a cheap biro, then tossed it aside like it was nothing. It landed in the small bin beside her desk with a soft thud, petals brushing the crumpled draft pages she'd thrown away last night. The motion was deliberate. Cool. Professional. The exact opposite of the way her chest had cracked open when she'd first seen it.
From the corner of her eye she saw Damian's shoulders stiffen. His coffee mug paused halfway to his mouth. The muscle in his jaw jumped—the same one that had twitched yesterday when he'd almost touched her wrist. Anger. Raw, immediate, and completely irrational. He had deleted the text. He had walked away. And now he was furious that she had done the same.
Good, she thought. Let it burn.
She sat, opened her laptop, and began the day exactly as she had planned: cool, distant, untouchable. The slow burn he deserved.
By 8:17 a.m. the rose was back on her desk.
Sarian had seen it before the toss—snapped a quick photo while pretending to adjust her AirPods—and posted it to the society blog's Instagram story with the caption: "When the boss sends flowers after the elevator scandal 👀 Our girl Imani is blooming." The story went live. Within minutes it was screenshotted, reshared, and the comments flooded in like gutter water after a rain.
"She bought that herself for clout 😂 Street urchin arc loading."
"Sleeping her way up one rose at a time. Pauper princess loading."
"Imagine thinking a single rose erases the fact that you're from Surulere. Delusional."
"Damian Anderson would never. She probably stole it from the lobby."
The insults piled higher than the files on Imani's desk. Street urchin. Gold-digger 2.0. "She looks like she still takes danfo to work." Her phone vibrated non-stop. She silenced it, but the notifications kept coming—tiny red dots that felt like needles under her skin.
She kept the rose anyway.
Not on display. Not in water. She slipped it into the top drawer of her desk, between two old notebooks, where no one could see it but her. Every time she reached for a pen, the soft petals brushed her knuckles like a secret apology she refused to accept. She played it cool all morning—voice steady on calls, slides immaculate, coffee fetched exactly at 9:30 without a single extra glance toward his door. Professional. Untouchable. Forcing him to crack first.
Damian cracked at 10:12 a.m.
He stormed out of his office, stopped at her desk, and dropped a fresh printout of the merger deck beside her keyboard. His voice was low, clipped.
"Slide 14. The margins are off by two millimetres. Fix it."
She didn't look up. "Brand guidelines say—"
"Change them." His tone was ice, but his eyes—when she finally lifted hers—were fire. He was staring at the drawer where the rose now hid. He knew. Of course he knew. The man noticed everything except his own feelings.
She nodded once. "Understood, sir."
He lingered. One second too long. The sandalwood and coffee scent wrapped around her like it had in the elevator. She could feel the heat of him even though he stood a full metre away. Her pulse betrayed her, jumping under the collar of her blouse. He noticed that too. His gaze dropped to the hollow of her throat, then snapped back up.
"Anything else?" she asked, voice sugar-sweet and professional.
His nostrils flared. "No." He turned on his heel and walked away, but she caught the way his fist clenched at his side. The rubber band pulled tighter.
Inside Damian's head the war was louder than the Lagos traffic outside.
Why the rose?
He had typed the message at 10:38 p.m.—Good job tonight—then deleted it like a coward. The rose had been an impulse at 6 a.m., ordered from the 24-hour florist on Banana Island before the sun rose. A single white rose because red felt too obvious, too romantic, too much like admission. He had told himself it was nothing. A quiet thank-you. A peace offering after he had yanked himself away from her yesterday like she was poison.
But the truth—the one he fought with every breath—was that he was drowning in her. Every time she looked at him with those steady brown eyes, every time her braids brushed his shirt in the elevator, every time she whispered "It hurts," something inside him cracked open wider. He didn't want to feel. Feelings were dangerous. Feelings had destroyed his father, had turned Ivy into a predator circling the family fortune. Feelings made men weak.
And Imani Bright made him feel everything.
He wanted to drag her into his office, lock the door, and tell her the truth: that he had whispered Yoruba endearments because they felt safer than English, that he had held her for twelve hours because letting go would have killed him, that the rose was the only honest thing he had done in weeks. Instead he punished her with margin adjustments and cold commands. Because if he let the rubber band snap, he wasn't sure he could survive the fallout.
At 11:45 a.m. Imani's phone buzzed again—this time a private text from Kings.
Kings: Babe. I saw the comments. I'm in the trenches rn arguing with these clowns. "Street urchin"?? I just called someone's mother a failed abortion in the replies. You good? The rose real or you manifesting again? 😂
She smiled despite everything and typed back under the desk.
Imani: Real. He left it. I tossed it in the bin in front of him. Then stole it back like a thief. He's angry. I'm angry. We're both idiots. How bad are the comments?
Kings: Bad. But I'm winning. Just told one troll their wig is from 2017 and they went silent. You're not a gold-digger, you're a queen. And if Damian doesn't grow a spine I'm flying to Banana Island to slap him myself. Love you. Breathe.
She laughed softly—small, broken, but real. Kings was out there defending her honour while she sat here pretending the rose in her drawer didn't smell like hope. She typed: Love you more, gay superhero. Talk later. ❤️
The afternoon dragged like wet Lagos sand.
She kept the professional mask welded on. Answered emails. Re-did the margins. Fetched his 3 p.m. coffee without a word. Every time their paths crossed—her handing him a file, him passing her a revised contract—the air thickened until she could taste it. His eyes lingered on her mouth. Her gaze traced the vein in his neck that jumped when he was fighting himself. Neither spoke. The slow burn was working. He was cracking.
At 4:07 p.m. her phone rang—Becky's name flashing across the screen.
Imani answered on the second ring, voice soft so the entire floor wouldn't hear. "Hey, smallie. Everything okay?"
Becky's voice bubbled over the line, excited and breathless. "Manny! You won't believe this. Maya—Damian's little sister—just DM'd me on IG! She said she saw my story from last week when I posted that dance video and she loves my vibe. She sent her driver in the pink G-Wagon—the one her dad bought her last year—to pick me up from school. We're at Coldstone in VI right now! The pink one with the cream interior! She's buying me the biggest sundae and—"
Imani's brain short-circuited. "Wait. Maya Anderson sent a G-Wagon for you?"
"Yes! And her friends are here—some rich girls in designer everything—but they're being so weird. They looked at my uniform like it was rags and one said I look more like the help than Maya's friend. But Maya didn't laugh. She told them to shut up and bought me extra toppings. We're bonding over Burna Boy and how annoying big siblings are—she says Damian is worse than you on your strict days. She wants me to sleep over at Banana Island tonight! Can I? Please? She's so cool and she said you can come too if you want but I know you're at work—"
Damian had stepped out of his office the moment the call started. He leaned against the doorframe now, arms crossed, pretending to check his watch. But his eyes were on Imani—soft, unguarded, watching the way her face lit up when she talked to her sister. The stolen glance lingered. He didn't look away when she caught him. For three full seconds their eyes locked across the open-plan floor, and the entire office disappeared. Just the two of them, the rose in the drawer, the almost-kiss from yesterday still humming between them like electricity.
Imani's voice faltered. "Becky… I'll think about the sleepover. Text me the address. And be safe."
She hung up. Damian was still watching.
She stood. Enough was enough.
She walked straight into his office without knocking, closed the door behind her, and turned the lock with a quiet click that sounded louder than thunder.
"Stop."
The word came out sharper than she intended.
Damian straightened behind his desk. "Stop what, Miss Bright?"
"The rose. The staring. The almost-touching then yanking away like I'm contagious. The mixed signals that are driving me insane. Stop it. I'm not your toy. I'm not your distraction. I'm your PA and I deserve better than this… whatever this is."
He didn't deny it. He stepped around the desk slowly, deliberately, until only the black marble separated them. Close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the way his pulse hammered at the base of his throat.
"You think I want this?" His voice was rough, low, vibrating with everything he refused to name. "You think I enjoy waking up at 5 a.m. ordering flowers like a teenager because I can't send the text I actually want to send? You think I like knowing that every time you walk into this room I forget how to breathe?"
Her breath caught. "Then why—"
"Because I'm terrified." The admission cracked out of him like glass breaking. Vulnerable. Raw. He looked away for a second, jaw working, then back at her. "You make me feel things I swore I wouldn't feel again. Last night in the elevator… holding you… whispering things in Yoruba because English felt too small for what was happening inside me… that wasn't instinct. That was me losing the fight. And I'm still losing it."
He stepped closer. The desk no longer existed. His hand rose—slow, giving her every chance to move—and his fingers brushed the inside of her wrist exactly like yesterday. Thumb pressing gently over her racing pulse.
"Imani…" Her name on his lips again—soft, reverent, desperate. He leaned in. Their foreheads almost touched. She could feel the heat of his breath on her mouth, smell the coffee and the faint trace of the cologne he wore only on days he knew he would see her. One more centimetre and they would cross the line they had been dancing around for weeks.
Her eyes fluttered shut. She wanted it. God, she wanted it.
But she whispered, "Then stop running away every time it gets real."
His hand tightened on her wrist. "I can't give you what you deserve. Not yet. Not while the board is watching, not while Ivy is circling, not while every blog in Lagos is calling you a street urchin for something I started."
The words landed like ice water. She pulled back first this time.
"So the rose was what? Guilt?"
"No." His voice broke. "It was the only honest thing I've done since I held you."
They stood there—inches apart, chests rising and falling in sync, the almost-kiss still hovering like smoke. Neither moved. The tension was electric, painful, beautiful. She could see the war in his eyes: the yearning that made his hands shake, the denial that kept him rooted in place. It hurt more than any insult online. Because he wanted her. And he was still choosing not to have her.
Her phone buzzed again—another notification. More comments. More pain.
She stepped back. "Fix it, Damian. Or leave me alone."
She unlocked the door and walked out without looking back.
But her drawer still held the rose.
And his eyes followed her all the way to her desk.
Across town at Coldstone Creamery in VI, the pink G-Wagon idled outside like a glittery promise.
Maya Anderson—eighteen, braids in a high ponytail, oversized sunglasses, and the effortless confidence only old money could buy—had already ordered two massive sundaes. Becky sat opposite her in her simple school uniform, the one the elite girls had side-eyed when they walked in. One of them had whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, "Is Maya really hanging with the help now? That dress looks like it came from Yaba market."
Maya had simply raised one perfectly arched brow and said, "That's my friend. Mind your business." Then she'd slid an extra scoop of strawberry onto Becky's bowl and changed the subject to Burna Boy's latest album.
They bonded instantly—over music, over annoying older siblings (Maya complained that Damian treated her like a baby; Becky groaned that Imani still checked her homework), over school drama (the mean girls in Maya's year, the boys who only noticed Becky when she danced). Maya didn't care that Becky's shoes were scuffed or that her braids were done at a roadside salon. She cared that Becky could quote every line from "Last Last" and that she made Maya laugh until her stomach hurt.
When the sundae bowls were empty, Maya leaned forward. "Sleepover tonight? Banana Island. My room has a view of the lagoon and we can raid the kitchen for more ice cream at 2 a.m. Your sister can pick you up tomorrow. Or stay too—I like her vibe from what Damian accidentally lets slip."
Becky's eyes widened. "For real? I have to ask Imani first. She's strict but… maybe."
She called right then. And Imani—still reeling from the almost-kiss—had said yes.
Maya grinned, already texting her driver to swing by Surulere later. Then, because she couldn't resist, she pulled out her phone and sent one more message—this one to her big brother.
Maya: Your PA's sister is cooler than you. She just out-danced me to Burna Boy and she's coming for a sleepover. Fix whatever you broke today, big bro. She deserves better than your brooding.
Damian's phone lit up on his desk at 6:03 p.m.
He read the text. Read it again. Looked across the floor to where Imani was shutting down her laptop, rose still hidden in her drawer, shoulders straight even after everything.
And for the first time all day, Damian Anderson smiled—small, private, and full of dangerous possibility.