By the second night, Mira wondered if it would have been easier to wrestle a lion than share a project with Rohan Malhotra.
The conference room was dark except for the glow of her laptop and the harsh, flickering light above the whiteboard. Her once-perfect storyboard now looked like a battlefield — sketches, sticky notes, coffee stains, half-erased taglines bleeding into each other.
She checked her phone: 11:43 PM. Her eyes burned from staring at the screen. Across the table, Rohan sat sprawled in his chair, sleeves pushed up, tapping his pen rhythmically against the table. His expression was infuriatingly calm, like he could do this all night — and probably would.
She couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “If you’re going to sit there looking smug, at least make yourself useful,” she snapped, not bothering to look up.
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m waiting for you to finish rewriting your safe version for the fifth time tonight.”
She shot him a glare. “It’s called refining, not rewriting. Maybe if you didn’t bulldoze every idea I have—”
“—we wouldn’t be here at midnight?” he finished for her, dryly. He leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “Look, Mira. We both want the same thing: a pitch that works. We can’t do that if you keep dragging this back to the safe zone every time I push the envelope.”
She threw her pen down. “And what if the client hates your precious ‘envelope’? What then?”
Rohan smirked. “Then at least we’ll know we didn’t play it small. That’s how you win the big ones.”
She hated that his voice was calm. Controlled. Unshakable. It made her feel reckless — like a match striking too close to gasoline.
“God, you’re impossible,” she muttered.
“You’re stubborn,” he shot back, but there was a glint of something warm behind it. Almost amused.
They sat there in the uneasy hush that always followed their arguments — Mira scribbling corrections on paper she’d probably throw away, Rohan tapping his pen, watching her like he could see straight through the armor she’d spent years building.
Minutes ticked by. The air conditioner hummed overhead. The city outside was a distant, muffled pulse.
She caught him staring and narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, looking away too late. “Just… you work like you’re trying to outrun something.”
She bristled. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Rohan. I work because I’m good at it.”
He tilted his head slightly. “That’s not what I meant.”
Mira shut her laptop with more force than necessary. “You think you know everything. You don’t know me.”
“Not yet,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it.
Her breath caught in her throat — just for a second. She stood quickly, shoving her chair back. “I’m getting coffee. You want any?”
He smiled faintly, the kind that made her want to slap him and kiss him all at once — which was infuriating in itself. “Black. No sugar.”
“Figures,” she muttered as she stalked out.
In the pantry, Mira leaned against the counter, palms pressed to the cold steel. She hated him — she did. Or she was supposed to. But he saw too much. Got too close. And she couldn’t decide if that scared her more than the possibility that he might actually be right — about the pitch, about her, about all of it.
When she came back, two paper cups in hand, he looked up at her with that same calm, infuriating confidence. She set his cup down harder than necessary.
He took a sip, winced at the bitterness, and looked at her. “So. Truce for tonight?”
She sank back into her chair, sighing. “Fine. Temporary truce.”
They bent over the table again, their heads nearly touching as they pieced ideas together under the harsh fluorescent light. Outside, the city slept. Inside, two rivals sat shoulder to shoulder — not friends, not enemies, something messy and electric in between.
And neither of them, though they’d never admit it, wanted the night to end.
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