Page 9 of My CEO Neighbor (Neighborhood Hotties #5)

T ed

Ted had never been comfortable with silence.

Silence meant lost productivity, missed opportunities, competitors gaining ground while he sat idle.

But sitting in the darkness with Monica's shoulder pressed against his, their conversation settling into quiet breathing, he was reluctant to break the spell they'd somehow created.

"You know," Monica said, "we could try some actual meditation. Real meditation, not just breathing exercises."

"I don't meditate."

"I know. You think it's nap time for quitters."

The fact that she'd remembered his exact words made him happy. "You were listening to my conference calls."

"Hard not to when you conduct them at the volume of a rock concert."

"I don't—" Ted stopped himself. They'd established a tenuous peace, and he didn't want to ruin it by being defensive about his work habits. "What would meditation involve, exactly?"

"Just sitting. Breathing. Letting your thoughts exist without trying to solve them."

"That sounds like torture."

"Five minutes," Monica said. "That's all. If you hate it, we'll talk about quarterly projections or whatever makes you happy."

Ted considered this. Five minutes wouldn't kill him, and if he was being honest, the breathing exercise had actually helped. His chest felt looser than it had in weeks, and his heart wasn't trying to beat its way out of his ribcage anymore.

"Fine. Five minutes."

"Okay. Close your eyes."

"They're already closed. It's pitch black in here."

"Right. Now, find your breath again. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Don't try to control it, just notice it."

Ted inhaled slowly, the way Monica had taught him. His stomach expanded, his shoulders stayed down, and for a moment he was calmer.

"Good. Now I want you to notice your thoughts without engaging with them. Think of them like clouds passing through your mind—you can see them, but you don't have to chase them or analyze them."

Almost immediately, Ted's brain offered up a detailed mental review of his presentation slides. The revenue projections on slide twelve needed updating, and the market analysis on slide fifteen was three days old, which might as well be three years in the tech world.

"I'm thinking about work," Ted said.

"Of course you are. That's normal. Just notice that you're thinking about work, and then let the thought pass."

Ted tried to release the mental image of his presentation, but his brain immediately supplied a new worry: what if Dexter Capital lost interest during the delay? What if they decided to fund DataFlow instead? What if—

"Still thinking about work."

"Still normal. Try this: imagine your thoughts are written on pieces of paper, and you're watching them float down a river. You can see each piece of paper, but you don't have to grab them or read them carefully. Just let them drift by."

The image was surprisingly vivid. Ted could picture a slow-moving river, sheets of white paper floating on the surface. But instead of drifting peacefully downstream, the papers kept getting caught on rocks and branches, spinning in eddies, demanding his attention.

"The papers aren't floating away. They're getting stuck."

Monica's soft laugh made Ted's dick hard. "That's your brain trying to solve everything. You don't have to make the papers float perfectly. You just have to stop grabbing them."

Ted took another breath and tried to let the mental papers drift without intervention. For approximately thirty seconds, it almost worked. Then his phone buzzed against his leg.

"Shit." Ted fumbled for the device, desperate to preserve the remaining battery. "Sorry, I should check—"

"Ted."

Something in Monica's voice made him stop. Not commanding, exactly, but gentle and firm in a way that reminded him of his kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Patterson, who'd had an uncanny ability to make him want to behave better.

"It's probably just a low battery warning," Monica said. "And even if it's not, what are you going to do about it from in here?"

Ted stared at his phone's dark screen, logic warring with the compulsive need to check, to know, to maintain some illusion of control over his rapidly deteriorating day.

"I can't just ignore it."

"You can for five minutes."

"What if it's important?"

"What if it's not?"

Ted felt his chest tighten again, the calm he'd briefly achieved evaporating like morning fog. "You don't understand. I can't afford to miss anything. Not today."

"Why not?"

"Because—" Ted stopped, frustrated by the simple question that somehow felt impossible to answer. "Because that's not how business works. Because opportunities don't wait for convenient timing. Because if I'm not constantly vigilant, everything falls apart."

"Has everything fallen apart before when you checked your phone five minutes late?"

"That's not the point."

"What is the point?"

Ted wanted to explain about competitive advantage and market windows and the razor-thin margins that separated success from failure in the startup world. Instead, he heard himself saying, "I don't know how to stop."

The admission hung in the darkness between them, more revealing than he'd intended. Monica was quiet for a long moment, and Ted wondered if he'd just confirmed every negative assumption she'd ever made about corporate workaholics.

"When did it start?" Monica asked finally. "The not being able to stop?"

Ted considered lying, deflecting, changing the subject. But the darkness made honesty feel safer than usual.

"College, maybe. I was studying business, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was always behind, always missing something that everyone else inherently understood.

" Ted shifted position, his knee bumping against Monica's.

"My dad built his company from nothing, made it look easy.

My siblings excelled at everything they touched.

I was smart enough, but smart enough felt like failure. "

"So you worked harder."

"So I worked all the time. Studied when other people partied, took extra classes. It worked—I got into a good MBA program, landed internships that people would kill for."

"But it still didn't feel like enough."

"Nothing felt like enough. I met Gwynne during my first year of business school. She was brilliant, driven, everything I thought I wanted in a partner. We were both so busy that we scheduled our dates in our calendars and called it romantic."

"What happened?"

"I dropped out to start CloudSync. She thought I was making a huge mistake, throwing away everything I'd worked for on some fantasy about being an entrepreneur.

" Ted remembered the fight, Gwynne's incredulous expression when he'd tried to explain his vision for the company.

"She wasn't wrong. The first two years nearly killed me.

Eighteen-hour days, living on ramen and credit cards, watching more qualified people tell me my idea would never work. "

"But you made it work."

"I made something work. Whether it's the right something remains to be seen.

" Ted rubbed his temple, where a familiar headache was starting to build.

"Gwynne stayed with me through the worst of it, even though I was barely present in the relationship.

I'd fall asleep during dinner, forget anniversaries, cancel trips because of some crisis that couldn't wait. "

"She sounds patient."

"She was. Too patient." Ted's chest felt tight again, but this time it wasn't about the elevator. "The night she left, she told me that she felt like she was dating my voicemail. Said I was more intimate with my laptop than I'd ever been with her."

"Was she right?"

The question hit harder than it should have. "Yeah. She was right."

Monica was quiet for several heartbeats. "Do you miss her?"

"I miss the idea of her. I miss having someone who understood the work, who didn't think I was crazy for caring so much about something that didn't exist yet." Ted paused. "But I don't think I ever really knew her. How can you miss someone you never actually paid attention to?"

"That's..." Monica's voice was softer now. "That's really sad, Ted."

"It's practical. Relationships require time and energy I don't have."

"Everyone has time and energy. You're just choosing to spend yours on other things."

"It's not a choice when the survival of your company depends on it."

"Isn't it?"

Before Ted could answer, he felt Monica shift beside him, turning to face him more directly. Her hand found his arm in the darkness, warm fingers wrapping around his wrist.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she said.

"Okay."

"Before I met you—actually met you, not just heard you through the wall—I had this whole story about who you were.

Rich corporate guy who bought expensive toys to compensate for having no soul.

Someone who probably had never experienced genuine human connection because you were too busy calculating profit margins. "

"And now?"

"Now I think you're terrified."

"Of what?"

"Of stopping. Of sitting still long enough to realize that you're not actually happy."

The words stole the breath from Ted's lungs. His chest seized, heart rate spiking so fast that black spots danced behind his closed eyelids.

"Ted? You okay?"

He wasn't okay. His breathing had gone shallow and rapid, his hands were shaking, and the elevator suddenly felt like it was shrinking around him. The darkness pressed against his skin, suffocating and absolute.

"I can't—" Ted gasped, clawing at his tie. "I can't breathe."

"Hey." Monica's voice was calm, steady, cutting through the panic that was rapidly consuming his ability to think. "Look at me."

"I can't see you."

"Then listen to me. You're having a panic attack, but you're okay. You're safe."

Safe. The word felt foreign, impossible. Ted hadn't felt safe in years, maybe decades. Safety was stagnation, safety was losing ground to hungrier competitors, safety was the luxury of people who didn't have thirty employees depending on them to not screw up.