Chapter 1

The city moved with its usual, indifferent urgency that Wednesday morning, but Brent Woods stepped into the lobby of Hartman & Rowe Creative as if it all moved just a little bit slower for him. It wasn’t confidence—not exactly. It was more like the ease of someone who had learned how to ride the currents rather than fight them. He pushed a hand through his well-kept dark hair, straightened the collar of his shirt, and tried not to think about how little sleep he’d gotten.

The lobby’s polished concrete floors still held traces of last night’s foggy reflections in his mind: flashes of neon, the pulse of bass, the clink of glasses. He’d come home past two again. He told himself it was networking—that wasn’t entirely a lie—but he also knew that part of him simply didn’t know how to shut the night off. Not yet.

“Morning,” called a voice from the reception desk in a tone too chipper for the hour.

Brent lifted a hand in greeting and forced a pleasant smile, the kind that was expected of a creative director whose face often appeared on company socials and client decks. The smile faltered only when the elevator doors closed around him and he was alone long enough to exhale the truth: he was tired. Deep down tired, not lack-of-sleep tired. A kind of exhaustion that came from always being “on.”

The doors opened to the agency’s main floor—open-concept, airy, modern, dotted with plants everyone insisted “boosted the vibe.” Brent liked the place. He liked the people. He liked the work. He just wished he didn’t feel like he was sometimes sprinting uphill inside his own life while pretending to glide.

“Woods,” came a soft, even voice behind him. “You look like a man negotiating with gravity.”

Brent turned to see Luke Fisher, carrying a stack of presentation mock-ups and wearing the mild, wary expression he always wore when addressing anything remotely dramatic. Luke was a quiet man—introverted to the bone—but he had the uncanny ability to comment on Brent’s condition with gentle accuracy.

“That obvious, huh?” Brent asked.

“Only to people who have eyes,” Luke replied, setting the mock-ups on Brent’s desk. “Or to people who know what your ‘I swear I’m fine’ face looks like.”

Brent laughed under his breath. “Rough night, that’s all.”

Luke gave him a skeptical look. “Isn’t every night a rough night when it starts after 11 p.m. and involves a guest list?”

“It was networking,” Brent countered.

Luke raised an eyebrow. “And how much networking can you do when you can’t hear anyone over the DJ?”

Brent shrugged. Luke wasn’t wrong. But he didn’t push further, which was one of the reasons Brent liked him. Luke questioned things—but stopped before crossing into judgment.

They walked together toward the glass-walled conference room that doubled as a brainstorming lounge. Sticky notes littered the walls. Half-finished concepts hung like colorful ghosts of ideas waiting to be reborn. Brent had built this atmosphere, this playground for creatives, and he felt a renewed sense of ownership stepping inside.

“So,” Luke said, flipping on the overhead lights, “we’ve got the beverage brand pitch at ten. I took a shot at refining the mood board based on the client feedback.”

Brent nodded. “Perfect. Let’s run through it.”

But as he spread the comps across the table, a dull pulse behind his eyes throbbed again—a reminder of last night’s drinks, last night’s noise, last night’s endless parade of faces he pretended to know well enough to care about.

From somewhere deep inside him, a quiet thought surfaced, uninvited.

I can’t keep doing this forever.

He pushed it aside, just as he always did.

Luke noticed something in Brent’s expression but kept his voice steady. “Drink some water. You look dehydrated enough to make a cactus worry.”

Brent laughed more genuinely this time. “Noted.”

Outside the conference room, the city glimmered through the giant windows—bright, seductive, relentless. And though Brent didn’t know it yet, this morning would be one of the last ordinary ones before everything he thought he understood about his life began to tilt.

By the time Brent stepped out of the office that evening, Manhattan had already shifted into its twilight self—sharper, louder, a little too eager to swallow the tired and the restless. The agency’s glass doors clicked shut behind him, sealing in the brainstorms, the client calls, and Luke’s pointed suggestion that he get more sleep, which Brent had waved off with practiced charm.