Page 12 of The Authenticity Clause
“Maybe,” Leo conceded, his eyes holding Julian’s. “But I think I prefer the stories that don’t fit neatly on a spreadsheet.”
The moment hung in the air between them, charged with an unspoken understanding. The office was no longer just a workspace. It was an intimate, quiet bubble, separating them from the rest of the world. In this bubble, they weren’t just boss and employee. They were two men, a study in contrasts, who had just discovered a shared language they didn’t know they both spoke.
The intensity of the moment made Julian’s skin prickle. It was a vulnerability he hadn’t felt in years, a direct threat to the walls he had so carefully built around himself. He needed to restore order. To return to the data.
He cleared his throat and looked back down at his phone, the screen a shield of familiar logic. “I’ll put the order in,” he said, his voice once again all business. “My treat. For working late.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Leo started.
“I insist,” Julian said, in a tone that brooked no argument. He quickly typed in the order, a perfect mirror of what Leo had predicted. When he got to his own order, he typed in Leo’swithout asking: Green Curry, spice level four, with a side of mango sticky rice. He’d seen him order it three times in the past week.
He hit ‘confirm’ and placed his phone face down on the desk.
“Food will be here in thirty minutes,” he announced to the room. “Let’s get back to it.”
He turned back to his screen, but the lines of code seemed to blur before his eyes. He wasn’t thinking about the Northwind project anymore. He was thinking about the surprising depth in Leo Hayes’s hazel eyes. He was thinking about what it meant to see the world, and what it meant to be truly seen.
The fraud, the chaos variable, the walking, talking anomaly—he was more than that. He was a puzzle. A complex, vibrant, and utterly fascinating puzzle.
And for the first time, Julian Thorne felt a genuine, and deeply unsettling, desire to solve it.
Chapter 9: The Unspoken Idea
The meeting was a slow, agonizing death by a thousand data points.
Leo sat at the edge of the long conference table, feeling less like a participant and more like a piece of decorative, slightly anxious furniture. This was the Northwind project’s “Blue Sky Ideation” session, a term Leo had quickly learned was corporate for “let’s talk in circles until someone cries.” The entire senior creative team was present, along with Sarah Vance and Julian. The air was thick with the smell of expensive coffee and quiet desperation.
The problem was simple and impossible: the client, while happy with the project’s technical direction, felt the core concept was still too… safe. They wanted a digital experience that was “disruptive,” “paradigm-shifting,” and “authentically wild.” They wanted, in essence, a lightning strike in a bottle.
For the past hour, Julian’s team had been trying to build a bottle according to schematics.
They presented data-driven user journeys. They showcased competitor analysis. They proposed iterative design enhancements based on proven engagement models. They were logical. They were strategic. They were brilliant.
And they were failing.
With each rejected proposal, a new layer of tension was added to the room. Leo could see the frustration etched around Julian’s mouth, a tight, controlled line. His boss was a master of logic, a king in a realm of quantifiable results. But this wasn’t a logic problem. It was a feeling problem. The client didn’t want a better mousetrap; they wanted the feeling of a world without mice.
“What if we gamify the onboarding process?” one of the senior designers, Mark, suggested, his voice lacking conviction. “Users could earn badges for exploring different product lines.”
“We’ve tested gamification before,” Julian countered, his voice flat. “The engagement uplift is marginal and doesn’t justify the development cost.”
The conversation hit another dead end. The silence that followed was heavy, punctuated only by the soft clicking of a pen. Leo doodled on his notepad, his mind drifting. He wasn’t thinking about user journeys or engagement metrics. He was thinking about the feeling of standing alone in the woods at night. The quiet. The sense of being a small part of something immense and ancient. The wildness.
Authentically wild,the client had said.
You couldn’t build that feeling with badges. You couldn’t code it with a slick interface. You had to evoke it. You had to tell a story.
“The data suggests a linear progression is most effective,” Julian stated, trying to steer the conversation back to solid ground. “We guide the user from discovery to purchase. A clear, unobstructed path.”
“But that’s not what adventure is,” a small voice said.
The voice, Leo realized with a jolt of pure horror, was his own.
Every head in the room turned to him. He felt a hot flush creep up his neck. He, the imposter, the fraud with the fake resume, had just contradicted the head of the department in front of the entire senior team. His heart began a frantic, panicked tattoo against his ribs.
Julian’s gaze was lethal. “Explain,” he said, the single word a clear command.
Leo’s mind raced.Circle back! Sync with the team! Abort!But his mouth, a traitorous entity with a death wish, kept moving.
