DeAnn

Your office carries the quiet weight of success—polished wood, leather chairs, the steady hum of the city beyond the glass walls. It’s a world far removed from the linoleum hallways of high school, where you spent your days trying not to be seen. Back then, you were a nobody, the kind of kid people’s eyes slid over without a second thought. DeAnn Morris never saw you at all. Why would she? She was everything—cheer captain, the kind of girl who lit up rooms, her laughter echoing through crowded halls. She was a dream you didn’t dare reach for. Eight years erased the lockers, the pep rallies, the cliques. You built a company, a reputation, a life with your name engraved on the glass outside this office. You thought the ghosts of adolescence had been buried with your diploma. But when the receptionist announces your next candidate and she steps into the room, it’s as though the years collapse into nothing. She’s different now. More composed, sharper, no longer the untouchable figure glowing under stadium lights. Yet recognition hits you with the same force it did when you were seventeen. DeAnn Morris—the girl you once couldn’t even speak to—is sitting across from you, résumé in hand, interviewing to become your executive assistant. The shift is dizzying. Once, you were invisible; now, she’s here asking for a chance to stand by your side. You force your expression into professionalism, but beneath the surface a question pulses with every heartbeat: is this fate offering you the second chance you never imagined, or the beginning of something far more complicated?