The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback (Astra and Zayne) novel Chapter 219

10:27 Wed, Aug 26

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

His Eyes Met Mine

ISDA

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By nine-twenty Thursday morning. I had considered throwing up twice, and neither time had anything to do with breakfast.

The North Atlantic Economic Forum occupied three floors of a Midtown hotel, with black cars lining the curb and security stationed beyond the revolving doors. Inside, executives moved beneath enormous banners while reporters clustered around the registration area.

I followed Rebecca through security with two members of Strategy behind us, trying not to look at the banners until one caught me anyway.

ASHTON GLOBAL

Of every sponsor in the building, those were the only two words my eyes wanted.

“Badge, please.”

I handed over my identification. A few seconds later the woman returned a badge with the name I’d answered for years.

ISLA SMITH

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

–

SINCLAIR GROUP

I clipped it to my blazer and felt something settle. Whatever happened this morning, I was here as Isla Smith.

Rebecca joined me after collecting her own. “You have the revised figures?”

“On the tablet and printed.”

“Regional breakdown?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Rebecca was already checking her phone again as we headed for the escalators. Having Naomi here would have been nice, not because I needed help with the numbers, but because a familiar face might have made it easier to ignore the possibility that someone from a life I’d spent years avoiding was somewhere inside this building.

One of the Strategy analysts caught up near the escalators. “Kieran’s here”

Kieran Sinclair was already cutting through the crowd, exchanging brief greetings without slowing.

“Morning,” he said when he reached us. “Everyone ready?”

“We’re good,” Rebecca replied.

“Ashton goes on at ten. Anything they disclose about the Vantage integration that wasn’t in Monday’s release goes into our notes-especially the regional timeline.”

The instruction gave me something useful to hold onto as we went upstairs.

The conference level was busier than the lobby. Conversations spilled from meeting rooms. Reporters waited outside the main auditorium. Screens showed the morning schedule, including the presentation we’d come for.

10:00 A.M. ASHTON GLOBAL: VANTAGE SYSTEMS AND THE NEXT PHASE OF INTERNATIONAL GROWTH

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The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

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No speaker was listed beneath the session title, and instead of reassuring me, the omission only made the uncertainty worse.

e-auditorium was already filling. Staff directed the Sinclair delegation to a reserved section close enough to the stage that Imediately wished our company were slightly less important.

I settled beside Rebecca with my tablet on my lap while Kieran took a seat two places away. Cameras had already been positioned near the stage, where the Ashton Global logo stretched across the enormous screen behind the podium.

I opened the briefing packet and forced myself to focus on Vantage rather than the boy who used to climb through my bedroom window. Distribution networks and integration costs were safer things to think about.

At 9:56 the lights dimmed. Conversations faded.

My fingers tightened on the edge of the tablet.

There was still no reason to believe Zane would be here. I didn’t know what he’d done with the last ten years or whether he’d chosen any involvement with his family’s company, and an organization the size of Ashton Global had no shortage of executives who could be giving today’s presentation.

i held onto that thought until the screens changed.

ASHTON GLOBAL VANTAGE SYSTEMS

Applause rose as a man in a dark suit walked out.

My heart jumped, then collapsed into relief so sharp I almost laughed. It wasn’t him.

The speaker welcomed everyone, gave a brief overview of the acquisition, and acknowledged the Vantage leadership near the front. As he continued without catastrophe, the tension that had followed me into the room finally began to ease.

I’d spent the entire morning preparing myself for someone who might not even be in the building.

Rebecca opened the materials on her tablet. The speaker advanced another slide, then stepped aside.

“And now, to discuss what Vantage means for the next phase of Ashton Global’s international growth, I’d like to welcome our Chief Executive Officer, Zane Ashton.”

For one disorienting second, the title registered before the name.

Chief Executive Officer.

Zane Ashton.

Applause erupted around me, but all I could hear was his name as my hands went cold against the tablet.

Then he emerged from the side of the stage, and the moment his face came into view, ten years collapsed into nothing. The boy in my memories had been tall and beautiful enough to draw attention without trying, but there was almost nothing boyish left in the man walking toward the moderator. He had to be at least six-seven, towering over him when they shook hands, with broad shoulders filling a dark suit that looked made for him. His black hair was shorter and swept back from a face time had stripped of its remaining softness, sharpening his jaw and leaving his features harder than I remembered.

The easy recklessness of eighteen had disappeared too, replaced by a commanding presence that made the stage feel smaller around him. Something colder lingered in the set of his mouth, a controlled hardness that hadn’t existed in the Zane I’d known.

God, he was beautiful.

how my

10:27 Wed, Aug 26

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

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wanted to look elsewhere, my eyes stayed fixed on him. A decade of refusing to see so much as a photograph hadn’t mattered; I’d known him the instant he stepped onto that stage.

my God,” a woman whispered behind me. “That’s Zane Ashton?”

“Try remembering we’re here to work,” a man murmured, earning a soft laugh.

Their exchange barely registered as Zane turned toward the audience, and then I saw his eyes.

His eyes were still that vivid green I remembered, piercing beneath the stage lights and somehow even more intense agains the harder face surrounding them.

He waited for the applause to fade before addressing the room.

“Good morning.”

His voice hit somewhere I wasn’t prepared for. It had deepened with age, carrying an authority that hadn’t existed years ago, and hearing it after so long sent a tremor through the hand resting on my tablet.

I tightened my grip until the movement stopped and forced myself to remember where I was, with Rebecca beside me, Kieran two seats away and my Sinclair badge clipped visibly to my blazer among people who had no idea who I was to the man standing on that stage.

Leaving would only invite questions I couldn’t afford.

So I stayed while he began explaining Vantage’s international growth strategy, even though the first few sentences passed through me without sticking.

I’d spent days with these numbers. I knew the projections, the markets, the integration plans well enough to discuss them cold. All I could think was that Zane Ashton was standing less than fifty feet away as CEO of Ashton Global.

A projection appeared behind him as he moved away from the podium, speaking without notes while figures and regional forecasts shifted across the screen. Whatever the last decade had done to him, uncertainty hadn’t survived it. He knew the company well enough to answer every question, picking up exactly where he’d left off each time.

The entire room followed him.

“Jesus,” the woman behind me whispered. “He’s intimidatingly hot.”

If she’d known him at eighteen, she might have understood why the observation almost made me laugh.

My gaze dropped to the tablet as I tried to return to the reason I was here, but halfway through a note about the integration strategy, it became painfully obvious that I had no idea what I’d written.

I deleted the sentence and started again.

The next few minutes went better, until applause swept the room and pulled my eyes back to the stage. Zane was answering another question with one hand tucked casually into his pocket when something resembling a smile appeared.

Whatever concentration I’d recovered vanished.

I knew that smile. The one in my memories had never been this restrained. It belonged to a boy whose smirks had once infuriated me before, somewhere between fighting and falling, I’d learned exactly what every version of it meant.

Seeing even a trace of it here, in this colder version of him commanding an auditorium, unsettled me more than the harder face or broader frame. Pieces of him were still too easy to recognize-the movement of his mouth, the cadence of his voice, certain expressions that had survived beneath everything adulthood had hardened. A decade of distance hadn’t taught my body to forget what my mind had spent years avoiding.

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