Chapter 28

"T hanks again so much for today," Fitri said, standing up from the table by the window with me. "Really nothing I can do to pay you back for all this?"

I waved her off. "You bought me lunch. Have you seen the cost of living in Miami these days? That's more than enough."

She adjusted her collar with an awkward laugh. "Well, so you say… still, it's generous of you to do all of this for me. How are things with that company you started at?"

"Ah." I finished off my coffee, tossing the cup into the trash. "Not too great. I don't love it. But it's keeping food on the table."

"Oh." She paused. "Are you… staying there, then?"

"Ha…" I shrugged. "That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? Don't know. I've wondered about heading out as an independent agent, but, you know. The market's vicious."

"I think the market's vicious in that it filters out… fresh-faced upstarts. People like me, I guess. You're a veteran, and a good one, too. I think you could do it if you wanted to… there's something about how open and honest you are that I think makes you easy to work with."

Open and honest, huh? I shook off the thought, sliding my tablet into my bag and hoisting it up onto my shoulder. "Thanks, Fitri. Might be right. We'll see how things shake out. I've gotta run, though, but I look forward to seeing how your project goes for you."

I saw her off at the door and went full-speed on to the meeting with my supervisor and Robert down in Coconut Grove for a strategy meeting before we talked to the big residential-investor client we were bullying today, and it was only once we'd finished that and were waiting for the client that I found myself sitting in the silence between moments, my knee bouncing, looking down at my phone where I'd pulled up my texts with María, of all people. Why? Even I wasn't sure, but I guess it was only a coinflip anyway.

Want to talk business, can we chat today?

Took until nighttime—I finished up a meeting with the investor, where I managed to piss off Robert by deliberately taking the pressure off the prospective buyer, and he gave me a stern talking-to after it was done, and then it was off to the next thing, knocking on some proprietors' doors and trying to make friendly, and I felt like I had the soul sucked out of my bones by the time I was back in my apartment with Earl on my lap, and María sent me another text.

I'm in your neighborhood, might as well meet if we're going to talk

Mother Goose must have been feeling a little better, if she could be spontaneous again. She suggested a bar close by, hipster place with vinyls and cocktails, and I caught her there at the end of the bar, wearing a night-out dress that suggested she was out for more than just me tonight. I slid in next to her, and she raised her drink, freshly placed in front of her, to toast me.

"Here's to business," she said. "I like the sounds of that."

"María. You're talking this up too much. Now I feel like I have to deliver."

"I know. High-pressure sales tactic."

I laughed, glancing at the menu and ordering a negroni offhandedly. "I guess you're doing at least a little better, if you're giving me this attitude?"

"Más o menos. Something about this city really doesn't let you quit, does it?" She held her drink up to her lips, not sipping it but just holding it there pensively. "Draws you back in… but I guess you'd know, hija."

"Find work, then?"

"No. Nothing concrete. But I've been talking. And maybe that talking will go somewhere. Hablemos de ti ahora. Leon treating you okay?"

"Ah… más o menos." I paused. "Emphasis on menos."

She closed her eyes and sipped her drink, long and slow, and let out a sigh. The moment in the conversation she'd been waiting for. Seemed María and I still knew each other like the backs of our hands. Of course—we were never that different. Guess it made sense. "Así, we're talking business."

"Si. You knew it was going to happen if I went to Leon, didn't you?"

"Not until I saw Miguel happy as could be there. The two of you can never both be happy. Realized you weren't the right person for it." She looked down, setting her drink down hard just as my drink came out, and I needed a drink, too, because that was when she dove into, "Damn, I miss Queen Pearl."

I took a long sip of the dark, bitter drink, setting it down gently on the wood surface. The dark of the bar around us, the rich warmth of the vinyl music filling the air—felt like a secret world away from the rest of the universe. "Yo también. You and me both."

"You should just stick to English. Your accent—"

"I know, I know."

She laughed. "So, how's the Mercier account?"

I pursed my lips, folding my hands on the bar surface. "It's now or never. I… think… we can close."

"You worried about it, hija?"

I chewed my cheek. "No."

She looked over at me. "That confident?"

"I think you're right to worry. They haven't liked my… style. Once the thing they brought me on for is done, coinflip says they'll fire me ASAP. But I don't mind."

She paused. "Out of curiosity… have you ever been fired?"

I laughed. "You know? Technically, no. Always just the company dissolving. Guess I'm turning all kinds of new leaves."

"You know what you want to do instead? If they do let you go? Or… I feel like you're on your way out even if not."

I laughed, studying her out of the corner of my eye for a while, swirling my drink, before I said carefully, "You already know, though, don't you?"

"Ah, I can hazard a guess. You've gotten a bit more transparent lately." She sipped her drink for a while before she said, "You don't want to answer to a boss anymore."

"Don't think I have anything against answering to a boss, just… not that boss. If you were still running Queen Pearl, I'd work for you."

She smiled thinly, and even though she tried to put it away, play it cool, I could see that vulnerability written all over her features when she did. "Not too sore then about how it ended?"

"You did what you had to, María. And so did I. So did we all. It was just bad luck."

She looked back down into her drink, cupping it in both hands. I gave her the space she needed—sipped gingerly at my drink, tasting the way the bitter, dry flavors almost sparkled over my palate. Letting the moment steep.

And then María broke it with, "You know, if you do manage to close Mercier, I might learn from your methods and start sleeping with clients."

I choked on my drink. "María—that's not exactly—"

She gave me a dry smile. "Oh, is it? Are you going to deny it, then?"

I huffed, looking away. "You know what? I will, actually. We were already at it even before I knew she was our next client. So, technically…"

She set down her drink, turning on me. "You and Cameron Mercier were having a secret fling, and you didn't tell me when we were about to take on her case?"

"Well—"

"Let alone just that I want to hear about it if my friend is sleeping with Cameron Mercier?"

I laughed awkwardly. "I, uh," I started, looking down into my drink, distantly aware I was blushing like a teenager. "I kinda really like her, honestly."

"Of course you do. She's why you're staying in Miami, isn't she?"

"Ah…"

"Guess your bad luck streak finally ended. She seems like a catch. I'd try out the other side of things if it were her offering."

"Experiment on your own time, María, just don't tell me about it." I scratched my head. "I mean… she is a hell of a catch. But there's also, well—a hell of a catch. Given that you've clearly been poking into this whole thing, you probably know the situation."

"The exmarido, he's jealous, yes?"

"Jealous is an understatement. Sabotaging her brand, trying to get the parent company to drop her. They're the ones who actually own all the shopfronts, the warehouses, the manufacturing contracts and distribution centers… if they drop her, her whole brand is going to be devastated."

She looked down into her drink, narrowing her eyes a fraction. "Ah… men."

"I'm not the biggest fan of men, but even I don't think they're typically this bad." I pursed my lips. "I don't think it's really even about me. I think just… he hates how she's wealthy, powerful, and in charge of herself. He's telling her to come back to him and he'll drop everything against her brand."

"Mm." She sipped delicately, buying time, thinking it over. "And neither of you know what you're doing, but you know you can't walk away. True love."

"I mean—" I looked away. "Told her I'm not walking away, at least. But the stakes are hers to deal with, so…"

She laughed. "It's like I don't even recognize you, hija."

"Been… getting that a lot."

"And all you can do is trust that she'll make the right decision."

I shifted in my seat. "I don't know what the right decision is. Just… the decision I want her to make."

"You know what the wrong decision is, though, don't you? Going back to a situation like that…"

"Yeah. But she wouldn't…" I looked down into my drink, mind drifting back to Cameron's cute, girly drinks. Her love affair with my cosmopolitans. Adventurous, fun, she would say.

Someone who would never let herself be controlled.

"She wouldn't," I said, gripping my glass tighter. "She won't."

∞∞∞

Guess it figured it was raining.

Robert had given me a dirty look on my way here, but I'd still been riding the high of dinner at Ruth's place last night where I put my hands on the table, standing up, and said, well, I'm going to get to sleep so I can go close Cameron in the morning, and I hadn't really believed it until I'd said it. Even now, I wasn't sure I did, but… but at the same time, it felt impossible that I wouldn't.

Closing , of course, was a whole host of things that that word normally wasn't. For Leon Realty, closing was getting someone to sign on a dotted line. For Cameron…

It started with a gentle sprinkling of rain against the windshield as I drove out of the office right as sunrise was starting to break and off to the property, raindrops refracting hazy golds in the early dawn light, but it was already picking up heavily against the tall glass wall of the lobby as I met Cameron there, her oat-milk latte ready in my hand as she stepped out of the garage elevator.

"Don't I feel spoiled?" she said, her voice bright as she took the latte. That look in her eyes—the way they gleamed as she looked into mine, stepped in just a little bit closer than we normally would, in the almost sacred quiet of the early morning—she took my breath away. "Thank you, London. And good morning. Sorry your special early morning is ruined by the rain."

"Don't even mind the rain when I'm seeing it with you."

She smiled wider. "Not even waiting until we're upstairs to start flirting with me?"

"Ah, well, you know. To be fair, I didn't even wait to find out your real name before I started flirting with you." Although honestly, these days, when I saw the rain, it just made me think of Cameron. Was it too sappy to tell her I was genuinely coming around on rain because it made me think of her? "But if you think we should go upstairs and flirt more there, I'm game."

"I'm not saying no," she said, walking past me, and my heart jumped into my mouth as she slipped her hand into mine, pulling me along towards the elevator with her.

I wanted to take her hand and walk with her everywhere. Wanted all of Miami to see me on this woman's arm. Hell—everywhere else in the world she went, too—as far out as Tokyo, I wanted to be the woman Cameron Mercier had with her.

The elevator ride was long, in the anticipation that hung between me and her, playful little comments traded as she leaned against the elevator wall just next to me, looking at me with that gleam in her eyes, and I tried to pretend my heart wasn't pounding. Felt like I was on my way to propose—the way everything else was a distant hum over the roar of blood in my ears, over the overwhelming awareness of what was happening. Of what I was asking.

It was our first time returning to a property, and she and I both knew what that meant. The tone in her voice when I told her about coming back here—and when—it spoke volumes. She hadn't said anything about it, not directly, but I read every word between the lines.

And when the doors opened in front of us and we came out into the living room suite with the massive windows spilling out over the bay just as the sun broke over the horizon, casting the room in brilliant deep gold and rose colors, refracting off crystal accents and glinting on the floors—the drizzle of rain only made the effect more dramatic, light gleaming off water droplets like liquid diamonds, and next to me, Cameron let out a small breath.

"Oh…" she whispered, her hand falling to her waist. I took her latte, freeing up her hands as she walked, slowly, forward, up towards the glass, and I walked with her.

"Told you I'd bring you back to this one for the sunrise."

She let out a long, slow sigh, laying her hands on the glass. Daring, I stepped closer to her until our sides touched, and I slipped a hand to the small of her back. She got a little, distant ghost of a smile, something much deeper there in her eyes as she spoke. "I think I…"

"Yes?"

She laughed. "I think I have expensive tastes."

I leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "We all do in some places. But you also like pancakes in the morning, dances to tacky EDM hits in your living room…"

She looked at me, eyes sparkling, reflecting beautifully in the light of the sunrise. "I'd need somebody with bad enough taste to join me for those living-room dance parties… know anyone who's been getting into EDM lately?"

"You know, I think I might know just the girl."

"That's convenient. You don't suppose she might be able to double as a professional can-opening chef, do you?"

"As it so happens." I took a long breath. "I think this is the place."

She laughed, softly, breaking my gaze—a little shy all of a sudden, looking down. "So, now is when you're getting me to sign on the dotted line."

"You knew I was going to ask now. I want you to have your home. Not to mention, a safe store of assets… and I want to be able to visit you at your new home. For late nights and early mornings. And living-room dance parties for two."

She sighed. "London… you know I want to say yes. But you know I haven't ever really been here looking to buy."

"I don't think I do know that. A part of you has always been there—seriously thinking, seriously looking. The same part of you that dared to think you could make it with an international clothing brand."

She smiled wider. "You know—you really are a good salesperson."

"Ha. Not even that. Just a girl falling fast and hard for you. Who wants you to be happy. And kind of selfishly wants to be happy with you, too."

She closed her eyes, fluttering them shut and sighing as she sank in closer to me. "You never did play fair…"

"As if you're one to talk."

"Too true. I guess that's why we're a good fit." She softened her lips, tilting her head towards mine, and I closed my eyes and met her in the middle, our lips finding each other's, kissing slowly in the gentle warmth of the sunlight that filtered in through the window, moving in slow, perfect rhythm, perfect harmony, and I'd never felt so much peace and so much like my heart would burst out of my body all at once.

And of all the timing in the world, that was when the elevator chimed behind us.

Cameron jerked back, panic flaring in her eyes as she whipped back on the elevator, and I looked back with her to where the doors opened behind us, and—I guess I should have figured the asshole would find us here, because it was Kevin Farmer, striding towards us with that look in his eyes, unnaturally fixed straight ahead. His plasticky expression, wax-model posture, like a funhouse mirror I didn't want to see my reflection in.

"Kevin—" Cameron started, her voice strained tight, a wild undercurrent to it that I didn't think I'd ever heard—something that made her sound decades older, strained, tired, a woman who'd gone through a lifetime's worth of frustration.

"So," I said, turning back to him with my hand in my pocket. "I guess you made friends with the proprietor… I'd thought he was acting weird when I'd talked to him."

He barely looked at me. "I'm not here to talk to you, Sinclair," he said. "Cam, c'mon. It's time to go home."

"Pretty sure I told you," I started, but Cameron stepped in front of me, cutting me off.

"Have you not done enough yet? What do you even want from me? Really want from me?"

Kevin put on a fake smile. Made me want to tear his eyes out, the smarmy acting going into it all. "Darling, I'm an honest man. I've told you already. I want you to go back with me. Back to our life. This hasn't been good for either of us. I haven't felt the same, haven't been able to focus on my career at all, and you've gone off looking for meaning in indulgence—"

"Cameron's not your property," I snapped, stepping forward. "You were lucky she even gave you the time of day as long as she did—"

Kevin sneered at me, and back to Cameron. "Spending your time around bitter, angry people never was good for your energy, darling."

"I'm not—" I started, but Cameron cut me off again.

"Leave London out of this," she said, her voice low. "She's better than you could ever know. I've made it clear I'm not going back. Not to you. Not to that house. Not for anything."

"Darling, your brand isn't worth one person. You know that. How many people's lives are tied up in it? How many people's employments?"

"Rich coming from the one threatening that all in the first place," I said. Kevin glared at me, that hard-edged look flashing back into his features.

"You don't know how to stay out of a conversation that doesn't involve you, do you?"

Cameron cut in before I could say anything. "It involves her," she said. "If it involves me, London is a part too. And show some respect when you talk to her."

My heart jumped a little despite the situation, a floating sensation that it really wasn't the time or place for. Kevin sighed, holding up his phone.

"Darling… I didn't want to do this. But you know as well as I do that it's for your own good. You've always done this—doing something just because someone told you not to, drawn to something just because it's forbidden. But you're never happy in the end when you do, are you?"

"It's—" Cameron started, but he kept going.

"Really. Can you think of a single purchase I've talked you down from that you regretted not getting? Can you think of a single event I convinced you that you didn't need to attend that you regretted missing?"

Cameron let out a long, shaky breath. The tension in her shoulders, the hard lines coming in around her jaw—this side of her that only came out in front of Kevin, the version of Cameron he'd created, I wanted it to never have to come out again. I put a hand on her arm, speaking in a low voice. "I can think of several," I said. "Things we've been enjoying… Cameron being happy. Been a while for her."

"And you don't know anything about the situation," he snapped. "Can you say you knew Cameron before she was Cameron Mercier and all the things that entails? You know how it changes a person. Can you really say you know her?"

"I know her better than you'd think," I started, and he spoke over me.

"Six years together," he said. "Married for four. And you've—what? Been on a fling with her for a couple of months now? And you're trying to tell me what she's really like—"

" Yes, I am," I snapped. "Because you don't know her—spent all those six years together, if you really want to count the last one, denying who she was, trying to change her—"

"According to who? Cameron? The person living a fleeting life, searching for the next hit of dopamine from another woman, another expensive home, that she won't hold onto for long, while she's trying to justify her decisions?"

"She's not a child," I growled, feeling like—like my voice wanted to rip itself up out of my body and physically fight him. "And maybe you couldn't possibly know the ways we know each other—"

"You don't think you're trusting blindly?"

" No, I don't. Maybe I know her better than you do because I've cared more about her in two fucking months than you would in ten fucking years—"

"London," Cameron started, and Kevin spoke over her.

"You know how many women have been in the same place now?" he snapped. "How many people she's found looking to scratch the itch, kill the ennui, people who thought they really meant something to her—"

"Go fuck yourself, Kevin," I spat, loud enough to make him recoil, throwing him off. "You're a sniveling weasel trying to make yourself look important if you have to lie through your teeth, cursed by your success to be a sad, miserable lump of imitation personality and all the character of mass-market manufacturing, and when you die, there won't be a soul who's loved you enough to remember who you really were."

The room suddenly was deathly silent, Kevin and Cameron both looking at me with wide eyes, parted lips, the sound of the rain against the windows a distant stream.

"You aren't—" Kevin started, and I spoke over him.

"You know as well as anyone that it's true, and that's why you're here looking to kill the fucking ennui by harassing a woman you miss having under your thumb. Why you're projecting everything about being spiteful, contrary, desperate to have—"

"London," Cameron said, her voice soft, as she squeezed my hand. I swallowed, only then realizing what I'd actually been saying. Not that I regretted a word of it, but… hadn't even meant to say it.

Kevin tightened his expression, taking a long breath steadying himself before he spoke, but Cameron spoke before he could.

"Tell me what you're here for, Kevin. Please. Let's drop the pretenses and cut to the chase. I take it you talked to Weber."

He dragged his eyes slowly off me, going with some reluctance to force them back to Cameron. "All right," he said. "We can get down to it. You have until midnight before Weber submits the movement to cut the agreement. I want us to work something out."

Cameron sighed. "Do you even want me back, Kevin? Is it not demeaning to force a woman who doesn't want to be with you?"

He spoke quietly, his gaze steady on her. "You misunderstand. I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for you. How long have you been drifting, suffering in this lonely haze? It's time to come home."

I swallowed back the biting rage that flared up, but it still spilled out. "Even with it staring right into your face, you still act like—"

"London." Cameron squeezed my hand, and she sighed, again, slower this time—more to herself than anything else. "I'll have to… go talk to my team again. Goodbye, Kevin. It's been a pleasure."

My stomach dropped. Couldn't work out what talking to her team meant, but I wanted to believe… even in the face of all this, that she'd do the right thing. Wanted to hope. Kevin narrowed his eyes, glaring at me, before looking back to Cameron.

"Make the right choice, darling," he said, quietly. "For yourself. For everyone on your team. And honestly… for London."

He turned and headed back for the elevator—not a moment too soon, because one more word and I might have actually thrown a punch. Once the door slid shut behind him, Cameron sagged against a wall, looking down, her eyes heavy and lidded.

"Cameron—"

"Sorry, London," she whispered, her voice ragged.

"Please tell me you're not actually going to—"

"There are a lot of other people's livelihoods wrapped up in my brand," she said distantly. "It's not just me."

"But—"

She gave me a lopsided smile. "Pity it's so complicated, because what a dream girl, the way you go in guns blazing telling him to fuck himself like that."

"Oh, uh." I cleared my throat. "Sorry, I, uh… just lost my temper seeing—"

She put a finger to my lips. "Never apologize," she said, her voice soft, just the ghost of it there. "For letting out the way you really feel. Especially when it's for my sake. It means a lot… you mean a lot. To me, darling."

"I…" I swallowed, my face hot, my head spinning. "Cameron—angel, you're being too sentimental right now. Don't tell me that means you're actually thinking of going—"

"It means I'm going to talk to my team. Thank you, London. And I'm sorry." She stepped forward and pressed a kiss to my lips, a sweet, gentle ghost of all the passion we'd had before—heart-wrenching, straining my insides until I thought I'd scream. "I've really… been falling for you, too. Very fast. And very hard. And I haven't minded it."

"Do you…" But I didn't even know what I was saying. She pushed away from the wall, walking back towards the elevator.

"Would have liked this place," she said distantly. "I think it really should have been the one… maybe I was lying to you all along."

But she wasn't. I knew she wasn't. Cameron and I…

She left me alone. I think I said something back to her, too, but I wasn't really even sure what… left drifting, standing there under the wall of windows, rain pelting them, watching after the elevator door as it shut in front of me.

She'd… forgotten her latte. Maybe if this were a romance movie, I'd chase her down with it and we'd kiss in the rain and skip to the happily-ever-after.

Real life wasn't like the movies. I'd just drink the stupid thing. Oat milk wasn't my favorite, but I could have liked it for Cameron.