CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

After the workshop, Liam met with his team in a borrowed conference room. The day was soft outside the windows, luring his attention toward the budding trees and soft breezes, the promise of greenery just out of sight.

Without preamble, he said, "I called this meeting today because I need some time."

"Time?" echoed Yolanda, a brown-skinned woman with impressively shiny black hair she wore cut in a line so straight it could slice peaches.

"Time off."

"What are you on about? We're booked out."

He shook his head. "I need some downtime. Cut everything for a couple of months."

"Two months!" Yolanda slammed her hands down on the mahogany table. Her rings and bracelets added emphasis, banging against the wood. "Nah, no can do."

Krish glanced between the two of them, raised a hand. "Hold on, hold on. What's up, bro?" He smoothed his beard with index finger and thumb, his dark eyes piercing. "This about the woman again?"

"A sheila?" Yolanda blustered. "Not again!"

He scowled at her. "Out of line."

She glared but apologized. "Sorry. But you've got an empire here. It doesn't turn so easily."

Liam shot a look toward Krish, who was responsible for this attitude. It made him angry. Two years ago, Liam had been sideswiped by a breakup from a woman he really had expected to marry, but it had been a normal kind of breakup between two adults who hadn't wanted the same things. Only Krish had seen it as the same as his previous breaks. No one else knew his history.

He looked at Krish for a long moment. He looked right back, unapologetic. Liam felt a surge of uncommon anger.

He took a breath. "I never wanted an empire," he said calmly.

"Well, it's bigger than you now. It's all of us." Yolanda indicated the people around the table. Mike, a muscled man from Adelaide who ran the security team; Penny, a fragile-looking blonde fresh out of uni who was Krish's assistant, planning and executing logistics; Alan, Yolanda's second-in-command, a pale Scot with a shock of curly red hair. Their eyes were all fixed on him. Worried.

There it was, the conflict. He looked at each of them, feeling a need to avoid letting them down. They had pinned their fortunes to his star, and he was mindful of his responsibility to them.

And yet, he felt the peace of Tillie's apartment echoing through him, lying in her bed this morning, watching her paint. Her energy and passion called to him, the way her arms moved, the tilt of her head. He felt he'd known her before, maybe in a hundred lives.

"We've been on the road almost all year," he said now. "I think we can safely take a break for a few months. The world won't end."

"Hold on, hold on," Krish said. "How about a few weeks instead? Not now, but when we finish the European loop." He flipped through notes on his phone. "End of June. You could take the rest of the summer."

Resistance rose in his belly, his lungs, and he listened to his body for a long moment before he spoke. "No." He would have lost her by then. Lost any chance of seeing what it was. "I need it now. Three months."

"You just said two," Krish said.

"That's all of Europe!" Yolanda cried. "We've been working on this for a year. It's a growing market, and they like you."

"I know, Yolanda, and you have done a great, great job with this. Can we just push it off until next year?" He steepled his hands and exhaled. "I'm tired, man."

"You don't look tired." Yolanda pushed back. "You did look tired, but now you look reenergized."

Krish said to the group, "Give us the room."

They rose, exchanging looks, and filed out. Liam knew what they were thinking, and it made him defensive. When he was alone with Krish, he said, "I told you, it's not like that."

"Look, bro, I'm on your side, remember?"

Liam shook his head. "No, I don't think you are."

"Who knows you better than me, bro?" Krish leaned forward. "I've seen this a hundred times with you, this thing where you always think you're in love. You chase her, find out it isn't what you thought, and everyone ends up crying."

His uncommon anger grew molten. "That's reductive. I am not the boy I was in school."

"I get that. But some patterns are more difficult than others to root out." He shook his head. "I gotta tell you, this feels like that pattern."

Despite himself, Liam felt a faraway flicker of doubt. It was sudden. He'd been lonely and off-kilter for a few months. He thought of Tillie last night, the way she laughed, the softness of her lips. "I've done the work, man. I haven't slept with anyone for two years!"

"Maybe that's the problem. Just because you sleep with somebody doesn't mean you're meant for each other."

"Stop." Liam glared at his friend. "Give me some fuckin' credit. You're always thinking about Opal. But I was young. We all fall hard at that age."

"It's not just Opal. Look, I'm not trying to disrespect you, but you're a love addict, and you know it. Every woman you fall in love with is going to save your soul or something."

"I've done the work. Two years, man. Two years to go through my shit and get my act together."

Krish looked away. His tone was softer when he said, "What's her name again?"

"Tillie. She's an artist."

"Tillie," he repeated. "You've known her only a few days. And if you haven't had sex with another person in two years, it's bound to feel powerful."

Liam waited. A thumping of fury pounded his temples.

"A lot of people are depending on you here, and you've made commitments. Why can't you just accept the end of June, and see how it goes?"

Again, that pulse of resistance. This morning in meditation, he'd felt the prompt to clear his schedule. "She's in trouble, I think. She's going to need someone in her corner."

"She doesn't have anybody else? You appeared to save her?"

When he heard it like that, it sounded ridiculous. "It's not like that." He let the moment they met rise in memory, the fall of her dark hair, the electrifying connection when he looked into her eyes.

Like he knew her. Not in some other life or in a dream, but in life, in this life. He just hadn't figured it out yet.

"If it's real," Krish said, "it'll stand the test of your wild schedule. That's something she's going to have to deal with, anyway."

The thought of spending his life like this, on the road constantly, one city to the next forever, felt like a prison. "I hate this, bro. I never wanted it, not like this."

"I know. But here it is."

Liam thought of the team, hopeful faces around the table. He thought of the rooms full of people who paid princely sums to meditate with him in person. It seemed ridiculous, and it always kind of had, but he'd been rooted in the practice itself, in the teaching, and the joy that gave him, so it was all right. Better than all right.

Good. Deeply fulfilling.

But now it wasn't.

"Maybe just think on it for a night," Krish said.

Liam nodded. "One night."

"Good." Krish clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll tell the others."

"Will you meet her?" Liam asked.

"What will that do?"

"Maybe a lot. Maybe you'll see what I see."

"I always see what you see, bro. You have good taste in women, aside from Opal."

Liam smiled. "Try."

"Sure. Name the time."

"How about right now?"