Chapter Twenty-Six
ISAAC
The night before Micah's rut hit, he told me.
We were in his office — the one in the penthouse, the room where the succession documents had been spread out a thousand times over seven years of working together.
He was standing at the window and I was on the couch and we were technically reviewing final documentation but mostly we were in the particular quiet of people who have too much to say and are finding the order for it.
"It's close," he said.
I looked at him. "I know."
"I can manage it through the hearing. I've managed worse."
"I know that too."
He turned from the window. His face in the penthouse light had the quality it always had when he was managing something significant — composed, precise, controlled — and underneath the composure, the particular strain of a man who'd been holding a lot of weight for a very long time and was starting to feel it.
"I don't want to manage it alone," he said.
The statement landed in the room with the specific weight of an understatement. Micah Kent, who'd been managing everything alone since his father handed him a company at twenty-six, was telling me he didn't want to do that anymore.
"You won't," I said.
"The timing is bad."
"Yes."
"There's nothing to do about the timing."
"No." I stood. Crossed the room to where he was standing. "But you've got me, and you've got Dean who's come through the worst of his heat and is steadier than he's been in months, and you've got Avery who—" I stopped.
"Who what," he said.
"Who I think understands rut better than she lets on," I said. "Who has been managing the biological edge of you for months and knows exactly what it means."
He exhaled. A slow, controlled thing. "I'm scared of what the rut does to my control."
"I know."
"Around her specifically."
"I know that too." I held on to his eyes instead. "But the rut doesn't make you someone different. It just makes you less able to manage the person you already are." I paused. "That person is good. He's been good for a very long time in a way that nobody has watched closely enough to say."
Micah looked at me.
We'd had a lot of conversations in this room that stayed in professional register even when they weren't professional conversations. We were better at this now. Getting better.
"I'm going to need you close," he said.
"Then I'll be close."
"And Avery—"
"I'll talk to her. Tonight, if you want."
He nodded.
I texted Avery from the elevator: Can I come by? Micah. It's not an emergency but it's a tonight kind of conversation.
She replied within a minute: Yes.
Her apartment at ten-thirty had the quality it always had at that hour — the specific lived warmth of a space that was getting used to having people in it.
Dean was asleep on the couch, which was approximately his natural state in her apartment anymore, and Avery was in the kitchen with tea and the look of someone who'd been reading something difficult and needed the interruption.
I sat across from her and explained about the rut.
She listened with the particular stillness she had.
"He told you to tell me," she said. "Or he asked you to."
"He asked me to. He said it felt like a tonight conversation but he needed to finish a document before he could do it." I kept my eyes on her. "He's not sending me as a proxy because he's avoiding the conversation. He's sending me because he trusts that I know how to tell you."
"What does he need?"
"You. Close. Not managing — close."
She was quiet for a moment.
"It's the night before the hearing," she said.
"Yes."
"I have to be in that room in fourteen hours."
"Yes."
She looked at her tea. "Is this going to be—" She started over. "Will I be okay in the morning?"
"Yes," I said. "I'll make sure of it. So will Dean." A pause. "So will he."
She nodded.
We moved from her kitchen to her living room, where Dean was still asleep.
She texted Micah the address he already had.
She sat on the couch and Dean shifted in his sleep, and I sat on the floor with my back against the couch because that was where I was most comfortable in small spaces, and we waited.
Micah arrived at eleven.
He looked at Avery and she looked at him and then she moved and he sat and she came back to him the way she'd started coming to all of us — not by surrendering something but by choosing, which was better than surrender because it was hers.
His rut was close and contained and the presence of all three of us helped it stay that way. The night was quiet. The morning was necessary.
She was going to testify in fourteen hours.
She was not afraid.
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