Maeve
“AT THIS POINT, IF you don’t end up adopting him, you’ll give him separation anxiety.”
I startled so violently that when my head jerked toward the sound of my best friend’s voice, the back of it clashed straight into the metal leg of the chair beside me. “Ow, fuck, Sammy.”
Before I could even tend to the growing pain at the back of my head, the shiba inu sprawled across my lap lifted his head with a sleepy grunt, his fox-like face with quiet judgement, amber eyes narrowed as though deeply offended that my possible concussion had distributed something far more important: his nap.
“Sorry, Mochi.” I murmured, lowering my head carefully back onto the padded floor as he gave another soft, offended huff before dropping his head onto my stomach again. “I hope you know, if I could, I’d take you home today.”
Mochi gave a low little rumble that almost sounded understanding, and I resumed stroking absent patterns through his fur, like I had for the last forty minutes.
“I can’t believe Ama snitched on me,” I told Samyra as she made her way through the pit room, dogs weaving around her legs in desperate bids for attention while her focus stayed fixed entirely on me.
Rain drops clung to the sleeves of her coat, tiny droplets catching in the soft wool as she gave her damp hair a ruffle.
“It’s not all on her,” Samyra replied carefully, stepping over the chew toys scattered across the floor like tiny plastic landmines before lowering herself onto the cushions beside me.
Mochi lifted his head, the consideration to abandon all of his loyalty to me was clear in his gaze as he watched her outstretched hand.
“I texted you to see if you wanted to grab dinner after my meeting. I was near Lord’s, and when you didn’t reply, I checked your location and saw you were here, so I texted Ama. She called me back sounding terrified.”
As though he could somehow understand I needed anchoring more than his need for attention from my best friend’s outstretched hand, the dog nuzzled his head once more against my belly.
It didn’t matter anyway because, a second later, Trip, the shelter’s impossibly needy greyhound, padded straight over instead, tail wagging furiously as Samyra immediately scratched behind his ears.
The pit room around us stayed warm and dim beneath the low lights, blankets and oversized cushions scattered across the floor for the therapy sessions they usually held there in the evenings.
People normally had to book the room in advance, especially this late in the day, but Ama had taken one look at my face when I walked in and waved me through without a single question.
The shelter belonged to Ama’s father for nearly twenty years, tucked between a florist and a tiny Italian café on a quiet Chelsea side street where everything smelled faintly of coffee, fresh grass and rain.
Back in university, this place had practically become our second home.
None of our student flats allowed pets—which felt personally offensive to me at the time—so we’d ended up volunteering here three afternoons a week instead.
Most people our age spent their weekends hungover in their flats, me and Samyra spent ours bottle-feeding abandoned kittens and getting emotionally manipulated by elderly terriers, and we did it with no regrets.
Don’t get me wrong, we both knew how to let loose to, and had our own set of memories that were tequila induced, but I much preferred the other version of our memories.
Even when I’d been younger, I’d always connected to animals more easily than I did with people. I suppose, there was a part of me that could rest easy near them knowing that I didn’t have to mask my feelings, or when you did the wrong thing and looked ridiculous, they simply didn’t care.
When I was younger, Mum’s cat allergy combined with her complete lack of desire to house literally any other living creature, meant pets were banned from our house with a military-level enforcement.
No cats. No dogs. Not even hamsters after Year Six and the incident where I’d rescued—stolen—one from the science lab because I just wanted to have one so badly.
She hated animal hair on clothes almost as much as she hated the idea of animals actually living in the house, which meant even if I’d been old enough to volunteer at the local shelter on my own, Mum never would’ve signed the forms anyway.
So I took whatever scraps of animal affection life offered me.
The feral cats that lived near my grammar school and tolerated me on good days.
Matt’s guinea pig, which I was fairly certain despised me personally.
But it wasn’t until James, my stepfather, came into the picture that I discovered my love for horses, along with Mum’s sudden lack of concern about my proximity to animals once she realised complaining about it would irritate him.
James loved his horses far too much to entertain lectures about fur on her outrageously high priced clothes and furniture.
The first time James took us to his racing yard out in Surrey, all pristine fences and rolling green fields that looked painted into the countryside, something in me latched on instantly.
After that, I spent entire weekends there pretending I cared about racing statistics when really I just wanted an excuse to disappear into the stables.
Mum had been fully supportive in the way she always was when appearances were involved, eager to parade us around as one big polished family, but I’d happily played along if it meant more time around the horses.
Even when I went to stay with my father, I’d find ways back there. He was usually too busy to notice when I slipped out for hours at times, caught a bus across Surrey, and went searching for one horse in particular.
Duke.
Massive dark thing with a white streak down his face and the temperament of a divorced pub owner.
He only liked three people.
The head groom.
James.
And me.
My throat tightened unexpectedly at the thought.
I hadn’t seen him in months.
Even when after everything with Mum had imploded, James had still be adamant to check-in on me, and gave me permission to visit Duke whenever I’d wanted.
But eventually, even the occasional texts stopped, and going there started to feel strange, like I might walk into the stables one day and be told I was no longer welcome.
Staying away felt like the safer choice, as if no contact still left room for whatever silent fracture had formed between me and Mum to be repaired. As if she hadn’t simply woken up one day and decided her new family was enough to make it easier to pretend I’d stopped being part of hers.
Samyra must’ve noticed something shift across my face because she didn’t say anything else. She just exhaled quietly and lowered herself onto the blankets beside me, shoulder pressing against mine as Trip snuggled himself next to her.
For a while neither of us spoke, and the only sound in the room was the soft echo of the rain tapping against the windows.
Someone down the hall sneezed violently enough to make three dogs bark in solidarity, and end whatever silent moment we had.
I cleared my throat, speaking before she had the chance to. “What were you doing near Lord’s?”
I felt her stiffen momentarily before she sighed. “I took your advice.”
I turned my head, curiosity sparking through me. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I spoke to my manager, and she was on board with it, so I texted Ishaan. And he called his br—boss,” she corrected herself quickly, like the word had tripped her up mid-air.
“Who wanted a meeting ASAP. And yes, it is a bit weird, but he wanted to see if I could actually deliver what he was looking for, whether the chemistry was there, all of that.”
She exhaled through her nose, still half-laughing at how absurd it sounded even as she said it.
“He was in London too, which is unusual, because he’s normally either in France or Delhi.
Apparently he had forty-five minutes he could squeeze me into before he met the other two companies tomorrow, so it was now or never.
I took my client deck, the one I usually use for pitches, and went straight to L'Orchidée. By the time I was done, it was around the same time you were, which is why I texted.”
My eyes had gone wide as saucers, recognising the Michelin-star restaurant name. “You had a meeting with the boss? Is that even normal?”
She tugged on her lower lip, considering it before nodding.
“I know. I’m so used to dealing with actors and celebrities that dealing with a literal billionaire felt…
weird.” A beat passed before she added, almost as an afterthought, “When I asked Ishaan, he said it was perfectly normal. Apparently it’s a really close partnership because of the relationship with the driver, so he wanted to be directly involved from the start. ”
I frowned. “How do you mean?”
For a moment, Samyra stilled in thought, almost like she was trying to hold back something. I tried to remind myself that not everything had to be interrogated. That even if there was something underneath it, it didn’t automatically belong to me to uncover.
But, to my mind, silence had never stayed neutral for me.
It had the tendency to rearrange itself into meaning whether it deserved to or not.
Growing up with parents who came and went in fragments, conversations half-finished before something better took priority, explanations softened or withheld, had trained something restless in me.
If I didn’t understand every piece, I started wondering which parts I’d been left out of.
So I listened harder than I needed to. Not always because I wanted control, but because I hated the feeling of standing just outside a door that everyone else had the key to.