Chapter 16
sixteen
CALLUM
I was designing a building I had no business designing.
Not the Riverside project—that sat in its folder on the left side of my desk, dutifully awaiting the attention of a man who was supposed to care about it.
The sustainability report was due Thursday.
The material samples needed sign-off. Richard Ashford's inbox was expecting a revised elevation by end of week.
Instead, I was hunched over a set of pencil drawings on warm-stock paper, sketching a coffee bar layout for the fourth time in a week.
The counter needed to be L-shaped. I'd tried a straight run and a U-shape, but the L gave the best flow—enough room for two baristas to work without colliding, a natural queue line for customers, and a clear sightline from the register to the front door.
The espresso station would sit at the bend, positioned so the person pulling shots could see the entire room.
Willow always watched the room while she worked. I'd spent a year observing that habit from my corner table at Brew & Bean. She tracked every customer, every conversation, every shift in energy. A good barista served coffee. Willow conducted a room.
The layout needed to support that.
I erased a line, redrew it two inches to the right. Added a notation for electrical: dedicated twenty-amp circuit for the espresso machine, separate circuit for the cooler. I'd seen what Brew & Bean's aging wiring did to their equipment and I wasn't going to repeat that mistake.
Behind the coffee bar, I'd drawn a kitchen—small, efficient, designed around the way Willow moved when she prepped pastry trays.
She led with her left hand, reached with her right, and turned counterclockwise.
I'd mapped her workflow months ago without realizing I was doing it.
Subconscious data collection that probably qualified as creepy if I examined it too long.
I chose not to examine it too long.
Along the far wall: a community board. Cork-backed, framed in reclaimed wood from the building's original structure.
Willow had one at Brew & Bean—a chaotic collage of local band flyers, poetry readings, and business cards from regulars she was always promoting.
Hers was held together with thumbtacks and optimism. This one would be built to last.
And in the back corner, near the windows where the morning sun hit best: a reading nook.
Two armchairs. A low shelf. A space where a person could sit for hours and nobody would rush them.
Willow had mentioned a book club once—an offhand comment, tossed out during a conversation about things she'd do if she ever had her own place.
She'd said it the way people said things they'd stopped believing were possible.
I'd filed it. Apparently, I'd filed everything.
The building itself was a former commercial space on Elm Street, downtown—two stories, brick facade, built in 1940 and neglected for the past decade.
Good bones. Terrible plumbing. A roof that needed replacing and a foundation that was solid despite the years of abuse.
I'd walked through it a month ago with a real estate agent who couldn’t quite understand why I was fixated on this old building when there were plenty with better margins.
But this building had character. It had history. It had the same stubborn refusal to quit that reminded me of a woman who kept a dying espresso machine alive through sheer force of will.
I was in deep. The rational part of my brain—the part that had kept me alive through a divorce, a custody arrangement, and twenty years of client negotiations—kept pointing out the obvious: I was buying a building for a woman I hadn't told I loved.
A woman I'd been dating for weeks, not years.
A woman who was twenty-three and might wake up tomorrow and realize she'd made a mistake.
The irrational part of my brain, which had staged a full coup since Willow Monroe moved into my apartment, didn't care.
“Something tells me that’s not the Riverside project.”
Graham stood in my doorway, coffee in each hand, wearing the face he wore when he was about to say things I didn't want to hear. I'd known the man for fifteen years. That face appeared with depressing regularity.
“You would be correct.”
“New project?” He crossed to my desk, set one coffee down, kept the other. His gaze dropped to the plans I hadn't bothered to hide. "That's the Elm Street building."
"It is."
“Any particular reason you’re drafting plans for a building we don’t own?”
“Because as of 4 p.m. yesterday, it cleared escrow. It’s my building now.”
“Yours as in…personally or owned by our company?”
“Mine. No connection to the firm. Just mine.”
“Wow.” He pulled the chair from the corner and sat. “Judging by the plans…it’s going to be a coffee shop.”
“Among other things,” I admitted with a nod. I swiveled the plans toward Graham so he could get a better look. “What do you think?”
Graham studied the layout with the quiet competence of a man who'd spent two decades reading blueprints.
His eyes tracked the coffee bar, the kitchen, the community board, the reading nook.
I watched him connect the dots—each design choice pointing at a person whose name I hadn't written on any of the drawings but might as well have.
"This is good work," he said. "The flow is smart. The L-shaped counter solves any bottleneck issues you might struggle with.” He tapped the reading nook. "Natural ventilation from the east-facing windows?"
"Cross-ventilation. I'm adding operable transoms above the original casements."
"Nice." He leaned back. “Am I safe to assume this sudden interest in coffee shops has something to do with the beautiful Miss Willow?”
I wasn’t going to lie. “Yes.”
"Callum."
“Don’t start. It’s my business, which is why I purchased with my own money.”
Graham held his hands up in mock defense. “Hey, I get it. I’m just saying…are you sure about this?”
“No. Yes. Mostly yes. But there’s a part of me that’s apprehensive,” I admitted.
“Does Willow know about this?”
I shook my head.
“Good grief, this is worse than I thought.
When are you going to tell her? After you've renovated an entire building in secret?
You going to just hand her the keys and hope she doesn't have a panic attack?
" Graham's voice was mild but his point was a nail gun.
"This is a grand gesture. Grand gestures require communication.
Otherwise, they're just expensive surprises that blow up in your face. "
"Thank you for the unsolicited advice."
"You're welcome. I charge by the hour." He drank his coffee, shaking his head. “Look, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. All I’m saying is…be careful.”
“Duly noted.”
“Right. Which brings me to the actual reason I'm here. I have news. Good news, for once."
"What?"
"Ashford called this morning. He's hosting a dinner Friday night. Private. Eight people. His inner circle. And us." Graham paused for effect—the man had a flair for the dramatic that he denied possessing. "He's awarding us the Riverside contract."
The Riverside contract. Two years of proposals, revisions, presentations, and client dinners.
Two years of tailoring every design choice to Richard Ashford's vision while maintaining the structural integrity that kept me up at night.
Two years of Graham managing the politics while I managed the plans.
And now it was done. We'd won.
I waited for the rush. The relief. The satisfaction of a goal achieved, a finish line crossed.
It didn't come.
What came instead was a calculation I didn't want to make.
The arrangement with Willow had been built on this contract.
She'd agreed to play my girlfriend so I could land Ashford's business.
That was the deal. The entire architecture of our relationship—fake, then real, then this uncharted territory we'd been living in—was framed around a transaction that was about to close.
If the contract was done, the arrangement was done. The reason she'd agreed to be in my life had an expiration date, and it just got stamped.
"Callum?" Graham was watching me. "This is the part where you celebrate. Or at minimum, acknowledge that a good thing happened."
"It's good news," I said. "Excellent news."
"You look like a man who just won the lottery and realized he lost the ticket."
"I'm processing."
“What’s to process? We crossed the finish line and won the trophy.” He set his cup down. "What's going on?"
I roused myself to force a smile. “Nothing, sorry. This is good news.” I wasn’t going to share the private details of me and Willow’s arrangement for Graham’s scrutiny.
If Graham didn’t buy it, he didn’t call me out.
Instead, he rose with a short nod. “Good. I’ll see you Friday, then.
Ashford's place. His wife is coordinating.
I'll send you the details." Graham paused at the door. “For what it’s worth, I think the coffee shop plans are pretty damn good. Makes me wonder if you’ve been holding out on your best work.”
He left. I sat with the Elm Street drawings in front of me and the Riverside contract in my inbox and felt the two halves of my life pressing against each other with the structural pressure of competing loads on a shared beam.
One was the career I'd built over twenty years. Safe. Predictable. A monument to the version of myself I'd constructed after Jessica left.
The other was a coffee shop on warm-stock paper, designed around a woman who stole my coffee in the morning and fell asleep against me at night.
Both couldn't occupy the same foundation. Not forever. Sooner or later, I'd have to choose.
I went to the Elm Street building at lunch.
It was a twelve-minute drive from the office—I'd timed it, not out of obsession but out of... okay, it was obsession. I'd driven this route nine times in six weeks. I could drive it blindfolded, which was a fact I'd be sharing with no one.