Chapter 14
Amara
Ispend the next few hours lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling fan in my resort villa.
My mind keeps replaying last night’s dinner.
The way Corin admitted he’d burn down his career to save my mentor if he’d known how things would end between us.
The way his hand felt in mine. The way he immediately pivoted to “I need to protect you from any fallout” like I’m some delicate flower who can’t handle a little professional arson.
Men.
By three AM, I give up on sleep entirely and open my laptop.
I’d heard an audible ping earlier, but ignored it.
Sure enough, the email sitting at the top of my inbox is from Corin, formally proposing a one-week clinic extension with proportional compensation adjustment, CC’ing Marisol like this is just another professional request.
Classic Corin. Emotions? Let’s wrap those in a formal proposal with adjusted compensation terms.
The worst part is, I can read between every careful line. He’s asking me to stay. Not demanding. Not assuming.
Asking.
My Manhattan caseload stares back at me from another browser tab, and I should probably focus on that. Work is safe. Work makes sense. Work doesn’t look at you with those stupidly vulnerable dark eyes and then immediately construct emotional barricades.
But instead I keep staring at his email.
Additional week. Proportional compensation. Please confirm availability.
Finally I set aside my laptop and lie back on my bed.
That man is going to be the end of me.
By the time dawn rolls around, I’ve had maybe forty-five minutes of sleep. I get up, have enough coffee to fuel a small litigation team, then hit reply all on the email from Corin, so that Marisol will be included.
My fingers hover over the keys.
This is a terrible idea.
I should just leave.
Pack my bags, go back to Manhattan, find a nice therapist who specializes in women who keep falling for men with issues.
Instead, I type:
Marisol,
I’ll extend the pilot program for one additional week. The Morrison family case needs follow-up, and there are three pending lease renegotiations that require oversight.
Let me know the revised timeline.
Best, Amara
I reread it three times to make sure it sounds appropriately professional. No mention of Corin. No acknowledgment that this decision has anything to do with last night.
Because I’m staying for the families.
Not for him.
Definitely not for him.
My cursor hovers over the send button.
You’re lying to yourself and you know it.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it.
Then I close my laptop without waiting for a reply, with perhaps more force than necessary.
Then I go take a shower that uses up most of the villa’s hot water, and get dressed.
I aim for full business casual. Wool trousers.
Wool jacket. The works. The kind of thing I’d normally wear in Manhattan, not Eleuthera.
Yes, I know how pathetic it is that I packed complete business attire alongside my vacation clothes.
I was never a light packer.
But I don’t leave for the clinic. I just sit in my air-conditioned villa. Waiting. Ignoring all email and call pings on my phone.
Until two PM. Then I leave.
Which is petty. Extremely petty. The kind of petty that would make my law school ethics professor deeply disappointed in my lack of professional maturity.
But if I’m staying another week, Corin needs to understand that I’m doing this on my terms. Not his schedule. Not his careful choreography of when I should arrive and how we should maintain appropriate professional distance.
My terms.
When I finally walk out of my air-conditioned rental car and into the parking lot of the island clinic, the afternoon heat hits like a physical wall. I’m already regretting my trouser choice. Should’ve gone with the cotton poplin dress. But no, I had to make a Statement with my wardrobe.
Idiot.
Through the clinic’s front window, I can see Corin at the steel desk. He’s with someone. A local guy, looks mid-fifties. They’re reviewing what looks like a fishing lease agreement spread across the desk.
My stomach does this stupid little butterfly thing.
Because Corin looks good. Like, annoyingly good.
He’s wearing one of those lightweight linen shirts in washed navy, unbuttoned one extra button because apparently he’s trying to kill me. His hair is slightly mussed like he’s been running his hands through it. The small scar above his left eyebrow catches the light.
I enter, and Marisol is nowhere to be found. Probably in the storage area or the conference room.
I push through the door to Corin’s office.
He glances up immediately and surprise flickers across his face. It’s replace by relief, but then he quickly locks it down.
“You came back,” he says.
The fisherman looks between us, clearly sensing he’s walked into the middle of something complicated.
I sit on the nearest chair and pull out my legal pad with perhaps excessive precision. “For the clinic. Not you.”
Wow. Really driving that point home, aren’t we?
Corin’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, but he just nods. “Understood.”
The fisherman clears his throat. “Should I come back another time?”
“No,” Corin says, refocusing on the lease agreement in front of them. “Let’s finish reviewing clause seven. You were saying the renewal terms changed without notification?”
I busy myself setting up at the other end of the desk. Pull out my laptop. Open my email. Pretend I’m not hyperaware of every movement Corin makes, every shift in his posture, the way his voice drops slightly when he’s explaining something complicated to someone who might not follow legal jargon.
It’s always surprised me how good he is at this. Most venture capitalists I’ve dealt with have entire legal teams to handle the fine print while they focus on the overall strategy or whose yacht is bigger. But Corin actually reads contracts like someone who understands them.
I asked him about it once. He’d shrugged and said something about how you can’t rely on lawyers to catch everything when you’re the one signing your name.
Also mentioned he’d been sued enough times in his early career that he learned to spot problems on his own before they became litigation. Problems his own lawyers had missed.
Which, honestly, is fair. Because nothing teaches you contract law quite like living through it day in and day out.
They work through the fishing lease for another forty minutes.
Trying not to sweat in my expensive business casual, I force myself to focus on extending the contract template I put together for Corin last week, the one he was supposed to use in my absence, but I keep catching fragments of their conversation.
Corin is patient, and thorough, walking the fisherman through every clause with careful attention.
Finally, the fisherman stands and shakes Corin’s hand gratefully. “Thank you, Mr. Saelinger. Really. My family’s been fishing these waters for three generations. Wasn’t about to let some mainland developer take our land from us.”
“You shouldn’t have to fight this hard for what’s yours,” Corin replies. For some reason, I get the impression that what he’s saying has some kind of a double meaning. When his eyes catch mine and I see the determined glint there, oh I know his words definitely have a double meaning.
The stubborn side of me rears its ugly head.
You think I’m yours, do you?
And you think you don’t have to fight?
Oh we’ll see about that.
The fisherman leaves, and suddenly it’s just the two of us in this tiny office with the concrete walls and the louvers open to salt air that does nothing to cut the tension.
Silence.
I stare at my laptop screen.
Corin shifts papers on his side of the desk.
This is fine.
We’re professionals.
We can absolutely work in the same space without addressing the fact that I walked out on him last night, or that he keeps trying to exile himself to “protect” me, or that I spent the entire night wanting to both throttle him and kiss him until we forget every boundary we’ve ever constructed.
Healthy coping mechanisms.
Really nailing this.
Then Corin slides something across the steel desk.
I glance up.
It’s the pilot one-week extension agreement. Ready and waiting for me to sign.
But at the bottom, in handwriting I recognize, there’s a note:
Thank you for staying. I appreciate you more than you’ll ever know. —C.
My throat goes tight.
Don’t you dare cry.
I pick up my black gel pen. The same brand I left on his nightstand after New Year’s Eve. The same kind I’ve used for years because the ink flow is perfect and the grip doesn’t cramp my hand during long contract reviews.
The pen hovers over the signature line.
You’re probably going to regret this.
I sign my name.
Amara Saira Khan.
When I slide the document back across the desk, Corin picks it up and reads my signature like it contains some kind of hidden subtext.
Which, to be fair, it absolutely does.
“We’re not okay,” I say quietly.
He looks up, meeting my eyes. “I know.”
“But we’re trying,” I add.
He blinks a few times, and his chin does this quivery thing, but then it’s gone, and he nods.
Did Corin almost cry?
That would be a first.
I open my legal pad and make three small dots in the margin. A private annotation that means: this moment matters and I don’t know what to do with it.
Corin clears his throat and slides a folder across the desk. “Williams family lease. Marisol flagged it this morning. Developer’s trying to insert a mineral rights clause retroactively. Can you draft a response?”
I nod once and pull the folder toward me.
Corin returns to his laptop. I return to mine. We work in silence for another hour, the only sounds the clicking of keyboards and the distant rhythm of waves against the island’s coastline.
At some point, he gets up and makes coffee. Brings me a cup without asking. Black, no sugar.
I take it without commenting, but my fingers brush his when he sets it down.