Chapter 9
Emilia
Day thirty-three. Twenty-seven to go.
The number used to settle me. It doesn’t anymore.
I don’t live here.
I need to be clear about that. My apartment is twelve minutes away in Makiki. I have a lease, a key on my actual keychain, and a coffee maker that knows exactly how I like it.
I just happen to spend approximately seventy percent of my waking hours at Jake Hale’s penthouse lately.
Because of Poppy. Obviously.
It’s Tuesday morning and I’m at Jake’s kitchen island packing a preschool snack bag, which is something I definitely didn’t plan on knowing how to do three weeks ago.
Poppy has opinions about the order in which items enter the bag: grapes first, crackers second.
The cheese has to be cut into triangles or it is, according to her, broken.
I’m cutting triangles when Jake walks in on a call, suit jacket on, tie still loose, Poppy attached to his leg like a barnacle while he closes what sounds like a nine-figure conversation.
“Push the board meeting to Thursday. I need the environmental impact numbers before I sign off.” He reaches down without breaking his sentence and lifts Poppy onto the counter beside me. “Yes. Thursday. Final answer.”
He ends the call.
Poppy grabs a grape immediately.
“Those are for school,” I say.
“I’m testing them.”
“You’re not a grape tester.”
She considers this. “What if I was, though?”
Jake takes the grape out of her hand, pops it in his own mouth, and raises an eyebrow at me.
“We’re leaving in eight minutes,” I say.
“Seven. Traffic on Punahou is brutal on Tuesdays.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
And that’s the thing that keeps knocking me sideways.
Not the charm. Not the easy billionaire confidence that fills every room he walks into.
The fact that he knows the traffic patterns now.
He knows Poppy’s teacher is Ms. Smith and that Tuesday music circle is non-negotiable and that pickup is at two fifteen, but parking requires arriving at two.
He memorized all of it.
Nobody told him to.
That shouldn’t be attractive. But it is.
Shit.
Lani handles the days now. Jake’s nanny.
She’s good. Calm, unhurried, already knows Poppy takes her crackers in triangles and her shoes on the wrong feet if you let her.
Weekdays, eight to four, the foundation hours and the preschool gap covered, which is exactly what I set up so I wouldn’t have to be the one standing in this kitchen cutting cheese into triangles before drop-off.
I vetted her myself. She could pack this snack bag in her sleep.
And I’m packing it anyway.
That was supposed to be the handoff. Get someone qualified into the daily logistics, step back to the job I’m actually paid for.
I’m doing drop-off in eight minutes.
Preschool drop-off runs four minutes over because Poppy insists on showing Jake every drawing taped to the hallway wall before she’ll go inside. He looks at each one seriously, like he’s evaluating acquisitions.
“This one’s strong,” he tells her, pointing at something that might be a shark.
“That’s you,” Poppy says.
He tilts his head. “I’m green?”
“You’re not green, silly. But green was the best one.”
He crouches down to her level and nods very seriously. “I respect that.”
She beams. Then she runs into her classroom without looking back, and Jake stands in that hallway a half second longer than he needs to, looking at the green crayon version of himself on the wall.
I step up beside him. “For what it’s worth, you’re her favorite subject.” Jake glances at me sideways, then nods once, like that was something he needed to hear.
The Hale Foundation Community Outreach Center smells like sunscreen and kids’ snacks. Jake walks in like he’s been doing this for years…which he has.
We’re here for a Hale Futures site visit before the Waikiki luncheon: donor prep, current numbers, real faces to reference in the room later.
Jake ignores the numbers the second a seven-year-old named Marcus decides to explain the structural problems with his Lego tower.
Jake crouches down. Full suit and expensive shoes, and he crouches right down on a community center floor and listens like Marcus is presenting at a board meeting.
“The problem,” Marcus says seriously, “is the corners.”
“Always the corners,” Jake says.
“You know about construction?”
“Family business.”
Marcus squints at him. “Are you famous?”
“Moderately.”
“Cool.” He hands Jake a Lego. “Hold this.”
Jake accepts it without hesitation.
It’s not an act. That’s what kills me. He just actually gives a shit.
A few weeks ago at the gala, I was hunting him down in a service corridor. Tonight he was already here when I arrived, no script, no notes, no polished PR version of himself.
He’s in conversation with a foundation board member from Singapore, referencing her daughter’s scholarship by name, following up on a grant proposal like he read it this morning.
She’s leaning toward him.
They’re all leaning toward him.
I stand at his shoulder for two hours and watch him do this, and I think about every time I’ve dismissed his instincts as lucky or accidental or just charisma with good lighting.
His brothers are brilliant in ways people can measure.
Dane’s strategy. Noah’s systems. Lucas’s vision.
Jake’s brilliance shows up in people. In the way they feel when they leave a conversation with him.
He doesn’t lead through fear or pressure or structure.
He leads through trust.
We present Hale Futures together, and I don’t think to manage any of it. He takes a section, hands it to me, picks it back up where I left off without a beat. We never rehearsed this. We don’t need to. I finish a thought about the housing pilot and he’s already into the scholarship numbers.
The room leans in. I watch it happen. A donor near the front says something to her husband and they both smile at us. The kind of smile people give a couple they like.
Jake’s palm settles at the small of my back. I lean into it before I think about whether anyone’s watching.
That’s what stops me.
At the start I tracked every touch. Counted them. Now his hand finds my back and I just move into it, and a room full of people watches and buys it completely.
The trouble is they’re not wrong.
We got good at this. Too good. I can’t tell anymore which part is for the donors and which part is just us.
And we have twenty-seven days left. I wrote that number down myself. I don’t know what I do with it now.
I’m still processing that when Julian Vaughn materializes at the edge of my peripheral vision.
Polished. Unhurried. Wearing the smile I stopped trusting somewhere around the eighteen-month mark.
Two years of my life, Julian Vaughn. A relationship I built the way I build everything, carefully, with structure, with both of us agreeing it made sense on paper. He’s a Pacific Edge donor, which is the official reason he’s here.
He’s also my ex, who once told me I was “difficult to feel close to,” packaged it as concern, and let me carry it for a year before I understood it was a criticism. We were public enough that half the people in this room remember us as a couple. So does Jake.
I turn. Jake’s already moving toward us, and his expression cools the second he places who I’m talking to.
Jake’s been on my side for a long time, whether I wanted him there or not.
“Jake.” Julian extends a hand. “I was hoping I’d run into you. Remarkable event. The foundation’s work is impressive.”
“We think so.” Jake shakes once.
“And the engagement.” Julian tilts his head. “That surprised a few people.”
“Did it.” Not a question.
“Life’s full of surprises, I suppose.”
Jake smiles. “That’s what I keep hearing.”
“Commitment doesn’t exactly fit your brand, Hale.” Julian swirls his drink, easy and pleasant. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Jake smiles. “Funny. Emilia used to say the same thing about your personality.”
The two donors closest to us laugh before they can stop themselves.
Julian’s smile stays perfectly in place.
Jake holds his gaze for exactly one beat, then turns back to the Singapore board member like Julian is a footnote in a meeting that already ended.
He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t throw a punch. Doesn’t do anything except make Julian Vaughn feel like a minor inconvenience in a room Jake already owns.
Impressive as hell. Not that I’m saying that out loud.
Julian says something on his way out. Smooth. Offhand. Something about hoping it all holds.
Jake’s expression doesn’t crack. Not even close. But I’m standing right beside him and I catch the moment the amusement in his eyes turns flat and careful.
He’s back in under a second, charming the next donor, completely untouchable.
I don’t say anything.
But I file it away, because Jake Hale doesn’t let things get to him. And that one did.
Julian finds me near the valet stand as the luncheon winds down.
I see him coming, but I don’t have a reasonable escape route.
“You look good,” he says. “Happy, even.”
“Julian…”
“I’m not here to cause problems.” He glances back toward the venue. “Jake’s good at this. I’ll give him that.”
“He’s exceptional at it.”
Julian tilts his head. “He’s very good at making people feel important in the moment.” His voice stays pleasant. Measured. “The problem is, eventually he gets restless.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know his history.” His eyes move to the door briefly. “I’m not saying it to be cruel, Emmy. I watched you spend two years building walls around yourself. I’d hate to see you take them all down for the wrong reason.”
The valet pulls up a car that isn’t mine.
“Jake isn’t restless,” I say.
Julian smiles, not unkindly. That’s the worst part. “I hope you’re right.”
He gets in the car.
I stand in the Waikiki heat and remind myself that Julian Vaughn spent eighteen months telling me I was too guarded, too controlled, too unwilling to feel anything. Now he’s warning me I’m feeling too much.
The problem is the fear that settles in anyway.
What if he’s not wrong about the restless part?
Poppy crashes on Jake’s couch at 7:30 p.m., one arm around her sea turtle, completely out.
I should leave. I know I should leave.
Instead I’m in his kitchen in bare feet making tea in the mug that has become, without any formal agreement, my mug. Jake’s across the room with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, reviewing foundation documents with the quiet focus he only brings out after Poppy’s asleep.
The city spreads out behind him through the floor-to-ceiling windows, all gold and deep blue.
He looks up. “Tea?”
“Already made some.”
“Good.” He goes back to the document.
I lean against the counter and look at the two of them. The sleeping kid with the sea turtle and the man who learned Poppy’s classroom wall gallery requires four minutes of dedicated attention on a good morning.
Julian’s voice is still in the back of my head.
Eventually he gets restless.
But Jake isn’t restless tonight. He’s just here, quiet and steady, reviewing grant numbers after Poppy goes down.
I think about my apartment. The clean counters. The silence that used to feel like control and mostly just feels like absence now.
I didn’t notice it happening. Didn’t decide to stop dreading coming over to this place. One day I just looked up and realized I liked being here.
What I dread now is the part where I pick up my bag and leave.
Jake looks up again. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“It’s a different kind of quiet tonight.”
I set the mug down. “Julian talked to me outside.”
Something moves through his expression. “What did he say?”
“That you get restless.”
Jake holds my gaze for a moment. Then he closes the laptop. Leans back. Looks at me like the document can wait.
“Do you believe him?”
I want to say no. The fact that I can’t say it immediately is its own answer.
“I believe he said it to make me doubt myself.” I hold his gaze. “Actually, that part I’m sure about.”
Jake is quiet for a beat. Then he stands up.
He crosses the kitchen and stops close enough that I have to look up at him.
“Stay,” he says.
Low. Certain. Not asking.
“Jake.”
“I’m not talking about the fake engagement, Emilia.” His voice drops. “I’m talking about tonight. Stay.”
That does something to my chest I’m not ready to examine.
“I have work in the morning.”
“So do I.” He searches my face for a second. Then he steps back and gives me the space I didn’t ask for. “Drive safe.”
I pick up my bag.
I say goodnight to Poppy, who doesn’t hear me.
In the elevator I watch my own reflection in the mirrored doors and think about Julian’s warning and Jake’s certainty and the way this penthouse stopped feeling temporary.
Three blocks from the building I admit, in the complete privacy of my own head, that I’m already thinking about tomorrow morning.
That’s the problem with Jake Hale.
He doesn’t chase. Doesn’t beg. Just says drive safe and means it.
He just makes leaving feel like the wrong call every single damn time.
And the worst part is, I already knew that before I walked out the door.