Chapter 2
Anna
"Bloody hell."
My first thought was that I misheard him. My second thought was that nobody sounds like that in real life. The accent was mostly American but sharpened with something British, like the Queen’s English got mugged by Miami and they were still negotiating custody.
"I am so sorry," I started, because that seemed like the right thing to say when you’ve crashed into a stranger, kissed him against his will, and let him accidentally grab your chest all within the span of a few seconds. "I didn’t see you, and someone bumped into me, and the coffee just… it went everywhere, and I’m really, genuinely sorry about your shirt. "
He wasn’t listening.
He was wiping his mouth. Not a casual swipe.
An aggressive scrubbing with the back of his hand, back and forth, like I’d smeared something toxic across his lips.
Then, and I watched this happen in real time with my own two eyes, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small bottle of hand sanitizer.
He pumped it. Twice. Rubbed his palms together with the focus of a man decontaminating after a chemical spill. Then he did his mouth area again. With the sanitized hands.
Like a system. Like a protocol.
Whatever guilt I’d been carrying evaporated on the spot.
My shirt was soaked. My Americano was a puddle on the pavement. My lips were still tingling from the collision. And this stranger was standing here sterilizing himself like I carried something contagious.
"Did you just…" I pointed at the hand sanitizer, still processing. "Did you just sanitize because I touched you?"
Those gray eyes cut to mine. Up close, behind the rectangular glasses, they were sharp and cold and looked at me like I was something unpleasant he’d discovered on the bottom of his shoe.
"You spilled coffee on my shirt," he bit out, his voice clipped and precise, every word enunciated like he was billing me per syllable, "and then you put your mouth on my face. So forgive me for maintaining basic hygiene."
"I didn’t PUT my mouth on your face. You backed into me."
"I was stationary." He said it like he was delivering evidence in a courtroom. "You were the one in motion. The physics of this are not complicated."
I stared at him. "Who talks like that? Are you a physics textbook? Do you narrate your own life in scientific terms?"
He didn’t answer. His eyes dropped from my face to my coffee-soaked shirt, which was clinging to my chest in ways I hadn’t had time to worry about until this exact moment. Then his gaze came back up.
"You should be more careful," he said, "where you point those things."
My brain needed a full second to catch up. He was looking at my chest. Where the coffee spilled. Where his hand had landed approximately forty-five seconds ago.
"Excuse me?" My voice came out high enough to crack glass. "Did you just, did you, are you seriously looking at my chest right now? You grabbed me. YOU grabbed ME."
"An involuntary reflex to prevent a fall."
"That’s your defense? Involuntary reflex?"
"It’s not a defense. It’s a fact."
"You’re a pervert."
He blinked. Once. Like the word needed to be processed and filed. "I’m observing the damage to my shirt, which, I’ll remind you, was clean before you weaponized your beverage against it."
"Weaponized my…" I couldn’t even finish the sentence. "You are the rudest human being I have ever met. And I waitress at a diner in Wynwood, so trust me, the competition is stiff."
He straightened his glasses. Pushed them up the bridge of his nose with one finger, precise, the way someone adjusts a weapon before firing.
"Fascinating," he said. No warmth. No humor. Nothing. "Please never let our paths cross again."
And then he turned and walked away. Still rubbing his hands together. Still disgusted. Still treating the entire encounter like a public health emergency.
I stood there in the middle of the farmers market with iced coffee dripping down my shirt, fury buzzing through every nerve, but underneath it all, faint and completely infuriating, was the memory of his lips against mine—and the treasonous thought that his mouth had been gentler than anything that came out of it.
I found Miley three stalls down, examining a jar of artisanal honey like it held the secrets of the universe.
"Where’d you go? I turned around and you just…" She looked up. Took in the coffee stain. The expression on my face. Her eyes went wide. "What happened to you?"
I told her everything. The kid on the scooter. The crash. The accidental kiss. His hand on my chest. The hand sanitizer.
Miley lost it.
She laughed so hard she had to put the honey down because her hands were shaking. She bent over, wheezing, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "He SANITIZED?" She gasped for air. "After your lips touched? Like you gave him a disease?"
"It’s not funny, Miley."
"It’s the funniest thing I've ever heard." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Maybe the funniest thing that’s ever happened to anyone. You accidentally kissed a germaphobe in a farmers market and he pulled out Purell like it was an EpiPen."
"I didn’t just kiss him. It was an accident. A collision."
"A collision of mouths." She was wheezing again. "That’s a kiss, babe. That’s literally what a kiss is."
"I hate you."
"You love me." She straightened up, still grinning. "Was he at least cute? Tell me the universe gave you something for your trouble."
I thought about his eyes first—storm clouds that had trailed me even after I'd turned away, their edge just as cutting behind the glasses as it was over them.
Then the jaw, angled like it existed to win arguments before his mouth even opened.
Dark hair that hadn't shifted a single millimeter through the entire collision, like even his follicles had been briefed on protocol.
He'd been standing there drenched in my Americano and still somehow looked like I was the mess, not him.
Furious, soaked from the chest down, and completely, offensively unforgettable.
"He was… objectively attractive. In a serial killer kind of way."
"Oh no." Miley pointed at me. "That’s your type."
"I don’t have a type."
"Cold, mean, and devastatingly handsome. That’s been your type since college."
"We’re not doing this." I started walking. "We’re going home. I smell like a coffee shop floor and I’m not discussing my type with you in a farmers market."
She threw her arm around my shoulder, still laughing. "Fine. But I’m probably bringing this up again. Multiple times. Actually forever. After all, this is a once-in-a-lifetime type of encounter."
I let out a long sigh and let her drag me toward the exit while she continued laughing at my humiliation the entire way home.
Back at the apartment, I showered and threw the ruined shirt in the washer with more force than a shirt deserved. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror afterward, hair dripping, towel wrapped tight, and just looked at myself for a minute.
Dark curls I’d given up fighting against Miami humidity. Olive skin that used to glow in golden-hour lighting, back when photography was still my life. Dark brown eyes that had once been bright, now dulled by a kind of exhaustion concealer could hide but nothing could heal.
This was what starting over looked like. Twenty-five, broke, borrowing a bathroom, and still flinching at raised voices. Not exactly the vision board I’d planned.
But I was here. I was standing. And on Monday, I was starting a real job with a real salary, and maybe, just maybe, things were going to start moving in a direction that didn’t feel like falling.
Monday arrived faster than I was ready for.
I put on my best blazer—charcoal, bought on sale three years ago, and holding up well enough if no one looked too closely at the cuffs where the stitching was starting to fray.
Dark pants I'd ironed twice. Small gold earrings Miley had lent me because mine all looked like they came from a boardwalk vendor.
Hair pulled back tight, curls pinned into submission, because I wanted to look put-together even if my insides were a mess.
I checked myself in the mirror four times before Miley physically pushed me out the door.
"You look great. Go make money. Stop fidgeting," she said, clearly entertained by my spiraling.
Hunter Interactive's building sat in the heart of Miami's financial district, all glass and gleaming surfaces, every panel polished enough to throw my reflection back at me before I was ready for it.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the lobby doors and glanced down—scuffs at the toes of my shoes, more obvious now against all that chrome.
My fingers drifted to my cuff and found the fraying thread there, tugging once before I caught myself.
I rode the elevator to the executive floor with my hands gripping my bag strap so hard my knuckles went pale.
The doors opened and Miles was right there, leaning against the reception desk with two coffees, grinning like he’d been waiting for a show.
"First day." He handed me a cup. "You survived the elevator. That’s step one."
"Is step two harder?"
"Step two is meeting my brother." He started walking, and I fell into step beside him. "But we’ll build up to that. Let me give you the tour first. Ease you in. Like a warm bath before the ice bucket."
"That’s not comforting, Miles."
"It wasn’t meant to be." He winked.
He walked me through the floor, pointing out departments, introducing me to people whose names I immediately forgot because my brain was too busy absorbing the sheer scale of the place.
Everything was clean to a fault. Organized.
The desks were spaced evenly, the artwork on the walls was actual art, not motivational posters with stock photos of mountains.
People moved with purpose. Phones rang and were answered before the second ring.
The whole floor hummed with the energy of people who were very good at what they did and very aware that someone was watching.