Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Incoming video call: Gage
She swiped.
He was standing in his bedroom, just outside the open doors of his walk-in wardrobe.
Tall, broad, built for control. The tuxedo jacket was gone, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, bow tie undone around his neck.
Blue eyes. A face too perfectly symmetrical to be soft.
Austerely handsome in a way that made her want to reach through the phone just to feel the heat of his skin and remind herself he was real.
Bea sat up in bed, face soft with sleep, hair tangled down one shoulder. The ultra-fine merino crewneck she was wearing was massive on her, charcoal grey. Clearly a man’s.
Gage’s eyes narrowed slightly, peering at it. “That’s mine.”
She looked down. “Yeah.”
“You took it.”
She shrugged under the blanket. “You never said I couldn’t.”
“I said you could wear it. You didn’t say you were taking it across continents.”
“Are you demanding it back?”
“Not yet.” His gaze dragged over her. “But I will.”
Her heart leapt at the double meaning.
He sat down on the edge of his bed. The bow tie slipped from his collar as he pulled it free and set it aside.
“Christmas chaos over?” he asked.
“Mostly. Everyone left around one. The house is eighty percent back to normal. My cousins ate everything that wasn’t nailed down.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”
“For what?”
“You sent me a message at midnight.”
Bea groaned softly. “That was a whole day ago.”
He leaned back slightly, one hand resting on his knee. “Which means I’ve been very patient.”
She gave him a look. “You really want to have this conversation while you’re still half in formalwear?”
“Would it help if I took the rest off?”
Her heart stuttered. “You’re being smug.”
“Spill, sweetheart.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell him. The words were just hard to say. “I was dreaming.” Bea tucked her chin into her collar. Stalling. “You were in my room.”
Gage said nothing.
“You came in after work. I was in bed already. You didn’t say much. You just…we were about to…” She bit inside her cheek. “It felt real.”
The silence between them was loaded.
“And then you woke up. Without me.”
She nodded, fingers tightening in the sleeves of his hoodie. “I wanted you here. I wish it was real.”
It was the closest she’d come to admitting what they both knew—that she shouldn’t have gone home for the whole summer. Not without him.
“Me, too.”
Bea let out a slow breath, trying to clear the heaviness from her chest. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was too early in the morning for repentance.
“How was dinner?” she asked softly.
“Fine.”
“Formal and full of polished glassware?” she teased.
A faint smile touched his mouth. “That about sums it up.”
“Who was there?”
He listed names. She recognized a few of them: Nate West, his best friend. Some old friends of the family. A few from the King Global Capital board.
Then, like it was nothing: “Catherine.”
Bea didn’t flinch. It hit anyway. Her stomach twisted. She kept her expression even, gaze fixed just below the camera.
Catherine Vale. The woman who was everything she wasn’t. Diamond of an elite UR family, family friend to the Kings, and—by every available metric—the perfect match for Gage.
Her strengths: looking like a fashion editorial in motion, complimenting people into therapy, and reducing Bea from a respectable five-foot-five to approximately the size of Tom Thumb. Of course she’d sat across from him, glass of wine in hand, probably in something black and backless.
Bea had chosen to go home. Catherine had stayed. Where he was.
It was ridiculous, really, but it hadn’t quite occurred to her that Gage might be fielding the same kind of attention she’d been trying to avoid.
“Classic guest list,” she said, since she had to say something.
“Mm.”
“What about New Year’s?” she changed the subject, since the last thing she wanted to hear more about was a dinner where Catherine had been. “You going to the Meridian?”
The Meridian was the residence of the First Minister, the leader of the UR, and the official Hall of State. It looked almost otherworldly, rising from the earth like a commandment—domed, encircled in glass, as if the world had been built around it rather than before it.
She’d never been inside, but she knew Gage had. Families like the Kings, part of the billionaire class whose empires underpinned the UR’s economic strength, were considered a matter of national interest. Politicians didn’t just know them. They relied on them.
“Nah,” he replied. “Probably just Nate and a few others.”
“At yours?”
“Or Nate’s.”
She nodded.
“You?” he asked. “New Year’s?”
“I’ll do something with Claire,” she said. “A party downtown. Just someone’s apartment.”
“Who’s going to be there?” Gage asked.
“Some people from U of T,” she said. “A few from high school.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Nothing fancy by UR standards. Food, drinks, music you wouldn’t like.”
He waited in that calm way of his that always made her say more than she meant to.
I’m walking straight into this one.
“There’s…this one guy,” she murmured. “Logan. He’s messaged a bit. Called once.”
A pause. “When?”
“The day after I got back.”
“And he doesn’t know about me.”
He couldn’t have known that. And yet, somehow, he did.
“Not exactly,” Bea hedged.
“Why not?”
“I haven’t really told anyone. Just Claire. My parents.”
Because she didn’t know how to explain it. Because it still felt too big, too strange, too far from the girl everyone thought she was. Beatriz Cruz from Toronto, dating Gage King, billionaire from Northgate.
And then, because she was already halfway in and Boxing Day was as good a time as any for confessions, she added what was least likely to ease his mind. “He was something. A while ago. Not a boyfriend. But…something.”
Even through the screen, Bea felt Gage register it. Not because he was surprised. Because this confirmed what he already knew: someone would try. Someone always did.
“I haven’t really responded,” she added quickly.
“But you didn’t tell him to stop.”
“Not exactly.”
He waited until she met his eyes. “You will.”
She nodded.
Another pause. Just long enough to tighten everything. “Good.”
Bea inhaled. “If you were here, this wouldn’t be an issue.”
“No. It wouldn’t.”
He didn’t say I told you so. That was the voice in her own head.
Bea’s bedroom was thick with steam, perfume, and the low thrum of music from her speaker; something moody with just enough beat to keep them moving.
Clothes were draped over the desk chair.
An eyelash curler sat abandoned beside two tumbling lipsticks.
Somewhere under the bed, a pair of backup heels waited in case the main ones failed.
Claire Park, ride-or-die since Scholastic Book Fairs and High School Musical, was on the floor in a silk tank and leggings, surrounded by open makeup bags. She was holding a mascara wand in one hand and a half-eaten clementine in the other.
“So today,” she said, peeling the fruit with theatrical aggression, “a guy at the diner told me I had ‘resting enchantress face.’ Which, first of all, probably tracks. Second of all, sir, maybe don’t try to flirt with your server while your wife is in the bathroom.”
Bea huffed a laugh from the bed. “Was it the guy with the Bluetooth in one ear and the boat shoes?”
Claire pointed the mascara like a weapon. “Always the ones who say ‘my guy’ unironically.”
Bea laughed and reached for her lip liner.
“Table seven was a guy in a Patagonia vest who tried to explain gravity with a spoon, an ice cube, and the confidence of someone who once watched a Neil deGrasse Tyson video.”
Bea laughed. “And he still asked for your number?”
“He told me I had ‘a physicist’s smile.’ I don’t even know what that means. Do physicists smile differently?”
“I think he was trying to say you’re smart.”
Claire raised her glass in mock salute. “And hot. Don’t leave out the important part.”
Bea grinned, reaching for her mascara. “I love how every shift, there’s at least two come-ons.”
“Yep. I radiate ‘single woman who definitely needs a man.’”
“You chose this.”
Claire rolled onto her side. “This is karma for thinking I could work shifts and still survive a five-year degree.”
“You’re almost done.”
“One more year, one more prac, and then—bam—I get to make sure million-dollar skyscrapers don’t collapse.
” Claire stretched with a groan, then crossed to Bea’s mirror, fluffing her hair and checking her eyeliner.
“Be honest. Do I look like a woman who can design a load-bearing column and still break hearts?”
Bea looked up. “Claire Bear, you’re the gold standard for hot engineer.”
“Perfect. That’s the brand I’m going for.”
There was a knock on the door before it opened. Bea’s umma entered, armed with a small plate of sliced fruit and a watchful gaze.
“Something to eat,” she said in Korean to the girls, placing the plate on the desk. “Don’t drink on an empty stomach.”
Bea turned, smiling. “We won’t.”
“Have fun. But not too much,” Umma warned, and the door clicked shut again.
Bea exhaled, flopping onto the edge of the bed. “She forgets I’ve lived away from home most of this year. That I’m not sixteen anymore.”
She glanced at the dress hanging on the back of her closet door. It felt like power disguised as pretty—soft lace in deep red, almost bare shoulders, and an asymmetrical hemline that didn’t ask for permission.
Claire followed her gaze. “Is that the one?”
Bea scratched at the inside of her wrist. “I bought it for…something else.”
“For Gage?”
Bea nodded. “Before I came home.”
Claire propped herself up on one elbow. “So now it’s repurposed. Shame to waste it.”
“I don’t know. It feels like…too much?”
“For who?” Claire asked. “Logan?”
Bea looked at her sidelong, but didn’t reply.