Chapter 10 Sam
Chapter ten
Sam
Ididn't save the file or close my tabs. I just slammed my laptop shut, grabbed my bag, and followed Tom through the heavy glass doors.
Now, we’re on the sidewalk under a flat gray afternoon sky. The Board meeting is in less than two days, and I am walking toward the L train with a photographer I've known for less than a month.
My practical brain is already rewriting the night to compensate for this detour
Get to Wren's, assess the space, get back to the apartment by seven, put two solid hours into the deck, sleep by midnight.
I pull out my phone, set an immediate reminder to pull Williamsburg commercial comps, and slide the device deep into my pocket.
That is the plan. It is tight, but manageable.
Tom, however, is not fine.
He walks half a step ahead of me, his thumb scrolling and stopping as he rereads the same panicked text over and over. We don't speak on the cold walk down to the station.
The L train isn't crowded yet, so we easily find seats near the back of the car. Tom sits heavily, staring blindly at the screen in his palm. I set my bag between my feet and meticulously zip my jacket just to give my hands something to do.
There are no jokes about my color-coded schedule. The easy, professional version of him, the guy who shows up at site meetings with coffee and strong opinions, is gone.
What's left is quieter. Tighter around the jaw.
"She's going to be okay, you know," I say over the rumble of the train.
Tom finally looks up. "Yeah," he says, setting the phone face-down on his knee. "I know. It's just... Wren doesn't ask for help. So when she actually does—"
"You drop everything."
"Yeah."
The train rocks. I adjust my bag strap, keeping my voice even. "I get that. After my dad left, I was responsible for my siblings. My mom was working two jobs, so someone had to make sure homework got done, permission slips got signed, and everyone got to school."
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen."
The lights flicker as we go underground. Tom is quiet, turning his phone over once on his knee before setting it flat again. "That's a lot of weight for fourteen."
"I didn't know any different." I watch the dark tunnel wall blur past the window. "You just handle it. Because if you don't, things fall apart."
Tom doesn't answer right away. His jaw shifts slightly as he looks down at his hands. "Yeah," he says, his voice low. "I know that feeling."
I look at him. There's no performance in it. No follow-up charm, no pivot to something easier or lighter.
"You and Wren are close," I say.
Tom exhales a slow breath through his nose. "We moved around a lot growing up. Different homes, different rules. You learn not to get attached to too many people." He turns the phone over in his hand again. "Wren was the only constant."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It was." He pauses. "But it made me good at adapting."
I don't say anything as the train finally slows for Bedford Avenue.
Tom stands, bracing himself against the sway of the car, and extends his hand down to me.
I write it off as a purely practical gesture to navigate the jerking train, but as my fingers slip into his, his grip is solidly reassuring.
He helps me stand and lets go before we even reach the sliding doors, but my skin holds onto the phantom warmth of his palm.
I keep my eyes carefully fixed forward.
"She's probably stress-cleaning," Tom says as we step out onto the platform.
"Does she do that?"
"When she's scared? She reorganizes everything. Last time her lease was up, she alphabetized her ink inventory." He glances back at me. "Twice."
I follow him up the concrete stairs toward daylight.
The shop is three blocks from the station. The sharp scent of green soap, rubbing alcohol, and stale espresso hits me the second we push through the front door.
It is a beautiful space. Street level with great visibility. Through the glass, I immediately note the exposed brick, the industrial pendant lights, and a waiting area with two mismatched chairs. The walls are covered in framed original artwork. Someone curated every single inch of this room.
Wren is behind the front desk, laptop open, and she is already standing when the bell above the door rings.
Tom crosses the room. They share a quick hug, the real kind, where you can literally see the tension drop out of someone's shoulders the moment their arms go around the other person. Tom pulls back first, his hands lingering on her shoulders to check her face, before she looks past him at me.
"You brought the architect."
"Sam Morgan." I extend my hand. "Nice to meet you."
She shakes it with a firm, assessing grip. "Wren. Tom's told me approximately nothing about you." She releases my hand. "Which means you're important."
"That's not—" Tom starts.
"He goes quiet about things that matter," she says to me, entirely ignoring her brother. "If he's talking about you nonstop, you're background noise. Radio silence means he's paying attention."
Tom looks desperately up at the ceiling.
Sixty seconds in, and I already like her.
"Thirty days," I say, getting straight to business. "And you've been looking at listings."
"Everything is either wrong, too expensive, or available in six months." She drops heavily back into her desk chair. "I've got a broker, but she keeps sending me spaces in neighborhoods where my clients won't follow me."
"Can I see the shop?"
She pauses. "The whole thing?"
Wren looks at Tom. He gives her a subtle shrug, the shrug of someone who has recently learned to stop second-guessing my process.
"Okay," Wren says, standing back up. "Come on."
She walks me through it methodically, from the front waiting area through the curtain to the back. I pull out my tablet and start sketching, asking rapid-fire questions about plumbing minimums and lighting angles.
I don't need to turn around to know Tom is leaning in the doorframe behind us.
I can see his reflection in the mirror above Wren's station, his arms crossed as he watches his sister walk me through her setup.
Stripped of his corporate armor, he looks younger.
The way he is watching me makes the back of my neck prickle.
I have to force myself to take a breath before I can draw the next line.
"I know it's not much," Wren says, unconsciously running her hand along the edge of the station countertop. "But I built this over six years. Every client, every piece on these walls... I earned every inch of it."
"It's not about the size," I tell her, keeping my voice perfectly level. "It's about what you built here. And we are going to find you a place to do it again."
Wren is quiet.
Tom's reflection catches my eye in the mirror. "See? I told you she was good."
Wren looks at him, then back at me. "You were right."
I pull a stool up to the front desk, pull out my tablet, and open a blank sketch file. "Walk me through your ideal scenario," I say, stylus poised.
Wren sits across from me. "Same square footage, or slightly bigger. Street level. Good foot traffic but not tourist-heavy, and still in this neighborhood so I don't lose my client base."
I start sketching out two simultaneous layouts, one on each side of the screen. I turn the tablet toward her.
Wren leans in, studying it in silence for a long moment before looking up. "How did you do that? I've been trying to explain this to my broker all morning."
"You told me. I just drew it."
"She's good people," Wren says. She doesn't say it to me. She says it to Tom.
Tom smiles, the first real, genuine smile I've seen since his phone buzzed back in the Morgan + Bennett office. "I know."
Good. One problem solved.
While Wren and Tom debate neighborhoods, I continue detailing the sketch. I'm not ignoring them; I'm listening while I work. It's the specific kind of multitasking I perfected at fourteen—tracking three conversations at once and knowing exactly which one was about to need me.
Tom's phone buzzes twice during the walkthrough. He silences it both times without even glancing at the screen. He refuses to step away from us, not even for two minutes.
I set the stylus down.
Tom’s phone buzzes again on the counter. He silences it without even looking.
He hasn't stepped away once. Not when Wren started explaining the lease. Not when she started listing everything she built here. Not even for two minutes.
Across the room, he watches his sister the same way I used to watch my siblings when things started to wobble—already braced, already calculating, already halfway to fixing it before anything actually breaks.
I recognize that stance.
You don’t learn it unless you’ve spent years being the one who catches things.
He rushed over here because this is what you do when someone you love needs you.
And somehow, in the middle of all that, he brought me with him.
I pick the stylus back up, my neck growing warm as Priya's teasing voice suddenly echoes in the back of my brain.
He's cute though, right?
I add a ceiling height note I already wrote.
When Tom's phone buzzes a third time, he finally looks at the screen and stands. "One second. I need to take this."
He steps outside. Through the front window, I watch him pacing the sidewalk with one hand buried in his jacket pocket.
Wren watches him through the glass for a moment before turning to me. "He's different around you."
I keep my eyes strictly on the tablet. "Different how?"
"He brought you here."
"He needed someone with commercial real estate contacts—"
"I have a broker, I didn't need you for that."
She glances out the window again. "He has this habit when he gets uncomfortable. He constantly checks for the exit. Moves around so nobody notices he's already halfway out of the conversation."
"I've seen it."
"He hasn't done it once since you walked in."
Outside, Tom turns back toward the door.
"I'm trying not to make him feel like he has to have an exit plan," I say quietly.
"Good." Wren's eyes follow him through the glass. "Because he will find one if you push. But if you don't—if you just let him figure it out..." She pauses. "He might surprise you."
"He already has."
She looks at me. The corner of her mouth moves, although it's not quite a smile.
The door opens, letting in a blast of street noise as Tom steps back inside, shoving his phone into his pocket. "Ready to head back?"
I close the sketch file and stand. "Wren, I'll send you a curated property list and the zoning guidelines tomorrow morning."
"You really don't have to—"
"I want to," I say, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "Let me help."
Wren nods."Okay. Thank you."
***
The train ride back to Manhattan is packed, standing room only. We end up near the sliding doors, gripping the overhead rails.
We are pressed close together. Tom's chest is inches from my shoulder.
Every time the car sways, his arm brushes mine, sending a sharp, electric jolt straight down my spine.
The air between us feels entirely different from the quiet ride into Brooklyn.
The quiet on the ride here had edges. This quiet is heavy. Thick.
The train violently jerks over a rough patch of track. I stumble, my hand slipping from the rail.
Tom catches my hip instantly, steadying me before I can fall. He doesn't let go immediately. He looks down at me, his green eyes dark in the flickering subway light.
"You're not what I expected," he says over the screech of the rails.
My breath catches. "What did you expect?"
"Someone rigid. Someone who wouldn't detour." His thumb flexes against my hip, just once, before he finally drops his hand. "I'm glad I was wrong."
***
I am home by seven.
I drop my bag on the chair, hook my jacket by the door, and open my laptop on the kitchen table before I've even kicked off my shoes.
Pulling up three commercial Brooklyn listings I flagged during the subway ride, I screenshot them and start drafting an email to Wren.
I include the zoning notes, permit requirements, and square footage ranges for two new neighborhoods she hadn't considered.
I am three paragraphs in when my phone buzzes against the wood.
Tom
Wren just texted me. Called you "good people." High praise. She doesn't trust easily.
I read it twice, my heart doing a strange, fluttering rhythm in my chest.
Neither do I.
Three seconds pass.
Yeah. I noticed. Makes it mean more.
I set the phone face-down on the table, my heart doing a strange, fluttering rhythm in my chest.
The Harbor Board presentation is still open in another tab on my screen. Forty-five slides. I check the clock in the corner of the monitor. I have thirty-six hours before I need to be sitting at that conference table.
I should open it.
I look at my phone. I look at the blinking cursor in my email to Wren.
I close the Board presentation tab.
I'll review it in the morning. It is a terrifying violation of my usual routine, and the Board meeting is only thirty-six hours away. But for the first time in my entire career, the plan doesn't feel like the most important thing in the room.
Leaving my laptop open to the real estate listings, I pick up my phone and read Tom's text again.