Chapter 15
THE GUILT IS KILLING ME
Andie
The city sparkles in the sunlight, like it’s trying to impress a beauty contest judge.
I park two blocks away—on the far side of the river, the side where the streetlights are cracked and the sidewalk buckles up around the roots of old trees—and walk the rest of the way.
Café Soleil is one of those places that feels private even when it’s full.
The window is narrow, its yellow light fogged.
You can’t see anything from the street except the vague geometry of bodies moving behind the glass.
I push open the door and step into warmth, in every sense.
The smell hits first: scorched espresso, heavy cream, the earthy rot of overwatered ferns in the corner.
The walls are exposed brick, dark with decades of brewing and spill.
Mismatched velvet chairs sag in little clusters around battered tables, and a redhead with a sleeve tattoo is hunched over the counter, dropping a record onto a turntable.
Billie Holiday. “Strange Fruit,” slow and bleak and perfect.
The barista doesn’t look up. Maybe she knows not to.
Thomas is already here. I see him before he sees me, which is a pleasure, because my man is drop-dead gorgeous.
He’s angled into a shadowed corner, not quite hidden, but not on display either.
Black wool sweater, collar high enough to half-cover his jaw, and his hands—both of them—clamped around a glass of iced tea.
There’s a plate with an untouched croissant, and a mug across from him.
When he finally looks up, it’s as if he’s expecting me.
His eyes find mine instantly, bright blue, and in that split second the whole world shrinks to the distance between us.
I feel the shiver all the way down, nerves fizzing.
It’s the kind of butterflies that you get when you first meet someone attractive, but in my case, I’ve been dating Thomas for a while now.
How lucky am I? To still feel what I feel after all this time.
I walk to him, steps slow, and see how his gaze never leaves my face, tracking every inch of my approach.
He stands as I get to the table, which should look old-fashioned or awkward but doesn’t.
He towers over the room, over me, but he doesn’t reach for my hand, doesn’t lean in for a kiss.
He just looks at me, drinking me in, until I sit.
When he lowers himself back into the chair, it’s with the same masculine grace that’s always captivated me.
“Hi,” I say. My voice is soft, but not shy.
Thomas smiles, just a flicker at the mouth, nothing like the wolfish grins he gave me in private. “Hi, sweetheart.” His voice is lower than usual, almost hoarse. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. I’ve missed you today.”
His words make my heart pound because again, we’ve been dating in secret for a while now, and our souls are absolutely entwined.
Yet it’s hard because now I literally live with his daughter in an off-campus apartment.
It’s difficult for me to slip away unnoticed, and when I do, I make up excuses that sound lame, even to me.
I remember the last time I tried to sneak out to meet Thomas.
“Are you really working this much?” Mary Kate asked when I said I had to cater another event.
“Oh yeah,” I fibbed, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “The location is far too, so I thought I’d just stay overnight with a friend.”
“Who?” Kayleigh asked, her brow scrunching. “Do we know them?”
“No, because it’s someone I cater with,” I answer lightly. “Bye now!”
The girls nodded, but I could tell they were suspicious because it’s summer, traditionally a slow time for the school.
Yet I’m always working events, so it seems a little fishy.
Ah well. A girl can only do so much. With a sigh, I wrap my hands around the latte waiting for me.
The ceramic is hot, almost scalding, but I hold on until my knuckles pale.
Thomas watches this, his own hands curled tight around his glass, thumb stroking the rim in a restless loop.
“I miss you too. And thanks for the coffee,” I say, raising my cup.
He nods. “The joe is terrible here,” he says, with a twitch of amusement. “But the ambiance makes up for it.”
I take a sip, and he’s right—the coffee is acidic, thin, more like battery acid than anything else. But I keep drinking, if only for something to do with my hands.
Sunlight streams in through the window. A couple in the far corner murmurs in French, so softly the sound dissolves into the hiss of the espresso machine. The record skips, then restarts. Time feels slow and sticky, like it’s resisting our presence.
“Have you been waiting long?” I ask.
“No,” he says, “I like to watch the weather.” His gaze drifts to the window, then back to me, as if I’m more interesting.
There’s a rhythm to this, I realize. A dance of silence and small talk, of watching and being watched. I let it play out, sipping my latte, feeling the air between us flex and contract.
After a while, I say, “You look tired.”
He shrugs, the sweater pulling tight across his shoulders. “I flew in this morning. London was a disaster.”
I want to ask why, but I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about work. He wants something else, something quieter. I tuck my hair behind my ear and look down at the table, studying the grain in the wood, the ring where his glass has left a mark.
Thomas reaches out, slow and deliberate, and touches my hand—just a single fingertip, then all five, spreading across my knuckles. His hand is warm, rough with the fine callus of someone who lifts weights regularly. The contact is so small and yet so overwhelming that I freeze, unable to move.
He lets his hand linger there, then withdraws. “I missed you, Andie,” he says, very quietly. “I really mean it. More than I thought I would.”
I don’t say it back, but he reads it in my eyes.
For a long minute, neither of us speaks. We just let the sounds of the café settle over us: the scrape of a chair leg, the low hum of Billie’s voice, the patter of rain. Outside, the world is cold and gray, but inside, it feels like the last safe place on earth.
Finally, Thomas sets his mug down, hard enough that it clinks. “We should talk about this,” he says. “About us. If you’re comfortable.”
I nod, but my heart is beating so fast it drowns out the words.
He leans forward, elbows on the table, fingers tented. “When this started, I thought it was just chemistry.” He watches my face for a reaction. “Just a fling, nothing else. But it’s more than that now. You know it is.”
I can’t look at him, so I fix my gaze on the rising swirl of milk in my cup. “It is,” I say, barely above a whisper.
He exhales, the sound shaky. “It scares the hell out of me, Andie. You’re so young. I’m…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
I finally meet his eyes, and the nakedness in them nearly undoes me. “I’m not that young,” I say. “And you’re not that old.”
He laughs, soft and genuine. “You’re right. But the math isn’t the problem.”
“What is?” My hands tighten on the mug.
“Stella,” he says, the word landing like a dropped weight. “She’s the problem.”
I bite my lip, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. “She’s my best friend,” I say, and even as I say it, I know how small it sounds.
Thomas nods, and his hands find each other, fingers lacing tight. “I know. I’ve tried to figure out if it would be worse for her to find out from me, or from you, or from someone else. It’s a shit scenario all around.”
A couple of beats go by, filled only by Billie’s voice and the clatter of spoons in the bus bin.
Finally, he says, “I want you, Andie. I want all of you. I wish you were living in my penthouse, not in that shared apartment with Stella and your friends. I want to feed you by hand, to wake up with you. I want to…” He trails off, searching for the line between confession and threat.
The words wrap around me, too heavy and too sweet at the same time. My eyes drop to the table, and I tuck my hair again, fingers shaking.
There’s something I’m not saying. Something huge and poisonous that sits in the back of my mouth, threatening to spill out. I almost blurt it—about the bet, about the sex video on my phone, about how I don’t deserve any of this. But the words die there, on my tongue, and all I do is nod.
Thomas leans back, his gaze burning through me. “We didn’t meet in a normal way, you and I,” he says. “We don’t have what a lot of people would define as a “normal” relationship because of our age gap. But I’d rather have this more than anything.”
My throat is tight. I force myself to swallow, then say, “Me too.” My voice is raw, stripped down to the nerve.
The billionaire smiles then, a real one. “That’s my girl,” he says. He reaches for my hand again, this time holding on.
We sit like that for a long time, the rain turning from drizzle to downpour, the windows shivering with each gust of wind. The café grows quieter, the other patrons fading around us, until it feels like we’re the only people left in the room.
I look at him, really look, and realize: I want all of him, too. The mess, the risk, the way he makes my skin come alive.
But there’s still the matter of the secret. The thing that hangs between us, unsaid.
I try to push it down, just for today.
Because for now, in the golden warmth of Café Soleil, in the shelter of his hand, it almost feels possible. Maybe even real.
Maybe enough.
Thomas lets the silence hang as long as possible, then breaks it with the confidence of a man who knows what he wants.
“We need to be smart about this,” he says, voice shifting to the register I’ve heard him use in boardrooms and at donor dinners.
“I’m a trustee at Century, and you’re a gorgeous young co-ed.
This isn’t a normal problem, Andie.” He runs a hand through his hair, then gestures at me, helpless.
“I could lose my position. You could lose everything.”