Chapter 5
GAbrIEL
Knox’s text arrived Monday morning at seven forty-five, while Gabriel was driving to work.
Knox: My car’s still in the shop. I need a ride to Park Slope. Devney wants fresh danish from that bakery for the ten o’clock meeting.
Gabriel stopped at a red light and answered.
Gabriel: Which bakery?
Knox: Flour & Honey. Devney’s obsessed with the place. I’m supposed to pick up the standing order.
Gabriel: Can’t she send someone else?
Knox: Apparently this requires my “personal touch.” Her words. Also, she wants me to try some new honey almond thing the baker’s testing.
Gabriel: She can’t fire you if you don’t go.
Knox: She said she’d make my life miserable until Ronan did it for her. Same result.
Gabriel stared at his phone.
Park Slope was two blocks from Tessa’s coffee shop. It was the neighborhood where he had run into her last Thursday, where they had sat across from each other and pretended they were capable of casual conversation.
He had managed to avoid thinking about her for approximately six consecutive hours over the weekend, a personal record achieved through aggressive contract review and a gym session that had left his trainer concerned about his cardiovascular limits.
The light changed. He pulled into a parking garage near Oath Capital. Park Slope was a big neighborhood. The odds of running into her again were minimal. He was picking up danish, not camping out at her coffee shop hoping for another accidental encounter. That would be pathetic.
Gabriel: When?
Knox: Eight thirty. Gives us time to pick up and get back before the meeting.
Gabriel: I’m at the office. I’ll swing by.
Gabriel spent the next forty-five minutes pretending to focus on emails. At eight twenty, he gave up and grabbed his keys.
Knox was waiting outside his building when Gabriel pulled up at eight thirty, phone pressed to his ear, looking like whoever was on the other end had personally offended him and his entire bloodline.
“I don’t care if the timeline’s aggressive. That’s why you’re being paid.” Knox slid into the passenger seat without breaking stride in his conversation. “Find a way to make it work, or I’ll find someone who can.”
He ended the call and looked at Gabriel. “Contractors. They act like moving a wall requires an act of God and a blessing from the Pope.”
“It’s your apartment.”
“It’s a box with windows and terrible lighting. I’m trying to make it habitable.” Knox buckled his seatbelt. “How was your weekend? Thrilling, I assume.”
“I reviewed contracts and went to the gym.”
“Naturally. Because that’s what normal people do on weekends.” Knox checked his phone. “Take Seventh. It’s called Flour & Honey.”
Gabriel pulled into traffic toward Brooklyn. Monday morning meant stop-and-go progress, everyone commuting with their coffee and their Monday dread.
Knox scrolled through something on his phone, then looked up. “You’ve been weird since the wedding.”
Gabriel kept his eyes on the road. “I haven’t been weird.”
“You’ve checked your phone forty-seven times during meetings this week.
You’re never on your phone during meetings.
” Knox’s voice carried that casual tone he used when he was anything but casual.
“And Thursday you came back from checking on my construction crew looking like you’d eaten gas station sushi. ”
“Your crew was fine.”
“I’m sure they were. What I want to know is what happened in Park Slope that made you look like that.”
Knox studied him with the expression that meant he had already drawn conclusions and was simply waiting for Gabriel to confirm them.
“Does this have anything to do with a certain caterer who makes you forget how to breathe?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s a yes.” Knox leaned back. “You know what the problem with you is? You think if you don’t acknowledge something, it doesn’t exist. Meanwhile your body’s staging a full-scale rebellion every time she walks into a room.”
“Knox.”
“I’m saying. The meeting last week was painful to watch. You looked at her like she was the only person in the building.”
Gabriel’s hands tightened on the wheel. “What did Ronan say?”
“That you need to keep your head in the game.” Knox paused. “His words, not mine.”
“My head is in the game.”
“Is it? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve been distracted all week. Ever since our best friend entered into marital servitude and you saw the caterer again.”
Gabriel didn’t answer. Traffic crept forward.
“So what’s the story?” Knox asked. “With you and the caterer. And don’t tell me there isn’t one, because I sat through that meeting.”
“We dated in high school. I told you that.”
“You told me the bare minimum, which means there’s more.”
Gabriel turned onto Seventh Avenue. “We were together for two years. Broke up at graduation. Hadn’t seen each other since.”
“Until the wedding?”
“Yes.”
“And now she’s catering all our events, and you’re what? Fine with it?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
There was a silence.
“I made my choice when I signed The Oath.” The words came out harder than he intended. “It was my idea. I started this whole thing. Now I have to see it through. I’ve got four years left.”
Knox watched him. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
They parked half a block down from the bakery and got out. Up ahead, warm lighting spilled through the window of Flour & Honey, and people moved inside.
Gabriel stopped mid-stride.
Across the street, a woman in a black jacket and dark jeans was walking the same direction. Tessa. Her hair loose around her shoulders. She slowed beside a man slumped against the brick of the bodega—no shoes, torn clothing.
Knox nearly collided with him from behind. “What?”
“That’s Tessa.”
Knox followed his gaze. “Where?”
“Across the street. Black jacket.”
They watched her reach into her bag and pull out something wrapped in paper and a bottle of water. She set them beside the man with a quiet word too soft to carry across the street. Then she straightened and disappeared into Flour & Honey.
“And that,” Knox said, “is why we have a homeless crisis. People like your girl make it easy for them.”
“I’m sure she’d say she’s helping. And she’s not my girl.”
They entered the bakery. It smelled like butter and brown sugar.
Tessa stood at a table with Lucy, who had her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail and flour dusting her apron.
Lucy looked up and saw them. “Oh look. It’s Devney’s boys.”
Tessa’s head turned. Her eyes found Gabriel’s, and she went still.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello.”
That was all he managed. His brain had stopped working the moment her eyes found his.
She drew a small breath. “So. Monday morning.”
“Monday morning.”
“Lucy and I were working on partnership details.”
“Right.”
The air between them felt charged. Five feet separated them, close enough to catch the hint of her perfume. Citrus and sandalwood.
Lucy moved behind the counter. “I’ll get your order boxed up.”
Tessa’s gaze shifted to the register. Gabriel followed and tried to steady his breathing.
Knox approached the counter like he was entering hostile territory, shoulders back and jaw tight. He had the posture of a man who expected the world to accommodate him and couldn’t understand why this particular corner of Brooklyn hadn’t received the memo.
“I’m here for the order for Devney Wilder.”
Lucy didn’t look up from the pastry box she was assembling. “Magic word?”
Knox’s eye twitched. “Excuse me?”
“Please. The magic word is please.” She glanced up then, taking in his tailored suit, his expensive watch, the expression that suggested he’d never been asked to say please in his life. “They don’t teach manners at whatever finishing school produces guys like you?”
“I wasn’t aware purchasing baked goods required an etiquette lesson.”
“Everything requires basic human decency. That’s free, by the way. Unlike the danish.” She filled the box, her eyes never leaving his. “Thirty-eight dollars please.”
Knox pulled out his wallet. “Are you always this charming with customers?”
“Only the ones who walk in here looking like they’ve got a stick up their—“
“Lucy.” Tessa’s voice carried a warning.
“— spine,” Lucy finished sweetly. “I was going to say spine.” She wasn’t. Everyone knew she wasn’t. “You know what would help with that? Oatmeal. Lots of fiber. Really loosens things up.”
Knox stared at her.
“Keep the change.” He dropped two twenties on the counter, picked up the box, and turned to leave.
“Wow. A whole two dollars,” Lucy called after him. “Don’t spend your generosity all in one place.”
Knox stopped and turned back. His gaze found hers and held it for a beat too long.
“Are you always like this?”
“Only with people who deserve it.”
“And you’ve decided I deserve it based on what, exactly? Thirty seconds of interaction?”
“I didn’t need thirty seconds.” Lucy crossed her arms. “I clocked you at the wedding. Expensive suit, expensive watch, looked at everyone like you were calculating their net worth.”
“You noticed what I was wearing at the wedding?”
Lucy’s cheeks flushed, just barely. “I notice things. It’s called being observant.”
“Observant of what, exactly?”
“Of the people my best friend was marrying into. You included.”
“And what did you decide about me?”
She didn’t answer and the silence stretched.
Knox shook his head, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “You’re incorrigible.”
“And yet here you are, still talking to me.”
He had no answer for that.
Knox turned and headed for the door without another word. The bell over the door chimed with more force than the bell had been designed for.
Lucy disappeared into the back of the bakery, muttering about impossible men and their attitudes.
Gabriel exhaled.
Tessa covered her mouth, trying not to laugh. “Lucy is in rare form.”
“She’s delightful.”
“She grows on you.”
“Like mold.”
“Give her time.”
Gabriel glanced toward the door where Knox had vanished, then back at Tessa. He wanted to stay. He wanted an excuse to linger in a bakery that smelled like butter and sugar. But Knox was waiting in the car with Devney’s danish, and they had a meeting in forty minutes.
“I should go.”
Tessa nodded. “Right.”
“Thursday’s event looks good. Devney forwarded the final menu.”
“Good.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll see you then.”
Their eyes met and held long enough for Gabriel to memorize the small freckle near her left ear he’d somehow forgotten.
“See you Thursday.”
He left before he could talk himself into staying.
Back in the car, Knox sat with the bakery box on his lap.
“The baker’s terrifying.”
“She wasn’t that bad.”
“She said I needed oatmeal to loosen things up.”
“She wasn’t being literal, Knox.”
“Then what was she being?”
“She was saying you seem uptight. Emotionally constipated.”
Knox’s jaw tightened. “I’m not uptight.”
“You walked in there like you were about to fire someone. She pushed back.” Gabriel shrugged. “She’s direct.”
“She’s rude.”
“Call it what you like.”
Knox didn’t answer. He pulled out his phone.
Gabriel merged into traffic and let his mind drift back to Tessa. The wedding had been one collision. The coffee shop had been another. The bakery made three. In a city of eight million people, that wasn’t coincidence anymore.
Back at Oath Capital, Gabriel hung up his jacket and tried to focus on the morning’s work. He couldn’t. He kept circling back to her.
Three encounters in two weeks. Three times she’d been within arm’s reach, and three times he’d let her walk. Nothing in Gabriel’s life happened by accident. He engineered outcomes—quarterly, contractually, by the hour if necessary.
He pulled up the vendor list on his phone. Devney had sent it to the team that morning, and Tessa’s contact sat there among the florists and lighting contractors. Professional. Accessible. One tap away.
His thumb hovered over her number.
He tapped call.
She answered on the third ring. “Thorne Events.”
“It’s Gabriel.”
Silence on the line. Then, quieter, “Hi.”
One syllable, and he was sixteen again. “I got your number from the vendor list.”
“Did you need something?”
“No. That’s not why I called.”
“Why did you call?”
“Because I’m tired of leaving it up to chance.”
She didn’t respond.
“Coffee,” Gabriel said. “Thursday morning. Your coffee shop. On purpose this time.”
“Gabriel—”
“I know it’s complicated. I know we have history.
I know there are a hundred reasons this is a bad idea.
” He exhaled. “But I also know that every time I see you, I can’t think about anything else for days.
So either we stop running into each other entirely, or we stop pretending it doesn’t mean something. ”
The pause stretched long enough that he thought she might hang up.
“Thursday,” she said. “Eight o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“I know.”
“And what are we doing?”
“Coffee.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“I’m not pretending to know yet.”
“Don’t show up early,” she said. “I’ll need the full hour to talk myself into coming.”
“See you then.”
Gabriel pocketed his phone and headed for the conference room.
The Hartman meeting ran ninety minutes. He contributed where necessary, kept his head in the room, and didn’t check his phone once.
When it ended, Knox left without a word. Ronan lingered.
“You good?”
“I’m fine.”
“Knox seems off.”
“He’ll live.”
Ronan studied him a beat longer than necessary, then nodded. “All right. Catch you later.”
He left.
Gabriel returned to his office, closed the door, and checked his phone.
One new message.
Knox: I’m not going to be the last man standing.