12. Something Real #2
After dropping Ava off, Riley returned with sand on the hem of her pants, her hair wind-tossed around her face, and that focused look she got when she was shifting from Ava's world into the resort's.
She checked her phone once, probably for the camp's update app, then tucked it away and lifted her tablet like armor.
"Ready?" Bianca asked her.
Riley glanced toward me, only briefly.
Then she nodded. "Ready."
Victor Raines arrived with two associates, three phones between them, and the kind of smile men wore when they had already decided what a place was worth before stepping inside it.
I met him at the main entrance with Donny on my left and Bianca on my right. Riley stood half a pace behind Bianca, tablet in hand, hair pinned back, expression calm enough that no one who didn't know her would see the nerves.
I saw them.
Then she lifted her chin and began walking Victor through the revised event flow for the celebrity wedding like she had owned that lobby for years.
"We've shifted the press barrier away from the south drive," she said, guiding them toward the terrace.
"It protects guest arrival photos without trapping vendors in the same corridor.
The ceremony load-in will happen before sunrise, and hospitality staff will rotate through the service elevator to avoid interrupting the bridal party. "
Victor glanced at her tablet, then at me. "Efficient."
"It has to be," Riley said before I could respond. "Privacy is the luxury here. Not just the view."
Bianca's mouth curved. Mine almost did too.
Riley moved them through the terrace doors, into salt air and heat rising off pale stone. The ocean threw light across the glass walls. She pointed out the tenting plan, the power access, the camera blind spots, the way the sound would carry after dark.
She was sharp. Steady. Not performing authority, just inhabiting it. Pride hit me hard enough that I had to look away.
Victor didn't miss it.
"Impressive," he said, his gaze sliding from Riley to me. "Though, let's be honest. This place has many assets, but the real draw is still you."
Riley's hand paused over her screen.
I looked at him. "The resort stands on its own."
"Of course." Victor smiled wider. "But a Santoro property without Santoro? Different math. Your name sells rooms. Your history sells attention. A champion's comeback story could sell the world."
The word "comeback" landed wrong. Donny shifted beside me.
"There is no comeback," I said.
Victor lifted both hands. "Hypothetically."
Riley looked at him then. Not offended. Not rattled. Watching. Taking the measure of the room beneath the conversation.
Victor kept talking about brand reach and global markets, but I tracked Riley instead. The smallest crease between her brows. The way her thumb tapped once against the tablet before stilling.
She had heard what I heard. Victor wasn't investing in the resort. He was circling the old version of me. And for the first time all morning, Riley stopped looking like she was afraid my name might open doors for her. She looked afraid of what someone else might demand I walk back through.
Ava had gone down earlier than usual.
Camp did that to her. She loved it, but it cost her. The bright sun, the group games, the constant language of other children, the careful effort of holding herself together in a world that never stopped shifting.
By dinner, her words had gone thinner. By bath time, she was humming the same three notes into her towel. By the time Riley tucked the weighted blanket around her, Ava was already half asleep, one hand curled around the smoothest sunrise shell from that morning.
Riley stayed in her doorway a little longer than she needed to.
I noticed because I was doing the same thing.
Maybe we were both learning the shape of what it meant to care for Ava from the same side of the hallway. Maybe that was why the silence after Riley went to her room felt heavier than it should have.
I found Riley on the balcony with her elbows on the rail and the city spread below her.
She had changed into a soft white dress that moved with the ocean breeze, her hair loose against her back. For a second, I stayed in the doorway and let myself want.
Then she said, "You hover loudly for a man who barely talks."
I stepped out. "Occupational hazard."
"From fighting?"
"From parenting."
That made her smile, but it faded when she looked back at the skyline. Miami glittered beneath us, bright and impossible, all that money and heat pretending the dark didn't exist between the lights.
I came beside her, close enough that our arms brushed.
"You've been quiet since the walkthrough," I said.
"So have you."
"I'm always quiet."
"Ava already disproved that."
A laugh moved through me. Riley's shoulder softened against mine, and for a moment, we were just there. No staff. No investors. No rules we had figured out.
Then she said, "I imagined staying today."
The weight of it was disproportionate, and I felt every ounce.
"In Miami?"
"In Miami. In event work. In this world." Her fingers curled around the railing. "Not as a nanny who stumbled into something. Not as the woman people whisper about because she caught your eye. As myself."
"You are yourself."
"I know." She swallowed. "But I know how easy it is for women to disappear inside powerful men's lives."
The instinct rose fast. To promise. Protect. Make it simple because I wanted her to stop sounding like she was already preparing to leave.
But nothing about me was simple.
So I stayed quiet.
Riley glanced at me. "That was not the reassuring silence I was hoping for."
"It isn't you."
"I know." Her voice softened, which almost made it worse. "It's still something."
I gripped the railing and looked out at the water beyond the resort lights. "The night we met. At the hotel bar."
Her body went still beside mine.
"That was Donny's idea," I admitted. "Not the bar exactly. But getting out. Being seen. Pretending I was still a man who knew how to want something without feeling guilty for it."
Riley didn't speak.
"He had been pushing for months. Longer than that, if I'm honest. Telling me Zoe wouldn't have wanted me buried alive with her memory." My throat tightened around her name. "I hated him for it sometimes."
"But you went."
"I went because I was tired of everyone looking at me like grief had made me holy." I let out a breath that didn't clear anything. "And then you were there."
Her hand shifted closer to mine on the rail. Not touching. Offering.
I looked down at it.
"I'm glad I met you," I said. "That part isn't complicated."
"And the rest?"
The rest was Ava asleep down the hall. Zoe's laugh still trapped in certain corners of the house. Riley's future unfolding in a world where my name could either open doors or poison them. My body remembering how to reach for her before my mind could catch up.
"The rest is where I don't trust myself," I said.
Her eyes lifted to mine. "What does that mean?"
"It means I want you." The words came out rougher than I intended. "It means wanting you is the easiest part of this."
Hurt flickered across her face anyway. "And the hard part?"
"Believing I can reach for you without asking you to carry everything I still haven't put down."
She looked toward the city. "You know wanting to protect me from your damage can become another way of deciding for me."
The truth of it landed clean.
"I know," I said. "I'm trying to figure out the difference before I make you pay for it."
She nodded once. Not reassured. But not dismissed either.
I reached for her hand because letting her stand there with nothing felt worse than touching her with too little. She let me take it.
I lifted her knuckles to my mouth and kissed them softly. Her fingers trembled once against my lips. It was affection. It was apology. It was everything I could give and not enough of what she deserved.
When I let her hand go, the space between us felt wider than before.
I stayed beside her anyway, both of us looking out over Miami, while the thing growing between us turned heavier in the dark.
Eventually, Riley murmured good night and walked inside without looking back, leaving me alone on the balcony with everything I hadn't been brave enough to do.
No one was supposed to find me in the resort gym before dawn.
That was the point.
Five mornings a week—sometimes six—I took the private elevator down before the breakfast staff arrived and the resort remembered I belonged to it. Security knew not to interrupt unless the building was burning. Donny knew showing up early meant risking whatever I could throw.
It was the closest thing I had to a ritual, which meant it was also a pattern.
I had slept badly, if an hour of staring at the ceiling counted as sleep.
Riley's face kept returning in the dark: the careful nod when I gave her honesty instead of certainty, the tremor in her fingers when I kissed her knuckles, the distance I had left between us because I didn't know how to cross it without dragging ghosts behind me.
I had wanted to go after her. I had stayed where I was.
That was the problem with grief. People talked about moving on like it was a door you either opened or didn't. No one warned you that sometimes you stood with your hand on the knob, wanting what waited on the other side, hating yourself for wanting it, and still hearing the dead breathe your name in the room behind you.
The glass wall was black with the last stretch of night, and the heavy bag swung in front of me like something I could solve with enough discipline. Sweat ran down my spine. My wraps were damp. Every strike landed clean because clean was all I had. Clean breath. Clean footwork. Clean impact.
Not Riley's wounded eyes. Not Zoe's name caught in my throat. Not Victor Raines's voice crawling back through my head.
A champion's comeback story could sell the world.
I hit harder. The bag snapped back. The chain creaked. I stepped around it, reset, and drove a knee into the leather.
"You always train alone, legend?"
The voice came from behind me.