3. Jenna #2
“It’s not my group of billionaires.”
“Please. I’ve sat in on plenty of your meetings. You run Chicago—all of you do to an extent. There’s a gravity to it. Not everyone gets to orbit without burning up on re-entry.”
“Re-entry.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“That’s the tell, Pemberton. You still think you’re watching from outside the glass.
” We reach a crossing and wait for the bright mechanical chirp of permission.
“Bennett would lose a limb before he lost you. Layla texts you when she needs to think out loud. Audrey talks about you like you’re load-bearing.
Serena quotes you. Caleb respects you, which from Caleb is basically a signed affidavit.
David trusts you with his logistics, and David doesn’t trust just anyone with anything. ” A beat. “And me—”
He stops there.
A cyclist glides past. A train rumbles somewhere overhead. He doesn’t finish it, so I do it for him.
“And you,” I say, evenly, “have terrible timing.”
He laughs once, under his breath. “That too.”
We cross. The hotel glows warm at the end of the street.
“You really think you don’t belong?” he asks.
“I think there are rooms where everyone was born knowing which fork to use, and rooms where you learn by watching, fast. I’m not sure I belong in either.
Yours, or the one I grew up in. I’m somewhere in between.
” I don’t know why I keep going. “My mother still says axe instead of ask. My father keeps cash in an envelope in the freezer because he doesn’t trust banks not to suddenly become theoretical.
My sister thinks my lipstick brand means I betrayed the borough. And when I’m with your people—”
“Our people,” he says.
I shoot him a look. “That. That’s exactly what I mean.”
He smiles. “You’re making my case for me.”
“When I’m with your people,” I go on, “I know the rules now. I know the wines, the schools worth mentioning, the vacation spots you’re supposed to say casually. I can do all of it. But I learned it. I wasn’t raised in it, and when I go home, it shows.”
“You know what I hear?” He keeps his voice easy, which I’ve learned is what he does when he means something.
“I hear that you built yourself. That you can walk into a room of old-money sharks, take the contract, then go home to Queens, stand in your mother’s kitchen, and still know exactly who you are. ”
“That’s generous.”
“It’s accurate.”
I don’t know what to do with that, so I change the subject. “Do you go home much? To Greenwich?”
“Every couple of weeks.”
I glance at him, surprised. “That’s . . . often.”
“Most people assume that once you have enough money, family becomes a Christmas activity.” He shrugs. “Mine didn’t get the memo.”
Something in the way he says it makes me leave it alone. “That’s nice,” I say, and mean it.
We make it to the hotel, the lobby enveloping us with its after-hours hush. The elevator opens on cue—empty, just us. Three floors up, I say, “Tonight was kind of fun. As far as business dinners go.”
“Kind of fun.” He smirks. “Put that on my headstone.”
“I’ll email your secretary with that request as soon as I’m in my suite.”
He laughs softly, the kind of laugh that wants to become something else. “You make it very hard to be professional, Pemberton.”
“Good thing for you, I set a high standard.”
The doors open on our floor. The corridor swallows our footsteps in carpet. My door is closer than his, and I stop in front of it, clutch in one hand, key card in the other, and for a second neither of us says anything.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For dinner?”
“For letting me take the lead in the meeting.”
He bounces a shoulder. “You deserved to. You’re the one who fixed the papers. I hope you realize that everyone involved with the NeuraTech project is going to think you’re a superstar for getting this over the line.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” I insist.
“We’ve been working on this for years. Take the win, sweetheart.”
Before I can respond to that, he takes the card from my hand and taps it to the lock. “Get some sleep so you can ruin more men in suits tomorrow.” He leans in and presses a lingering kiss to the center of my forehead.
I blink up at him, speechless for a moment. Then he steps back, pushes the door open behind me, and slides his hands into his pockets like a man holding himself in place.
For a second I just stand there looking at him, dazed. I mean, who the fuck just kisses a woman on the forehead without warning?
“You too,” I say. “Sleep well, I mean.”
I wince and slip inside. The door closes with a muted click, and I stand in the entry of the suite with my pulse in my throat and my forehead still warm, listening to the silence where he used to be.
I make it four seconds.
“Fuck it,” I whisper.
Then I yank the door open.
He’s still there—mid-turn, like some part of him didn’t believe he’d actually get to leave. I fist both hands in his lapels and pull, and he comes without a smug pause or a joke, letting me haul him over the threshold.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” I tell him.
He laughs, low and dark, his hands already finding my waist. “Pemberton. This means fucking everything.”
And I laugh—startled out of me, helpless, before I can stop it.
“Shut up and fuck me, Dominic. Before I change my mind.”
“Anything you want, sweetheart.”