Chapter 36
HOLDEN
When the last of the students shuffled out, leaving coffee cups and confusion behind, I stayed exactly where I was.
Pretending to organize papers. Pretending not to notice that Ellora was still sitting there in the back row with her arms crossed, watching me like she was deciding whether to stay or storm out.
“Hey,” I said finally, my voice rougher than it’d been during the lecture. It couldn’t be helped. The last few days had been long and difficult. I was so tired that even my tired was exhausted, but I’d finally come up with a plan. “Thanks for coming.”
She didn’t answer. Just nodded as those green eyes looked into mine like she was trying to develop x-ray vision. I took that as my cue to keep talking before she could tell me to go to hell.
“You want to know if this is really happening,” I said, my gaze never leaving hers. “It is. I just don’t have the approval yet, but I’ll get it.”
“How?” she asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “I thought you said—”
“Most of the construction crews we’ve hired can handle renovations just as well as rebuilds,” I explained. “They’ll still have work. The only difference is that they’ll be restoring instead of destroying.”
I took a step closer to her. “It’ll actually be a lot cheaper this way.
There will be fewer permits involved and less waste.
The board won’t like it at first, but they’ll love the savings.
The only people that will lose out on this plan is the demolition crew, but I’m paying them off myself. Out of my own pocket.”
“Does that mean…” She trailed off, her eyelashes fluttering as she blinked rapidly. “Does this mean that it all gets to stay?”
I nodded. “Nothing gets torn down. Not your shop or any of the others either. Some of the buildings need a lot of work. Yours is one of them. We might still need the demolition crew to knock down some walls and that kind of thing, but in general, it’s all staying.
Exactly where it is. Just not exactly how it is. ”
Her eyebrows lifted, disbelief flickering into something that almost looked like hope. “Why go through all this trouble now, though?”
I laughed, but it came out more like a sigh. “Because I was an idiot, and because you were right when you told me that talk is cheap. I couldn’t fix what I broke with words, so I’m fixing it with actions instead.”
Her gaze held mine, but I had no idea if she believed me yet or if she just thought I was pulling some kind of stunt. I wasn’t walking away until I made things right. This was my fight and I finally felt like maybe I had a shot at winning it.
All I needed to do was get her to stand beside me.
I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling like I was about to step off a cliff. “If we do it this way, renovating and not rebuilding, we’d still be fixing up the block, making it safer and prettier, which will also bring in more foot traffic. You’d get more customers and so would everyone else.”
Ellora was silent, but I was hoping she was thinking through my new proposal.
“Would that be okay?” I asked quietly. “I mean, is that something you’d actually be happy with?”
For a second, she stared at me like she was waiting for the punchline. Then finally, she nodded. “That would be better than just okay.”
The knot in my chest loosened. “Okay. Good. There’s, uh, there’s just one more thing.”
Her eyebrows arched with suspicion. “I knew this was too good to be true.”
“We still need the board to agree, which means I’m going to have to pitch it to them like my life depends on it.”
She tilted her head. “How exactly do you plan to do that?”
I grinned. “By cheating.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Cheating?”
“Yep. I want you there. Come be my secret weapon. You’re better at selling people on a feeling than I’ll ever be. You built a whole community out of thin air with Second Story Sunday.” I paused. “So, how about it? Show off some of those business skills I’ve been pretending to teach you.”
She huffed out a little laugh. “Are you seriously asking me to help you convince a room full of billionaires not to be greedy?”
“They’re not billionaires. I’ll be the only one of those in the room and I’m already onboard, but yeah. Who better than you?”
She looked at me for a long moment, like she was trying to decide whether I was serious or just hopelessly naive, but then she sighed, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. “Fine, I’ll do it, but if it goes sideways, I’m blaming you. I’ve never pitched a board before.”
“Deal, but if it works, I’m blaming you.” I exhaled a long breath, the first tendrils of relief snaking through me. “Jimmy set up a meeting with them for tomorrow morning. We had to get it on the books sooner rather than later. I hope you’re ready to go to work.”
“Now?” She blinked hard. “You want us to prepare a whole pitch overnight?”
I shrugged. “It’s either that or we risk things going even further than they already have. We need to put a stop to it as soon as possible. Once the demolition crews hit the ground, that’s it. There’s no more convincing them to pull the plug.”
Ellora stood up immediately, sliding her backpack over her shoulder and moving down the few steps toward me. “Alright, then. What are we waiting for? Let’s go do this thing.”
We went back to my office at Langton Development. The city was spread out below in a glittering grid of lights. The view from up here usually made me feel powerful but not tonight. Tonight, I was too busy looking at her to really notice the view.
Ellora kicked off her boots the moment we walked in and padded across the polished floor in her socks, like she owned the place and didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought. I liked that. Too much, probably.
She smiled when she caught me staring. “Close your mouth. We’ve got work to do, remember?”
“Yeah, but it can wait just one more minute.” I kicked the door shut behind me even though everyone else had long since gone home. I strode across my office and didn’t stop until one of my arms had slid around her waist and the other around her shoulders.
I pulled her into me and kissed her hard, pouring every ounce of relief, longing, and gratitude into every stroke of my tongue against hers.
With her soft curves fitted to my body and her fingers stroking through my hair, I groaned and wished I could take it further, but we seriously didn’t have time.
“God, I missed you,” I murmured against her lips when I broke the kiss. “I’m so fucking sorry, Ella. I never meant to hurt you and I know it happened anyway, but I swear to you that I’ll never do it again. Never.”
She brushed the backs of her fingers across my cheek, her eyes fluttering closed. “Please don’t. I don’t know that I could take it, Holden. I really don’t. These last few days…”
“Are over,” I finished for her, resting my forehead against hers for just a beat.
“They’re over. We’re putting them behind us and focusing on the future, okay?
I wish I could somehow make you forget that they’d ever even happened, but the best I can do is to make sure there are no more days like them in the future. ”
“That would be good.” She pulled in a deep breath, her chest expanding against my own, then she let go and took a step back. “So, what do we do first?”
My heart was racing after having her in my arms, my thoughts scattered, and my dick was trying its best to join the party, but I took a breath of my own, stood still for a minute, and then walked to my desk.
Turning the large monitor on top to face us, I sat down on the edge of my desk and powered up the computer.
“I think we should start with the community angle,” I said. “As soon as this thing is on, I’ll pull up the plans, but I suspect our best bet at selling this is going to be community and savings.”
“Do you really think that will soften these vampires?”
“They prefer the term investors.”
“Same difference.” She smirked. “Okay, so we show them the people side, but then what?”
“Then we make it clear it will be profitable,” I said. “Because that’s the only language they speak fluently.”
She leaned back a little, her eyes scanning the blueprints on the screen after I’d opened them up. “You know, if you actually cared about profits first, you could’ve just kept your mouth shut and gone along with the original plan.”
“I know, but then I’d have to live with myself without you and it turned out that prospect was harder than facing the vampires.”
“Investors.”
I pumped my eyebrows once. “Now you’re getting it.”
She nodded again, slower this time, but when she scooted forward and really focused on the plans, I knew she was in. Right now, she trusted me again. She wasn’t doubting me or my intentions anymore, and that made it all so fucking worth it.
We worked for hours after that. She had ideas that I never would’ve thought of.
Small things that made the whole proposal more human, like suggesting that the shop owners could each contribute something to the public space, art, workshops, or even performances, to make it not just beautiful, but alive.
Connected to the people. Give them a reason to show up.
Every time she got excited about an idea, her eyes lit up and I forgot to breathe. Around one a.m., she glanced over at the clock. “You realize we’ve been at this for five hours, right?”
“Yeah, which means we’re either geniuses or completely delusional.”
“Maybe a little bit of both,” she said, smiling tiredly and looking up at me through watery, reddish eyes. “Do you think they’ll go for it?”
“I think if they don’t, I’ll have to find myself a new board.”
She snorted. “You say that like it’s easy.”
“I’m rich, not reasonable.”
She laughed and everything in me felt like it’d been cracked wide open, allowing every bit of happiness and joy she brought me to permeate the deepest recesses of my being. “God, I’ve missed that sound.”
“So did I.” She reached for my hand, but her gaze drifted back to the computer screen as she threaded our fingers together.
We kept at it a little longer, polishing the slides and rehearsing the transitions, making sure we could anticipate every objection. Eventually, she yawned and rested her chin on her hand.
“Do you ever stop working?” she asked.
“Not really,” I admitted. “But if you’re offering to teach me how, I’m a quick study.”
She rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth lifted again. “We should get some sleep. All this work will be useless if we’re too tired to make the actual pitch.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think we should just crash here.
” I inclined my chin toward the couches in the sitting area of my office.
“It’s not exactly romantic but those are comfier than they look and I have blankets in my bathroom.
I’ll have Maia get clothes for us in the morning.
What do you say, should we save time on the commute and not have to worry about traffic in the morning? ”