9. Mia
Mia
By nine o’clock I’ve pulled four trays, boxed two custom orders, and piped a dozen cupcakes. I’ve also told Juno three times that I’m fine, which is the number of times you have to say something before the person stops asking.
The regulars come in waves. The coffee order for the office around the corner arrives at eight-fifteen like clockwork. The woman who always asks if we have anything gluten-free and then orders a croissant anyway shows up at eight-forty, getting her croissant.
The mixer held together by electrical tape holds together for another morning. I know every beat of this place by feel; the way the oven runs five degrees hot on the left side, the way the display case latch sticks if you don’t lift and push at the same time.
This is my world. It’s mine. All of it. And for a few hours everything is exactly what it’s supposed to be.
Then Reed walks in at ten past two in a suit and the two hours are over.
“You’re early,” I say, not looking up from the tray I’m washing.
“You close at two.” He’s already scanning the back counter, taking stock quietly. “We need to be at Hawthorne HQ by three-thirty.”
“I know what the schedule says.”
“Celeste sent a revised version this morning.”
“At six-fifteen. With a follow-up at six-thirty.” I set the tray on the rack. “She follows up twice. I’ve learned this about her.”
“Three times if the event is significant.”
Reed brought me a bag of clothes. Cream blouse and tailored pants, my exact size.
I change in the back room, wash the flour off my wrists, and stand in front of the small mirror by the storage shelves.
I look like someone who belongs in a different life. Someone who walks into glass-walled buildings without feeling the gap between herself and everyone else in the room.
That’s the point. I know that’s the point, and knowing it doesn’t make it sit any easier.
The drive is twelve minutes. Reed drives, and I use the opportunity to observe the city as it moves past the window.
The lobby of Hawthorne HQ is every glass-and-steel power fantasy I’ve ever walked past but never been invited into.
The reception desk alone looks more expensive than my bakery equipment.
The woman behind it clocks Reed before he’s halfway across the floor and nods like she’s been expecting him, which she probably has, because people like Reed don’t arrive unannounced anywhere.
He puts his hand at the small of my back as we cross the lobby. I keep walking.
The boardroom is on the thirty-second floor. Seven people around a table that probably seats twelve, all of them with the settled stillness of people who’ve been winning arguments in rooms like this for long enough that they don’t need to show it anymore.
Reed doesn’t sit. He takes the far end of the table, stands there, and waits. The room finds him. That’s the only way to describe it. He doesn’t pull focus. The focus just goes to him, the way water finds the lowest point.
“I know this was scheduled as a check-in,” he says.
The version of his voice he uses in this room is one I haven’t heard before. Not colder than the rest. More contained, like a flame with a lid on it.
“As you can see, everything is under control. The press coverage last week was a misunderstanding. It’s been addressed. In ten minutes we go downstairs and say so on record.” He glances at me. “Mia.”
I step forward. Seven faces come to me. I keep my chin level, my shoulders back, and I smile, big and warm and totally fine.
“Miss Calder.” Sharpe’s voice is cold and indifferent. He doesn’t look happy to see me, but he tries to hide it. He does it well too, except that the eyes don’t lie. “You’re aware of the custody motion filed this week.”
“I am.”
“And you understand that your presence in Reed’s life is currently the stated basis for that motion.”
“I understand that a motion was filed,” I say, “and that Vanessa Hawthorne chose to use our engagement as grounds for it.” I hold his gaze. “Those are two different things.”
Sharpe looks at me for a moment that runs a beat longer than comfortable. Then he looks at Reed.
“The press conference,” Sharpe says.
“In ten minutes,” Reed says.
And just like that, that’s the end of the board meeting. I don’t know if that’s a normal check-in for a company of this magnitude, but it looked very weird to me as an outside observer.
Celeste is already in the press room, standing to the side with her tablet. She gives me one look as we walk in. It means stay on the story and don’t improvise. I already know all that.
Reed steps up to the podium and I take my place at his left shoulder.
“Thank you all for being here,” he says, scanning the room, taking in all the cameras.
“I’ll keep this brief. Mia and I are engaged.
That’s not a response to a news cycle, it’s not a PR move, it’s simply true.
” He pauses. “The incident at the Deleon gala last week was a vendor miscommunication that was resolved the same evening. What the cameras caught was me realizing who Mia was and going after her to apologize.” Another pause, shorter.
“As for the custody motion filed this week, it’s without merit and we’ll address it through the appropriate channels.
We’re not going to litigate our family in a press room. ”
He looks at the journalists.
“Questions?”
They come fast. I answer the ones aimed at me, sticking to the story, and when a particularly pointed question about the timeline lands in my direction, Reed steps in smoothly.
“We took our time,” he says. “That was my preference. When something matters, you don’t rush it.”
He glances at me when he says it, brief, just enough to read as real. I hold his gaze for exactly the right amount of time then look back at the room.
The journalists continue with the Walsh acquisition, the board confidence levels, the timeline on the hearing. Reed handles each one with calm and patience I could only wish for.
Then the journalist in the third row leans forward. Young, recorder in hand, looking eager to prove himself.
“Miss Calder,” he says, “some people are suggesting you’re a gold digger with a rolling pin. Care to respond?”
The room goes still.
I pull a breath.
“She’s mine,” Reed says. It comes out nearly as a growl.
Two words. No elaboration, no follow-up, no glance at me to check how I took it. He says it the way you state a fact that doesn’t require defense because it simply is.
The journalist opens his mouth and closes it.
I keep my face as controlled as I can manage. I’m not used to this level of public scrutiny, but I owe it to Reed to do my best.
The questions keep coming. Who introduced us. How long we’ve known each other. Whether Harper has met me. Whether I find the age gap significant.
I answer each one the way we rehearsed. The Burton Foundation dinner, the east corridor, the four weeks, the story that’s true in all the places that matter.
At some point Reed’s hand finds mine, fingers sliding between mine. I’m not sure exactly when it happens, only that the next question comes and I answer it without losing the thread, and the one after that, and the one after that.
His thumb moves once. It’s a grounding touch, making me feel less alone.
I finish an answer, breathe, and keep going.
When it’s over Celeste steps in immediately. I’m grateful for it. Reed leans near my ear.
“You did well,” he says, and moves toward Celeste.
I stand in the borrowed clothes in the clearing press room for a moment. Then I find the stairs.
The door at the top opens onto the roof.
It’s not finished up here, not dressed up for visitors. Just concrete, a low barrier, and the city spread out in every direction.
I walk to the edge and stand there. My shoulders drop about two inches, which is apparently what they’ve been carrying since the lobby.
I find the bakery supplier receipt in my jacket pocket, the one from Tuesday I forgot to file. I flip it to the blank side. I find the pencil stub I always have somewhere on me, a fact Juno considers both a personality trait and a problem, and I start drawing.
I don’t consciously decide to. My hand just starts.
The skyline comes out loose and fast, gestural rather than accurate. The shapes are more about how they feel stacked against each other than where they actually sit. The gaps between the buildings where the sky comes through.
I’m three minutes in and not thinking about anything when the door opens.
Reed steps out. He crosses to where I’m standing and looks down at what’s in my hands.
“That’s the Pearce building,” he says. “You’ve got the setback wrong.”
“I know. It looks better wrong.”
He studies the sketch. “The proportions on the tower are off too.”
“Are you critiquing my receipt drawing?”
“I’m observing.”
“Observe more quietly.” I add a shadow under the cornice. He stays where he is. “How do you even know what the Pearce building’s setback looks like?”
“I tried to buy it in 2019.”
I look up at him. “They said no?”
“First time in four years.” He says it without any particular feeling, just a fact he’s made peace with. “I remember everything about a building that told me no.”
“That’s extremely normal,” I say.
“It’s practical.” He looks at the sketch again. “You could build something real with this. Not receipts. Walls.”
“I do build things on walls.”
“You’re better than the bakery.”
“I love the bakery.”
“I know you do.” His voice drops slightly, not by much, just enough that I notice the difference. “That’s not what I said. I said you’re better than it. Those aren’t the same thing.”
I turn that over. “Croissants pay rent. Not everyone gets to do the thing they’re best at. Some of us do the thing that keeps the lights on.”
“You could do both.”
“With what, Reed? What time? What money?” I look at him. “The hospital mural is the first wall commission I’ve had in eight months and even that’s not real or truly mine, is it? Before that it was a coffee shop in Bushwick that paid me in oat milk lattes and exposure.”
He looks at me. “The hospital mural is yours regardless of how this ends. That’s already in the contract.”
“I know,” I say.
He’s quiet. The city is loud below us and up here it’s just wind and the scratch of my pencil. The distance between us is less than it was a minute ago.
I don’t know when he moved closer.
He turns toward me. Not all the way. Just enough that I feel the shift in his attention, the way it moves from the skyline to my face. My pencil is still in my hand, but my eyes are on his. He doesn’t close the gap.
He stays exactly where he is, and the not-closing affects me more than the closing would have.
“Tell me what you’re not saying,” he says.
I look at my sketch. The Pearce building with its wrong setback, better wrong than right.
I am one confession away from ruining everything, and I know exactly what it is.
Swallowing the confession, I turn back to my sketch and keep drawing.