17. Mia
Mia
The coffee is already made when I get to the kitchen at four-thirty.
French press, good grind, the kind that takes actual effort.
It’s dark in the apartment, dark outside, and Reed is standing at the counter in yesterday’s sweatpants with his hair untouched, waiting for the press to finish.
He doesn’t say anything when I come in. He just hands me the mug, leans against the counter while I drink it, and when I put the empty mug in the sink and pick up my bag he nods once and that’s the whole conversation.
Except he doesn’t go anywhere. He stays at the counter, pours his own coffee, and I put my bag back down because something about the way he’s standing tells me we’re not done.
“I had you investigated,” he says. “Before you moved in. Background check, financials, past addresses.” He keeps his eyes on his mug.
“It’s what I do with anyone who comes into my home.
I did it with Lucia before I hired her. I did it with every board member before I brought them in.
” He sets the mug down. “I did it with you.”
I take a breath, unsure of where this is going.
“Vanessa’s PI dropped a copy on my desk yesterday afternoon,” he says. “She’s had her own file running since the engagement announcement. She got hold of the same report and built on top of it.”
The kitchen goes quiet. I’m standing in a borrowed kitchen at before-dawn finding out I’ve been in a folder since before I unpacked my bag.
“So you investigated me,” I say. “Then Vanessa investigated me. And I’ve been in this apartment for three weeks not knowing either of those things.”
“Yes,” he says, and stops there. No but, no because, nothing to take the edge off it.
I put both hands on the island. “I handed your lawyer six months of bank statements. I sat in front of your board. I’ve offered to go to your custody hearing as your fiancée, I stood next to you in front of cameras, answered questions about how we met.
” I look at him. “I did all of that while you investigated me and kept a file on me that I didn’t know existed. ”
“I know.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m not going to pretend it’s less than it is.
” He turns his mug in his hands. “The last time I trusted someone without checking first, I spent ten years not knowing what was happening in my own house. I was being cheated on for eight months and Harper was home for all of it. I check. Everyone.” He finally looks at me.
“That doesn’t make it right. It’s just why. ”
I look at him across the island. Four-thirty in the morning, sweatpants, hair untouched, the under-cabinet light catching the scar on his wrist, and he’s telling me he had me investigated the same way he’d tell me a delivery was late.
Here’s the information. Here’s why. What you do with it is your business.
“Did anything in the file change your mind about me?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
He doesn’t answer, which is the answer. Reed Hawthorne doesn’t volunteer the things that make him look exactly like what Vanessa described on that morning show. He waits until the alternative is worse.
I reach for my mug out of habit and remember it’s in the sink.
I pick it back up and fill it from the press.
My stomach turns over before the smell even reaches me, the same slow roll I’ve had yesterday that I’ve been putting down to nerves, bad sleep, and the general chaos of living someone else’s life forty floors up.
Not wanting to drink it anymore, I put the mug down.
“I’m tired,” I say. “Not the kind that sleep fixes.” I look at the dark window, the city below, the few lights still on at this hour.
“I’ve been useful my whole life. I learned early that if I stay helpful and easy and fine, people stick around.
The second I stop being fine, the second I actually need something, they find somewhere else to be.
” I pull my sleeves down over my wrists. “So I stopped needing things.”
Reed is quiet, watching me with his coffee in both hands, not moving, not cutting in.
“What would you want?” he asks when I stay quiet. “Take the bakery off the table, take the contract off the table. What do you actually want?”
I look at him across the island in the dark kitchen and the answer is right there, three weeks of mornings exactly like this one, bad eggs, Harper’s hand in mine in the parking lot, his shirt on me, and it scares me badly enough that I look down at the counter instead of at him.
My stomach rolls again, harder this time, nothing near my face, just the turn of it on its own. I press my fingers to the edge of the counter and breathe through my nose until it passes.
“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the most dishonest thing I’ve said since I moved in. Reed looks at me like he knows it but isn’t going to push it.
He picks up his phone. It buzzes in his hand before he’s done anything with it.
“It’s Celeste,” he tells me.
“Doesn’t she ever sleep?” I muse.
“I pay her too well for that,” he says and sets the phone on the island between us. “I’m here with Mia. You’re on speaker.”
“I’ll be quick,” she says, not bothering to greet either one of us.
“Your last week’s hospital visit got a double-page spread in two lifestyle outlets.
The PS 114 event picked up local news coverage and a syndicated piece.
The comment section has shifted, less transaction, more love story, which is what we needed going into Walsh.
” She turns a page. “The optics are the strongest they’ve been since this started.
Which means the timing on the next event is right. ”
“What’s the next event?” I ask.
“An engagement party,” Celeste says. “We’ll invite board members, two Walsh counterparties, and curated press.” A short pause that makes me brace for what’s to come. “It will be live-streamed.”
My brows fly up and I look at Reed, but he’s looking at the phone instead.
“Define live-streamed,” he says.
“Forty minutes, one approved camera position, controlled guest list. Not a broadcast, a window.” Another page turn.
“The engagement party is the last public event before Walsh closes. If it holds, you go into the shareholder meeting with the board satisfied and the custody negotiation with the public opinion on your side.” She closes whatever she has open.
“It needs to read better than the Lowell benefit. The Lowell was good. This needs to be real. The people in that room will know the difference. I’ll have more details this afternoon. ”
The call ends.
Reed picks his phone up. I glance at the mug I’ve pushed to the back of the counter and leave it there because the thought of putting it near my face again does something unpleasant to my stomach for the second morning running.
Two mornings with metal taste in my mouth and nausea before five. I’m tired in a way that sits in my bones past the point where sleep should have fixed it by now.
“Live-streamed engagement party,” I say, because I need something out loud that won’t make me worry enough to call my doctor who’ll just tell me that I should take a break for once, and I’d have to tell her that I literally can’t afford to.
“Celeste will have a plan,” Reed says.
“Celeste always has a plan.” I pick up my bag from the chair. “I need to get to the bakery.”
He looks at the untouched mug, then at my face. He opens his mouth.
“Don’t,” I say. “I’ve drank too much coffee already. I’m fine.”
He closes his mouth, sets his mug down, and straightens up from the counter.
“Reed,” I say.
He stops.
“The investigation,” I say. “Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” he says, and sounds like he means it.
I pick up my keys. He stays at the counter and watches me go. I feel his eyes on my back all the way to the door.
The hallway is quiet. The elevator takes thirty seconds and I count every one of them. In the lobby the doorman nods and I nod back then push through the glass door into the dark street.
I pull out my phone before I’ve hit the sidewalk. Juno picks up on the second ring because she’s always awake at this hour, the tattoo studio doesn’t open until ten but she’s been a five in the morning person since before I met her.
“Tell me something good,” she says, instead of hello.
“They want to throw us an engagement party,” I say. “Live-streamed.”
“Mia,” she breathes.
“I know,” I say.
“Live-streamed,” she repeats.
“Forty minutes, one camera, controlled guest list.” I start walking. “Celeste says it needs to be real.”
“How real is it?” Juno asks, and she’s not talking about the party. We both know she’s not talking about the party.
I walk half a block before I answer.
“I don’t know,” I say, which is the second time I’ve said that this morning and meant something completely different both times.