20. Reed
Reed
I’m still on the phone when I hear her door open.
It’s not Harper’s usual shuffle or the building settling. Mia walks differently when she’s made up her mind about something, heel first, no drift in it, and that’s what I hear coming down the hall toward my office.
I end the call in two sentences and put the phone down.
She stops in the doorway in the oversized shirt she wears when she’s done with the day, arms crossed, and chin up.
She doesn’t look angry, but I kind of wish she was because anger would be easier to work with.
She’s got the face of someone who already knows the answer and came anyway, just to see if I’d lie about it.
“Did you pick me because you wanted me,” she says, “or because I was the one standing on the steps when the camera went off?”
I lean back. “It’s not that simple.”
“Reed.”
“You were on those steps with your hands on your hips and a hundred thousand people already on your side,” I say. “Celeste saw the numbers and made a call. That’s the beginning of it.”
She nods. She already knew that, but she’s waiting for what comes after, which is the real problem.
I get up from the desk and go to the window because I think better on my feet and worse when she’s looking at me from six feet away with those eyes that don’t miss anything.
“The morning I came to the bakery,” I say, to the glass.
“You told me to get out before I’d even cleared the doorway.
You read every page, argued half of it, and signed with flour on your hands.
” I turn around. She hasn’t moved. “Then you went straight back to your piping bag. Most people would have asked for more time, but you just decided.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” she says.
“No,” I agree. “But you didn’t make it easy either.
You argued with me at six in the morning before the ink was dry, you told Sharpe to his face that you’d been through worse, and when Harper asked if you were staying you answered her before I’d finished deciding what I wanted you to say.
” I hold her gaze. “None of that was in the contract.”
She shifts her weight in the doorway, arms still crossed, giving me nothing yet.
“The truth is that it started as optics,” I say.
“I needed someone the public trusted and Celeste found you. It made sense on paper. When I offered you an out in week three, I was hoping you’d say no.
I had the exit ready and I was sitting across that desk hoping you wouldn’t take it. That’s when I knew.”
The office is quiet. She’s watching me with her jaw set, working through it.
“The phone call,” she says. “I was in the hallway. I heard you.”
I don’t say anything.
“If she leaves, we lose the board vote.” She says it back to me word for word. “Two more weeks.”
“That call was about Walsh,” I say. “The shareholder meeting, the board, the timeline. It all runs on the same window. You know that. It’s why we signed the agreement in the first place.”
“I know what it was about.” She unfolds her arms, lets them drop to her sides. “I also know what it sounded like. And I know how it started. I guess I’m just trying to figure out if anything that happened between us was real.”
“All of it,” I say. “Every bit of it. The board, Walsh, the hearing, yes, all of that is still running and still matters. But so do you. You’re not a line item, Mia.
You stopped being that a long time ago and I should have said it before you had to stand in a hallway and hear it secondhand from a phone call.
” I come around the desk, close the distance between us until she has to tilt her chin up to hold my gaze.
“I’m not asking you to take my word for it.
Look at the last four weeks and tell me what you actually saw. ”
She looks at me for a long time.
“You’re bad at this,” she says eventually, but the edge in her voice turned softer.
“I know,” I say with a smile.
She exhales through her nose and the last of the tension across her shoulders drops a fraction. I reach up and push a strand of hair back from her face. She lets me, her eyes closing for one second, her cheek tipping the smallest amount toward my hand.
She opens her eyes and looks at me, her jaw working. “It’s a lot easier when it’s just the contract,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” I say.
“So.” She takes a breath, steps back, and puts a foot of space between us. “Don’t make it harder than it already is.”
She’s not shutting it down, but she’s not opening it up either. That’s Mia, holding the line even when her hands are shaking on it.
My phone goes off on the desk. We both turn to look at it. Celeste’s name on the screen, which at this hour means the evening isn’t done with us yet.
I put her on speaker. “I’m here with Mia. Talk.”
“A gossip site has the contract.” No greeting. “Full text, both signatures. They’re running it in twenty minutes. The lawyer says there’s no injunction that moves on this timeline. Vanessa’s PI had a copy. We suspected that, and for some reason, she held it until tonight, and now she’s using it.”
I turn to the window, needing to gather my thoughts.
“Statement?” I ask.
“In fifteen minutes. I need you both reachable.” Celeste stays calm. I’ve put enough fires in front of her over the years to know she always does. “Both of you, listen to me because this is important, okay? Don’t call anyone else and don’t go online. Let me work.”
She hangs up without waiting for our answers.
I stand at the window for three more seconds before I turn around.
Mia is in the middle of the room, arms at her sides. She’s holding herself together the way she does when there’s no good option and she’s going to get through it anyway because that’s the only move she knows.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” she asks.
“Possibly,” I allow. “But Celeste’s a miracle worker.”
My phone lights up on the desk. A news alert, the screen bright enough that even she can read it from where she’s standing.
BILLIONAIRE PAYS BAKER TO PLAY FIANCéE.
She stares at the screen, but I glance at her and watch the color leave her face in a slow pull, watch her jaw go tight and hold there.
She doesn’t look away, doesn’t make a sound, just stands in my office reading the headline that takes everything she’s been for the last four weeks and reduces it to a transaction with a dollar sign.
She lets out a slow breath, turns around, and walks out.
There’s no door slam, no parting line, nothing to argue with or follow. Just her footsteps in the hallway, heel first, and then the quiet click of her bedroom door pulling shut.