CHAPTER 2
Just Brad
Brad — POV
Brad told himself he wouldn't go back.
That was the plan when he left his Portland headquarters — a glass tower overlooking the Willamette River, where his name was etched into the lobby wall and his decisions moved markets. Where every surface reflected ambition, and every face knew his name before he spoke it.
But he wasn't going back to Portland. Not yet.
He was heading east.
Toward the Columbia River Gorge. Toward the house he had bought two years ago but never really lived in.
A glass-walled retreat on the Washington side of the river, just outside Hood River, Oregon. He had told himself it was an investment. A place to think. A weekend escape from the noise of a life that never stopped demanding more from him.
In truth, it was a hiding place.
And today, he needed to hide.
Simple. Clean. Logical.
One visit to a flower shop in a small Gorge town wasn't supposed to change anything. It was just a stop. A moment of quiet before retreating to his empty house. A break from the noise of meetings, numbers, expectations.
Nothing more.
But as the car pulled away from Merrow Street, he kept looking out the window longer than necessary — long enough that his driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror, then looked away without asking.
The Columbia River blurred past on his right — gray-blue and endless, cutting through the gorge like a scar he couldn't stop touching. The cliffs rose on both sides, ancient and indifferent. People in Hood River lived their lives down there. Small lives. Real lives.
Lives where no one knew his face.
That was the point.
Brad leaned back in the leather seat and closed his eyes. He rubbed his thumb along the seam of his jacket sleeve — a nervous habit he thought he had killed years ago.
He was thirty-three years old. He had accomplished more than most people did in a lifetime. And felt less than most people did in a week.
The Gorge house came into view twenty minutes later — perched on a ridge, all glass and steel, invisible from the road. Private. Controlled. Exactly what he had paid for.
Exactly what he was tired of.
He stepped inside and didn't turn on the lights.
The afternoon sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, setting the Columbia River on fire. Mount Hood loomed in the distance — white, permanent, unmovable. The view was worth millions.
It had never felt like enough.
Brad walked to the kitchen. Poured water into a glass. Didn't drink it. Just held it. His thumb traced the rim — once, twice, three times — like the glass might tell him something the silence wouldn't.
His phone buzzed.
Once. Twice. Again.
He didn't check it immediately.
That alone was unusual.
Normally, he responded within seconds. Delay meant loss. Silence meant risk. His entire life had been built on the principle that the person who moved fastest won.
But today, the notifications felt distant.
Like they belonged to someone else.
He finally picked up the phone.
Messages. Emails. Meeting reminders. His assistant asking if he had seen the quarterly projections. The board requesting a call about the Southeast Asia rollout. Everything waiting for him.
Everything important.
Everything urgent.
Except none of it felt urgent right now.
Brad locked the phone and set it down on the marble counter. The screen went dark, but he could still see his own reflection in the glass — tired, guarded, unfamiliar.
Then he looked out the window again.
The water. The mountain. The town of Hood River tucked into the valley below, invisible from here but somehow closer than it had ever been.
He replayed the moment without meaning to.
The way she looked at him without trying to read him.
The way she didn't hesitate when she spoke.
The way she treated him like... just another person.
"Hi," she had said. Friendly but cautious. Like he was a stranger, not a headline.
He liked that.
He hated how much he liked that.
Brad walked to the window and pressed his palm against the cold glass. His breath fogged the surface for a moment, then disappeared — just like his anonymity would, if she ever found out the truth.
Kathy.
He didn't know why her name stayed with him. He barely knew her. A few minutes of conversation. A few simple questions. A few answers that shouldn't matter.
And yet they did.
He turned away from the window and walked into his home office. Screens lit up automatically as he entered. Data dashboards. AI system updates. Global performance reports. Real-time everything.
The world he controlled.
The world that never stopped needing him.
He sat down but didn't touch the keyboard.
Instead, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. His hands rested on the armrests — still, but tense. Like he was bracing for something he couldn't name.
Silence filled the room.
Not like the flower shop. That silence had felt alive — two people existing in the same space without needing to fill it with noise.
This one felt... heavy.
The kind of silence that came from being alone in a house too big for one person.
He tried to focus. He really did.
But his mind kept drifting back.
Back to her voice. Simple. Calm. Direct.
Back to the way she didn't try to impress him.
Back to the way she didn't even ask his name like it mattered more than anything else.
Brad sat forward slowly.
That part still bothered him.
She didn't know who he was.
And she didn't seem interested in finding out.
"What do you do?" she had asked. "Complicated-thing person?"
He had said "Tech."
Vague. Evasive. A lie wrapped in truth.
She had laughed. "That's... vague."
And then she had let it go.
No follow-up questions. No LinkedIn stalking disguised as curiosity. No recognition flickering behind her eyes.
Just acceptance.
That was new.
People always wanted to know. Eventually. Name. Company. Status. Money. It always came out. It always changed things.
But she hadn't asked.
Or maybe she had. And he had avoided answering properly.
Brad rubbed a hand over his face. His palm scraped against stubble — he hadn't shaved that morning. Another small crack in the armor.
That's not normal, he thought.
But normal was exactly what he wanted.
And that was the problem.
He stood up and walked back to the kitchen. The Gorge stretched out beyond the glass — water, sky, mountain, town. His private kingdom. His beautiful cage.
The flower shop was down there somewhere. On Merrow Street. At the quieter end of a town that didn't know his name.
He could go back.
Or he could stay here. Safe. Controlled. Alone.
The choice should have been obvious.
It wasn't.
His calendar reminder popped up on his phone. Meetings. Calls. Approvals. A full schedule waiting to pull him back into the version of his life that made sense.
Brad scrolled. Paused.
Tomorrow afternoon. One hour. Free.
That was rare. Too rare.
He hovered over the time slot for a moment.
Then clicked.
And added a label.
"Errand."
He didn't write what it was. He didn't write where. He didn't write why.
Because names made things real. And real things were harder to control.
Brad set the phone down.
The house — the retreat, the expensive hiding place — stayed quiet around him.
He walked to the window again.
Down there, somewhere on Merrow Street, she was probably closing the shop. Locking the door. Walking home to a life that didn't involve boardrooms or billionaires or glass-walled houses on ridges.
He envied that more than he wanted to admit.
Brad stared at the darkening sky.
"I'm going back," he said quietly.
Not to anyone. Just to himself.
Because saying it out loud made it feel like a decision instead of an accident.
And Brad Hawkins didn't do accidents.
But for the first time in years —
he wanted to.
He didn't go the next morning. He had meetings. Calls. Responsibilities that didn't pause for curiosity or confusion.
But the thought of the shop stayed with him.
Through the boardroom. Through the data reviews. Through the endless questions about growth and risk and quarterly projections.
He answered everything automatically.
His body was there.
His mind was not.
That evening, he stood on the deck of his Gorge house, watching the Columbia turn gold in the fading light. The air smelled like pine and river water. Nothing like Portland. Nothing like his real life.
His phone buzzed. Board updates. Expansion plans. The world he had built.
He silenced it.
This house wasn't supposed to mean anything. Just an escape. Just glass and land and a view he had bought because he could.
But now, when he thought of Hood River, he didn't think of the view.
He thought of her.
Brad turned away from the railing and walked inside.
The white lilies from his first visit still sat on the kitchen counter — fading now, soft at the edges, but still alive.
He should throw them away.
He didn't.
He didn't know then that some truths fade the same way. Slowly. Quietly. Until there's nothing left but the stain of what used to be.
Instead, he opened his calendar and found the gap he had saved.
Tomorrow afternoon.
One hour.
He didn't change the label.
But he knew what it meant.
And for the first time in a long time, Brad Hawkins let himself want something he couldn't control.
He let himself want her.