Chapter 18
eighteen
. . .
Witt
The best teammates aren't always standing beside you.
Sometimes they're cheering from somewhere you'll never see.
The summit is inefficient.
Chicago is loud.
The hotel room smells like lemon cleaner and expensive fabric, and the mattress is too soft. I sleep badly, sit through six hours of presentations, answer eleven questions, reject two proposals, approve one pilot program, and speak to a man who says synergy seven times in under four minutes.
It’s Synatrix.
By the time the plane takes off for Austin the next evening, I am exhausted in a way sleep won’t fix.
I should be thinking about the launch.
Instead, my mind moves where it wants.
Maci standing in my office with pretzel dust on her fingers, explaining a problem everyone else missed.
Maci in an emerald dress, looking at me like I was not too much or too little, but simply there.
Maci at the arcade, arms around my neck, laughing because she beat me honestly.
Maci telling me I show love quietly.
I don’t know why that sentence has stayed with me.
I didn’t ask it to. Still, it has repeated inside my head at least thirty-seven times since pizza night.
You show it quietly.
She said it as though quiet love counts.
As though the way I remember Witley’s dinosaurs or arrange Noelle’s chaotic decorations so they don’t overwhelm the room or keep Birdie’s favorite tea in the pantry matters as much as the way my family hugs and cheers and says everything aloud.
Maybe it does.
Maybe I have spent too much of my life assuming volume determines value.
The thought is uncomfortable.
So is the next one.
Maybe letting go of Rune doesn’t mean I loved her less.
Maybe it simply means she already let go of me.
I close my eyes and rest my head against the seat.
For years, Rune was the safest place in my life because she was separate from everything else. Separate from family. Business. Expectations. Loss. She existed in a space I could control, a system with rules we both agreed to follow.
Maci exists in all the spaces I cannot control.
My office.
My penthouse.
My family.
My thoughts.
My routines.
She is real in a way Rune never was allowed to be which should make her easier to resist.
It doesn’t.
It makes everything worse.
The penthouse is dim when I walk in just after eleven.
The city glows beyond the windows, but the living room is lit only by the television and one lamp near the couch. A baking competition plays at low volume, featuring three people arguing about frosting consistency with more emotion than the situation warrants.
Maci is on the couch.
Not asleep.
Almost.
She’s curled under a blanket with one bare foot sticking out, hair piled messily on top of her head, wearing pajama pants covered in tiny ghosts and an oversized T-shirt that says GAME OVER in faded letters. A bowl of popcorn sits against her hip, and several kernels have escaped onto the couch.
Usually, I would notice the mess first, but it’s her I noticed. My system is glitching.
I do notice the popcorn on the cushion, a few kernels on the floor, two on the blanket and a smear of butter on the side of the bowl
My brain catalogs every disruption, but unexpectedly, dismisses them.
The penthouse looks lived in, not damaged or invaded.
Lived in.
There is a difference, it’s like my dad’s house.
Lived in.
She stirs hearing the elevator doors close in the hallway, blinking slowly at the room before her gaze finds me.
“Hey,” she says, voice soft from near-sleep.
One ordinary word shouldn’t affect me, yet my insides feel squishy.
I set my bag near the wall. “You’re awake.”
“Barely.” She shifts upright, and the bowl tilts dangerously.
I cross the room and catch it before popcorn covers the floor.
Her eyes widen. “Nice save.”
“I have excellent reflexes.”
“Of course you do.”
A small smile pulls at her mouth, and something in my chest eases in a way I don’t want to examine too closely.
She starts brushing kernels from the couch into her palm. “Sorry. I’m messier at home than I am at work.”
“I noticed.”
Her face falls slightly.
Idiot.
I sit on the edge of the adjacent chair and pick one kernel off the couch cushion, then another. “I didn’t say it was a problem.”
She studies me like she’s not sure whether to believe that.
Maybe I don’t entirely believe it either.
But it’s true.
Somehow.
“How was your trip?” she asks.
I should say efficient.
Unnecessary.
Tolerable.
Instead, I look at her sitting in my living room with popcorn on the blanket and sleep softening her face, and the honest answer arrives before I can stop it.
“Better now.”
Her hand stills over the popcorn bowl.
The television continues murmuring about collapsed pastry.
Neither of us looks at it.
For once, the quiet between us doesn’t feel empty. It feels occupied.
By everything I’m not saying.
By everything she might be hearing anyway.