Chapter 23
Adam was twenty minutes early. He stood under the red awning in the chill, hands buried in his coat pockets, as pedestrians bustled past him like a river of strangers.
Lucy spotted him from half a block away, his tall frame carving a silhouette against the sidewalk lights.
His hair was shorter—freshly cut, she realized.
She approached, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re early.” She checked her watch: seven minutes early herself, and neither of them held much leverage for complaint.
Adam pushed open the restaurant door with a flourish. He turned, eyes flicking to her hair as if cataloguing a new detail. “The train behaved suspiciously well,” he offered in apology. Then, more softly, “And you look beautiful.”
Lucy paused at the threshold, surprised enough that her chest warmed against the cold.
Compliments from him had once been as routine as sunshine, something she barely even registered.
Tonight, though, each word felt vulnerable under inspection.
She searched his face—no trace of teasing, no glint of strategic flattery. Just honesty.
She stepped inside without replying. The hostess led them past steaming tabletop grills, humid air humming with garlic and charred meat.
A birthday party near the bar had already launched into a boisterous rendition of “Happy Birthday,” directed at a girl who looked mortified by the attention. Lucy inhaled deeply.
At their table near the back, Adam waited until she chose a chair before he sat across from her. He placed his phone facedown beside the menu, thumbs lingering at its edge. Lucy couldn’t help glancing at it; when she did, his hand shot out and slipped the device into his coat pocket.
“You don’t have to perform good behavior,” Lucy said, her voice low.
“I was putting away my phone,” he said evenly.
Her lips twitched. She folded her napkin onto her lap and read the menu from the bottom up, an old habit . When she reached the appetizers, she caught him watching.
“You still read menus backward,” he said.
“I start with desserts,” she corrected. “I move upward according to importance.”
Before Adam could answer, a server swept up and explained that the restaurant encouraged ordering a variety of dishes to share. Adam asked what Lucy might like, his deliberate phrasing drawing the server’s curious glance.
Lucy cut in: “You know what I eat.”
He inclined his head. “I didn’t want to presume. You may have developed new objections.”
“To dumplings?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Trauma is unpredictable.”
She laughed—short, amused. “Go ahead, then.”
He ordered dumplings, short ribs, spicy rice cakes, and the cucumber salad. After the server departed, he straightened the menu’s edge against the table, looking at her as though waiting for her to judge his performance.
“Was that controlling?” he asked.
“It was efficient.”
He offered a small nod of gratitude. “Thank you. I’m accepting partial credit where available.”
They both smiled, though a familiar tension hummed between them—like the low vibration of the grills overhead.
Lucy realized she’d forgotten how much space he filled at a table, how his attention snapped back to her when a server passed, how her irritation could spiral helplessly into affection before she’d had time to build her defenses.
“How is the lighthouse cover coming along?” he asked.
She blinked. “You remembered.” Lucy stirred her water thoughtfully. “The editor wants isolation to feel inviting, not murderous. I redrew the sea—took out the storm clouds.”
Adam let out a soft breath. “The sea is still dark, right?”
She smiled at him. “It’s the North Atlantic. The water can have a personality.”
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “And the person in the lighthouse window?”
“I took him out.”
“That seems harsh.”
“He didn’t belong.”
He exhaled slowly and turned his head toward the metal vent above the next table, where a server was lighting the grill into sudden orange flame that reflected in Adam’s glasses for a flicker. Lucy waited for his reaction. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than before.
“I tried drawing once,” he said. “After… the cruise.”
She leaned closer. Drawing was new territory for him—she remembered his tentative attempts with the fountain pen she’d given him. But his patience with his own hands? Always the first thing to give.
“What did you draw?” she prompted.
“The kettle,” he said, barely meeting her eyes. “It was on the counter after I bought it. It made me think of you.” His cheeks warmed.
Lucy’s chest softened at the image. “You could have asked me why I liked it.”
“You weren’t speaking to me,” he said, glancing down at his menu.
She let out a chuckle. “I like the whistle. It sounds outraged.”
“It does sound like an evacuation order,” he said, smiling.
They fell kind of comfortable silence, broken only by the hiss of a passing server and the hum of conversations. Lucy watched the motion in Adam’s hands, how he followed the grain of the wood, how his eyelashes brushed his cheeks. Then her thoughts drifted elsewhere—rebellious, quiet.
The dumplings arrived, steaming and plump. Adam couldn’t wait for them to cool; he seized one and burned his fingers. He yanked his hand back and studied it as though he expected the skin to blister.
“You remain poor at survival,” she teased, reaching to hold his hand. He let her—only for a moment—as if he needed proof he wasn’t alone in the world.
“I have accepted a strategic dependency on you,” he said, lifting her fingers to his lips.
“That has been dangerous for both of us,” Lucy murmured.
His smile faltered. “Yes.”
Her heart pinched at the softness in his voice. Dangerous—yes. They both knew it. Lucy turned her attention to her dumpling, separating it from the plate. She wondered how a dish so ordinary could taste so charged with everything unsaid.
“Tell me about the new office,” she said, switching topics.
He sighed and leaned back. “It’s on the third and fourth floors above a dental practice. Forty-three employees, and they’re still deciding if my arrival is a stepping-stone to something bigger or if it foreshadows their downward trajectory.”
“Pablo is the unofficial mayor,” Adam said. “He controls the supply closet, the calendars, and apparently the moral atmosphere. In my first week, I ordered six hundred legal pads. Now he distributes them like birth certificates—no one takes one without asking for his consent.”
She laughed. “At that rate you’ll be out of blank paper in six years.” She dug into the rice cakes. The sauce was a bold red that threw steam off every bite. Adam tried one gingerly, claimed the spice was reasonable, then began to sweat almost immediately.
Lucy watched his ears flush pink. “The ventilation’s poor.”
“There’s a metal chimney two feet from my head.”
“Perhaps it’s decorative.”
Adam drained half his water. “I missed having you notice when I’m lying about food.”
“You missed having someone to stop you from hurting yourself,” she replied quietly.
He paused, swallowing. The name she didn’t speak lay between them—Karina. Her absence pressed into the air like humidity. Lucy felt both of them wrestling with her memory, as though a single syllable might set off an avalanche.
“Have you seen her?” Lucy asked.
Adam’s fingers tightened around his glass. He stared at the water swirling. “No. Her attorney contacted mine about the company records, but we haven’t spoken.”
“Do you want to?”
“Some days.” He met her eyes, soft and distant. “Then I remember she left you and Steven on that island to fend for yourselves, and I don’t care whether she ever liked her job.”
Lucy bristled, then softened. “You cared about her.”
He exhaled, the confession rough around the edges. “Not in the way she wanted.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
He sank back in his chair. She watched the tension ease from his shoulders as he forced the truth from his lips.
“I cared. I trusted her, depended on her, and but I guess I didn’t know her at all because she thoguht competence counted as intimacy.
Now every good memory feels like proof I missed something. ”
Lucy reached across the table and touched his wrist. “Some of those memories were true.”
He shook his head, voice low. “I don’t want them to be.”
“That doesn’t change what happened.”
“No.” He traced a damp ring on the wood with his glass. “I hate that you can say her name and not look like you swallowed a nail.”
Lucy let out a soft laugh. “I’m better at chewing.”
He allowed himself a grin. The sound changed the atmosphere between them without clearing what lay beneath. It felt more honest than resolution would have.
They shifted to talk about her projects again: the fantasy romance cover she’d been avoiding and the details of the lighthouse cover. Adam confessed he still wanted a tiny silhouette in that lighthouse window—and bristled when she threatened to make it a murderer.
They’d nearly reached dessert when a woman paused at their table. Lucy recognized her from publishing events: Nina, an editor at Marlowe House. Neither remembered the other’s last name without a visual jog.
“Lucy Brooks,” Nina said, offering a warm smile. “I thought it was you. I saw the updated Northstar campaign credits. Congratulations.”
Her congratulations felt bittersweet—tied to stolen work—but Lucy thanked her and said, “This is Adam.”
Nina turned, beaming. “Are you working together?”
Adam hesitated, then said, “I’m here with her.”
It was a subtle distinction, but Lucy felt the shift. He didn’t define himself by her anymore. He was simply someone by her side.
Nina and Lucy talked covers and authors for a few minutes; Adam remained politely quiet, observing. When Nina finally left, Lucy glanced at him, uncertain whether to critique his introduction. He met her eyes and shrugged gently. She let it pass.
The cinnamon doughnuts arrived, and Lucy tore one open. Steam fanned her fingers. She handed him the larger half, recalling how he’d eyed the chocolate cake on the menu.
“You hate cinnamon,” she reminded him.
“I tolerate it in fried contexts,” he said, spearing the sugar-dusty edge with his finger.
“You could have ordered something you like.”
“I wanted these.”
“You wanted the cake.”
He paused, sugar sprinkled on his thumb. He licked it off without breaking eye contact. “I can want two things.”
“That’s gotten us into trouble before.”
“Wanting wasn’t the problem,” he said, soft as confession.
She studied the way his lips tightened at her words. It sounded almost scripted—like something he’d drafted in his head for weeks. He caught her watching him.
“That sounded better in my head,” he admitted. “I meant I want cake and I want to eat what you ordered.”
“You ordered the doughnuts.”
“Then I’ve lost the argument completely.”
Lucy gathered her coat as the restaurant’s warmth gave way to the night air.
The temperature had dropped, and her breath formed little clouds under the streetlamps.
Adam fell into step beside her, neither reaching for the other’s hand.
The gap between them was narrow enough to bridge, yet deliberate.
They reached her building. Lucy fumbled with her keys, then paused, key halfway in the lock. Adam looked up at her apartment windows, then down at the laundromat glowing across the street. She felt exposed under his gaze.
“This is where you live,” he said, quiet.
“It is,” she confirmed.
“I imagined more trees.”
“In Brooklyn?”
“The listing said tree-lined.”
Lucy turned slowly to face him. “You looked at listings.”
His cheeks colored. “After you said the building was above a laundromat. I found eleven candidates and decided searching further was deranged.” He rubbed his neck. “I never found out which one was yours.”
“That was deranged around candidate three,” she observed.
“I was having a bad night.”
She unlocked the door but did not step inside. The hallway light cast her silhouette thin and tall.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said.
He tilted his head. “You paid half, without my knowledge.”
“I’m thanking you for your company.”
His expression softened. “Then you’re welcome.”
He looked at her mouth as if reading braille. Her pulse fluttered.
“You can kiss me,” she said, heart thudding.
He blinked. “Are you sure?”
“No, but I still said it.”
“I want you to be sure.”
“Adam, if you ask one more question, I will change my mind.”
He closed the distance in a heartbeat. One hand cradled her jaw, the other pressed lightly at her waist. His mouth touched hers carefully, as though testing the water before diving in deeper.
Then she pulled him closer, and everything familiar—the longing, the anger, the silence between them—pressed into that single breathless moment.
He drew back slightly, forehead against hers, breath ragged in the cold. Lucy’s knees felt weak.
“You’re not coming upstairs though,” she said.
“Okay.”
“You were going to ask.”
“Of course. I remain deeply interested in upstairs.”
Lucy laughed softly and pushed him back a step. She opened the door, stepping inside before her resolve faltered.
“My gallery opening is Thursday,” she called over her shoulder. “Seven o’clock. You can come— if you want.”
“I want.” His eyes linged on hers and she knew he wasn’t talking about the gallery.
Outside, Adam watched her through the glass. Just before she turned away, she caught him smile. He brushed a fingertip against his coat cuff, where a smudge of cinnamon sugar still glowed in the streetlight. Then he sighed and walked into the night.