2. Kiara
— ? —
Kiara
Five Years Later
“I want the dinosaur cereal.”
“We have this cereal. It’s perfectly good cereal.”
“It doesn’t have dinosaurs on the box.”
“Kieran. The cereal inside is exactly the same.”
“The box matters.” He crosses his arms over his pajama shirt. Four years old, with his father’s gray eyes and his father’s jaw and absolutely none of his father’s money. “The dinosaurs on this box have the wrong number of fingers.”
“You’re four. How do you know how many fingers a dinosaur has?”
“I read it.”
“You can’t read.”
“I can read dinosaur words. They’re easier.” He points at the generic cereal box. “That T. rex has three fingers. T. rex had two fingers. That’s a mistake. I won’t eat mistakes for breakfast.”
The kitchen is small. The apartment is small. The life we’ve built is careful and entirely dependent on my salary and Nadia’s help.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll buy the dinosaur cereal next time.”
“Thank you.” He reaches for the bowl. “Also, velociraptors were smarter than T. rex.”
“Says who?”
“Says science. Velociraptors had big brains for their body size. That’s what smart means.”
“Where are you learning this?”
“The library. Ms. Floyd lets me read the grown-up dinosaur books because I don’t tear pages.”
The knock at the door is Nadia. She lets herself in with her key, still wearing her scrubs.
“Auntie Nadia!” Kieran abandons his cereal to run at her.
“There’s my favorite nephew.” She scoops him up. “Did you eat your vegetables?”
“I ate some of them.”
“Which ones?”
“The orange ones.”
“Carrots are a good start.” She sets him down and looks at me. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re wearing the same cardigan from my last three visits.”
“It’s a good cardigan.”
“It has a stain on the sleeve.”
I look down. Peanut butter. I don’t remember putting it there.
Nadia moves past me into the kitchen. She opens the fridge and surveys its contents. “You have no food.”
“I have food.”
“Yeah, the takeout container, which I’m a hundred percent sure is rotting.” She picks up a lemon. “And this. What are you even doing with this?”
“The lemon is for water.”
“That isn’t food.” She closes the fridge. “I’m bringing groceries when I come back. Don’t argue.”
“You just worked a full shift.”
“And I’ll work another one after I sleep. Let me help. You never let me help.”
“You help constantly. You’re the only reason I’ve survived these years.”
Her face softens. She crosses the kitchen and hugs me.
“You’ve done more than survive,” she says. “You’ve built an entire life. You’ve raised a brilliant, strange little boy who knows more about dinosaurs than any adult I know. You have a job and an apartment, and you’re doing it.”
“Surviving isn’t thriving.”
“Surviving with a child and no support is thriving. Stop being hard on yourself.”
Kieran appears at our knees, forcing himself into the hug. We make room for him.
My phone buzzes. I check it.
“Work?” Nadia asks.
“Deborah wants me in early. Big account.”
“Go. I’ll stay with him.”
“You need to sleep.”
“I’ll sleep on your couch. It’s comfortable enough.”
“It’s terrible, and you know it.”
“It’s terrible, and I don’t care. Go make money. I’ll teach Kieran about vegetables.”
“Good luck. Ms. Floyd let him raid the stash again. I’m sure he has a lot to say.”
“I know. I admire that about him.” She ruffles his hair. “He has opinions about everything.”
I kiss Kieran’s forehead. He tolerates it, then wipes it off and returns to his cereal. I grab my bag, my keys, my coat.
“Kiara,” Nadia says as I reach the door.
I turn.
“Whatever this big account is, you can handle it. You always handle it.”
I nod and leave.
The Grand Pennant Hotel sits in the center of the business district, all marble floors and brass fixtures and a quiet elegance that costs more per square foot than my entire apartment.
I’ve worked here for three years, starting as an assistant and climbing to events coordinator through sheer refusal to fail.
Deborah intercepts me before I reach my desk. Silver-haired, sharp-eyed, with the demeanor of a general.
“We landed the Cole account,” she says.
The name hits me in the chest. I keep my face neutral. “Cole?”
“Cole Real Estate. They’re developing a major project here. Residential towers, mixed-use retail, the whole thing. They’re basing their operations out of the hotel for the duration of the build. Events, meetings, and accommodations for their executives. It’s enormous.”
“That sounds like a significant contract.”
“It’s the most significant contract we’ve landed in five years.” She hands me a folder. “The heir is running this one himself. Jensen Cole. He specifically requested a dedicated liaison from our events team. Someone to handle everything his people need.”
My throat tightens. “And you want me.”
“I want my best coordinator on this. You have never dropped a ball, never missed a detail, never given a client a reason to complain.” She studies my face. “Is there a problem?”
“No.” I force the word out. “No problem.”
“Good. His advance team arrives soon. He follows shortly after. Get familiar with the brief. Don’t embarrass me.”
She strides off, and I’m alone with the folder in my hands.
I don’t want to open it. There’s more than one family named Cole. There are countless developers, and the odds that this is the one I’m thinking of are almost nothing. It’s a common name. It means nothing. It has to.
I open it.
His headshot looks up at me from the first page. Gray eyes. That sharp jaw. Hair pushed back from his forehead the exact way he used to when he was thinking hard about something. Older now. Harder at the mouth. But him. Unmistakably him.
Jensen Cole.
No. Not him. Not here. Not walking through my doors with his name printed on a contract I’m supposed to run.
Fuck.
My hand is shaking. I notice it from far away, the way you notice a thing happening to a stranger.
I put the folder down before I drop it. The father of my son.
The man who left me at an altar in front of everyone we’d invited and never once turned around.
And I’m about to spend a year confirming his reservations and clearing his schedule.
I lower myself into my chair and stare at the wall until it goes soft at the edges. Then I take out my phone and call the only person alive who knows what this costs me.
“What’s wrong?” Nadia picks up before the first ring finishes. “Is Kieran hurt?”
“Kieran is fine.” My voice comes out thin and wrong. “They’ve handed me the Cole Real Estate account.”
The line goes quiet.
“Nadia. Are you still there?”
“I’m here. I’m praying you’re about to tell me it’s some other Cole.”
“He’s running the build himself. Jensen. They made me his liaison for the entire project, and I found out from a photo in a folder.”
“So give it back. Claim an overload, invent a conflict, do whatever you have to.”
“I can’t give a reason without giving all of it, and no one at this hotel knows the first thing about who I used to be.”
“Then he’s a client and nothing more. Book his meetings, keep your face closed, and give him none of the woman he threw away.”
“He’ll take one look and know exactly who I am.”
“Let him. Knowing your face buys him nothing that lives behind it. Stay cold. Give him nothing. Never once let him see it land.”
“And when he asks about the years. About my life now.”
“Your life stopped being his the moment he left you in that dress. If he asks, hand him a vendor list and a forecast.”
I press the back of my hand hard against my eyes. “His eyes are the same. Kieran has them exactly.”
“I’ve looked at that boy every day for four years, and it changes nothing. He’s yours. Jensen built none of him and doesn’t even know he draws breath.”
“He’ll never find out.”
“Then we bury it deeper and we keep walking.” A pause, and her voice drops. “Now stand up. Fix your face. Go be the woman they should all be careful of.”
“And who’s that?”
“You. On an ordinary day. Go.”
That almost pulls a smile out of me. “Thank you.”
“Call me the second you’re home.”
I hang up and let myself look at the photo one last time. The gray eyes. The mouth I once knew better than my own.
Five years of distance, about to close to the width of a hotel lobby.