5. Soleil
FIVE
SOLEIL
"Three days." I held up three fingers. "Three. Whole. Days."
He sat behind his desk. The lamp threw a warm circle of light across the papers in front of him, leaving the rest of the office in shadow.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms. His tie was gone.
His jaw was set the same way it had been at the gallery — tight and controlled — but his eyes were different. Softer. Or maybe just tired.
"I had this whole speech prepared," I continued, stepping inside. "It was devastating. Razor-sharp. You were going to feel terrible."
He came around the desk. Not fast, not slow. His stride was even, deliberate, closing the distance between us with the same precision he seemed to bring to everything. I opened my mouth to deliver the first line of my devastating speech.
His hands found my face. Palms warm against my jaw, fingers curving behind my ears, tilting my head up. He pressed his lips to my forehead. Then my left cheek — slow, his mouth lingering on my skin for two full seconds.
Then he pulled me into him. His arms wrapped around my back. His chin settled on the top of my head. He held me against his chest, and I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt.
"I'm sorry." His voice was low and close, vibrating through his chest into mine. "I got buried in work and handled it badly. No excuse." His hand moved up my spine and settled between my shoulder blades. "Let me make it up to you."
The speech evaporated. Every sharp word, every rehearsed line I'd practiced in the elevator — gone.
Because this wasn't the man from the gallery with the crossed arms and the locked jaw.
This wasn't the controlled figure who'd pulled away after the kiss on my stoop and walked into the dark without looking back.
This was someone open, present. His arms solid around me and his breath warm in my hair, apologizing without deflecting. I didn't know he had this in him.
I pulled back. My hands were flat on his chest. I searched his face — the dark eyes, the set of his mouth, the small crease between his brows. I was looking for the catch, the angle, or the deflection.
I couldn't find one. Which, for me, was the same as it not existing.
"Make it up to me how?" I asked.
"Are you hungry?"
I was starving. I'd been painting since 3:00 p.m. and had eaten half a granola bar and a handful of almonds from Margaux's desk drawer, which she would be furious about tomorrow.
"Always," I said.
He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, shrugged it on, and held the door open. I walked through. He followed, his hand finding the small of my back as we stepped into the corridor. The touch was light and warm. I didn't pull away. I pressed into it.
Tucked below street level, the restaurant had no signage or awning label — only a brass handle and stairs descending into a glow of honeyed light that bathed everything like an oil painting. A sharply dressed man in shadows awaited us below.
"Mr. Reeves." He smiled. "Your table is ready."
The table was in a private alcove, separated from the main dining room by a curtain of amber glass beads. White linen. A single candle. The flame reflected in Nolan's eyes when he sat across from me, and I realized I was staring at the reflection instead of the menu.
"You had a reservation?" I asked.
He unfolded his napkin. "I did."
"On a Tuesday night. At a place that books weeks in advance."
He smoothed the napkin across his lap. "Yes."
I could have asked. The question was right there — If you weren't planning to call, why did you have a table? If the three days of silence were real, how is this reservation also real? The math didn't work. One of those things was a lie.
But the candle was warm. His eyes were on me. The alcove smelled like butter and rosemary and fresh bread. The evening felt like something I didn't want to interrupt with a question that might change the atmosphere.
I picked up the menu.
The waiter appeared. I ordered the duck confit with cherry reduction. Nolan ordered the sea bass, grilled, no sauce. I looked at him over my menu.
"No sauce."
"I don't like sauce."
"You don't like sauce. On fish."
"The fish is the point. Sauce is a distraction."
"Sauce is a complement."
"Sauce is a cover-up."
I shook my head and set the menu down. "You are the most difficult man I've ever shared a table with."
His mouth quirked. That ghost of a smile. I was mapping its varieties — the faint flicker, the one crinkling his eyes, and the elusive full version flashing teeth. Tonight, I was gunning for the teeth.
The food arrived. My duck was perfect. I took a bite and closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Nolan was watching me. His fork was suspended halfway to his mouth, forgotten. His eyes were on my lips.
I reached across the table with my fork and speared a piece of his sea bass.
He looked at my fork, then at me. "You're going to keep doing that."
"Obviously." I put the fish in my mouth. It was good. Plain, but good. "It needs sauce."
"It does not."
I reached across again. He caught my wrist. His fingers wrapped around it — loose, warm, his thumb resting against my pulse point.
My fork hovered over his plate. We stayed like that for a beat.
Two. His thumb pressed lightly against the vein in my wrist, and I knew he could feel how fast it was going.
He released me. I withdrew the fork. He went back to his fish. I went back to my duck. Neither of us mentioned it. Both of us were aware of the exact spot where his thumb had been.
"Tell me about your week," he said.
"Rafael got a write-up in a downtown arts journal.
The journalist called his work 'emotionally tectonic,' which made Rafael so nervous he called me four times to ask if that was good.
" I tore a piece of bread and dipped it in the cherry reduction.
"I'm scouting a new artist — a ceramicist from Bed-Stuy who makes these incredible vessels that look like they're mid-collapse.
And Margaux threatened to quit over a framing vendor who delivered the wrong molding for the third time. "
"Did she quit?"
"Margaux threatens to quit every Tuesday. It's part of her process." I leaned forward on my elbows. "What about you? What does your week look like when you're not vanishing on women who kissed you?"
His jaw worked. He set his fork down and picked up his water glass, turning it once. "Acquisitions. Restructuring. Finding the weak angles in companies that don't want to admit they have them."
"That sounds like surgery."
"It is surgery. Except the patient doesn't get anesthesia."
I laughed. He observed every bit of it. His gaze followed my lips' curve, my head's backward tilt, and my hand rising to my collarbone. When our eyes met again, his face cracked open, like a door left unlatched.
"You're different tonight," I said.
He reached across the table. His hand covered mine. His thumb found the ridge of my knuckle and traced it, slow, back and forth. "Different how?"
"I don't know." My voice was quieter. His thumb kept moving. "Less guarded."
His eyes held mine across the candle. The flame moved between us. His thumb didn't stop.
"Maybe I am," he said.
After dinner, the waiter swept away the plates.
Nolan scrawled his name on the check, blind to the total.
We rose. His hand settled at the small of my back once more — palm broad, fingers splayed, heat seeping through my linen blouse.
He steered me past the beaded curtain, through lingering diners, up the stairs, and out into the crisp October air.
His touch lingered, firm and possessive, as if it owned the spot.
My breath caught. I let it.
We walked. I tucked myself against his side, not because of the cold, but because I wanted to be there.
His arm came around my shoulders. I fit against him, my head at the height of his chest, my hip brushing his with every step.
The fit was so natural it unnerved me. Like a key sliding into a lock that had been waiting.
"Tell me something," I said. "Something I don't know."
His arm tightened around my shoulders. "My mother was a nurse. ER. Night shifts mostly. She'd come home at 6:00 a.m. smelling like antiseptic and still make breakfast before we left for school."
I glanced up at him. His jaw clenched, but his gaze drifted elsewhere — perhaps a kitchen, some sunlit morning, a woman scrambling eggs after a grueling twelve-hour shift.
"Dinner was mandatory in our house," he continued. "6:00 p.m. No excuses. She didn't care if you had practice, homework, or a broken leg. You sat at that table, you ate, and you talked about your stuff."
"She sounds wonderful."
"She was strict, but she was present. She was always present.
" He paused. "My father drove a delivery truck.
Gone by 4:00 a.m., back by 7:00 p.m. He'd walk in the door, and my mother would already have his plate ready.
He'd sit down without changing his clothes, and they'd talk for an hour after we went to bed. "
I pressed closer to him. "That sounds like love."
"It was. That silent breed." His words softened.
I was quiet for a moment. Our footsteps matched. His arm was warm. The city hummed around us — distant taxis, a dog barking, and someone's television flickering blue through a window above the street.
"My mother grew rosemary," I said. "On every surface in the kitchen.
Pots on the windowsill, bundles drying from the rack above the stove.
The whole house smelled like it." My throat tightened.
"After she died, my father kept the garden going for a year.
Watered the plants every morning. Then one day, I came home from school and the pots were gone. All of them. He never said why."
Nolan's arm tightened around me. A single squeeze. He didn't offer words and didn't try to fill the space with something comforting. He just held me tighter, and the tightening said everything.
My building appeared. I climbed the first step and turned. He stood below me, one step down, the streetlight catching the same half of his face — the cheekbone, the jaw, and the eyes.
He closed in. One hand claimed my hip, the other cradled my neck, fingers threading into my hair as he kissed me.
Slow. Methodical. No frantic crash like the other night.
This was assured and intentional. His lips warmed mine.
His grip firmed in my hair. I clutched his jacket front and tugged, erasing every inch between us.
His lips moved from my jaw to the spot beneath my ear. My head fell back. His mouth was hot against my pulse.
"Nolan." His name left me in a breath I hadn't planned.
He pulled back. Forehead against mine. His breathing was ragged. His hand was still in my hair, his thumb brushing the skin behind my ear.
"Good night, Soleil."
He let go, stepped down, and walked away. Hands in his pockets, he didn't look back.
I went inside and leaned against the door. Same position as three nights ago, same wood against my spine, but different. The stoop was discovery. This was certainty. My lips were swollen. My neck still burned where his mouth had been. My hands were shaking, but not from cold.
I pulled out my phone and called Margaux.
She picked up on the second ring. "This better be good. I'm watching my show."
"I'm in trouble."
A pause. I heard her mute the television. The background went silent. "The good kind?"
I bit my lip. My cheeks hurt.
"The worst kind."