Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
By eight-forty Tuesday morning, I had already accepted two things.
I had not slept enough, and Talia Vaughn had gotten all the way into my day before I even put a shirt on.
That part showed up while I stood in my kitchen in gray sweats, coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, looking at the LinkUP post she had made for Burton Creative’s event coming up. One hundred and fifty a ticket.
Worth it.
The comments under it told their own little story. A few women said they were sharing it. A couple more said the room already looked beautiful. Then the men came through talking about pulling up, coming to support, sliding by, and I knew exactly what half of that meant.
Niggas loved to act like a flyer had changed their life the second a fine woman posted it.
Talia had liked a few of the comments. Women’s, men’s. Professional. Warm. Exactly how she was supposed to move in a space like that. Still, I stood there longer than I needed to, thumb resting against the side of my phone, reading the thread like it had personally offended me.
Seeing other men flirt under her post did something possessive in me, quiet enough not to embarrass me and honest enough that I could not lie about it.
It was not insecurity. I knew what I looked like.
Knew what I brought to a room. But something about men getting comfortable under her comments made me want to ask every last one of them what exactly they thought was available there.
Unreasonable.
Still true.
So I did what I did.
I ignored Bryce’s eyes under it. Didn’t like it, though. That was what I had to admit to myself.
Still, I was thick in my feelings, so I kept going.
Me: If I’m invited?
A few more eye emojis showed up from people who needed hobbies.
Then Talia answered.
Talia: You definitely are.
That sat in me all the way through the drive downtown because it felt like us.
Like a thread still carrying over from last night.
The dark. The truck. Her in my lap. My fingers in her.
The way she had come apart on my hand and still gone inside her house without letting me follow.
The way we had texted after, honest enough to say what we wanted and disciplined enough not to let the wanting make every decision for us.
That was still on me when I got to work.
By nine-twelve, one deal was already trying to die on my desk.
Not quietly either.
Marcus Ellison, the buyer on the East Liberty mixed-use acquisition, had decided the updated numbers suddenly made him “less comfortable with the exposure.” Peter Keane, seller’s counsel, was acting like deadlines were a form of oppression.
Denise Palmer in credit wanted one more clarification before she blessed the final structure.
And somewhere inside all of that, Marcus was on speaker in my office using the phrase “solution-oriented” while actively making the solution harder to reach.
That kind of thing usually woke me all the way up.
And it did.
Just not enough to keep Talia out of it.
I sat at the head of the small table in my office, jacket off, sleeves down, tie still where it belonged, and listened to Marcus talk himself in a circle while the skyline threw pale morning light across the glass behind me.
Molly stood just inside the door with a yellow legal pad and the expression of a woman already deciding which fires were worth my time and which ones needed to die before they reached me.
“Marcus, let me make sure I’m understanding you correctly,” I said when he finally stopped talking. “Yesterday you were comfortable closing at this leverage. This morning you’re not. Nothing about the property changed overnight. So what exactly am I solving?”
Silence.
Across from me, Devon dropped his gaze to hide a grin.
Marcus cleared his throat. “I’m just trying to make sure I’m protected.”
“You are protected,” I said. “What you’re asking for now is reassurance, and those are not the same product.”
Peter Keane jumped in after that, voice too smooth, too ready. “Well, if your client can’t perform, we may need to revisit whether today is realistic.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the phone on the table like I could see him through it.
“My client can perform,” I said. “The question is whether everybody else in this deal plans to stop improvising long enough to let him.”
Devon coughed into his fist.
Molly’s pen kept moving.
Usually, once the room needed that version of me, everything else fell away. I could lock in, cut through the noise, and make people stop hiding feelings inside numbers.
Today, even while the deal tried to fall apart in real time, some part of me was still carrying Talia.
Her hand drifting over my thigh. The look in her eyes when she realized exactly how hard I was.
The way she had taken my fingers in the dark, body shaking over me while I held back from everything I wanted.
“Micah.”
Devon’s voice pulled me back.
I looked up.
Marcus was waiting on me again.
Right.
I folded my hands once on the table and gave them all the part of me that belonged to money and consequence.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “You’re either closing this deal today the way we structured it, or you’re admitting out loud that what changed is your nerve, not the math. If it’s the second one, say that now and let everybody use the rest of their morning for something more useful.”
The room went still.
Then Peter started backpedaling. Marcus started clarifying. Denise, who had been quiet on the line for most of it, finally spoke up.
“If Calvin Rhodes can get updated liquidity support over by eleven,” she said, “we can live with the structure as is.”
There it was.
A path.
Molly stepped forward before I even had to look at her. “I’ll get the revised support from Calvin.”
Devon straightened from where he had been leaning against the credenza. “I’ll call Peter directly and get him out of his feelings.”
I nodded once.
That was why I trusted the people I trusted. No theatrics once the work got real.
By ten-o-three, the deal wasn’t dead anymore. Just expensive and irritating, which was close enough to normal for banking.
Devon followed me into the hall after the call ended.
“You enjoy talking to rich people like they forgot math.”
I kept walking toward my office. “I enjoy when rich people stop acting like nerves are a negotiating strategy.”
He laughed. “That was cold.”
“That was accurate.”
He leaned against my doorframe while I moved past him. “You know what’s funny?”
“Nothing you’re about to say.”
“You only get that voice when you’re irritated for real or distracted by a woman.”
I looked up at him.
He grinned.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”
“You have entirely too much free time.”
“And you got that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one where part of you still in the room and part of you somewhere else.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Even with a live deal trying to test everybody’s character before lunch, part of me was still turned toward her.
Not only because of last night, either. Yesterday’s texts had changed the temperature too.
The bra question. Her asking if I wanted her to go without one.
The way both of us let the conversation walk right out of decorum like we had not already left most of it in the truck.
Whatever careful line we had been pretending to hold had gotten thinner.
It was still there.
Barely.
Molly knocked once and stepped in without waiting because she had earned the right years ago.
“Liquidity support is on the way. Legal says if they have it by eleven-thirty, the rest stays on track.” She set two folders on my desk, then looked at me once too carefully. “Also, you’re distracted.”
I sat down. “That your official diagnosis?”
“It is.” She smoothed a tab on the top folder. “You’re still doing your job. You’re just doing it like part of you has better plans.”
That got a laugh out of me before I could stop it.
She lifted a brow. “Mmhmm.”
“You and Devon need hobbies.”
“We have hobbies. Yours is apparently texting somebody back too fast.”
I looked up.
Her face stayed straight.
Mine did not.
“That obvious?”
“To me? Yes.” She turned toward the door, then paused. “If the one o’clock runs long, I’ll move your four. But if you plan on acting new all day, at least eat lunch.”
By noon, the deal was moving again. Documents updated. Legal mollified. Borrower suddenly respectful now that the possibility of losing the property had gotten close enough to smell.
But I still was not treating the day like it belonged all the way to work.
By four, I knew exactly what I wanted.
I did not want another restaurant, another server asking if everything tasted all right, another room where I had to share her with waitstaff, traffic, and a clock sitting on the table between us.
I wanted her in my place. Wanted the whole evening under my roof, where nothing had to be rushed or cut short and the city could fall away for a few hours.
That should have made me pause.
It did.
For about one breath.
Because bringing Talia into my home meant something different than kissing her in a lounge or pulling behind a dark building when the wanting got too loud.
My place was mine. My quiet. My records.
My books. The view I came home to when the day had taken too much out of me.
I did not bring women there casually, and I damn sure did not call a private chef for somebody I planned to treat like a passing appetite.
But there was nothing casual left in the way I wanted her.
That was the truth.
I wanted to feed her. Pour her wine. Watch her move through my space and decide what she thought of it.
I wanted her laugh in my kitchen, her perfume in my hallway, her eyes on the pieces of my life I had not posted for anybody to appraise.
I wanted to sit across from her with no audience, then sit beside her, then touch her with enough time to learn what the truck had only started teaching me.