Chapter 26
The wheels kiss the tarmac like a sigh, soft, controlled, deceptively calm compared to the storm sitting in my chest.
I unclip my belt, grab my jacket, and step into Melbourne’s heat. It hits me in a wave of warm asphalt, jet fuel, the sharp city tang that always feels like home and warning in the same breath.
And there he is.
Elias waits beside the glossy black Audi, hands clasped, posture straight as a soldier. His salt-and-pepper hair is tied back today, his shirt crisp, his eyes carrying that same quiet loyalty I’ve leaned on for years.
“Welcome back, sir,” he says with a half-smile, the closest thing he gives to affection.
“Good to be back,” I answer, clasping his hand and pulling him into a brief shoulder bump. “You been behaving?”
“Always. The building’s running smooth. Fresh produce in the fridge. Housekeeping left you a note.” He raises a brow. “And she made your favourite. The lamb slow-braise.”
My stomach growls on cue. “Christ, I missed that.”
Elias opens the passenger door. “City’s busy tonight. They’ve got some festival or another. Lights everywhere. You’ll see.”
I slide into the cool leather, the door shutting with a click that feels final, somehow like I’ve crossed into another version of myself. The Melbourne version. The masked version. I’m not sure I like him anymore.
As we pull away, the city rises around us, glass, neon, old brick with new steel strapped over it like scars.
Night crowds spill across pavements. Someone’s laughing wildly.
Someone’s shouting into a phone. Street food smoke curls upward, ginger, garlic, charred meat.
Melbourne always smells like possibility and exhaustion.
Elias drives steadily. “Long trip?”
“Long enough.” I scroll through my emails, thumbing through contract approvals, supplier complaints, and a board reminder. None of it lands. Penn’s name ghosts behind every sentence, every blinking notification.
I watch the city smear past the window; lights dragged into lines by speed. “Feels busier than usual.”
“It’s Melbourne,” Elias replies. “She doesn’t sleep. Just changes moods.”
I almost smile. “Sounds like someone I know.”
We ride in a comfortable silence as the Audi climbs toward the residential skyline.
My phone buzzes again another message I ignore.
I’m too aware of the weight in my chest, the truth I haven’t spoken, the life she doesn’t know I have.
A CEO. A man with a penthouse. A man with people who depend on him. A man with secrets.
A man terrified she’ll walk away when she sees all of it.
When we reach the tower, Elias parks underground and steps out quickly to open my door. “Everything’s ready upstairs. Groceries stocked, linens fresh, and Mei left dinner warming.”
“Tell her I said thank you.” I pause. “And that her towels are the only reason I tolerate coming back.”
Elias huffs. “She’ll pretend to be insulted, but she’ll be pleased.”
The lift hums as it rises. My floor, the top floor, opens with that familiar soft chime. The hallway is warm, lights dimmed low, the way I prefer after travel. The scent hits first: star anise, rosemary, and something sweet Mei must’ve baked just because she felt like it.
The door is already unlocked.
Mei always leaves it that way when she knows I’m minutes out.
Inside, the penthouse glows. Lamps on. Windows open to the skyline. Food set out on the kitchen island under glass cloches. My bedroom door cracked open, revealing the soft fall of fresh linen, the careful fold of my nightshirt across the bed. Towels stacked like cloud layers in the ensuite.
Everything touched with care.
Everything touched with intention.
I stand there for a moment, letting the quiet sink into me, letting the sense of being looked after soften the sharp edges of the day.
But it only makes me think of her.
Penn.
Sweet, fractured Penn with her grief tucked behind her ribs and her heart stitched together by hope and fear and something I want more than I know how to say.
I shower, steam rising around me, washing off airports and uncertainty. The water is too hot but grounding. I brace one hand on the slick tile, inhaling the citrus scent Mei stocks because she says it clears “bad energy.”
I need to believe that.
When I step out, I wrap a towel around my waist, pour myself a whiskey over ice, add a wedge of lime, her favourite smell on me, though she doesn’t know why yet and walk barefoot to the window.
Melbourne sprawls beneath me. A pulse. A beast. A promise.
I sip and let it burn down my throat.
How the hell am I going to tell her?
How do I explain the man I am here? How do I show her that I’m not hiding out of deceit, but out of fear, real fear that once she sees the whole picture, she’ll think I’m too much, too established, too complicated?
I press my forehead to the glass.
“I can’t lose her,” I murmur to the city lights. “Not after everything.”
I worked for this worked to be the kind of man she could lean into. Worked to build something stable, something safe, something she could step into without losing herself.
But now I have to tell her the truth.
And I have never been more afraid in my life.
The glass fogs under my breath.
One hand curls tight around the glass. Lime drips down my wrist.
“Penn,” I whisper, like a prayer I don’t deserve. “Please…see me.”
The city doesn’t answer.
But somewhere, beneath the noise and glow and distance, I feel her. Like a pull. Like a thread. Like home.
I text her before I can talk myself out of it.
You awake, Peach?
I stare at the screen a little too long. It’s pathetic how my pulse kicks like I’m eighteen and she’s the first girl who ever looked at me.
She replies after a minute that feels like hours.
Yeah. Couldn’t sleep. You?
I don’t tell her why I’m awake. I don’t tell her where I am. Not yet.
Long day. Thought I’d check in.
Check in. Christ. If she knew how badly I wanted to climb inside her chaos and make a home there, she’d block me out of self-defence.
The phone lights my face in the dark bedroom. The sheets are still cold. Melbourne hums outside my window — a low, metallic vibration, the kind that sinks into your bones if you’ve lived here long enough.
She types.
Stops.
Types again.
You good? You sound… I don’t know. Off.
She can read me too fucking well.
Or maybe I’ve been starving for someone to see me, and she just happened to be the one who bothered to look long enough.
I’m fine. Just tired. What’re you doing? I send it before I can rewrite it into something less revealing.
Three dots appear.
Disappear.
Reappear.
She’s thinking too much which means she’s thinking about me.
Good.
I picture her lying there, curled into the half-light of her room, hair messy on her pillow, chewing her bottom lip like she does when she doesn’t trust her own thoughts.
Trying to sleep. Didn’t work. Too much in my head. You ever get that?
Always, Peach. Always.
But not for the reasons she thinks. I start typing the truth.
Yeah, Peach. More than you’d think. My thumb hovers over send. Feels too naked. Too honest. Too mine. I erase it. Replace it with Yeah. Happens. My lies aren’t big. Just soft omissions. Silence shaped into something safer.
She sends a tiny mhmm emoji—the quiet kind—like she knows I’m hiding something and she’s choosing not to push. Not yet.
The room is too quiet. The kind of quiet that lets old ghosts climb out of their corners and sit on the edge of your bed.
I strip down, push into the cool sheets, and the emptiness hits me with unnecessary force. The penthouse is spotless—Mei’s work—everything folded and turned down, towels fluffed, candles replaced, the faint scent of lemongrass and starch in the air.
I’ve slept in worse. Cargo ships. Airport floors. Offices with nothing but a jacket for a pillow.
Success never shook those habits free. Poverty stays branded into the muscle.
I built the company piece by bloody piece risk by risk, contract by contract, lie by measured lie. Freight. Logistics. Ocean transport. What started as a single emergency run up the coast has turned into one of the fastest-growing private carriers in Australasia.
Everyone sees the clean numbers. The tailored suits. The handshake deals.
No one sees the crates I hauled barefoot. The docks I worked until dawn. The storms I slept through. The fires I waded into to save what little was mine.
Death taught me how to build. Fear taught me how to keep it.
But she—
She softens something I didn’t think could thaw.
My phone buzzes again.
Miss your smartass comments. Even your mail complaints. You on another route or something?
I laugh quietly. Jesus. She makes it too easy to fall.
Nah. Not a route. Just busy. Been dealing with mail like it’s Christmas rush. You’d think people were mailing gold bars.
Her reply is instant.
Bet you missed me complaining about it for you.
God. I can hear her voice. The way she leans into sass like it’s armour she doesn’t realise is see-through.
I type before I can stop myself. Miss the stairwell too. And the cool air. And you. I stare at the last line.
My thumb hovers. Coward. I delete and you. Replace it with
Miss the cool air.
She sends a small heart the shy kind like she’s dipping her toe into meaning.
I want to tell her where I am. Why I’m here. That I’m coming home the second I finish what needs doing. But I don’t. Not yet.
Instead, I open my laptop the new Australian expansion contracts glowing on the screen. The man who held the deal before me died last week. Heart attack. His son wants everything rushed. Too fast. Too eager. That’s always a sign something fucking stinks.
Work has always been easier than people.
But tonight? I’m thinking about her more than the numbers. Thinking about her scrolling back through our messages, replaying them, wondering what I meant. Thinking about her lying on her side, hair fanned out, breathing uneven.
Thinking about the way she looked at me the last time we crossed paths like she’d let me ruin her if I asked gently enough.
My phone lights up once more. You still there? Yeah, Peach. God, I’m here.
I type. Yeah. Still here. Get some sleep.
I almost added, "I’ll talk to you tomorrow." But that feels like a promise. And men like me shouldn’t make promises to women like her. Not until I clean up the pieces of the life she doesn’t know I’m holding.
I set the phone on my chest. Close my eyes.
The city hums beneath me, alive and sleepless.
I make a quiet decision, the kind that shifts the ground under your feet.
When I get back… I’m not keeping my distance anymore.
Let the world burn. Let the paperwork wait.
Let the consequences come. She’s worth the risk.
Sleep takes me slowly, gently, with her name still echoing in my chest like a prayer I’m not brave enough to speak aloud.