6. Sutton
SUTTON
The partner from Ohio had been talking at me for nine minutes, and I hadn’t heard a word of it.
The venue was the same one we used for every partner reception—a rooftop space on the west side that the events team liked because it photographed well and I tolerated because it had a terrace where I could disappear when I needed to.
I knew this man. I’d negotiated against him twice and with him once.
He ran the licensing arm for a regional retail chain that had been making noises about expanding their use of our tech, and his name was on a contract I needed to close before the end of the quarter.
At any other moment in my professional life, I would’ve given him the full force of my attention.
I was not giving him the full force of my attention.
I was tracking Joss across the room.
She’d come in at 7:42, twelve minutes after the official start, which I’d noticed because I’d been counting the minutes since 7:30.
She was in something dark blue. Sleeveless.
The hem hit just above the knee. The silver chain was back at her throat—the same one she’d worn Monday night at dinner, the one I’d noticed then because I’d been looking for reasons to look at her neck.
Her hair was up tonight, which surprised me, until she’d turned her head to greet the head of design and I’d seen the loose pieces she’d left at the nape of her neck.
She was holding a glass of white wine and a small black bag. She nodded at the right moments, kept her smile measured, and didn’t let her gaze drift once.
Not even in my direction.
That was deliberate. I knew it was deliberate because I’d been doing the same thing for the last hour and change, and the effort of not looking at someone across a crowded room was approximately seventeen times the effort of looking at them.
I’d been clocking her location in my peripheral vision like a man tracking stock prices.
The partner from Ohio was telling me a story about his daughter’s wedding. I nodded at what I hoped were the appropriate places.
Across the room, Joss had moved from the head of design to a small cluster of people standing near the bar.
I recognized two of them. The third I didn’t.
He was tall, mid-forties, in an unstructured linen jacket with the sleeves pushed up and the collar left open one button too far.
He had his back half-turned to the rest of the cluster and his attention fully on Joss.
He was standing closer to her than he needed to be.
She’d clocked it. I could see her clock it. Her shoulders had moved up half an inch and her smile had gone two shades more polite. The small black bag had migrated from her left hand to her right, which put a barrier between her body and his.
He leaned in to say something to her. She tilted her head a fraction to listen. He stayed leaned in after he finished talking.
She took half a step back. He closed the half step.
I excused myself from the partner from Ohio.
I didn’t run. I didn’t even hurry. I crossed the room with the same measured walk I used in every executive setting I’d ever been in, nodded at a board member who tried to catch my eye, accepted a glass of something from a passing server without looking at it, and arrived at the bar cluster at exactly the moment Joss’s smile was about to crack.
“Joss.”
She looked up.
Her relief registered for one half second before she covered it. The half second was enough.
“There’s someone I need you to meet,” I said.
I didn’t look at the tall man in the jacket.
I addressed Joss directly. I let the other two members of the cluster see that I was extracting her, and I let the tall man see that he was being dismissed.
Then I waited the necessary beat for Joss to give me the small professional nod of a PM following her CEO’s lead.
“Of course,” she said.
“This way.”
I touched her elbow. Just the elbow. Just for the second it took to turn her toward the far side of the room. Then I let go.
She walked beside me. We crossed the reception space without speaking.
We passed the head of engineering, who lifted her glass to me without comment.
We passed two more partners I’d been meaning to talk to all night and would now not be talking to.
We passed the open doorway to the small terrace off the main reception room, and I steered her toward it without saying anything, and she went.
The terrace was empty.
The evening was warm and thick. The city below was busy as usual—taillights moving along the avenues, the river catching whatever light was left in the sky, the hum of a Wednesday night at nine o’clock.
We were thirty floors up in a venue Myrror rented for these things—a rooftop event space on the west side with too much glass and not enough privacy.
The reception was behind us through a set of French doors that closed slowly enough I had to wait for them to click shut before I turned to her.
She was already looking at me.
She’d set her wineglass on the wide stone ledge that ran along the terrace railing. Her hand was flat on the ledge next to it. Her chin was tilted up the half inch it always tilted when she was waiting for me to do or say something specific.
“There’s no one I need you to meet,” I said.
“I know.”
That was all she said. I know. Two words. The same two words she’d said on the rooftop on Friday night. The same two words she’d said in her hallway on Monday outside her door. She had a way of saying I know that ended conversations and started other ones.
I closed the distance between us. Not all the way. Two feet, then one.
“That man was making you uncomfortable,” I said.
“He was.”
“I handled it.”
“I was about to handle it more.” Her chin tipped up another fraction. “You got to him first.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
The question landed in the space between us and sat there.
I could’ve answered it three different ways.
I could’ve said because he was standing too close.
I could’ve said because I don’t share. I could’ve said something measured and CEO-shaped about the company’s responsibility to junior staff at events like this.
I didn’t say any of those things.
“Because I told you on Monday I wouldn’t stop at a kiss,” I said.
Her breath caught.
I watched her register it. The small intake. The flicker at her throat. The way her hand on the stone ledge curled into a slight fist and then flattened again.
“Sutton.”
“Tell me to stop.”
“What?”
“Tell me to stop. I’ll stop.”
She didn’t tell me to stop.
I lifted my hand to her jaw the way I’d lifted it Monday night. Thumb against her cheekbone. Fingers along the line of her throat. She’d been waiting for me to do it—I could see it in her eyes, in the way her chin came up to meet my hand—and this time, I didn’t pull back.
I kissed her.
I kissed her carefully. I kissed her like a man who knew exactly where every line was and had made a private contract with himself about which ones he was crossing and which ones he wasn’t.
Her mouth was soft and warm and tasted faintly of the white wine she’d been holding, and she made a small sound against my lips that I was probably going to think about for the rest of my life.
Her hand came up off the stone ledge and rested flat against the lapel of my jacket.
She didn’t grab. She didn’t pull me closer.
She just set her hand on my chest and left it there.
I kissed her for maybe four seconds.
It felt like one. It felt like an hour. It felt like the only thing I’d ever done that mattered.
I broke the kiss.
I didn’t step back. Her hand was still on my chest. My thumb was still at her cheekbone. I could feel her breath on my mouth, and I let the moment sit there for one more beat before I made myself speak.
“You can still tell me to stop,” I said.
“I’m not telling you to stop.”
“Joss.”
“Sutton.”
I closed my eyes. I let myself stand there for two more seconds with my hand on her face and her hand on my chest and the June night sitting on us. And then I did the hardest thing I’d done all year, which was step back.
I let my hand drop from her jaw.
She let her hand drop from my chest.
We stood there a foot apart, looking at each other, breathing.
“You have a partner reception to go back to,” I said.
“I know.”
“I have a partner from Ohio waiting for me.”
“I know that too.”
I almost smiled. I didn’t.
“You’re going to walk back into that room,” I said, “and you’re going to be a junior PM at a partner event.
And I’m going to walk back into that room and be a CEO.
And we’re both going to do that for another hour, and then we’re going to leave separately, and you’re going to go home, and I’m going to go to my condo.
And tomorrow, we’re going to be at the same office. ”
She nodded. Once.
“Can we do that?” I asked.
“I can do that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I reached up and tucked a loose piece of her hair back into place. The same gesture from Monday night. Different stakes.
I picked up her wineglass from the stone ledge and handed it to her. She took it.
I opened the glass door for her. She walked through it ahead of me. I stayed a step behind her on purpose, my hand at the small of her back as we crossed back into the reception space, my fingertips against the silk of her dress, the flat of my palm at the curve just below her ribs.
I let my hand stay there one beat longer than I should’ve.
Then I let it drop.
She moved one way. I moved the other.
The partner from Ohio was at the bar. He was watching me. He was going to ask me about it in the morning when he sent the follow-up email he always sent after a reception, and I was going to give him an answer that didn’t answer anything.
I crossed to him. I picked up where we’d left off. I let him finish the story about his daughter’s wedding.
The whole time he was talking, I could feel where her hand had been on my chest.