CHAPTER 3
TREY
By Monday afternoon, Trey had learned three things.
First, Paula could work sixteen hours without noticing she had not eaten.
Second, Renee Whitaker was apparently capable of generating emails faster than a federal clerk’s office.
Third, dating a crisis manager during an actual crisis required humility.
At 7:18 p.m., Trey stood outside Paula’s temporary Washington office holding two containers of Thai food and wondering whether showing up counted as care or management.
He texted instead.
The temporary office had the exhausted look of a room being used harder than it had been designed for.
Legal pads overlapped on the conference table.
Two coffee cups had gone cold. A printer warmed the air with the faint smell of paper and toner, and the fluorescent lights flattened everybody's complexion after nine.
Trey watched Paula move through it anyway with a kind of contained electricity.
She did not become less tired when she worked; she simply became more precise.
That difference mattered. He had once admired her competence from a careful distance.
Now he could see the cost of it up close—the tightness at the base of her neck, the way she reread a sentence when her concentration slipped, the tiny exhale when Danielle answered a question before Paula had to.
TREY: Downstairs. Food. If you’re busy, I’ll leave it with security.
Her reply came forty seconds later.
PAULA: Come up.
The invitation mattered because it was hers to give.
He signed in and rode to the ninth floor.
Paula’s office door was open. Danielle sat on the sofa with her shoes off, eating almonds from a vending-machine bag.
Trey stopped.
Danielle looked up.
“So you’re the clothes buyer.”
Trey sighed.
From behind a laptop, Paula said, “I told you she was going to say something.”
Danielle stood and hugged him before he could object. They had spoken before, but this was the first time Trey had seen her in person since Paula stopped pretending he was merely a professor from her past.
“So,” Danielle said, stepping back to look him over, “you’re Trey in person.”
“We’ve spoken.”
“Yes. When you called asking intimate questions about my best friend’s measurements like a very polite kidnapper.”
Paula laughed.
Trey handed Danielle one of the containers.
“I brought enough for you.”
Danielle looked inside.
“Oh.”
Paula pointed. “See? That’s how he gets you.”
Danielle took the food. “I can be bought.”
“I knew I liked you,” Trey said.
Paula stared at him.
“What?”
“You’re charming my friends.”
“I brought noodles.”
“Exactly.”
Danielle sat again.
For the next hour Trey occupied a corner chair while Paula and Danielle worked. He did not understand every detail and did not need to. Paula moved between legal analysis and crisis strategy with a fluency that made the combination look inevitable.
At one point she stood at a whiteboard.
“The problem isn’t the allegation,” she said. “The problem is that three people gave three versions of the timeline. If we correct publicly before we correct internally, somebody contradicts us tomorrow and we become the story.”
Danielle nodded. “So internal interviews first.”
“Exactly.”
Trey watched Paula.
She caught him.
“Stop looking at me.”
“I’m sitting here.”
“You’re doing the face.”
Danielle looked between them. “What face?”
“His proud face.”
“I don’t have a proud face.”
“You have several faces.”
Danielle smiled. “Oh, y’all are annoying.”
Trey liked her.
At nine thirty, Danielle left.
Paula closed the office door and leaned against it.
“I’m tired.”
Trey stood.
“Come here.”
She did.
No argument.
That told him more than the words had.
He wrapped his arms around her and felt her exhale against his chest.
For several minutes, nothing happened.
No advice.
No strategy.
No questions.
Just weight.
Paula finally said, “This is nice.”
“What?”
“Not having to explain why I’m tired.”
Trey kissed the top of her head.
Her hands slid around his waist.
Then lower.
Trey caught one wrist.
Paula looked up.
The exhaustion in her face had changed.
“PK.”
“What?”
“You’re tired.”
“I’m also horny.”
He almost laughed.
“Those can coexist.”
“I’m aware.”
She moved closer.
Trey’s voice lowered. “Color?”
Her eyes sharpened.
“Green.”
He studied her.
“Are you trying to use sex to turn your brain off?”
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised him.
“Then we’re not doing anything complicated tonight.”
Paula frowned. “Why?”
“Because you’re exhausted.”
“I said green.”
“And I heard you.”
She watched him.
Trey released her wrist and touched her cheek.
“You don’t have to perform stamina for me either.”
Something in her expression broke open.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
“Damn you.”
“Frequently.”
She kissed him.
The kiss was slow, deep, familiar. Trey let it stay there—mouth, breath, hands at her waist, her fingers in the front of his shirt.
When they finally separated, Paula rested her forehead against his chest.
“You’re irritatingly responsible.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Take me home.”
“Yours or mine?”
She thought.
“Yours.”
He nodded.
No triumph.
No assumption.
Just a choice made and heard.
In the car, Paula fell asleep before they crossed Massachusetts Avenue.
Trey drove with one hand on the wheel and the radio low.
At a red light he looked at her.
This was not the dramatic part of loving someone.
Nobody wrote songs about carrying a laptop bag upstairs while the woman you wanted stumbled behind you half asleep.
Nobody romanticized plugging in her phone because she had forgotten.
Or putting water beside the bed.
Or taking her earrings from her hand one at a time because she was too tired to find the jewelry dish.
Paula sat on the edge of his bed while he removed her shoes.
“You know,” she murmured, “this is suspiciously husband-like behavior.”
Trey’s hands paused.
Paula’s eyes were already closing.
She had no idea what she had just done to him.
He set the shoe down.
“Go to sleep, PK.”
She crawled beneath the covers.
“Bossy.”
“Yes.”
Within minutes she was out.
Trey stood beside the bed.
Husband.
The word had entered the room casually.
It did not leave casually.
He turned off the light.