Chapter 26
Quinn
Avery hadn’t answered in twenty-four hours. Not the call from the night before. Not the one that morning. Not the text Quinn sent mid-afternoon that was neutral enough to be safe.
Busy. I’ll call later.
Later hadn’t come.
Quinn set her phone face-down on the kitchen counter and told herself she respected that. If Avery needed space, she would have it. Quinn did not chase. She did not escalate. She did not press when someone pulled back.
The argument stayed with her anyway. That irritated her more than the silence.
Quinn did not carry things. She filed them away. She dealt with them. She moved on. Efficiency applied to emotion as well as business. This one refused to be filed.
Not the entire conversation. Just the sharp parts. Avery’s voice tightening around the word acquisition. The question underneath the question. The moment Quinn felt herself shift from listening to defending. The space that opened between them and never quite closed before the call ended.
She had ended it cleanly. No raised voice. No cruelty. No dramatics. She had told herself that mattered. That it meant she had handled it well. It had felt true for about ten minutes. Then the apartment went quiet in a way that felt wrong.
Los Angeles stretched beyond the glass walls, late light sliding across the hills. The city glowed in that hazy gold hour she usually appreciated. Tonight it felt distant, like something behind glass she couldn’t quite touch.
She braced one hand against the counter and breathed slowly, evenly, the way she did before walking into investor negotiations.
If Avery needed space, Quinn would not crowd her into a conversation just to soothe Quinn’s discomfort. Space was the respectful choice. That was what she told herself.
Three days until she was already scheduled to return to New York. She could allow space for three days.
She moved through the apartment with deliberate precision. Changed out of her blazer and hung it carefully. Realigned her shoes by the door even though they were already straight. Wiped a nonexistent smudge from the counter. Control lived in small adjustments.
Her phone remained facedown. By the time night settled fully over the city, the quiet had edges.
She opened her laptop and buried herself in work. Investor follow-ups. Revised projections. A new outline for the expansion roadmap. She responded to emails with clipped clarity, each sentence controlled and contained. Competence steadied her. It always had.
Still, her attention slipped. She reread the same paragraph three times before realizing she hadn’t absorbed a word of it. She closed the document with more force than necessary and leaned back in her chair.
Avery wasn’t entirely wrong. That was the part that lodged under her skin.
Quinn had the resources. Quinn had the leverage. Quinn had the power to alter the shape of Avery’s company with one signature. Even if she never intended to use it that way, the imbalance existed. Pretending otherwise was convenient.
She hadn’t lied during the call. She hadn’t misrepresented anything. But she had defaulted to control instead of vulnerability. She had answered the accusation, not the fear beneath it.
She stood and crossed the apartment before she realized she’d picked up her phone. The screen lit. No new notifications.
Her jaw tightened. She tapped Avery’s name, stared at the empty message field for a long second, then typed.
Quinn: I don’t want to fight with you. I just want to understand.
She read it once. It was honest. It was restrained. It did not demand anything.
The words sat there, calm and careful. They also sat there like pressure, like a gentle hand that still expected a door to open for it. Quinn deleted the text, locked her phone, and set it facedown again like it might betray her if she looked at it too long.
She slept badly, if it counted as sleep at all.
* * *
Wednesday Quinn was up before her alarm, her mind already turning over the argument in fragments she couldn’t quite quiet. She went to the gym at her usual time because routine was a handhold and she was not about to let go of it.
The treadmill hummed beneath her feet. The burn in her legs was familiar. She ran longer than planned and pushed harder than necessary.
Her trainer watched her increase the speed again and said, “You’re pushing too hard.”
“I’m fine,” Quinn replied, wiping sweat from her brow with the edge of her towel.
She wasn’t.
The physical strain didn’t dull her thoughts. It sharpened them. Avery’s voice tightening around acquisition. The clipped end of the call. The silence afterward.
Back home, she showered, dressed, and went to the office like nothing was wrong.
Meetings stacked cleanly across the morning.
Her voice remained level as she navigated conversations that mattered to people who didn’t.
She corrected a mistake in a report before anyone else noticed and filed it away as proof she was still sharp.
Still in control, she told herself. At lunch, she stared down at the salad Alyssa had insisted she order and moved the leaves around without appetite. Hunger was an inconvenience. She had learned to ignore worse.
Her phone buzzed on the table. Her heart kicked before she even looked, which irritated her. It wasn’t Avery. It was a calendar alert.
She opened her messages anyway. The thread with Avery sat at the top. The last thing she had sent still showed delivered. She typed again.
Quinn: I’m not trying to take anything from you. You know that.
The sentence felt defensive the moment it existed. She deleted it.
By midafternoon, the silence felt intentional. Not cruel. Just chosen. Her phone buzzed again. She finished the sentence she was typing before reaching for it.
Braeden.
Quinn let it ring once before answering and said, “Hey. I’m in the middle of something,” keeping her tone even.
“I know,” Braeden replied on the other end. “You sound like it.”
“That’s not a reason to call,” Quinn said, leaning back in her chair.
“It is when you’ve ignored me for twelve hours,” Braeden said calmly.
“I didn’t ignore you,” Quinn replied, her mouth tightening.
“You absolutely did,” Braeden said without hesitation.
Quinn exhaled softly and asked, “What do you want?”
“I want to know why you sound like you haven’t slept,” Braeden said.
“I slept,” Quinn answered.
Braeden hummed in disbelief and said, “Mhm.”
“It’s a disagreement,” Quinn said finally, staring out at the skyline.
“With Avery,” Braeden said, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Yes,” Quinn admitted.
“And she hasn’t answered you,” Braeden continued.
Quinn stayed silent.
“That’s what I thought,” Braeden said.
“I’m giving her space,” Quinn said, her tone sharpening slightly.
“Is that what you’re doing,” Braeden asked gently, “or are you waiting for her to fix it so you don’t have to risk anything?”
Quinn’s jaw tightened. “I’m not chasing someone who hasn’t responded.”
“Did she ask for space?” Braeden asked.
Quinn hesitated before answering, “No.”
“Then you’re choosing distance,” Braeden said evenly.
Quinn pressed her fingers against the arm of her chair and said, “I don’t like not knowing where I stand.”
“That’s because you’ve spent your whole life making sure you always know,” Braeden replied. “Control is your comfort zone.”
“And what’s the alternative?” Quinn asked quietly.
“Showing up,” Braeden said. “Even if it doesn’t go the way you want. From everything you told me at my party on Saturday night, you really like her, and she seems pretty fucking great. So show up, Quinn.”
Quinn was quiet.
“I mean it,” Braeden continued.
“I know,” Quinn said. “Your right.”
“I think you’ve only said that out loud three times in our life.”
“Shut up.” Quinn swallowed and asked, “What if she doesn’t want to see me?”
“Then you’ll survive,” Braeden said. “But at least you won’t be sitting in L.A. wondering.”
Quinn stared at the neat stack of papers on her desk and said quietly, “I don’t want to lose this.”
“Then don’t disappear from it,” Braeden replied. “Go.”
Silence settled between them.
“I have a meeting in five,” Quinn said at last.
“I’m sure you do,” Braeden said. “Call me when you land. Or don’t. But book the flight.”
“You’re very bossy,” Quinn said, a faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“You love that about me,” Braeden replied with a laugh.
The call ended. Quinn stared at her screen for a long moment. Then she opened a new tab and searched for the next flight to New York. Then she opened her calendar and rescheduled the meeting.
It was, objectively, a terrible idea. The kind of decision she would normally interrogate six different ways before acting on it. She didn’t interrogate it this time. She just did it.
* * *