8. Riley #2
“I thought I knew where you were.”
“You knew a town.”
“Riley—”
“You didn’t know my job. You didn’t know where I slept. You didn’t know I was pregnant. And somehow you’re standing in my workplace acting like I’m the one who disappeared.”
He opened his mouth, but no answer came.
Riley held his gaze.
“Nobody vanished. I just stopped begging for air in a life that erased me.”
Graham started to speak again, but Maisie moved before he could. She set her phone on the abandoned stool and stepped between them, planting herself at the edge of the bay with her arms crossed.
“Maisie.”
“I’ve got this.”
Riley almost told her to move. The impulse died when Graham stopped where he was instead of walking around her. He still held the divorce papers in one hand, their edges crushed from the drive and the argument, but he made no attempt to use his size or status to force the issue.
Maisie tipped her chin toward the gravel lot. “You must be lost, man. The VIP ropes and the PR team dictating your breathing schedule are a few time zones north of here. We don’t host photo ops in the leather dust.”
One of the cutters farther down the line turned back toward his station, though his hands remained still above the workbench. The presses kept cycling behind them, each mechanical stroke making Graham’s expensive car outside seem even more ridiculous.
Graham looked past Maisie. “I’m not looking for a fight.”
“Good, because you picked a stupid place to start one.”
“Five minutes.” His attention stayed on Riley. “That’s all I’m asking for. Riley, please—just tell her to let me through.”
Maisie shifted enough to block his path again.
Riley rested one hand against the edge of the bench. “You can speak from where you are.”
Something changed across Graham’s face, though she refused to name it for him. He glanced at where Maisie stood, then back to Riley without arguing.
That alone was strange.
The man she remembered had lived inside a world where handlers cleared hallways before he reached them. People stepped aside when the captain came through. Schedules changed around him, doors opened for him, and staff members apologized when his own obligations made him late.
Maisie treated him like a delivery driver blocking the wrong entrance.
And he took it.
“Those divorce papers make you a trespasser, buddy,” Maisie said. “Don’t you have a commercial shoot to get back to? I’m sure Nicolle is waiting to play dress-up in your gear for the cameras.”
Graham looked down at the petition.
The glance lasted only a moment, but Riley caught it. He dragged his thumb across the wrinkled top page, then let his arm drop to his side.
“Don’t,” he said.
Maisie raised an eyebrow. “Don’t what? Say her name?”
“I’m not here because of Nicolle.”
“That’s interesting, considering she spent half the season attached to your arm.”
“Maisie.” Riley kept her voice level. “Enough.”
Maisie glanced back but stayed where she was.
Graham looked at Riley again. “I left the studio.”
The sentence stopped her.
Not because she trusted it. Not because leaving one commercial erased months of neglect. But nothing about the man standing in the gravel matched the apology Riley had expected him to deliver between sponsor obligations.
“What studio?” she asked.
“The Atlanta campaign shoot. I walked out.”
Maisie gave a short, skeptical laugh. “Sure you did.”
“I dropped the entire shoot and drove straight down here.”
The machines cycled again behind Riley. Graham did not look toward the staring workers or the car or the road that could take him back to whatever expensive disaster waited in Atlanta.
His attention stayed on her.
“Riley, please—just let me explain.”
Footsteps crossed the shop floor behind Riley.
Wade came through the bay entrance with a rag in one hand, wiping leather dye from his fingers. He took in Maisie standing between Riley and Graham, the papers in Graham’s hand, and the car blocking the freight lane outside.
“Whose car is sitting where my leather truck needs to back in?”
Maisie glanced over her shoulder. “Apparently Riley’s problem from up North.”
“Maisie.”
“What? It is.”
Wade gave Riley a questioning look. “Everything good out here?”
“I’m handling it.”
“All right.”
That was all he said.
No demand for an explanation. No attempt to move in front of her. Wade crossed to the edge of the workbench, dropped the dye rag beside a box of scrap leather, then came to stand at Riley’s side.
“Got a parked car eating up the entire loading zone for my leather freight,” he said. “Driver’s supposed to be here before lunch.”
The normalcy of it almost made Riley smile.
Graham’s attention shifted.
Until that moment, he had looked past Maisie as if Riley were the only person in the bay. Now he fixed his eyes on Wade and kept them there.
Wade wore his usual stained work clothes. Dye marked two fingers he had missed with the rag, and a strip of leather dust clung to one sleeve. He did not square his shoulders or move closer to Graham. He simply took his place beside Riley as if he had stood there a hundred times before.
Because he had.
The papers in Graham’s hand crumpled further.
He looked from Wade to Riley, then back.
There it is.
Not rage. Riley knew what Graham looked like when anger took over on the ice. This was different. He had the unsettled look of a man who had arrived expecting one problem and found another waiting beside it.
“Who the hell are you?”
Wade raised one eyebrow.