Chapter 3
THREE
STELLAN
“So what you’re saying…” Naomi inspected a white blouse, held it against a black blazer, and made a face that said it didn’t satisfy her expectations, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “What you’re saying,” she started again, “is that Mystery Guy wants to see you again.”
She made it sound obvious, like reading a weather report. Slight chance of rain and complicated history, bring an umbrella.
“That’s not what he said,” I told her.
“Oh?” She arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “So he didn’t drag you into his car and demand you attend his fitting like you’re his to command?”
Well.
I moved a row of ties from the left end of the rack to the right, lined up jackets by size.
After hours, with the lights dimmed and chairs stacked, the coffee shop still smelled like freshly ground beans, a neon sign in the window asking people to read banned books.
My real job was personal shopping advice and expensive fabric; this wasn’t that.
It mattered differently. Two years ago, I’d sweet-talked the owner into letting us use this space, and we’d come here once a month ever since.
“It did feel like an order,” I told her, and reminded myself I had no right to mind that. “I think his precise words were ‘I want you where I can see you.’”
Her mouth tilted up on one side. “Sexy.”
Ha. Ha. Ha.
“It wasn’t.” I tugged a hanger straight, hands moving in the hopes it would help slow my brain, stop me from thinking about Matt Harkins looking at me like I’d crawled out of a gutter and into his life just to spite him. “I really don’t think he meant it like that.”
“You sure?” Naomi asked. She was leaning against a table covered in folded shirts, hair pulled into a glossy knot, cream cardigan hugging her figure.
Model bones. Model face. The kind that had ended up on city buses last year for a skincare campaign with a slogan that told me to glow like I meant it.
I opened my mouth to say that yes, I was sure—and what came out instead was, “No. I’m not.”
She stared at me for a moment, then nodded and left it at that, leaving me to digest it. For now.
We worked to the rhythm of lofi beats for a minute, moving through the familiar ritual of arranging donated clothes into something that looked intentional.
Outfits set up like a gallery that featured different cuts, different sizes, safe options and slightly bolder ones, all while a poster on the wall said no gods, no masters and a stack of brochures explained mutual aid initiatives.
The whole place felt like a middle finger to capitalism, which was ironic when our mission was to help kids survive job interviews in a world that rewarded style and confidence more than talent.
Suit Up Wednesdays.
We’d show them the difference between walking into a room in your cousin’s graduation suit and walking in wearing something that fit your shoulders and your hopes, something that made you feel like you belonged in the chair across from the interviewer.
I’d started it half out of defiance and half because I couldn’t stand watching seventeen-year-olds age out of foster care with the same hollow-eyed fear I’d had.
Here’s your file. Here’s your trash bag of stuff. Good luck, kid.
Naomi slid a row of shoes into neat pairs against the wall. “Now, okay,” she said, picking the thread right back up. “This guy. Is it something I set up?”
I shot her a look.
“What?” she asked innocently. “I’m not asking for a name. Just… context.”
“That I won’t give you.”
“I can keep my mouth shut.”
“I know you can.” I straightened the shoulders of a blazer. “It’s just that I outed him once. I don’t want to do that again.”
She tilted her head, assessing, then said, “So it’s a name I’d recognize.”
Not a question—damn it. I stayed silent, head ducked, because I didn’t want to lie.
She kept watching me, voice slow as she added, “And it would’ve been some seven months ago.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Matt Harkins,” she said, quiet but confident. “As in the hockey captain whose face is over half this city lately. And who was dating model Talia Lind earlier this year until he wasn’t.”
Fuck.
I flattened my tongue against the roof of my mouth, holding on to a secret that wasn’t mine. Too late, though. Just like I’d been too late when I’d called Tomas. “Look,” he’d said, borderline kind, or at least not laughing. “It’s the job. I already sent them.”
I’d stared at the view from my hotel room until it blurred, then typed an email to the company owner, fingers shaking hard enough that I kept having to backtrack and correct my mistakes. We can’t do this. You don’t understand who he is. This isn’t just private relationship leverage, it’s wrong.
The response had come back some hours later, neat and cold. This is not your decision. Thank you for your services.
Then they’d deactivated my email access and sent a termination letter. Apparently, growing a conscience counted as misconduct.
I exhaled and fixed Naomi with a look. “How did you know?”
“The timing fits.” Brief unease flickered over Naomi’s face.
“And, yes, his ex. Talia. I set it up.” She winced.
“I didn’t know, okay? Not that it was about his sexuality.
I’d just heard the media gossip that they were on the rocks, and when we got talking at a party, she was…
not sober. Told me he’d been taking her for a ride. That she wanted answers.”
Easy mistake.
When Naomi and I met, we’d done the same job: flirt, lure them in, see what floated to the surface belly-up.
Then she’d landed a model gig and changed tracks, become one of a handful of ambassadors for the company—the kind of person you told too much at a fancy party, three drinks in and tongue a little loose, only to find yourself with an email address and a name that promised unconventional solutions.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I said, and she nodded, uncommonly serious. Because, yeah, with a man like Matt, “anyone” wasn’t just friends or coworkers. It was the city, the internet. People who thought they knew him from a screen or the rink.
“I won’t,” she said.
“Okay.”
We kept sorting—sizes and colors, options that would make the kids feel like they could shape how the world saw them.
The first time I’d pitched it to Naomi, she’d blinked at me like I’d gone crazy.
“Do I look like someone who volunteers?” she’d asked, deadpan.
Three days later, she’d sent me the names of three rich people with charity guilt and overflowing closets they were willing to pare down.
That was Naomi. She could act like a spoiled princess but moved fast like a shark when something mattered.
She picked up a tie with diagonal stripes in red and orange. “This one reads ‘I sell insurance but I hate my life.’”
“Good fabric, though.” I took it from her. “Pair it with a white shirt and a navy suit, loosen the knot a little, and suddenly it’s ironic instead of tragic.”
Naomi hummed, unconvinced, but put it back. Then she turned to survey me like an interesting riddle. “Matt Harkins,” she said, “is hot.”
I was tempted to drop my eyes and didn’t, offered her an easy smile. “Objectively true. I mean, hey, kind of hard to miss with all the bus ads and pre-season promo lately. Plus Ronan’s a fan, so.”
“Yeah, babe. Talk bullshit to me.” She held up a gray suit and inspected it, voice casual. “You also said there was something real when you met.”
The stupid flutter of my pulse. The way his mouth had gone soft and unsure. Even now, it tugged on something in my gut, made my cheeks go hot.
I didn’t reply. That was an answer all on its own.
Naomi’s mouth curved. “So he’s hot enough that you got fired over it.”
“I got fired for trying to do the right thing,” I said. “Not because he’s hot.”
“Details,” she said, eyes bright, before her voice softened. “Hey. You tried.”
“I did.” It came out a little too low. “It didn’t matter.”
“It does, though,” she said, lips thinning briefly because for all her designer armor, she didn’t like unfairness. Then she shook it off. “Anyway. My actual point is: Maybe the two of you need to fuck it out of your system.”
I choked on air. Like an amateur. “Pretty sure he’s angry, not horny.”
“One doesn’t exclude the other.”
I let out a laugh that was mostly breath, reaching for a row of shirts. “You really think the way to make amends is to turn myself into a virgin sacrifice?”
Her eyes skimmed over me, slow and deliberate, humor tucked into the edges of her smile. “Hardly a virgin.”
“Okay, rude.”
“And hardly a sacrifice,” she added, unbothered. “Based on how you’ve talked about him. And that was before I realized he’s an athlete with a body that can go on and on and on.”
Uninvited, my mind flashed through quick impressions—strong hands, strong thighs, dark eyes. He’d be… good. Christ. Inexperienced with guys, probably, almost certainly. But with a body like that, with the focus and discipline he’d need to succeed like he had…
I gave her a look. “I’m not going to turn guilt into a blow job and call it personal growth.”
“Why not?” she asked, like it was easy.
“Because I don’t do that anymore,” I said immediately.
She snorted. “Last I checked, you didn’t go celibate.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I hooked a blazer over the rack harder than necessary. “It’s the engineered part. The sequence, the timing, all that.”
Manipulative. I’d done the smile, the pause, the calculated touch. Now, with Matt, the idea made my skin crawl.
“I wasn’t suggesting you play him,” she said simply. “Just flirt a little, see if he wants you. Hardly different from when you catch someone’s eye in a club and you’re checking if he’s interested. Show up as yourself.”
I stared at her, oddly thrown. She stared back, unimpressed, as if she’d decided that we were done circling truths and this, here, was the honesty edition.
“As myself,” I echoed, too aware of the heavy smell of coffee that suddenly turned my stomach. “Okay. Except there’s complicated history, and I’d rather not risk my job.”