44. Kate #3
“Wish I could find someone who would fall for me like that,” he admitted. “You made my blood sing the way yours does when you’re playing.”
“You will,” I whispered.
He shook his head again.
“Nah. Women like you don’t come around twice.”
The sadness in his voice cut deeper than his anger ever did.
Amber nudged my hand, sensing everything.
Drew slipped his hands into his pockets.
“Come on, superstar,” he said roughly. “Let’s get you home before the morning joggers find out the next great recording artist is hiding in an abandoned gym.”
I smiled — small, tired, full.
And I followed him.
Music still humming in my blood.
My baby fluttering inside me like they were dancing.
And the ache of missing my husband echoing through every step.
The hard hat itched like hell.
My hair was shoved up underneath it, tucked into a messy knot held by three bobby pins and a prayer. The neon orange vest swallowed me whole. Work boots, scuffed and heavy, completed the illusion.
To anyone else, I was just another worker on break — clipboard in hand, steel-toe boots, sunglasses hiding half my face.
But Drew wasn’t buying the disguise.
Neither was Vega.
They flanked me like bodyguards escorting a celebrity, not a pregnant woman pretending to inspect rebar.
Heavy machinery clattered across the site, echoing through the valley. Welders sparked. Engines roared. The frame of what would someday be my music school rose out of the dirt like a cathedral made of bones and promise.
Drew’s jaw was tight—tighter than usual. Wren was stone-cold silent, tapping her fingers on her holster with the rhythm of a ticking clock.
Something was wrong.
“So,” I said lightly, pretending to study a blueprint. “Spill it.”
Drew exhaled, long and slow.
“Kaim’s dead.”
My stomach dropped.
“How?” My voice came out barely a whisper.
“Hit,” Drew said. “Rumor is it was clean. Professional. No witnesses.”
“And Michael?”
“He’s alive. But…” Drew pressed his lips together, choosing his words carefully. “Word on the street is Vegas is heating up. Council’s spooked. Someone’s losing control. Someone else is trying to take it.”
My breath froze in my lungs.
“Is it bad?”
Drew let out a humorless laugh. “It’s Vegas. It’s always bad.”
I clenched my clipboard to keep my hands from shaking.
“Just tell me,” I said. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“Uncle Roman’s headed here,” Drew said. “He’s calling the shots. Council isn’t letting Michael come back. Not until shit cools down… or blows up completely.”
My vision blurred.
“So how long?” I whispered. “How long until I can see him?”
Drew didn’t look away.
“It might be after the baby’s born.”
Something inside me shattered.
Glass. Music. Hope. All of it.
“No.” My voice cracked. “Drew, please. Help me get to him. I can’t— I can’t do this without seeing him. Without letting him see?—”
My hand drifted to my stomach.
The tiny life inside me fluttered, as if responding.
Vega’s eyes softened in a way I’d never seen.
Drew shook his head violently.
“Absolutely not.”
“Drew—”
“No.” His voice was thunder. “You’re pregnant. Hunted. And too important. I do have the means to get you to Vegas for a secret meet-up. But it’s not fucking happening. Not on my watch.”
I blinked hard, tears stinging.
“It would kill him if something happened to you,” Drew said, softer now. “Or the baby. Your blood — your baby’s blood — would be on my hands. And I’m not carrying that, Kate. I won’t.”
My shoulders shook.
Vega squeezed my forearm —shocking me. She’d never touched me before.
“He’s right,” she said quietly.
I inhaled, shaky, broken.
But they were right.
So Drew tried to fix what he could.
“Come on,” he said. “Let me show you something.”
He escorted me past the steel beams, the pounded earth, the concrete mixer. Up a hill of dirt and wood planks. And suddenly?—
There it was.
My campus.
The bones of genius.
The skeleton of a dream.
The amphitheater half-formed, its stone seats rising in curves like a seashell.
The outdoor stage framed against the skyline.
The draft lines for the fountains.
The pathways weaving through what would one day be gardens where young artists would come alive.
It took my breath away.
“It’s coming along,” Drew said. “Faster than most projects of this size.”
“It’s midsummer,” I whispered. “A year. Maybe more before it’s done.”
“And worth every second,” Drew said.
I shook my head.
“No. We can’t wait that long.”
He raised a brow. “Oh?”
“I don’t need the classrooms finished,” I said, fire igniting behind my ribs. “Or the dorms. Or the recording studios. Just this.”
I gestured to the open sky.
“The amphitheater. The stage. The grounds. Get that done first.”
Drew studied me— the resolve, the spark.
“I want a summer concert series,” I said. “Next year. I want this to be the birthplace of a new era of music on the East Coast. Bigger than New York. Bigger than anything.”
A slow grin spread across Drew’s face.
“I like how you’re thinking.”
I smiled back.
Vega walked ahead, scanning the perimeter.
Drew stood beside me, tipping his hard hat back.
“You’re going to change the world here, Kate,” he said.
I pressed a hand over my stomach.
“We are,” I whispered.