Chapter 2
His voice from the doorway didn't move me the way it used to. For eight months, when Jake said my name in a room, my head turned before I thought about it. Now I stayed still and watched the older man's eyes flick past me toward the door.
Lara.
Jake stood there in a navy sweater and jeans, hair still damp from the rain, holding his keys like he'd run from the parking lot. He hadn't run far enough to be out of breath for me. He looked at his father first. That told me everything.
"Dad," he said. "You didn't need to come."
"I did," his father said. He hadn't moved away from me. He straightened slowly, putting a deliberate inch of space between us that somehow made the moment feel more intimate, not less. "You didn't answer your phone."
Jake's eyes finally landed on me. He took in the dress. The glass. The way I wasn't crying.
"Lara, come on," he said. "Can we talk outside?"
I turned the whiskey glass a quarter turn on the marble. The light refracted through the facets. "You said you were at the office."
"I was," he said, too fast. "Earlier. Then—"
"Then you were at her place," I said. I kept my voice low. The bartender had stepped to the far end, polishing something, giving us the privacy Chicago bars are good at.
Jake flushed. He looked at his father again, like a check.
His father sighed once, quiet. He reached into his inner jacket pocket and took out a business card — thick, cream, embossed — and slid it across the marble until it stopped against the base of my glass. No name on the back facing me, just his office number and an address on Wacker Drive I recognized from charity invitations.
"Whatever you need tonight," his father said to me. "Car. Hotel. Don't drive after that." He nodded at the whiskey I hadn't touched. "Call."
It wasn't kindness exactly. It was management. I understood that. This family managed outcomes. The foundation tower had their name on it, the gala photos had their faces on the next page after mine, the private dressing suites where I'd once felt special had locks his father controlled.
I didn't pick up the card. "I don't need a car."
"You will," he said.
Jake stepped closer, hands out. "Lara, she means nothing. It was stupid. One afternoon. I was going to tell you."
I looked at him. Really looked. At the watch on his wrist, at the nervous way he touched his collar the way his father never did. "When?" I asked.
He had no answer. The silence went heavy. The brass candle holder between his father and me threw a soft gold circle on the marble, and I watched it instead of his face so I wouldn't do what he wanted and make it easier for him.
His father put a hand on Jake's shoulder, firm. Not comforting. A steer.
"Give her the night," his father said. It was an order, not a suggestion. "You'll talk tomorrow when you're thinking clearly."
Jake's jaw tightened. He wanted to argue. He didn't. He nodded at me, a quick, pleading nod, then backed toward the door like a kid sent from the table. The cold air hit again as he left.
We were alone at the bar again, his father and I, with the card still touching my glass.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked.
"Because someone in this family should act properly," he said. He stood. "And because my son doesn't understand what he had."
He left cash on the bar for the drink — three twenties — and walked toward the staircase, not the door, disappearing toward the back hallway like he had somewhere else to be in his own building. The card stayed.
May you like
I sat there another minute, breathing in the warm pendant light, smelling whiskey and brass polish. Then I picked up the card, not because I wanted his help, but because I needed to know if there was writing on the other side. There was. Two words in black ink, in his handwriting: Call me.
I folded it into my palm and finally lifted the lowball glass. I didn't drink. I just held it, feeling its weight, and stood to leave before the ice could melt completely.
