Chapter 004

***TWO DAYS HAS ELAPSED***

 Flora's POV

"Did you see the pass he made, Flora?" Lucille had both hands pressed to her chest as she spoke. "Those arms, Flora. Those arms were doing the work of God tonight."

"He's a hockey player, Lucille. They all have strong arms, it's nothing special."

"Not like those arms." She cut me a look as we moved through the post-match crowd spilling out of the stadium, bodies and noise pressing from every direction. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Tyler Sinclair had played tonight like the ice belonged to him personally and everyone else was simply a guest. He was fast and brutal and so completely in command of every inch of the rink that even I—who told him to his face that he wasn't my kind of guy—had found myself leaning forward in my seat twice without meaning to.

"All I'm saying," she continued, stepping around a group of fans in matching jerseys, "is that a man who moves like that on ice, imagine what he could do on—"

"Lucille."

She turned to face me with her arms crossed and the expression she had been wearing for the past seventy two hours since I told her that I turned Tyler before it widened into something else entirely—

“Isn't that Sean.” She said, pointing in the opposite direction of where we were standing. 

My eyes widened, a sharp piercing pain filling my chest like I just got stabbed.

I saw him, cutting through the main corridor toward the exit.

He was walking with four of his teammates, still in his post-match jacket, laughing out loud.

My heart rate increased so much that I thought it was about to burst out of my ribs.

After everything, he was still Sean, still absolutely handsome, still standing like he owned every room he walked into.

The BMW key was almost certainly in his jacket pocket.

I straightened my shoulders, took several deep breaths and walked over.

He noticed me before I reached him. I saw the exact moment his eyes landed on me, moving from mild curiosity to recognition then to something pretty close to disgust. He didn't move toward me. Hell, he didn't move at all. 

"Flora." He said my name in the most forced way possible. 

"Sean." I stopped a few feet from him, his teammates had gone quiet. "I need to talk to you."

"You came all the way to Chicago." He tilted his head to his friend with a mockful smile on his face. "For a conversation."

"I came to get my car." I said it cleanly, without preamble. "The BMW that I bought you, I need it back."

His lips widened into a grin, then he looked me over. His eyes going from my hair, down to the outfit Lucille had forced on me that morning, back up again. A smile started pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"You look different." He scoffed. "The hair, the clothes." He tilted his head. "What happened, Flora? You trying to be somebody now?"

His teammates erupted into a kind of laughter that made me wish the ground would open up and swallow me.

I kept my face still, and my palms clenched into fists beside me. "The car, Sean."

"You cut your style like that thinking it changes something?" He glanced at his teammates. "She used to wear her hair in a bun every day. Every single day. I mean who would want to be with a dork like that." He looked back at me. "Now look at her. Crop top and everything."

The tips of my ears were burning and I was doing all I could to prevent myself from breaking down in front of him and the crowd that had begun to pile around.

"I want the car back." My voice stayed level and I was proud of myself for that. "You have no right to keep something I purchased—"

"Purchased for me." He corrected pleasantly. "As a gift. C’mon. You gave it to me willingly." He shrugged. "Can't exactly take back a gift, Flora. That's not how gifts work."

"You dumped me—"

"Besides," he continued, like I hadn't spoken, "it's gone."

I stared at him. "What?"

"The car." He pulled a small, unbothered smile. "I gave it to my girlfriend. She loved it, actually and I think it really suits her." He paused for a moment. "She's more of a BMW kind of woman. You understand."

"You—" I stopped and started again. "You gave it to—."

"She asked and well, I said yes." He tilted his head, something almost gentle entering his expression as he pouted his lips like he actually felt sympathy for me. "Don't look like that, It was just a car."

"JUST A CAR. I went into debt to buy you —"

"See, that's your problem, Flora." He said it like he was actually delivering wisdom he was very tired of repeating. "You always did too much. Thought if you gave enough you'd be enough." He glanced down at my outfit one more time. "Dressing differently doesn't fix that, by the way. You can't crop-top your way into being a different kind of woman."

His teammates laughed loud again, the sound bouncing off the corridor walls, ringing loud in my ear. 

"Oh you need to shut your mouth." Lucille stepped forward from beside me and I hadn't even noticed how close she'd gotten, how tightly her jaw was set, how her hands had curled at her sides. "You absolute—"

"Lucille." I grabbed her arm, pulling her back softly.

"Flora, let me —"

"Lucille." I called again pulling her firmly this time. "Let's go."

She looked at me, then at Sean, who was watching the exchange with an expression of mild, entertained interest, then back at me. Her chest was heaving and everything about her posture said she was ready to start up a fight if I let her.

She let me pull her and we walked out of there. I didn't look back, I kept my chin level and my steps even and my face arranged into something that I hoped read as unbothered from any angle, and I made it all the way through the exit and out into the cold Chicago air before I stopped walking.

I stood on the pavement and breathed.

He gave the car to her.

Thirty thousand dollars, a year's advance. He had taken all of it—every ounce of what I had quietly destroyed myself to give him—and handed it to someone else like it was nothing.

I had no car, no job, just thirty thousand dollars of debt with a deadline and no single plan.

My eyes were burning so bad I could feel tears welling up in them.

My mind rewound back to Tyler, his proposal. 

That could be it, my way out of all this mess.

I picked up my phone to call his number and that's when it hit me. There was no way to actually contact him, I tossed the card he gave to me in his office.

"Flora." Lucille's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, soft now, the fight gone out of it. "Hey."

"I need his card." I said, my voice shaky, just like the rest of my body. 

"Whose—"

"Tyler's. I tossed it in his office. I need —" I was already moving, already turning back toward the building. "I need to go accept his proposal—"

"You can't just go back into his—"

"Then I need to find his number online, or ask the front desk, or—"

"Flora."

I stopped and took a deep breath.

"Come back to the room," Lucille said quietly. "Just—come back to the room. We'll figure it out."

The suite was warm and quiet and I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at nothing for approximately four minutes. Lucille moved around the room in silence, which from her was an act of profound love. She didn't say ‘I told you so.’ She didn't say anything, she just put the kettle on and left me alone with it.

I tipped my bag out onto the bed.

Lip balm. Receipts. My phone. A hair tie. My wallet. A folded piece of paper from the dentist reminding me about a cleaning I had missed two months ago and—

Something black and rectangular fell out.

I picked it up, my eyes widening as I stared at it.

Tyler Sinclair. No title, no designation. Just the name and his number.

I sat completely still for a moment. I tossed the card out, how come—

 I looked back into the bag, fishing around for the dentist card I collected sometime last week.

It wasn't there. That must be it,

The dentist card.

I had thrown out the dentist card.

I pressed my lips together, looked at the ceiling, then looked back down at Tyler's card in my hand.

My hands were shaking as I typed the number into my phone.

It rang three times before he finally picked up.

"Hi." I said. Then immediately wished I had started with something better. "This is…Flora. Flora Morgan." I pressed my free hand flat against my knee to stop it from bouncing. "We met two days ago in your office, and you made me a proposal and I—" I stopped and swallowed. "I'd like to discuss it. If that's—if the offer is still—”

I couldn't bring myself to finish the sentence. I just let it hang in the air between us, awaiting his response. 

A few seconds passed and there was still no response, just the sound of him breathing at the other end. I had mentally drafted and discarded several apology speeches for wasting his time, until I had almost convinced myself that the line had dropped and he was gone—

"You had two days Flora.” He said and judging from the tone I had a good idea what was coming afterwards. “This is the third day, so unfortunately the offer is no longer on the table.”

The line went dead.

I sat on the edge of my bed holding my phone in both shaking hands, staring at the screen as it faded to black.