CHAPTER 2: Four Years In a Single Room

“Selene.” His voice came through low and careful. Like a man who had rehearsed how to say a single word.

I stood at the counter with both hands around the phone and did not say anything back.

Outside the windows the city was doing its early morning thing. Grey. Slow. Indifferent.

“Selene.” Again. Lower this time.

“I’m here,” I said.

A pause. I had spent four years learning his silences. This was the kind where he was deciding how much to show.

“I didn’t think you’d pick up,” he said.

“I almost didn’t.”

Another pause. Longer.

“I called because I needed to hear your voice.” A breath. “Not for any reason. I just needed to know you were okay.”

My throat tightened. I pressed my lips together and looked at the counter.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“You signed the same day.”

“You filed.” My voice stayed flat. “What were you expecting from me?”

He went quiet. Long enough that I heard the hum of the city through the glass.

“I don’t know,” he said.

My grip loosened on the phone. Just slightly. Just enough that I noticed.

“There’s something I should have told you,” he said. “A long time ago.”

I waited.

“The bookshop. The one in the West Village. The rebrand you did in year three.”

My hands went still.

“I found it online. A design blog had featured it. I almost scrolled past.” A pause. “But the style looked like yours.”

I did not breathe.

“I went to see it,” he said. “In person. Your name was in the corner of the window.”

The counter was cold under my palms.

“You walked past my work,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And you never said anything.”

“No.”

I closed my eyes.

And just like that I was back there. November. Year three. Eleven forty-five at night.

I had worked on that bookshop for six weeks. A family. Three generations. Almost no money. The kind of people who brought homemade food to meetings and apologized for every email.

I took the job because something in it cracked open a part of me that had been shut for a long time.

I worked late every night. I forgot to eat. And I built them something that held everything they already were.

The night I finished, I printed it on the good heavy paper. Held it under the studio light. Looked at it for a long time.

It was the best thing I had made in two years.

I carried it down the hall.

Dominic was in the living room. Work shirt still on, sleeves rolled, laptop open on the coffee table. He had not heard me come in. The city was dark behind him through the glass.

I walked around the couch. I set the design on the table. Right in front of him.

He glanced at it.

“Looks good,” he said.

His eyes went back to the screen.

I stood there.

One second. Two. Three. Hands at my sides. Looking at the top of his head. Waiting for something I could not have named.

Nothing came.

I picked the design back up. Walked to the studio. Slid it to the back of the bottom drawer.

I never left my work out for him to see again.

He could walk down a street in the West Village to see it through a window.

He could not look up from a laptop to see it when I put it in his hands.

“Why are you telling me this now?” I said.

“Because I keep thinking about it.” He stopped. I could hear him breathing. “Because I think I owe you more than fourteen pages and a courier.”

The words landed in the middle of my chest.

I looked at the studio door at the end of the hall. Dark under the frame. The light I used to leave on until midnight, gone for months.

He had never once asked why.

My jaw ached. I had been holding it tight without realizing.

“Dominic,” I said.

“I know,” he said quickly. Like he already knew what was coming and wanted to stop it before it arrived.

“I have to go.”

Silence.

“Okay,” he said.

I ended the call. Set the phone face down on the marble.

I pressed both palms flat against the counter and breathed.

The kitchen was quiet. His keys were still on the counter from before. The folder with the signed papers was by the door.

It was done. Whatever that call was, whatever his voice still did to me, it did not change anything.

I pushed away from the counter.

I needed to be out of this apartment before I did something I could not take back.

I went to the bedroom and pulled a bag down from the top shelf.

Camille’s place, maybe. A hotel. Anywhere that was not here, with his suits in the closet and his keys on the counter and the pour-over set that had always been mine and somehow stopped feeling like it was.

I set the bag open on the bed.

Then I heard the elevator.

The doors opening at the penthouse floor.

A pause.

Then footsteps crossing the foyer tile. Footsteps I knew too well.

My hands went still on the bag.

He was supposed to be in Dubai until Friday.