Worth Every Million의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 20

Gwen is already up when I wake up. I can hear her in the kitchen, the sound of cupboards opening and closing, which means she is looking for coffee and judging the organisation of someone else’s space at the same time. Gwen has always done both things simultaneously. I get up and find her standing at the counter with a mug in her hand looking out at the city. “Third shelf,” I say. “I found it,” she says. “Eventually.” She turns to look at me. “How did you sleep.” “Better,” I say. And I mean it. Having her in the apartment changed something. The silence felt less heavy. “Good.” She hands me a mug she already poured. “He’s up too.” “Damien.” “Unless there’s someone else living here I don’t know about,” she says. I wrap my hands around the mug and look down the hallway. “Has he come out.” “Not yet,” she says. “But I heard him about an hour ago.” I nod. I stand next to my sister at the counter and we drink our coffee and look at the city and don’t say anything for a while and i

We drive for ten minutes without saying anything.I am not ready to talk and Damien seems to understand that because he doesn’t push. He just drives and I sit in the back and watch the city going past and let the coffee shop get further and further behind me with every block.I keep seeing Daniel’s face when I said she is.The way his expression cracked. All that manipulation and coldness falling away for just a second and underneath it something that looked almost like genuine shock. Like he had spent so long believing his own version of events that he had convinced himself I would never actually leave it behind.I left it behind.I am leaving it behind right now, block by block, sitting in the back of this car.“He blamed me,” I say.Damien doesn’t respond but I can tell he is listening.“He sat across from me and told me I was closed off and cold and that I loved the idea of the marriage more than I loved him,” I say. “He had the whole thing prepared. Every word of it. Like he had

Damien mentions at breakfast that he has meetings all day and will be at the office. I don’t plan what I say next. It just comes out. “Can I come,” I say. He looks up from his phone. “To the office.” “Yes.” He studies me for a moment. “Why.” “Because I have been in this apartment for two weeks,” I say. “And I want to see where you actually work. I want to see what your day actually looks like. I feel like I only know one version of you and I want to know more.” He looks at me for another second and puts his phone down. “Be ready at eight,” he says. *** I have been to corporate offices before. I worked in one for two years before Daniel asked me to stop because the hours were making things difficult at home. I know what they look like, how they feel, the particular energy of a place where people are working very hard and pretending it looks effortless. But I have never been in a building that reacts to a person the way Voss Capital reacts to Damien. It is not dramatic. Nobo

We don’t talk in the car on the way back.Not because there is nothing to say. Because there is too much and neither of us wants to start it in the back of a moving car where everything feels temporary. I sit with my bag in my lap and my candle inside it and I look out the window and Damien sits beside me this time instead of in the front and the driver takes us back through the city in silence.When we get to the apartment he tells the driver to take the rest of the day and we go upstairs and he goes straight to the kitchen and pours two glasses of water and puts one in front of me and sits down at the kitchen table.I sit across from him.He looks at his glass for a moment. Then he looks at me.“Victor Hale,” he says. “We met when I was twenty two. He was twenty six. We were both broke and both certain we were going to be something and we found each other at exactly the right moment.” He pauses. “We built a company together. Small at first, then not small. It took four years and eve

I wake up thinking about his hand on my face. Not in the way I woke up thinking about his arm against mine after the Alderton dinner. That was something I was embarrassed about and pushed away before I had fully processed it. This is different. I lie there in the morning light and I think about it directly and I let myself think about it and I do not try to file it away somewhere manageable. He put his hand on my face and I closed my eyes and I did not tell him to go. I am not ready. I meant that when I said it. But not ready and not wanting are two completely different things and lying here in the morning I know the difference between them very clearly. I get up. I shower. I stand in front of my wardrobe for longer than necessary and I pick something and I go to the kitchen. Damien is already there. He looks up when I walk in and I look at him and for about three seconds we just look at each other and everything from last night is right there in the room between us and neither