He loved her, and the love wasn't a strategy or a scar. It was an ache that had nothing to do with loss and everything to do with recognition. He'd been sitting across from her for weeks, watching her, and somewhere in the middle of allthose Thursdays, the thing he felt had changed from guilt into want and from want into need and from need intothis.This unbearable, clear-eyed, fully conscious understanding that Charlotte Hoffman was the love of his life, and he'd had her, he'd lost her, and losing her was entirely his fault.
He pulled out his phone. Opened a text to Maxwell.
I'm in love with her.
Maxwell's reply came in thirty seconds:Yeah, man. I know. The question is what you're going to do about it.
Dominic stared at the screen. What was he going to do about it? She'd told him not to touch her. She'd told him business only. He'd heard what was underneath it, not anger but fear. She was afraid of him. Afraid of what he could do to her heart if she let him close again.
He wasn't going to push. He wasn't going to strategize or manipulate or find the angle. He was going to show up on Thursday at four with the revised timeline. He was going to sit in his plastic chair. He was going to talk about grants, budgets and student outcomes, and he was going to let her see him. The version of him that was learning to be different, that was choosing to be different, that was reading education journals at midnight, touring community art centers and laughing at stories about crayons in ears.
He was going to let her decide.
CHAPTER 13
CHARLOTTE
Charlotte said yes to a date with Eric, in the faculty lounge, standing next to the microwave while her leftover soup rotated behind the greasy glass.
He'd asked casually, so casually she almost missed it. "There's this Thai place in Astoria. Really good pad see ew. You want to check it out Friday?"
She should've hesitated. Should've weighed it, turned it over, given herself time to examine why her first instinct was to glance toward the door as if someone might be standing there. Nobody was standing there. The hallway was empty. Dominic was in Manhattan, in his office, in his world, and she was here, in hers, being asked to dinner by a kind man.
"Sure," she said. "Friday works."
Eric's face brightened. A brief, barely suppressed burst of surprise and delight that he immediately tried to wrestle into something cooler. He failed. "Great. I'll pick you up at seven. Or — do you want to meet there? Whatever's comfortable."
"Meeting there is good."
"Perfect. It's on Steinway. I'll text you the address." He backed out of the lounge with his hands in his pockets, grinning,and bumped into the doorframe on his way out. "I'm fine. That was intentional."
She laughed. The microwave beeped. She took out her soup and stood there holding it. The laugh faded, and she thought about Dominic wiping tomato soup off her chin with his thumb, the roughness of his skin against her jaw, the diner going silent around them like the world was holding its breath.
Kate found out within the hour, because Kate had a sixth sense for romantic developments and a network of faculty informants that would've made the CIA jealous.
"You said yes." Kate was leaning against Charlotte's classroom door during afternoon prep, arms crossed, eyebrows at full elevation. "To Eric. You said yes."
"It's dinner. It's not a blood oath."
"It's a date, Charlie. Your first date since—" Kate caught herself. Redirected. "Since you started dating again."
"I haven't started dating again. I'm having pad see ew with a colleague."
"A colleague who has been visibly, embarrassingly interested in you for months and who you are now going to sit across from at a restaurant and eat noodles with on a Friday night. That's a date."
Charlotte straightened the papers on her desk. Aligned them. Tapped them against the surface until the edges were flush. "Maybe I need a date."
Kate was quiet for a beat. "Maybe you do."
"Don't say it."
"Say what?"
"Whatever you're about to say about Dominic."
"I wasn't going to say anything about Dominic." Kate pushed off the doorframe. "I was going to say you deserve someone who makes you feel good. And Eric makes you feel good." She paused. "Right?"
"Right."
