Page 41 of Soft Serve

"And she said," he continues, measured and careful, "that if I'm not on a plane by Friday she'll move to have my operational authority suspended pending a board review."

I keep my face neutral.

"That's a significant threat," I say.

"Yes," he says.

"What are you going to do?" I ask, and I keep my voice even because I need to hear his answer without my own fear in the way of it.

He looks at me across my kitchen, in the late-night quiet, with his phone still in his hand and his jacket still over my chair.

"I'm going to call her back in the morning," he says, "and tell her that suspending my authority is her prerogative and my absence is not."

I look at him.

"You understand what that means," I say.

"Yes," he says.

"It's not just the campaign," I say. "It's everything you've built. Everything your family…"

"I know what it is," he says quietly.

"Charles."

"Paloma." His voice is low and certain and stripped of everything managed. "I have been building toward someone else's version of my life for twenty-four years. And I have been in this town for two weeks, and I have felt more like myself behind your counter than I have felt in any boardroom in the last decade." He pauses. "I'm not leaving because Eleanor called."

The spiral in my chest goes quiet.

Not gone. Just still.

I look at him for a long moment, at the man who took things apart in his grandfather's workshop, who stood at my side door at six in the morning and walked away without knocking, who held out a phone screen during a supplier call and asked for nothing in return.

"Don't make that decision tonight," I say.

He looks at me, surprised.

"It's late," I say. "And you're in someone else's kitchen, and Eleanor just called, and that's not the right conditions for a decision that size." I hold his gaze. "Make it in the morning, when it's just you."

Something moves through his expression, warm and complicated.

"That's not what I expected you to say," he says.

"I know," I say. "But I'm not going to be the reason you burn something down without being sure. That's not what I want from you."

He's quiet for a moment.

"What do you want from me?" he asks.

I look at him across the kitchen. At the jacket over the chair. At the glass of water, he's barely touched. And at the man who just told me about a twelve-year-old boy and a workshop full of sawdust and a life that was handed to him before he knew to ask if it fit.

"I want you to be sure," I say. "Whatever you decide. I want it to be yours."

He crosses the kitchen. Not quickly. Not with urgency. Just steadily, the way he does everything that matters to him, and he stops in front of me close enough that I have to tilt my chin to hold his gaze.

"I'm sure about one thing tonight," he says quietly.

I wait.