Page 114 of Lease to Love

"I watched the neighborhood I knew disappear while everyone around me celebrated how much better it was getting. I fucking hated it."

Something about that sentence broke my heart.

"So, I worked." A sad, faint smile touched his mouth. "I buried myself in the company. Worked obsessively until it paid off. We went public. Made more money than any of us had imagined. But my friends?" He shook his head. "Not my friends anymore."

The words came without hesitation.

"They wanted to move into luxury land development. I didn't. I'd already seen what happened when money decided a neighborhood needed to become something else. I fought them on it." He leaned back. "And they voted me out."

My heart sank. "Roman…"

"It hurt. Hurt like a motherfucker." He looked at me. "But it was inevitable. We wanted different things. Didn’t understand each other anymore. And suddenly," He shrugged again, “It was just me, no business, no friends… and more money than I could ever spend.”

He downed the rest of his bourbon, then set the glass on the end table.

“So I started the Sterling Group. Moved back to DC and got to work.” He looked around the room. “It was too late for me to save my first home… But I could do something for my second one.”

And in that moment, so much about Roman made sense.

The way he watched people. The way he distrusted easy promises.

The way he could spend an entire neighborhood event looking like he wanted to be anywhere else and still notice every single thing happening around him.

The way he'd stayed in Langston Park even when half the neighborhood hated him.

Roman's hand settled on my thigh, and his fingers squeezed once… It felt less like possession and more like anchoring himself, like he needed to bring himself back to the now after dragging his most painful memory out of the deepest part of his chest.

And he reached for me to do it.

That did it.

I couldn't explain what happened inside me after that.

I just knew I was suddenly overwhelmed by this man sitting beside me, by everything he'd lost, everything he'd built, and the fact that underneath all that money and control was a boy who'd once wanted nothing more complicated than to play soccer in a park with his friends.

I finished my wine in one swallow.

Roman watched me set the empty glass down. "Summer?"

I stood. "Take off your pants."

He blinked. "What?"

I was already reaching for the hem of my shirt. "You heard me."

His eyebrows rose. "Baby—"

"You just opened up to me about something incredibly deep and real and heartbreaking, and I'm having a lot of feelings about it." I looked at him as I unhooked my bra. “And about you.”

He stared at me.

“And…” I continued, pulling my pants and underwear down in one go, “I don't have the words to express them right now."

He blinked.

“So please,” I stepped closer, naked as a jaybird. "Take off your pants."

His mouth twitched. "This is what we're doing?"