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“Oh,” he says, his forehead smoothing out. “You heard me talking to my sister?”
“Yes. You were saying things, and at first, I thought it was about your ex, but then you mentioned a contract.”
He blows out a sharp breath. “Itwasabout my ex. My sister had been at my apartment earlier that day, to make sure Lauren had taken all of her stuff, and got the keys back. After that, I texted Lauren and told her that she can’t call me again, for any reason. I wanted a clean break.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“But you mentioned something about being asked to read a contract, and that’s what you did for me. I asked you to read mine!”
He chuckles. “Yes, because Iofferedto, Eden. I wanted to read yours. But she’d emailed me a contract for some minor endorsement deal she wanted me to look over. Apparently, she thought she could still get free legal advice from me. I said ‘hell no’ to that.”
“Oh. In the same week?”
“Yeah. Recently, she’s been trying to become a social media influencer and was always taking pictures of—God, Eden, the last thing I came here to talk to you about was my ex.”
My breathing is becoming fast. “So, you really weren’t talking about me?”
“No, I really, really wasn’t,” he says. “Saying goodbye to you was… well. I wish I’d been smoother.”
“You were smooth. You looked unbothered.”
“Well, I wasn’t. I wanted to ask for your number. To see you again. But you told me you were only looking for a rebound, and you had a cute math teacher at work asking you out—”
“I never said he was cute!”
“That’s what I heard, at any rate,” Phillip says and takes a step closer. “The entire flight back home to Chicago, I hated myself for that. For not asking you.”
“I hated you my entire flight home, too,” I mutter.
He smiles. It’s the crooked one. “I would have deserved it, too, if I’d really been speaking about you.”
“How did you find me? How… how are you here?”
“I landed in Chicago, and nothing felt right. We’d had a two-week conversation, and I wasn’t ready for it to end.”
“Me, either,” I whisper.
He reaches out and runs a strand of my hair between two of his fingers. His eyes soften. “You, with your wild ideas and talk of vacation selves, and forcing me out of my comfort zone at every single turn. Your beautiful brown hair, and your quick mouth, and these dark eyes. I could look at them forever.”
I can’t breathe.
“My law firm was hired by a company here in Washington. There’s a tech merger going on, one of the biggest nationwide deals in months. An advisory position opened up.”
“Here?” I ask.
He nods, and this time his words turn cautious. “I sent in my application nine days after I returned to Chicago. It went through just last week.”
“So you… live here now?”
“I’m on a three-month extended stay in Seattle, yeah.”
“Wow,” I say. “Okay. Wow.”
“A good wow? Or a horrified wow?”
“Good, I think. But how did you find me? And my house?”
