Karli bursts through the door to the bookstore twenty minutes before her shift starts. “Skye, you won’t believe this.”
I hold up the tote bag I’ve been admiring for the past half hour. “You won’t believe this either. Look. What do you think? I sketched the logo design on it last night.”
She pauses in front of the register, a newspaper in hand. “Yeah, that’s nice.”
“Nice? If—sorry, when—we get the green flag to stay in business, we could produce and sell these. It’s cute. It’s quirky. It’s eco-friendly. It’s your neighborhood book bag. This is just a prototype, but—”
Karli slams the newspaper on the register. “Look.”
I do.
Cole is on the front page.
They’ve captured him walking out from a Porter Development building, the skyscraper rising imposing and tall behind him. He’s on his phone, and for once, he’s not smiling.
The headline screams the accusing words at me. “Billionaire’s dirty backstory revealed,” I read, murmuring the words.
“You need to read this article,” Karli says. “Apparently he cut out his old business partner. He was stone cold about the whole thing.”
I flip through the newspaper in search for the story. His business partner, his business partner… the one who’d commissioned an expensive logo?
The article is a full spread. Karli is practically seething beside me, pointing out things before I reach them. “He made Ben sign a non-disclosure agreement,” she says. “That’s why it’s his wife who’s doing the talking.”
“Ben?”
“Ben Simmons. Cole Porter’s former business partner.” She points to the picture in the spread of Ben and his wife. It’s a beautiful image. They’re sitting close together on a couch, her hands clasped around his, the picture of support.
I shake my head. “Wait, wait, I have to read.” My eyes skim the questions and the answers, each more damning than the last. Elena, Ben’s wife, is the one who does most of the talking. They were school friends, she answers. And then to be cut off like that…
The reporter interjects here—asking about the exact details. Ben’s the one who responds to that. I couldn’t tell you. I wish I could, but I was forced to sign an NDA. I would have been left with nothing if I hadn’t.
I scan the rest, every sentence, every question worse than the one before. Something sinks inside me. Could Cole have done this? Cole, who invited my nephew along to a baseball game?
“It’s a story. Stories can be twisted,” I say faintly.
Karli snorts. “Yeah, but not that much. God, can you imagine that we might have to see him again? He’s even more of a snake than we thought.”
“Yeah.”
“Apparently Ben was the one who actually built the business. He says so, at the end.”
I scan the final lines. The reporter asks if it’s fair to say that Ben had been the brains behind the operation. Simmons looks down, a faint smile on his face. “Cole was my best friend, once,” he says. “But no, he was never the smartest of men. He had the trust fund and I had the ideas. It was a good combo until it wasn’t.”
Anger and fear chase each other inside me, running in aggravated circles. Cole is one of the smartest men I’ve ever met—so Ben’s wrong on that account. But is he wrong regarding the rest?
Cole can be ruthless. I’ve witnessed that. He’s good friends with Nicholas Park—and that man has quite the reputation for the unsavory.
“He might not honor our agreement,” Karli continues. “We have to accept that possibility. What do we do if he doesn’t? Would our bargain hold up in court?”
I sink into the chair. “No clue.”
“Cutting out his own best friend for profit. Disgusting.”
“Seems like it.”
Karli’s face swims into view, her mouth set in determined lines. “And that was the guy you went toe to toe with, Skye! I’m more proud of you than ever. He might be a sleazeball, but we can hold our heads up high.”
Hold our heads up high.
If she only knew, I think. She’d never look at me the same way again.
Karli’s eyes widen, a sudden realization settling in. “Maybe he’d take it out on you if we win the bargain. Judging by our spike in customers, we might.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know him. Look at this… he cut off his best friend! Made him sign an NDA?” She shakes her head at the article. “And this is the Seattle Tribune. They wouldn’t publish just anything, either. You can bet this was fact-checked.”
Each of her words falls heavier than the next, until I feel bent under the pressure. “Sorry, I have to… Can you watch the register for a minute? I have to use the bathroom.”
“Yes, of course. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. One minute.”
And in our little three-square-feet bathroom, I break down completely. It’s not pretty. It’s not even rational. And still, I have to grip the sink to keep my breath from running away from me completely. The article is either a smear piece or a daring exposé.
And I have no idea what to believe.
My first instinct is to call him. To text. To hear him say It’s not true, Skye. Of course it’s not. You’re a writer. You know how writers write.
But isn’t that exactly what someone who was trying to manipulate me would say? Someone who wants to see this business demolished. Someone who’s been damn good at making me think they’d stopped caring about it. He’d hinted that winning wasn’t important to him anymore.
That I was important instead.
And I’d believed him.
The baseball game. The publisher event. Was it all a lie?
I shake my head at myself in the mirror. If I was being played for a fool, at least my eyes are open now, thanks to Ben Simmons. That is a good thing.
And if I wasn’t… well, I can’t let myself consider that, not yet. Not while my chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. Karli’s words come back to me, the ones that carried the most weight. The Seattle Tribune wouldn’t publish just anything. They would fact check. They had probably reached out to Cole for a comment, even.
The look Karli gives me when I come out of the bathroom is sympathetic. She puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “I’m sorry. Of course this made you think that it’s futile, but it’s truly not. We might still have a chance to pull this off.”
I nod. Inside, I’ve never felt more like a fraud. I don’t deserve her friendship, or her support, not right now. The bookstore is hers, after all. Eleanor was her grandmother. Not mine.
“We’ll just have to work harder,” I say faintly. “We have a week left.”
She nods. “That’s right. And if push comes to shove, he’s not getting us to sign any NDAs!”
I hmm in agreement, returning to stacking shelves with my mind whirling. And despite my phone burning a hole in my pocket that day, I don’t contact Cole, and he doesn’t contact me. He must have his hands full.
He’s either devastated by the article or pissed off that his former business partner found a way to circumvent the non-disclosure agreement.
And I’m not sure I want to find out which one it is yet.
The next day marks exactly one week until our two-month agreement with Porter Development comes to an end. Karli has a meeting with Chloe in a few days, and the both of them will pore over the numbers to see if we can present a profitable store.
Karli and I have been ramping each other up constantly. “We can do this,” Karli tells me again, as much for herself as for me.
“Oh, absolutely. We’ve seen more customers these past few weeks than ever before. We’re good.”
“We’re good,” she repeats. “We’re good.”
Her eyes flick to the back wall, and I wonder if she’s thinking of the same thing I am. The framed picture of Eleanor in front of Between the Pages from when it opened. It’s hung there so long there’s a square mark in the wallpaper behind it.
The day is a blur of sales and Instagram updates and hanging sale signs. I hang a huge one in the window display and add a handwritten note that explains our situation. One week left to make a difference, I write in the heading. Do you want our store to remain?
It’s desperate, but these are desperate times.
The doorbell jingles an hour before closing, and not with a customer. Middle-aged. A frown on his features. And wearing a T-shirt with an all-too-familiar logo. This time, it’s not peppered with darts.
He walks straight up to the register. “Good afternoon.”
I brace my hands against the counter. “Hi. I wasn’t aware we had a scheduled appointment with Porter Development today.”
He gives me an unpleasant smile and pulls out a construction ruler from his pocket. “I was sent to inspect the property in preparation.”
“Inspect?”
“Yes.” He taps the ruler against the desk, looking around with appraising eyes. “Take the building’s measurements and inspect the construction. After all, we need to know how big of a wrecking ball to bring.”
“Nothing has been decided yet,” I grind out.
His smile is irreverent. “That’s for you to bring up to my boss, or my boss’s boss. I’m here on orders, and to the best of my knowledge, we’re razing the building within the month.”
“Not on my watch.”
The man chuckles, like I’ve made a joke. His voice turns syrupy. “All right, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? The nerve! “What’s your name?”
“Max Blakefield.”
“Well, you won’t be measuring inside this store today, not until you come back here with a scheduled appointment that has gone from your boss or boss’s boss to us.”
The smile he aims me is patronizing. “I’m to measure the building on the outside, which requires no agreement from you. Free country, after all.” He has me beat, and he can see it on my face, because he gives a slick nod. “You have a good day, now.”
He strolls out of the bookstore, measurer in hand, like he does this all the time. My fingers ache from clenching so hard around the edge of the counter. If this was a cartoon, smoke would be coming out of my ears, I’m so angry. A wrecking ball, he said. His boss’s boss.
So much for honoring agreements, it seems. Porter Development seems intent on tearing the building down. Are Karli and I going to become the next Ben Simmons?
My hands fly furiously as I write a text to Cole.
Skye Holland: I close up the store soon. Can I come to yours after?
His response doesn’t take long, and it’s thankfully in a text, too. I’m not sure I could’ve kept my emotions hidden on the phone, and this is a conversation I want to have in person.
Cole Porter: Yes. I’ll be home by seven.
I’m in the lobby of the Amena at six fifty-eight. My fingers twitch at my side, too pumped up on adrenaline and nerves for my own good. Potential scenarios dance in my mind. Him admitting that our casual affair was all just amusement, that he had never planned to honor the agreement. The crooked smile twisted sardonically.
Or, worse, him telling me that the bookstore had never had a shot in the first place, eyes as patronizing as the handyman he’d sent today. My nerves increase with each floor I pass on my way up to his penthouse.
The elevator doors open to an empty hallway. He’s not in the kitchen, either. I lean around the corner, peering toward the living room. “Cole?”
“Coming!”
He emerges from his home office, a hand tugging at the tie around his neck. “You came fast.”
“I sure did. What happened today?”
“What do you mean?”
“You sent one of your men to the bookstore today.”
His face grows still. “I absolutely did not.”
“A certain Max Blakefield seemed to think otherwise. He showed up to measure the store for a correctly sized wrecking ball. Said the place would be razed within a month—and that if I believed otherwise, I’d better talk to his boss’s boss.” I spread my arms wide. “So here I am.”
Cole is shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know a Max Blakefield. Must be one of our contractors.”
“He was wearing a shirt with your logo. Looked like a builder.” My eyes snag on his expensive suit, stretching taut across his frame. “A real builder, I mean. He was wearing boots and work pants.”
There’s a silken thread of warning in his voice. “He was wrong. The company still plans to honor its agreement.”
“You mean you do.”
“Yes,” he says, like that’s the same thing. But it’s not.
“Your employees seem to think otherwise.” I swallow hard, lifting my chin, meeting his gaze head-on. “We saw the article yesterday. Karli is doubting that you honor agreements at all.”
“Ah.” He grinds the word out between his teeth. “So that’s what this is really about, huh? And is Karli the only one who is doubting?”
“I have some doubts too,” I say honestly. Doubts about us. What you’ve been doing. And why you’ve been doing it.
“Nine hundred words in a newspaper, and you’re rattled. I thought you were a writer yourself, Skye. You know how things are twisted.” The words are playful, but his tone is not.
“So it’s not true? What he said in the interview?” I ask. Cole just stares at me, and the silence grows heavy between us in a way it never has before. I’m furious about my own vulnerability to him—that I care so much about the answer. That I’ve given him this power over me.
“Did I make Ben Simmons sign an NDA?” he asks, voice trembling with barely concealed fury. “Yes. Did I cut him off from the business? Yes. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat, Skye.”
My chest feels like it’s collapsing, constricting, anger and fear choking off a response.
“And now you’re wondering about my character,” he continues. “What I would do to get what I want.”
I give a shallow nod, clenching my fists hard enough that my nails dig into my palm. “They say you’re ruthless. That you always win. Maybe you knowingly sent one of your men to the bookstore today to rattle us. Maybe you didn’t, but you might as well have, Cole. We made a deal.”
“Hold on,” he warns.
But my thoughts are leaping from one conclusion to another. “All this time, I thought sleeping with me was fun for you. Good sex. Maybe it was for sport, too. But now… was it to throw me off balance? To gain leverage?”
A swift shadow crosses over his face, jaw hardening. “What?”
“You don’t like to lose. Ben Simmons confirmed it. You just confirmed it, when you said he’d spoken true.”
Cole starts undoing the cuffs of his shirt in harsh, quick movements. “No, I don’t like to lose. Neither do you, by the way. We’re both competitive.”
“So?”
“I can be an asshole sometimes. You’ve pointed that out yourself. But to the best of my knowledge, I’m not amoral.”
“I didn’t imply that you were.”
“You just asked me if I’m fucking you to gain the upper hand in our business deal. Not that I understand how that would help me, exactly. Does your business lose profit, one orgasm at a time?” He shakes his head, an unhappy smile on his face. “I’m not, by the way.”
My throat feels like it’s closing in on itself. “You admitted to cutting off your best friend. How could I not ask?”
Cole braces his hands against the kitchen counter. “You want to know the real truth about Ben and Elena, his loving wife? Ben and I built the business together. I did most of the strategizing and he brought on investors. Always had a good eye for marketing and building a story.” He takes a deep breath, shaking his head. “Toward the end, he wasn’t pulling his weight. Skipping out on business trips. Making bad decisions without consulting me. But he was my best friend, so I gave him second chances.”
“Oh,” I breathe.
His voice hardens. “Elena didn’t like me working so much. She was my fiancée, by the way. They didn’t mention that in their little interview.” He looks away from me, jaw working. “They’d been sleeping together for nearly two years when I found out.”
“Oh, Cole…”
“So yes, I forced him out. It wasn’t hard. I had our staff’s loyalty, the majority of our shares, our clients’ trust. But I left him with more money than anyone should need in a lifetime.”
He pushes away from the counter, shrugging off his suit jacket and dropping it on his couch. “Is that enough humiliation for you? Or do you want to accuse me of something else?”
“Cole…”
“Spare me the pity, please. I’ve had more than enough of that from my own staff.”
I swallow against the dryness in my throat. I feel rooted to the spot, not sure if I should go to him or leave him alone. I’d come here to talk, to get to the bottom of things, to make sense of it all. And I’m left feeling like it all went sideways somehow, without knowing where it went wrong.
“Don’t worry,” he calls out, not bothering to turn around. “We’re just sleeping together. Your business deal still stands.”
To my horror, something burns behind my eyes, and I don’t know if the tears are from embarrassment, anger, or something far more dangerous. Hurt. I hurry to the elevator.
Cole doesn’t try to stop me.
