“You’re in my way.” I shouldered past Aiden with more force than necessary. Alessandra had warned us against passive-aggressiveness, but it wasn’t my fault if I bumped into her landlord while I was taking out the trash. The asshole was standing right in my path.
He stumbled before regaining his balance and pinning me with a hard smile. “Perhaps you should find an alternate route. There’s plenty of space around me.”
“It’s covered with trash.” I dumped an armful of ruined flowers into a giant Hefty bag.
“Then wait.” He resumed sweeping a pile of glass shards into a dustpan.
“You’re not the only one working.”
My eye twitched. I’d been here less than three hours, and I already wanted to punch Aiden in his smug, bearded face. Alessandra said their relationship was platonic, but no landlord was this hands-on with his tenant unless he wanted something.
Thank fuck I was here to make sure he didn’t do anything sleazy. I would’ve helped Alessandra clean up regardless, but Aiden’s presence ensured I didn’t step foot outside the shop until after he’d left every day.
“No, but I’m the only one in this room working efficiently,” I said coolly. “How long have you been sweeping the same glass?”
“It’s not always about speed. Good work requires time and care,” Aiden said. “You could learn a few things about that.”
Red crept into my vision. It would be so easy to grab one of the bigger glass shards and—
“How’s everything going?” Alessandra emerged from the supply closet, looking tired but more optimistic than she had when we first saw the damage.
“Great,” Aiden and I chorused. He smiled at me. I smiled at him. We smiled at Alessandra together.
“We’re making a lot of progress,” I said, which was true. We’d cleaned up most of the debris over the past two days, and we could start arranging the furniture back to their original positions tomorrow.
Her eyebrows skyrocketed, but she didn’t question our over-the-top cheerfulness. I think she was just happy she hadn’t walked into a fistfight or, if I had my way, bloody murder.
Alessandra stayed on the main floor, so Aiden and I kept our mouths shut for the remainder of the afternoon.
My sweat-drenched shirt stuck to my skin, and my muscles ached from hauling giant stuffed trash bags out to the dumpster every hour. I worked out, but I hadn’t undertaken basic physical labor since I started Davenport Capital. The mindless tasks were grueling but oddly soothing.
Thanks to my temporary new schedule, I had to cram a day’s worth of client interactions and financial assessments into six or seven hours every morning. It was nice to show up at Floria Designs in the afternoon and not have to think about what I was doing.
My team wasn’t happy about the changes, but they worked for me, not the other way around. As long as our portfolios were performing well, which they were, they had no valid reason to complain.
“Here.” Alessandra handed me a glass of water at the end of the day.
Aiden had left twenty minutes ago for a dinner reservation, and I’d slowed my pace so I could spend a little more time with her. “You look like you could use this.”
“Thanks.” My fingers brushed hers when I took the glass. A burst of electricity zipped over my skin, and Alessandra stepped back so quickly she almost tripped over a flattened cardboard box.
I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the charge between us. “Things are shaping up,” I said huskily. “I think we’ll be done by the weekend.”
“I hope so.” A pink flush decorated her face and chest. She looked so fucking adorable, I almost grabbed her and kissed her again, but we hadn’t even discussed our kiss at the lagoon yet. The last thing I wanted was to push her too far, too fast. “Thank you again for helping me with this.” She gestured around the store. “You don’t need to.”
“No, but I want to,” I said simply.
Alessandra had supported me unfailingly through the years, and I hadn’t done the same for her. Not as much as I should’ve. I could scrub every inch of the store every day for the next ten years and it wouldn’t come close to what she deserved. It was why I’d helped her myself instead of hiring a crew to do it. She warranted attention, not delegation.
Our breaths fluttered in the air before they liquefied into silence.
Lawn mowing, dishwashing, working as a busboy. I’d spent the first half of my life serving others for figurative pennies. After I made my first million, I swore I would never clean up other people’s messes again, but I would happily spend the rest of my life doing just that if it meant Alessandra would keep looking at me the way she did now.
Like maybe, just maybe, the tiny flame of hope I’d carried around for us since our divorce wasn’t misplaced after all.
As predicted, we completed our cleanup efforts on Saturday. I’d developed a baseball team’s worth of calluses by that point, but it was worth it.
“You did it,” I said when Alessandra collapsed into her chair with visible relief. “The store is officially back on track.”
“Sort of. I have about a thousand flowers left to dry before the grand opening, but…” Her sigh melted into a small smile. “God, it’ll feel good to walk in on Monday and not see a pile of trash waiting for me.”
“To no trash.” I lifted my can of Coke.
She laughed and clinked hers against mine. “Amen.”
We sat on opposite sides of her desk, which groaned beneath the weight of our Chinese takeout. We couldn’t decide what to eat, so we’d ordered a bit of everything—beef with broccoli, spring rolls, sesame chicken, crab rangoon, sweet and sour pork. The delivery guy couldn’t hide his shock when he saw there were only two of us during his drop-off.
That fucker Aiden had tried to stay for dinner as well, but a quick call in the bathroom took care of that problem—he was currently dealing with a vandalization issue at another one of his properties. It was fascinating how much damage one rock could inflict on glass.
I’d exhausted my patience with him days ago. He was lucky I hadn’t called in anything more destructive than a fucking rock.
“I bet this isn’t your idea of the perfect Saturday night.”
Alessandra stabbed at a piece of broccoli. “Be honest. Where are you supposed to be right now?”
I’d received invitations to two charity galas, a private museum exhibit, and a dinner party at the Singhs’ townhouse for that night. I’d declined all of them.
“Nowhere,” I said. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
Alessandra’s gaze faltered. She lowered her food without eating it, and the silence stretched so taut I feared it would snap and break the fragile camaraderie we’d developed since Brazil.
Part of me wanted to sweep the tough topics under the rug and continue enjoying our night. The other part knew that would only be a Band-Aid, not a cure. Alessandra and I had plastered the cracks in our marriage with a shiny veneer. It’d worked—until it hadn’t.
Sometimes, the only way to cross the highest mountain was to climb it.
“We should talk about what happened at the lagoon.” The elephant had been sitting between us for too long. “Our kiss—”
“Was just a kiss.” Alessandra pushed her broccoli around without glancing up. “We were on a date. Kisses happen on dates.”
“Ále…”
“No. Don’t make it into something more than it was.” A tremor ran beneath her words. “You asked for one date, and I gave it to you. That’s it.”
“If it didn’t mean anything, you’d be able to look at me.” My food lay abandoned on my plate, but it didn’t matter. I’d lost my appetite. “No more lying to each other or ourselves. We deserve that much.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Alessandra threw her hands up, her features painted with frustration. “Do you want me to say I enjoyed the kiss and I don’t regret it even though I should? Fine. I did, and I don’t.
But physical attraction has never been the issue. When I look at you, I…”
Her voice caught. “I think I could never love anyone more than you or after you. That you took everything I had to give, and I gave it freely because I couldn’t imagine a world where we wouldn’t be together.”
Her face blurred beneath the ache tearing through my insides. “But I’m living in that world right now, and I’m scared.” Alessandra’s chin wobbled.
“I don’t know how to live life without you, Dom. I haven’t dated anyone else in over ten years, and I just…I can’t…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t promise you anything more than I already have.”
I tried to speak, but every time I grasped a response, it crumbled into dust. I could only sit there and listen as she shredded my heart methodically, piece by piece.
“I know you’re trying. I know what you gave up to be in Brazil, to be here, and I truly appreciate it. But I’m not ready for anything more than what we have. I’m not sure I ever will be.” A lone tear streaked down her face. “You broke my heart, and you weren’t even there to witness it.”
If I ever thought I’d been in pain before, I was wrong. Broken bones and my foster mother’s whippings paled in comparison to the white-hot lance of Alessandra’s words.
I’d never intended to hurt her, but impact trumped intention, and no amount of verbal apologies could make up for what I’d done.
“I understand.” A stranger’s voice carried my words. It was too rough, too raw to be mine, but it was the only thing I had, so I used it. “If you need time, take it. If you want to date other people, do it. I won’t interfere. I didn’t appreciate you when I had you, and that’s my cross to bear. But you’ll always be the love of my life, and I’ll always be here, whether it’s a month, a year, or a lifetime from now.” The sound of her sob dampened my cheek with something hot and wet. “There are probably hundreds of men who’d line up for the chance to be with you. I only ask that you let me be one of them.”
I was taking the biggest gamble of my life. She’d said we could date other people in Brazil, but that had been hypothetical; this was real. The thought of standing by and watching another man touch her without doing anything about it made it damn near impossible to breathe.
But I broke her heart once, and I’d let her break my heart a thousand times in return if it meant that one day, she found her way back to me.
