Nate’s voice drifts in from the hallway a second before he appears, barefoot in sweats and an old University of Washington T-shirt, hair still damp from the shower. He takes in the scene in one sweep—the open FedEx box on the island, the shredded check, my white knuckles on the countertop—and his whole expression changes. Softer. Sharper. Focused entirely on me.
“What did they send?” he asks quietly.
“A bribe.” My throat is dry. “Fifty thousand dollars.”
He pauses, then tilts his head. “And?”
“And they’re not very good at reading me.” I push away from the counter and let out a breath that sounds too close to a laugh. “I tore it up.”
A slow smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, the kind that starts in his eyes before his lips ever get involved. “Good,” he says. “I was worried I’d have to do it for you and then you’d yell at me for touching your dramatic evidence.”
A real laugh makes it out this time, shaky but genuine. “It was a little satisfying,” I admit. “Like a very high-stakes arts-and-crafts project.”
Nate crosses the kitchen, stepping over the faint line of flour I never cleaned after baking Christmas cookies, and wraps his arms around my waist from behind. I lean back into him automatically, the warmth of his chest seeping into my spine.
“Walk me through it,” he murmurs against my hair. “What happened after you opened it?”
I tell him. About the check. About the note on company letterhead, as if my father were negotiating with a contractor instead of his own child. About the way my hands didn’t even hesitate as I ripped the paper. About the message I sent the group chat and the moment my thumb brushed the word Leave and, for the first time in twenty-nine years, I believed that I had options that didn’t end with me crawling back.
When I’m done, the kitchen is quiet again. Nate rests his chin on top of my head.
“You know,” he says slowly, “for a woman who supposedly can’t manage her own life, you handled that like a CEO.”
I snort. “Low bar. The last CEO I saw was threatening to cancel a fifty-million-dollar merger in the middle of dessert.”
“He wasn’t wrong,” Nate says. “About the merger, I mean. Not about the dramatic timing. That was…a choice.”
I twist around in his arms until I’m facing him. His eyes are tired—mine probably are too—but there is no pity there. Just the steady, infuriatingly calm belief that has kept me upright for the last eight months.
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