Page 22 of He Knows When You're Awake

“Still.” She takes a deliberate breath and straightens her shoulders. “I want this opportunity to be about my work, not... this.”

I nod, forcing myself to lean back.

We fall into an easy conversation as the sleigh carries us through the night. She tells me about growing up in Montauk, about summer jobs at the marina where she learned to curse like a sailor. I share stories about my early days in Manhattan, sleeping on friends’ couches while trying to land my first investors.

“Did it work?” she asks.

“Eventually. Though I had to wear the same suit to every meeting. It was three sizes too big. The shoulders were stuffed with newspaper.”

“No.”

“Yes. The trick was not raising my arms. Ever.”

She laughs. “And now look at you. King of Manhattan in designer suits.”

“I do own more than one now.”

“I never would have guessed.”

The sleigh carries us past ice-glazed waterfalls and through forests where snow weighs down the branches. She tells me about her first apartment in New York—a sixth-floor walk-up with a radiator that spoke in Morse code.

“It was trying to tell me something important, I’m sure of it,” she insists.

“Probably ‘Pay more rent.’”

“More likely ‘Your neighbor is definitely running a cult.’” She shakes her head. “There were a lot of people in robes.”

“And here I thought my first place in Brooklyn was bad. At least my neighbors stuck to normal illegal activities.”

“Like what?”

“Pretty sure they were running an underground poker ring. Badly, I might add. I learned everything not to do by listening through the walls.”

She laughs. “Is that where you developed your poker face?”

“That implies I gamble.”

“Please. Everything about you screams ‘calculated risk.’”

“What about you?” I ask. “You don’t strike me as someone who particularly likes structure.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“Your designs. They’re controlled chaos. Beautiful, but unpredictable. Unfinished. You move on to the next design without completing the one before that.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” There’s a hint of challenge in her voice now.

“Not a problem per se,” I say carefully. “Just... different from how I work. Although I do value deadlines.”

“Maybe that’s why you need me,” she says with surprising confidence. “To shake things up a bit. And I’ve never missed a deadline, regardless of if I’m a hot mess getting there. The orderly way is not always the best way.”

The idea of this woman and how she works both intrigues and unsettles me. I’m not used to being read so easily. Nor am I used to the suggestion that my way might not be the only way.

We stop at a viewpoint high above the valley. Below us, the village sits quietly between the mountains, untouched beneath the fresh snow. Sloane leans forward to take in the view, and I find myself watching her instead of the scenery.

This isn’t part of the plan.

She turns to look at me, her cheeks flushed from the cold. A snowflake lands on her lip, and for a moment I can’t look away.She doesn’t brush it off. Just watches me watching her, her breath coming faster now. The space between us seems to shrink, charged with something that has nothing to do with contracts or business arrangements.