Page 66 of Dial F for Finance

“At what?”

“Saying exactly what I need to hear.”

“I’m just telling the truth.” I press a soft kiss to her forehead. “You don’t have to believe me tonight.”

She closes her eyes and leans into my palm, finally too exhausted to argue.

The intercom chimes, cutting through the heavy quiet of the apartment.

“Food,” I tell her. “You’re going to eat, and then you’re going to sleep. No family. No work. No worrying about the future. Just you, me, and a bed that’s far too big for one person.”

She opens her eyes, a faint, combative spark returning. “Why are you always so bossy?”

“Because I’m right. And deep down, you fucking love it when I tell you what to do.”

She fakes a gasp, but it doesn’t hide the blush.

“Come on, Pemberton.” I stand and offer her my hand. “Let’s get you fed.”

CHAPTER 16

Jenna

Iwake in a bed the size of Rhode Island with a man’s arm heavy across my waist, and for the first time in my adult life, I don’t immediately calculate the distance to the door.

Morning does what morning does in a strange apartment—strips everything down to inventory. Sunlight on old wood floors. The East River moving past the windows like it has somewhere better to be. Dominic asleep beside me on his side, sheets tangled at his hips, his dark hair an absolute mess.

I study his face—brow furrowed as though he’s negotiating with a dream, jaw shadowed, mouth barely parted in a way that makes me want to trace the curve of his lower lip just to see if he wakes. I don’t, of course. I am a woman with self-control.

I am a woman with self-control.

Last night he fed me pasta, put me to bed and held me. Just . . . held me, because somehow this man always knows exactly what I need.

I reach out and touch his lip.

He doesn’t wake, but his brow smooths as if I’ve soothed an entire argument away with the pad of one finger. I trace the crease between his eyebrows and think about what Serena said on the sidewalk—about not seeing what I had in front of me until I was ready to accept it.

Am I ready now?

I close my eyes and try to picture what life would look like if I didn’t run—if I let myself keep waking up in the morning, not planning my exit but just . . . living. Would I become my mother, desperate for affection to the point of weaponizing it against everyone she loved? Or is it possible to love someone that hard and not obliterate yourself in the process?

All signs point to no. All prior evidence says that even wanting something is a liability; that the second you admit to needing another person, the entire economy collapses and you’re left picking through the rubble for receipts.

But he’s here. I’m here. The world did not end, unless you count the family-size drama in Queens, and even that was survivable. My mother woke up this morning, probably hungover and almost certainly still angry, and I woke up in a sunlit room with a man whose hand finds me automatically in his sleep, and the ledger—at least for now—shows a surplus.

He cracks an eye. “You’re staring at me, Pemberton.” His voice is rough with sleep, and somehow I don’t flinch. I let my hand fall to the sheet but not away from him. I’m not scared.

I am not scared.

“You snore,” I say, even though he doesn’t.

He grins, and the left side of his mouth tugs up in that way it always does when he knows he’s won a hand before I saw the cards.

“You drool,” he counteroffers, rolling to face me at full attention.

I smirk, and it’s a defense because I’m not ready for how easy it is to want him with nothing between us but linen and the city waking up beneath us. “You make a compelling case for separate bedrooms.”

“Agreed.” He pulls me closer. “But I don’t have the self-restraint to sleep that far away from you.” He says it like a joke, but his hand cups my cheek, thumb tracing the hinge of my jaw with this proprietary reverence that should alarm me. It doesn’t. His voice goes low. “I know why you’re staring.”