Bound By Contract

Friday

Nadia POV

"I did something," Leo said, "and you're probably going to be upset about it."

I sat down on my kitchen floor without looking for a chair first.

"How bad?" I asked.

"Define bad."

"Leo."

"Okay." A breath. "Eight months ago Dad asked me to co-sign something. He said it was a formality. A bank requirement, nothing that would ever actually be called on. He said my name just needed to be on it."

I closed my eyes. "How much."

He told me.

I sat with the number and did the math and felt something cold settle in my chest that had nothing to do with the kitchen floor.

"It's not your fault," I said.

"I should have read it."

"You were twenty and your father told you it was fine." I pressed my back against the cabinet and stared at the ceiling. "This is not on you."

"You've got that voice right now."

"What voice."

"The one where you're saying the calm thing but your jaw is doing something else entirely."

I made myself unclench my jaw. "Don't call Dad tonight. Don't ask him about any of this. Just let me work on it."

"Promise me it's going to be okay."

"It's going to be okay. Go to sleep."

I hung up and called Sylvia.

She picked up on the first ring. "Talk."

"Leo co-signed one of my father's loans eight months ago. Didn't know what he was signing. The liability sits against his name personally."

Real silence. From Sylvia that meant she understood exactly how serious it was.

"So what are you going to do," she said.

"I think you already know."

"There has to be another option. A private lender, someone who"

"Nobody moves that kind of debt in that timeline without collateral I don't have anymore." I got up off the floor and sat at the kitchen table. "It's Cole or it's Leo's name on a liability that follows him for the next ten years."

"I hate this."

"So do I."

She exhaled. "He already knew you were coming back, didn't he."

"Yes."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"Everything about this bothers me. That's not the point anymore."

After a moment she said, quietly, "Call me after Friday."

I hung up, got a notepad, and sat back down.

I wrote Leo's name at the top. Then I drew a line under it and wrote everything I was going to walk into that office and demand. Not ask. Demand.

Leo's portion cleared completely. His name off the debt, no conditions.

My own allowance from the contract. My own account.

Separate lives inside whatever shared space was required.

Exit clause. Twelve months, automatic, no extension, no discussion.

I wrote it twice, read it back, and added one last line at the bottom more for myself than for him.

This is a contract, not a surrender.

I fell asleep at the table and woke up at four in the morning with the pen still in my hand.

I showered, dressed, and was in my car by seven-thirty.

I didn't call ahead. Calling ahead would have felt like asking permission to arrive and I was done asking this man for anything before I'd walked into the room. I pulled up at eight-fifteen. The woman at the front desk recognized me and called upstairs without being asked.

I went up.

He was already at his desk when I walked in. Jacket on, something open in front of him that he closed when I entered. I crossed the room and put the list on his desk without saying anything.

He picked it up. Read through it without expression. Turned it over, checked the back, turned it again.

Then he picked up a pen and signed the bottom.

I stared at the signature.

"That's it?" I said.

"That's it."

"You didn't push back on anything."

"No."

"Why."

"Your terms were reasonable."

"I came in here ready to fight every single line."

"I know." He set the pen down. "You had it in your face when you walked through the door."

I moved past that. "The exit clause. Twelve months, automatic."

"Yes."

"Leo's portion, fully cleared, his name removed completely."

"Already drafted into the updated contract."

I looked at the signature again. He had agreed to every word without a single counter and I had built the entire drive over around the argument I was going to have, and the absence of one had thrown me further off balance than any argument would have.

"You decided all of this before I came in," I said.

He didn't answer. Which was its own answer.

"So what was Friday actually for," I said. "What were you waiting to see."

"Whether you'd come back."

I held his gaze and thought about Leo's voice on the phone. Small and uncertain and trusting me the way he always had. I thought about the list under his signature and twelve months and what they were going to cost and what they were going to buy.

"My lawyer sees the final contract before I sign anything," I said.

"Expected."

I picked up the list, folded it, put it in my bag. Turned toward the door. My hand found the frame the same way it had on Tuesday and I stopped there because there was one thing left and I needed to say it before I lost the nerve.

"On Tuesday you told me to come back Friday and you'd tell me what you actually wanted from this," I said. "You still haven't told me."

The room was quiet.

I turned around. He was watching me from behind his desk with an expression I couldn't place. Not closed exactly. More like something that had been almost open and decided at the last second not to be.

"No," he said. "I haven't."

I looked at him for a long moment. He didn't continue. Didn't offer anything else. Just held my gaze with that same steady patience he brought into every room like it cost him nothing.

"Are you going to?" I asked.

He looked at me for a moment that stretched just slightly too long.

"Ask me again when you've signed the contract," he said.