Wanted All Along

Chapter Six

Two months in, Amara learned what it meant to compete with Kian’s company for his attention, and she learned it on a Saturday morning that was supposed to be theirs.

They were in his kitchen, her second visit to his city, coffee going cold between them while he stood at the counter scrolling through something on his phone with the particular stillness that meant work had found him again. Amara recognized the posture by now—shoulders set, jaw tight, eyes moving fast across the screen like he was already three steps into solving whatever problem had just landed on him.

“Everything okay?” she asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.

“Fine.” He didn’t look up. “A vendor issue on the Lakeview project. I need to make a few calls.”

A few calls turned into two hours, Kian disappearing into his office with the door mostly closed, his voice a low, steady murmur through the wall punctuated by long stretches of silence where Amara assumed he was listening, or thinking, or doing whatever it was he did behind that door that made him seem, even from a distance, like the most competent person in any conversation he was part of.

She didn’t mind, not exactly. She’d known what he did for a living before any of this started, known the shape of his calendar even if she’d never seen the details. But there was a particular loneliness to sitting in someone else’s kitchen, in someone else’s city, waiting for someone else’s schedule to make room for you, that she hadn’t fully anticipated when she’d booked the flight.

She thought about Daniel, briefly, and hated that the comparison occurred to her at all. This wasn’t the same. Daniel had made her wait because he didn’t think enough of her to do otherwise, small careless cruelties dressed up as forgetfulness. Kian made her wait because his life ran on a different scale entirely, deals and buildings and decisions that affected more than just the two of them in his kitchen. It wasn’t personal.

She told herself that several times before she believed it.

He emerged a little after noon, tie gone, sleeves rolled, looking like a man who’d fought something and won, though his eyes softened the moment he found her curled on his couch with a book she wasn’t really reading.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it, which surprised her. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not, actually.” He came and sat beside her, close enough that his knee pressed against hers, an apology in the small physical gesture that felt more honest than the words themselves. “You flew here. I disappeared into my office for two hours. That’s not how I wanted this weekend to go.”

“How did you want it to go?”

He considered the question seriously, like it deserved more than a quick answer. “Slower,” he said finally. “I wanted to show you the city properly. Not just the parts that fit between meetings.”

“We still have the rest of the weekend.”

“We do.” He reached over, tucking a loose curl behind her ear, his hand lingering against her jaw a moment longer than the gesture required. “I keep thinking I’ll figure out how to leave work at the office when you’re here. I haven’t managed it yet.”

“Maybe it’s not really about leaving it at the office,” Amara said carefully, testing the thought as she spoke it. “Maybe it’s about deciding, sometimes, that something else matters more.”

Something shifted in his expression, quick and unguarded, gone before she could fully read it. “That’s a very reasonable thing to say,” he said. “I’m not sure I know how to do it yet.”

“That’s honest, at least.”

“I’m always honest with you.” He said it simply, like it was a fact rather than a compliment, and something about the plainness of it landed harder than a more practiced version might have. “I don’t know how to explain it. Everyone else in my life, I manage carefully. What I say, how much I let them see. With you I just—say the thing.”

Amara felt something in her chest tighten, warm and unfamiliar. “That’s not nothing, you know. Saying the thing.”

“No,” he agreed quietly. “I’m starting to realize that.”

He made good on the rest of the weekend the way he seemed to make good on most things once he’d decided to—thoroughly, deliberately, like being present with her was a project he intended to execute well now that he’d identified the problem. They spent the afternoon walking through a part of the city he clearly loved, an old neighborhood with narrow streets and a market that smelled like cardamom and fresh bread, Kian pointing out small details with a familiarity that made Amara realize how rarely he probably let himself simply enjoy the place he lived instead of just moving through it toward the next obligation.

“You come here a lot?” she asked, watching him haggle, briefly and half-seriously, over a bag of oranges with a vendor who clearly knew him.

“Used to. Before things got—” He gestured vaguely, the word he was avoiding sitting between them unspoken. “Busy.”

“You could come back. It’s allowed. Being busy isn’t a life sentence.”

He looked at her for a long moment, oranges forgotten in his hand. “No,” he said slowly, like the idea was new even though it shouldn’t have been. “I suppose it isn’t.”

That night, back at his apartment, he was different in a way Amara noticed but didn’t name out loud—more present, phone left in the other room, his attention fully hers in a way that felt like its own kind of gift from a man who clearly wasn’t used to giving it freely. Later, tangled together in his bed with the city lights glowing faintly through the curtains, he traced slow patterns along her spine and said, quietly, into the dark, “I don’t want you to fly home tomorrow.”

“I have work Monday.”

“I know.” His hand stilled against her skin. “I’m not asking you to stay. I’m just telling you I don’t want you to go.”

Amara turned to face him, searching his expression for the careful composure he usually wore even in moments like this, and found it entirely absent. “That’s not very uncomplicated of you,” she said softly.

“No,” Kian agreed, pulling her closer, his voice rough with something that sounded a great deal like a man losing an argument with himself he hadn’t fully admitted to having. “It really isn’t.”

Amara lay awake a while after his breathing had evened out into sleep, his arm still curled around her, the city humming faintly beyond the window. She thought about the market, the oranges, the small unguarded moment when he’d admitted being busy wasn’t a life sentence, and wondered how much of the man she was falling for existed only in these stolen weekends, and how much of him was buried under calendars and vendor calls the rest of the time.

She didn’t have an answer. She wasn’t sure he did either.

Her flight the next morning was early, and Kian insisted on driving her himself instead of calling a car, both of them quiet in a way that felt heavier than the silence usually did. At the drop-off, he kissed her longer than the moment strictly called for, one hand cupping her jaw like he was trying to memorize something before letting it go.

“Text me when you land,” he said, the same words he always said, except this time they sounded like they meant more than routine.

“I will.”

“Amara.” He caught her hand before she could pull away, something serious settling into his expression. “I mean it. I don’t want this to keep being weekends and flights and whatever we’re not calling it. I want to figure out something better.”

She felt her pulse jump, half hope, half caution. “What does better look like?”

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “But I’m going to find out.”

She thought about that the entire flight home, turning the words over like something fragile she didn’t want to drop, and didn’t let herself believe too much of it until she saw what he actually did next.