Trapped In The Billionaire’s Name

CHAPTER 24

Reina's POV

Damian texted me after the Vivienne meeting.

“She won't speak to the journalist. She's out of Celeste's reach.”

I was between patients when it came through. I read it twice, sent back “good”, and finished my shift.

What I didn't do was examine the thing that had moved through me when he'd told me he was meeting her. It wasn't jealousy exactly — I didn't have the right architecture for jealousy, having spent years making sure I didn't attach strongly enough to anyone for it to apply. It was something adjacent. The awareness that this man had a whole life before me that included a woman he'd been ready to build something permanent with, and that I was still figuring out what I was to him while that history existed.

Nadia found me in the locker room at two thirty.

"Vivienne Cole," she said, sitting down beside me without preamble. "I looked her up."

"Nadia."

"She's beautiful and accomplished, and they were together for two years." She paused. "How are you actually feeling?"

"Fine."

"Reina."

I looked at my locker. "I trust him," I said. "That's not the issue."

"Then what is?"

I thought about how to say it accurately. "She knew him before any of this. She knew him without the context of Celeste and forged documents and everything that pulled us together. She knew him just as a person." I paused. "Sometimes I wonder if what we have would exist without the circumstances."

Nadia was quiet for a moment. For Nadia that meant she was taking it seriously.

"Do you think he'd agree with that?" she said finally.

I thought about Sunday at Marco's. His knee against mine under the table. The way he'd answered Marco's questions without managing them. Tuesday at the facility and his hand turning over to hold mine without being asked. Last night on the couch and his jacket around my shoulders and him staying in the same room simply because he wanted to be there.

None of that was circumstance. Circumstance had introduced us. What came after was something else.

"No," I said. "I don't think he'd agree."

"Then maybe believe him over your own anxiety for once," she said. "You're the most self-aware person I know and also somehow the worst at applying it to yourself."

She left me with that. Which was peak Nadia.

He called at seven.

"Are you home?" he said.

"Just got in."

"I want to see you."

No preamble. No construction around it. Just the direct statement of a man who'd decided that with me he was going to say things plainly.

"It's been a long day," I said.

"I know. I'm not asking for the evening. An hour." A pause. "I want to tell you about the Vivienne meeting in person. Not over text."

I looked at my couch. My shoes were still on. I hadn't eaten since noon.

"Come here then," I said. "Bring food."

"What do you want?"

"Anything that isn't a hospital adjacent."

Twenty minutes later he was at my door with Thai food and no jacket because he'd clearly left his office in a hurry and hadn't thought about the November cold. I looked at him standing in my doorway — slightly wind-touched, carrying takeout bags, the CEO of a billion-dollar company on my landing looking more human than he ever did in a conference room.

"You're cold," I said.

"I'm fine." He came in.

We ate at my small kitchen table. Real plates this time — I'd decided at some point that eating takeout from containers around this man felt like a position I was maintaining for no reason and I was tired of maintaining positions for no reason.

He told me about Vivienne. All of it — what she'd said about Celeste's call, the conversation about the proposal, the way she'd looked at him at the end and said he seemed different.

I listened without interrupting.

"Are you alright?" I said when he finished.

"Yes." He meant it. "It wasn't difficult the way I thought it might be. She's perceptive. She knew what it was and what it wasn't and she didn't need me to manage it."

"She loved you," I said.

"I think she loved who she thought we'd be," he said. "She's honest enough to know the difference." He looked at me. "She said you could trust me."

I stilled. "She said that."

"Not directly. She said I look different. But that's what she meant." He held my gaze. "I wanted you to know that. Because I know the Vivienne thing was—"

"It wasn't anything," I said.

"Reina."

"It made me think," I admitted. "About circumstances. About whether this exists without all of it."

He was quiet. He didn't rush to reassure me, which I'd learned was how I knew when he was being genuine — he always took a moment to actually consider before he spoke.

"I thought about that too," he said finally. "Early on. Whether what I felt was just the situation." He looked at me directly. "And then I watched you talk about your patients. And I listened to you think through Celeste's strategy with more clarity than my lawyers. And I sat in a room with your mother and watched you be the most quietly devoted person I've ever seen." He paused. "The circumstances introduced us. Everything after that was just you."

My throat was tight.

"You can't say things like that," I said quietly.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know what to do with them."

"You don't have to do anything," he said. "Just let them be true."

The kitchen was small and warm and the city was dark outside and he was looking at me from across my own table like I was the most interesting thing in any room he'd ever been in.

I stood up and picked up the plates and took them to the sink because I needed something to do with my hands.

He came and stood beside me. Not behind me, not reaching past me. Just — beside me. His arm against mine. Present.

"Reina," he said quietly.

I turned.

He was very close. The specific closeness we kept finding our way to without formally deciding. His eyes were on mine and everything in his face was open and certain and waiting.

Not pushing. Just — there. Giving me the decision the way he always did.

I closed the remaining distance and kissed him.

It wasn't tentative. I didn't do tentative. It was a decision made fully and it landed that way — certain and quiet and so much like him in the way it felt that something in me recognized it before my mind caught up.

He kissed me back with the same quality of attention he gave everything. Like I was worth being present for completely.

When we pulled back we were still close. His hand was on my jaw. Mine was at his chest.

"Okay," he said softly. Like something had been confirmed.

"Okay," I said back.