“She’s who I thought of.” Fallon grins. “She’s always heard music that no one else does, and no matter how much her brothers get on her case about a car, I’m going to help her hold out for as long as possible.”
I drop my eyes, feeling guilty. Quinn needs more Fallons around her.
“It’s cool.” I point to the headset. “I’ll have to take that idea back to Dubai with me.”
Clients would be able to really see my vision.
“But I am still partial to your old school models,” I say. “I used to love staring at them—wishing I lived inside them.”
“Well, don’t forget your old school model.”
She tips her chin up the stairs to the landing. Following her gaze, I spot a few tables, before you get to the conference room, and I can just make out miniatures of homes, office buildings, and other constructions.
My model? And then it occurs to me. The ski resort I used to think I was going to build someday.
I hit her with a bemused look. “You don’t still have it.”
She beams.
Shaking my head, I can’t resist. I jog up the stairs and find it immediately, sitting on a table, the wood and paintand trees a little dusty, but otherwise in the same condition as when I left them.
I study it with more experienced eyes, seeing that the scale is way off. Chalets far too close to the slopes, not nearly enough dining options, and where’s the spa? There has to be one.
And for some reason, I thought every skier would be expert level, because I don’t see a single green or blue run.
“Well, thank God it was never built!” I shout out to her downstairs. “I think this design would’ve killed every skier on the mountain!”
I stare at it, hearing her voice. “The only flaw in a dream is if you never begin.”
She walks off, back to work, and I gaze at my first model, remembering how I used to picture myself walking through it someday. This was made back when everything was in front of me.
I remove my jacket, loosen my tie, and start pulling apart the model to start over.
Hours later, and I’m finally leaving the workshop. I can’t stop the feeling that I’m floating. When was the last time I lost hours like that, caught up in working on something that didn’t feel like work?
Fallon still has stuff to do, taking advantage that Hunter, Kade, and A.J. are busy at the summer camp all week. I climb in Jared’s Boss, the summer breeze filling my lungs in a way they haven’t felt filled in a long fucking time.
I’ll be back tomorrow.
I slip the key into the ignition, the engine rumbling to life so loudly that I don’t register the doorsopening. In a moment, someone sits in the passenger seat. Another person behind me cocks a gun at my head.
I freeze; the nozzle of a pistol pressed into my skull as cologne fills the car. I glance at Fallon’s workshop door.Don’t come outside.
“You weren’t a problem for years,” the guy in the seat next to me says with a slight accent.
Hugo Navarre.
Head of Green Street. Reeves’ successor. Farrow Kelly’s boss. It can’t be anyone else.
I glance in the rearview mirror at the other guy, but all I catch is his shoulder-length, light brown hair.
“Not because you were banished,” he points out. “But because you wanted to leave.”
I lock my jaw together, one hand on the wheel and one still on the key.
“You know why you wanted to go?” he continues, elbow propped up on the door as he sits back, fully relaxed. “You couldn’t stand your ugly soul and the place where you grew into it. That’s the difference between doing bad things in order to eat and doing bad things because you’re a fucking coward.”
I draw in a long breath through my nose, grinding the wheel in my fist.
