The way she felt in my arms in that hotel room in Florence.
I set the coffee down before I can throw it against the wall.
I shouldn't have touched her.
The thought is familiar now, a mantra I've repeated so many times it's lost meaning. But it's true. I shouldn't have had dinnerwith her. Shouldn't have invited her to my suite. Shouldn't have kissed her, touched her, made love to her like I had any right to her body or her trust.
She's David's daughter.
My best friend's daughter.
A woman young enough to be?—
I don't finish that thought. Can't finish it without hating myself.
But the alternative is worse. Because if I'm honest—truly, brutally honest—I have to admit that the night in Florence was the first time in years I've felt anything real. The first time a conversation had true meaning. The first time I touched someone and felt something other than the mechanical satisfaction of physical need being met.
Emma was real. Warm and brilliant and so goddamn alive that being near her made me remember what it felt like to want something beyond the next acquisition.
And I ruined it.
Because of course I did. Because that's what I do. I see something beautiful and authentic, something that exists outside the transactional logic of my world, and I can't help but reach for it. Pull it into my orbit. Try to make it mine.
Then I wake up alone, reading a note that calls what we shared a "beautiful mistake," and I'm reminded that some things aren't meant to be owned.
Some people don't want to be saved.
I grab my phone and pull up our text thread from last night.
I've tried to give her space. Tried to respect the boundary she drew when she walked out of my hotel room. But I had to reach out. I needed her to know how I’m feeling.
Her response was brief. Polite. The kind of message you send to be courteous, not to encourage further conversation.
And now I'm standing in my office, after closing a billion-dollar deal, but the only thing I actually want is to know what Emma Sullivan is thinking. And if she's thinking about me.
My assistant's voice crackles through the intercom. "Mr. Cross, your four o'clock is here."
I glance at my watch. They’re fifteen minutes early.
"Give me five minutes," I say.
I straighten my tie and return to my desk, pulling up the development proposal we're about to discuss. Mixed-use property in Brooklyn, residential over retail, exactly the kind of project that transforms neighborhoods and generates excellent returns.
I skim through the financials, trying not to think about Florence.
I can still feel Emma in my arms. Still hear the way she gasped my name when I was inside her. Still smell the perfume on her skin, taste the wine on her lips, and hear her laugh when I said something that amused her.
I close my eyes and will the images to go away.
This is pathetic. I'm a forty-two-year-old man, obsessing over a twenty-four-year-old woman who made it perfectly clear she doesn't want to pursue whatever happened between us.
I should move on. Should accept that Florence was a blip, a moment out of time that can't survive in the real world. I should be grateful she had the sense to end it before it became even more complicated.
But I can't.
Because she's not just some woman I met and slept with. She's Emma. Smart and fierce and passionate. She has dreams that don't involve me or my money or anything I can provide. She wants to succeed on her own terms, and she's willing to work herself into the ground to make it happen.
She reminds me of myself, twenty years ago. Before the wealth and the status and the careful construction of a life that looks perfect from the outside but feels empty on the inside.
