Correction: it helped Roxy plan my schedule. I hadn’t done my own schedule in years. She had me so damn organized that I couldn’t imagine ever doing my own schedule again.
“I sold my family’s business.”
“Youwhat?” I stopped dead in my tracks, but Duke kept on walking to my truck.Had I heard him correctly?“Did you just say you sold your family’s business?”
“Six years ago, yeah.” He faced me, his expression serious. “My family’s business cost me one of the best things in my life. I wasn’t about to let it cost me my daughter, too.”
I swallowed hard.Did he mean me?That twisted, masochistic part of me wanted to think he did. Not even because I wanted him back, but because it meant he regretted the way everything ended between us. That he wasn’t just sorry. There was a difference between being sorry that something happened and wishing you’d done things differently. One was polite. The other meant the past still mattered.
I shoved those thoughts down. Whatever Harley had meant by that—whether it was about me or not—it wasn’t my business.
“I started my own consultation business,” Harley continued when I didn’t say anything. “It’s small, mostly just something to fill my time. I only take a handful of clients at a time because I don’t need to work.”
“I’d imagine not.” I didn’t know much about his family’s business, but I knew enough to see they made millions. If he’d sold that…yeah, he’d never have to work again.“Good for you.”
“Anyway, I have to go,” he said. “Thank you for breakfast.”
“Anytime.”I meant that.
“This was good,” Harley told me as he walked backward toward his car, each step slow like he didn’t want to leave. “It was good catching up with you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll see you around, Harley.”
“Yeah, you will.” The words came out like a promise.One I realized I hoped he’d keep—and not in a work capacity.“Have a good day, Maverick. You too, Duke.”
I meandered toward my truck with my eyes glued on Harley’s SUV as he drove away. There hadn’t been a plan going into this breakfast. No reconciling expectations. No grand emotional reckoning or groveling apologies.
The only thing I had expected was the awkwardness of walking back into a personal conversation with him. But the thing was… it hadn’t felt awkward. Oddly, it felt full of hope. Hope for a future where we were in each other’s lives. Not in a romantic relationship kind of way, but something reminiscent of the two kids who ditched school to smoke cigarettes and get sandwiches.
I kind of liked the promise of that.
CHAPTER 85
harley
And what I’m going to do…” I clicked my tongue as I flipped back and forth between two pieces of paper in the file I was working out of. Silas King was a new business owner who should’ve waited another year or so before starting. He didn’t have a plan, and he didn’t have direction. He just wanted to run a business. That wasn’t a great foundation at all. “All right, what I’m going to do is go through everything you sent me. What I do is break everything down by where your weak spots are,where you can improve what’s already in place, and give some suggestions for ways you can grow your business.”
“Do you have good recommendations for insurance people?” Mr. King asked.
“I will include some options for you as well,” I said. “I can make it the first thing I do and get that back to you. That way, if you want my insight, we can go over them together.”
“Yeah, I’d appreciate that.”
“All right, I’ll get you a few options by the end of the day Monday,” I told him. I didn’t work on the weekends, and there was no way I’d get everything done before the day was over.
“Thanks, Harley.”
He hung up without any other pretense, which didn’t bother me. At least not today. Today, I was a little too distracted to do my job.
Breakfast with Maverick had my head all over the place. I’d expected it to be awkward and uncomfortable. I hadn’t expected how easy it would be to fall right back into comfortable conversation with him. It had felt almost natural—like all the crap between us had fallen away to something softer and smoother.
I kept replaying the little moments from the morning in my head. The way he laughed, the way he smiled at his jokes, the instinctive way he reached for Duke every so often.
And the way he looked at me?That stirred up old things inside me. Spending time with Maverick like this had nudged something awake inside me. The same thing I’d packed away because I had Aria to think about.
There had always been a connection between us—something intense and undeniable. With every version of our messy relationship, that connection deepened. Even now, after seven years of silence with the belief that we’d never see each otheragain, the connection hadn’t waned. Sure, it had changed, but it hadn’t waned.
I could feel it in my chest, a calm and steady thrum of something powerful. It was terrifying and dangerous. I couldn’t afford to get attached to Maverick again. Our lives were on different paths, and time had proven that we didn’t work.
