I lean in and kiss him.
When I pull back, Tom's eyes are still closed.
"Sam—" His voice is rough.
I say quietly, "I know."
Tom opens his eyes. The guardedness from the past three days completely gone.
"I'm trying," he says.
I squeeze his hand. "I know. That's all I ask. Keep trying."
We sit like that—hands linked across the table, coffee gone cold, the café noise washing around us. A couple walks past our table toward the exit. The barista calls out an order number. The door chime rings.
Tom clears his throat. "We should finish prepping for Thursday."
I nod. "Yeah. We should."
But neither of us moves to open our laptops.
Tom is still holding my hand.
Chapter thirty-one
Tom
The only sound in the room is the rapid, rhythmic clack of Sam’s keyboard across the plywood table.
Sam is in the zone.
We successfully checked Thursday's Board presentation off the list a few hours ago, but she hasn't slowed down.
I’ve been watching her for the last ten minutes instead of reviewing my contact sheets. She’s sitting across the makeshift plywood table from me, her posture perfect, making notes on the slides for the final Board deck. Her untouched coffee is pushed safely out of the spill zone. She looks completely in her element.
A notification drops into the top right corner of my screen. Subject line: "Harbor District—Image Revision Request."
I click it open. It’s from Castellano. He wants new images.
He wants proof the project will make money.
How the shops work. How people get there. Why anyone would choose this street.
He thinks we’re leaning too heavily on the community angle. He wants to completely alter the visual story we’ve spent a month building.
I look back at Sam. She’s still typing, completely unaware that a corporate wrecking ball just landed in my inbox. My first instinct is to just handle it. To go out, shoot the extra angles, and drop them in a folder so she doesn't have to stress about it.
But we have a rule now.
"Sam."
She raises one finger without lifting her eyes from the screen. "Give me thirty seconds."
A small smile tugs at my mouth. I wait, listening to the rapid fire of her keystrokes. She finishes her thought, hits a final key, and looks up.
"Okay. What?"
I turn my laptop around and slide it across the plywood. "Castellano."
