Tom's reflection catches my eye in the mirror. "See? I told you she was good."
Wren looks at him, then back at me. "You were right."
I pull a stool up to the front desk, pull out my tablet, and open a blank sketch file. "Walk me through your ideal scenario," I say, stylus poised.
Wren sits across from me. "Same square footage, or slightly bigger. Street level. Good foot traffic but not tourist-heavy, and still in this neighborhood so I don't lose my client base."
I start sketching out two simultaneous layouts, one on each side of the screen. I turn the tablet toward her.
Wren leans in, studying it in silence for a long moment before looking up. "How did you do that? I've been trying to explain this to my broker all morning."
"You told me. I just drew it."
"She's good people," Wren says. She doesn't say it to me. She says it to Tom.
Tom smiles, the first real, genuine smile I've seen since his phone buzzed back in the Morgan + Bennett office. "I know."
Good. One problem solved.
While Wren and Tom debate neighborhoods, I continue detailing the sketch. I'm not ignoring them; I'm listening while I work. It's the specific kind of multitasking I perfected at fourteen—tracking three conversations at once and knowing exactly which one was about to need me.
Tom's phone buzzes twice during the walkthrough. He silences it both times without even glancing at the screen. He refuses to step away from us, not even for two minutes.
I set the stylus down.
Tom’s phone buzzes again on the counter. He silences it without even looking.
He hasn't stepped away once. Not when Wren started explaining the lease. Not when she started listing everything she built here. Not even for two minutes.
Across the room, he watches his sister the same way I used to watch my siblings when things started to wobble—already braced, already calculating, already halfway to fixing it before anything actually breaks.
I recognize that stance.
You don’t learn it unless you’ve spent years being the one who catches things.
He rushed over here because this is what you do when someone you love needs you.
And somehow, in the middle of all that, he brought me with him.
I pick the stylus back up, my neck growing warm as Priya's teasing voice suddenly echoes in the back of my brain.
He's cute though, right?
I add a ceiling height note I already wrote.
When Tom's phone buzzes a third time, he finally looks at the screen and stands. "One second. I need to take this."
He steps outside. Through the front window, I watch him pacing the sidewalk with one hand buried in his jacket pocket.
Wren watches him through the glass for a moment before turning to me. "He's different around you."
I keep my eyes strictly on the tablet. "Different how?"
"He brought you here."
"He needed someone with commercial real estate contacts—"
"I have a broker, I didn't need you for that."
