Because she could.
Because Nerys Quillan can do the thing I cannot — she can feel the impulse, acknowledge it, and choose not to follow it past the point where it becomes reckless.
I press my back harder against the door. My lips are still swollen. My hands are still empty. My body is humming at a frequency that has nothing to do with golf and everything to do with the sound she made when I pulled her against me — a small, involuntary catch of breath, the only moment in two weeks where her composure cracked entirely, and it lasted half a second and I heard it and I will never, for as long as I live, stop wanting to hear it again.
I want to break down that door. Walk three rooms. Knock again. Tell her I don't care about contracts or power dynamics or professional frameworks. Tell her to open the door and let me in and kiss me like that again, longer, deeper, with her hands in my hair and my body against the wall and no stopping.
I don't.
Not because I'm virtuous.
Because she asked me to trust the read.
And the read says: wait. Do this correctly. Give her the protections she needs. Let the contract be rebuilt. Let the power equalize.
Play the course, not the impulse.
I walk to the bed. Lie down. The ceiling is white. The air conditioning hums. My body is a contested territory between what I want and what I've just learned I'm capable of choosing instead.
Disciplined,she called me today.
For the first time in my life, I'm going to earn it off the course too.
CHAPTER SIX
Nerys
Phaedra's office is on the second floor of a converted row house in downtown Charleston, above a bakery that fills the stairwell with the smell of sourdough at six in the morning and rosemary focaccia by noon. I have sat in this office through a divorce, a career transition, two tax disputes, and the strategic dismantling of a management contract that was costing me twelve percent of income I no longer earned.
Today I am sitting here reviewing the legal framework that will allow me to sleep with a client.
"Independent contractor agreement with guaranteed compensation for the remaining five trial events," Phaedra says, sliding the document across her desk. "Compensation is non-contingent. Meaning if Tala fires you, demotes you, replaces you, or otherwise terminates the professional arrangement, you receive full payment for all remaining contracted events regardless of cause."
"Including if I end the personal relationship."
"Including that. Clause seven, subsection B. Termination of any personal, romantic, or sexual relationship between the parties shall have no effect on the financial terms of this agreement. I wrote it in language a judge could understand at four in the morning."
I pick up the document. Thirty-one pages. Phaedra's work is always thorough, but this is meticulous even by her standards. She's written protections into protections, layered failsafes behind failsafes, constructed a legal architecture designed to ensure that if every possible scenario goes wrong — if Tala becomes vindictive, if sponsors intervene, if the media obtains the contract, if one of us simply changes our mind — both women walk away intact.
"Clause twelve," Phaedra says. "Either party may terminate the professional arrangement through written notice to the other party's legal representative. Notice period of fourteen days, during which all compensation and professional obligations continue. No in-person termination discussions are permitted without both attorneys present or on call."
"You're preventing breakup conversations from becoming firing conversations."
"I'm preventing pillow talk from becoming a termination hearing. Yes."
She leans back in her chair. Phaedra is five-foot-four, which means she is perpetually looking up at me in a way that has never once made her seem smaller. Her dark hair is pulled back. Her blouse is crisp. Her expression is the one she wears when she's about to say something I need to hear and don't want to.
"You're sure about this."
"I'm sure about the contract."
"That's not what I'm asking, Nerys."
"I know what you're asking."
She folds her hands on the desk. "You haven't had a serious relationship in five years. You haven't had a casual one in three. You took this contract because a twenty-seven-year-old golfer's talent reminded you of everything you lost, and now you want to restructure the professional agreement so you can pursue herromantically. I need to hear you say, out loud, that this is not about wanting to feel needed again."
The sentence arrives with the surgical precision Phaedra applies to everything. She does not soften. She does not hedge. She places the scalpel exactly where the tissue is weakest and waits for the patient to respond.
