[Rae’s POV]
The conference room smells like fear and imported leather. Twelve investors sit around a table that costs more than my warehouse's annual heating bill, their expressions calibrated to reveal nothing while extracting everything.
Beatrice orchestrated this meeting like a symphony conductor who specializes in emotional manipulation. Trial run, she called it. Merger optics assessment. Words that sound clinical but translate to: perform chemistry with Dorian or watch your inheritance evaporate.
Dorian arrives in a suit that probably has its own investment portfolio. He catches my eye and something passes between us—not attraction exactly, but recognition. Two show ponies who know they're being evaluated.
"Shall we?" He gestures toward the presentation screen with the confidence of someone who's done this since birth.
I expect awkwardness. I expect our usual verbal sparring to torpedo any professional credibility. Instead, something unexpected happens.
Dorian handles the projections with surgical precision—market analysis, growth trajectories, merger benefits rendered in graphs that make accountants weep with joy.
When he finishes a point, I pick up seamlessly, discussing Florisight's innovation pipeline, the experiential events market we're pioneering, the untapped demographics hungry for botanical storytelling.
We volley questions like tennis partners who've practiced for years. He sets up talking points; I spike them home. I mention a challenge; he pivots to solutions. The rhythm is almost unsettling—too natural, too coordinated, like we've been reading from the same script without knowing it existed.
"The synergy between traditional Valmont holdings and Florisight's experiential model," Dorian explains, clicking to a slide I've never seen, "creates vertical integration opportunities that neither entity could achieve independently."
"Which translates to reduced vendor dependency and increased margin control," I add, and the investors nod like synchronized swimming judges awarding perfect tens.
We continue for forty-five minutes. By the end, the board representatives are practically glowing. One actually uses the phrase "natural partnership," and I resist the urge to laugh because there's nothing natural about any of this—we're performing chemistry the way actors perform Shakespeare, technically proficient but fundamentally artificial.
Beatrice watches from the corner with satisfaction that makes my skin crawl. Her expression says: See? This is what I've been telling you. This is what stability looks like.
The investors file out with handshakes and promises of follow-up meetings. Dorian and I stand in the aftermath like soldiers surveying a battlefield they somehow won.
"That was..." I search for the right word.
"Terrifying?" he offers. "Impressive? Evidence that we're both excellent at pretending to be functional humans?"
"All of the above." I gather my materials, suddenly exhausted. "I didn't expect us to actually work well together."
"Neither did I. It's inconvenient." His smile turns wry. "We should debrief. My apartment's nearby—purely professional, of course. I have a 2019 Margaux that's been waiting for an excuse."
The invitation hangs between us. I should decline. I should go home, call Miles, try to untangle the wreckage of whatever we've become.
Instead: "Purely professional. With thousand-dollar wine."
"The best professional debriefs involve thousand-dollar wine. It's in all the business textbooks."
His apartment is beautiful and impersonal, like a magazine spread waiting for someone to actually live in it. Everything is curated—the art, the furniture, the carefully arranged books that look decorative rather than read. It's the opposite of Miles's chaos, where pizza boxes coexist with spreadsheets.
The comparison stings. I push it away.
Dorian pours wine with the precision of someone who's taken sommelier classes for networking purposes. The Margaux is excellent, because of course it is.
We settle on opposite ends of his designer sofa, maintaining professional distance that slowly shrinks as the bottle empties.
"The investors loved you," he says. "My mother will be thrilled. She's already planning the engagement announcement."
"That's presumptuous. We haven't even finished our first professional debrief."
"The Hales are nothing if not presumptuous." He swirls his wine, watching the legs form. "It's genetic. Along with perfect teeth and an inability to express genuine emotion without a PR consultant present."
"Sounds exhausting."
"It's efficient. Emotions are messy. Better to outsource them." But his voice has an edge—something raw underneath the polished delivery.
"Did you know my parents scheduled my childhood? Literally scheduled it. Tuesdays were for violin, which I hated. Thursdays for tennis, which I was adequate at. Weekends for family bonding, which consisted of discussing investment strategies over brunch."
"That explains your charming personality."
"It explains why I'm excellent at performing and terrible at being." He looks at me directly, and for a moment the mask slips. "You're not the only one exhausted by inherited expectations, Aurelia. At least you had the courage to build something different."
The wine is making everything soft and dangerous. "Florisight isn't courage. It's spite with better branding."
"Spite can be courage. Better than compliance." He shifts closer. "I spent twenty-nine years being exactly what my family wanted. Perfect grades, perfect career trajectory, perfect marriage candidate. And none of it feels like mine."
"So take something that is."
The words escape before wisdom can intervene. Dorian's eyes darken, and the distance between us collapses.
When he kisses me, it's nothing like Miles—controlled where Miles was desperate, practiced where Miles was raw. His technique is flawless, the kind of kiss that's been optimized through experience and probably feedback sessions.
I kiss back because I'm trying to feel something other than the ache Miles left. Because choosing with my head instead of my heart seems safer. Because Dorian is offering something manageable—a partnership without the terrifying vulnerability of actual love.
His hands are confident, unhurried. We migrate toward his bedroom without the desperate urgency of that night in Miles's kitchen. This is civilized. This is controlled.
This is exactly what I should want.
His bedroom is as curated as the rest—thousand-thread-count sheets, artwork that cost more than my car, everything designed to impress rather than comfort. He undresses me efficiently, appreciating the logistics of each removed item like unwrapping an expected gift.
The sex is technically proficient. He knows what he's doing, moves with practiced confidence, makes the right sounds at the right moments. My body responds because bodies respond—nerve endings don't care about emotional context.
But my mind keeps drifting. Comparing. Miles's hands shaking against my skin. Miles's voice breaking on my name. The way everything with Miles felt like an earthquake, like discovering new geography in familiar territory.
This feels like following a map someone else drew.
Afterward, Dorian pulls me against his chest with post-coital politeness. His heartbeat is steady, controlled—nothing like the cardiac emergency Miles's chest produced that night.
"That was nice," he says, and the word lands like a verdict.
Nice. Not transformative. Not desperate. Not real.
I tell myself this is choosing with my head instead of my heart. I tell myself strategic partnerships are smarter than emotional catastrophes. I tell myself that the hollow feeling in my chest is just wine and exhaustion and definitely not regret.
But when I close my eyes, I see Miles's face in that warehouse—the careful blankness, the way he said "moving on" like it was a death sentence he'd already accepted.
And I wonder if choosing with my head means losing everything that matters.