Beckett stops chewing. His fork hovers over his plate — I didn't even notice he'd been eating — and his steel-blue eyes stay on mine with amused focus.
He finishes the bite. Takes his time with it. Sets the fork down and pushes the plate an inch to the side, the ceramic scraping softly against the granite.
"Two hours ago you were holding a champagne glass and pretending to be fine." He leans back, studying me. "Now you're negotiating a hostile takeover in my kitchen. Barefoot."
I look down. I kicked my heels off at the door and didn't notice. My bare feet are cold on his tile floor. "Does the footwear affect the terms?"
"No." His eyes don't leave my face. "It just makes you harder to say ‘no’ to."
The sentence lands on my skin before it reaches my brain.
I feel it in my collarbones, in the place where my wet hair has been dripping for the last hour. And I have to remind myself that Beckett Morrow has said some version of this to a hundred women in a hundred rooms and meant it exactly as long as it was useful.
I'm not going to be an asset he charms into handing over the keys.
"That won't work on me," I say.
"What won't?"
"Whatever that was." I nod at the space between us. "The compliment, the eye contact. You'll have to try harder."
He holds my gaze for a beat, and his mouth does something I can't read. Like he is recalculating my value upward. Then he tilts his head, studying me.
"I'm curious about the part where you went straight to handing me your husband's empire."
"My empire." The correction is out before I can weigh it. "He just put his name on it."
"Fair." He crosses his arms. The kitchen light catches the edge of his jaw, and I notice a faint shadow of stubble.
It suits him.
"You should be glad I'm offering this." I keep my voice level. "But you might want to hold the celebration until you've heard the rest."
His eyebrows lift a fraction. "There's a rest."
"There's always a rest, Morrow. You'd know that if you acquired companies instead of just talking about it at parties."
The silence that follows lasts two full seconds. Then Beckett laughs — a short, surprised sound that comes from somewhere lower in his chest. He pulls a stool from beneath the island and sits across from me.
"All right." He rests his forearms on the granite and gives me his full attention. "I'm listening."
"Gary is a good lawyer," I say. "Better than good. If I file for divorce tomorrow, his attorneys will pick me apart. I'll be lucky to walk away with a settlement that covers rent."
"And you're telling me this because..."
"Because I need lawyers who are better than him. Your lawyers." I hold his gaze. "And in exchange, I will hand you Gary Pryce on a silver platter because I built that business."
Beckett studies me for a long moment. His thumb traces the edge of the counter — a slow, absent movement, the only sign he's thinking and not just watching.
My eyes follow the path of his thumb against the granite and I pull them back, irritated at myself for tracking him.
"Why not take the company yourself?"
The honest answer is that I built Breck Hotels with my grandfather's name and my own hands, and by the time Gary was finished renaming it and carving me out of every operating agreement, the company stopped feeling like mine.
I could fight for it.
I could spend years in courtrooms trying to prove I earned what was already mine, and the proving would eat me alive.
"Because I don't want the company." The words surprise me as they come out, but they're true. "I want my rightful share of what I built, a divorce settlement Gary can't contest, and a guarantee that he will never have leverage over me or my child again."
His gaze drops to my stomach for half a second, and his jaw tightens. He watched Gary's hand connect with my face after I announced the pregnancy on that stage. Now he looks like the anger he's feeling isn't his to show.
His thumb stops tracing the granite.
Beckett doesn't rush to respond. Then he starts asking questions.
He treats me like a business partner walking in with a serious proposal, and I don't know if that's respect or indifference. Either way it's the first time in years someone has listened to me talk about my own company without interrupting or looking over my shoulder for Gary.
When I finish, Beckett is quiet for several seconds. He taps his index finger against the granite once. Twice.
"I'm in," he says simply.
My chest loosens by a fraction I didn't know was held tight.
"But I have a condition." He leans forward, forearms on the counter. "I want you."
My eyes widen, and I open my mouth to protest, but he continues first.
"Easy there, sweetheart," he chuckles. "I mean in my office. Working alongside my team, hands-on through every phase. You don't hand me a folder and disappear. If we do this, you stay close. Got it?"
***
I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark. I'm trying to reconcile the woman who stood at a podium a few hours ago with the woman sitting in a rival's guest room with a suitcase and a deal she made over leftover dinner.
The phone on the nightstand buzzes. A spare Beckett left on the pillow without comment — another small act of attention I filed away and refused to examine.
The screen glows with Sloan’s name. I texted her twenty minutes ago from an unfamiliar number.
Me: It's Waverly. New number. I'll explain tomorrow.
I didn't expect her to call tonight. I expected her to read it in the morning, worry for ten minutes, then text back with a question I'd have twelve hours to figure out how to answer.
My thumb hovers for a second before I pick up.
I should have known — Sloan doesn't wait until morning for anything.
"Where are you?" her voice is tight in a way I've only heard twice — once when her mother was hospitalized, once when I called her from the bathroom floor after the second miscarriage. "Gary just showed up at my apartment. He's looking for you."
My stomach drops. "What did you tell him?"
"That I haven't seen you. Which was true until thirty seconds ago." I hear her exhale. "Waverly, where are you?"
"At a… friend's." The lie tastes strange and obvious.
Beckett Morrow is not my friend. But it's simpler than the truth, and the truth would require an hour I don't have.
Sloan is quiet for exactly one beat. "I am your only friend, Waverly."
She says it without cruelty, and she's right. I let Gary shrink my world to a handful of rooms and one person who refused to be shut out.
"I'm divorcing him," I say. The words sound different when I say them to someone who isn't Gary or a man with a business interest in my answer. They sound real.
Sloan's breath catches on the other end of the line. "Are you safe?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
I look around the guest room. The clean sheets, the nightstand, the phone a stranger left for me because he noticed I didn't have one. "I'm sure."
"Good." Her voice steadies. "Then I'm coming to see you tomorrow, and you're going to tell me everything. Text me the address and don't argue."