The second meeting is worse than the first because I'm prepared for it.

That's the problem with anticipation—it gives your nervous system too much time to malfunction. I've spent three days telling myself that Sebastian Ashford is just another investor, just another man in an expensive suit with more money than sense. I've repeated it like a mantra while staring at fabric swatches I couldn't actually see.

It's a lie, obviously.

Marcus schedules him for 2 p.m. on a Thursday, which gives me six hours to convince my hands to stop shaking. I spend most of that time in the studio with Lily's video call playing on my phone while she describes, in meticulous seven-year-old detail, the exact trajectory of a ball she kicked at school. She's good at this—at filling silence with the mundane specifics of her day. It's her superpower, this ability to make ordinary moments feel important.

"And then Tommy said it was impossible," she continues, swinging her legs beneath her at the after-school program table, "but I calculated the angle and the velocity and—"

"You calculated?" I can't help smiling at this. She gets the vocabulary from me, the precision from someone else I'm not supposed to think about.

"Well, I guessed. But I was right, Mom. That's basically the same thing."

"That's not how science works, babe."

"It should be."

I love her with an intensity that occasionally frightens me. It's the kind of love that makes you stupid, makes you willing to burn down the world to protect one small person. Right now, with Sebastian Ashford arriving in approximately five hours, that love feels like a liability.

"I have to go," I tell Lily, and I watch her face do that thing it does—the small, practiced acceptance of a child who's learned not to be demanding. It kills me every time.

"Okay. Love you, Mom."

"Love you too, baby. Be good for Mrs. Chen."

I end the call before I can hear her promise to be good—a promise she shouldn't have to make, a promise that shouldn't matter this much. Then I sit in the studio for exactly three minutes, breathing like someone who's just run a marathon, before I stand up and fix my face.

By the time Sebastian arrives, I've applied fresh lipstick twice, changed blazers once, and convinced myself that this is fine. Totally fine. Just a business meeting with a man who looked at me like he wanted to consume me whole and also solve me like a particularly complex equation.

Nothing terrifying about that.

He walks into my office at 2:04 p.m., and the first thing I notice—the only thing I notice, really—is that he smells like cedar and smoke and something darker underneath. Rain, maybe. Or leather. Something that makes my hindbrain go absolutely feral in a way I'm deeply uncomfortable with.

"Evelyn." He doesn't shake my hand. Doesn't even offer one. He just moves into the space like he owns it, and I realize with a spike of irritation that he probably does own the building. "Thanks for making time."

"That's what professionals do," I say smoothly, gesturing to the chair across from my desk. I don't sit yet. Standing gives me approximately four inches of height advantage, and I'll take any edge I can manufacture. "Shall we discuss the investment terms?"

His mouth curves at one corner. "Straight to business. I remember that about you."

Don't. Don't engage with that. Don't ask what else he remembers. Don't think about the last time he looked at you like that, in a hotel room in Barcelona, when you were someone else entirely.

"I have the preliminary prospectus," I say instead, sliding a leather folder across the desk with the kind of precision that suggests I've practiced this moment. I have. "Quarterly projections, supply chain assessments, market analysis."

He picks up the folder without looking at it. His eyes are still on me.

"I read it," he says. "Impressive numbers. Your growth trajectory is unusual for sustainable fashion—most brands plateau around year five. You didn't."

"I'm not most brands."

"No," he agrees, and there's something in his voice that sounds dangerously like admiration. "You're not."

This is the part where I should feel victorious. This is the part where I should lean back in my chair and let him make his pitch, let him convince me that his money is worth the entanglement. Instead, I feel like I'm standing on a precipice, and he's holding the only rope.

"Tell me how you did it," he says. "The story behind the numbers. I've read every interview you've given in the last five years, and you never actually answer that question."

"That's because it's not relevant to the investment."

"It's relevant to everything." He sets the folder down, finally, and leans back in his chair like he has all the time in the world. Like I'm not a ticking time bomb of anxiety and poorly managed attraction. "You came from nothing, Evelyn. No family money, no connections, no safety net. You built an empire from nothing. That doesn't happen through luck or hard work alone. That happens because you want something badly enough to burn down your entire life for it."

The accuracy of this assessment makes me want to throw something.

"Flattering," I say instead, sitting down because standing is starting to feel performative. "But not the basis for a business relationship."

"Why did you disappear?"

The question lands like a punch to the solar plexus. I don't answer immediately because I can't actually breathe, and breathing seems like a prerequisite for speech.

"That's not—" I start, then stop. Try again. "That's not relevant to—"

"Seven years ago, you were in Barcelona. You were brilliant and ambitious and completely impossible to pin down, which I found incredibly attractive." He's not smiling anymore. His eyes are too sharp, too focused. "Then you vanished. No goodbye, no explanation, no forwarding address. You became a ghost."

"I became someone who got her priorities straight," I say carefully, because this is the lie I've been perfecting for seven years. "I realized I wanted to build something bigger than a relationship with a man who thought he could own me."

It's not entirely false. That's what makes it dangerous.

"I never tried to own you," he says quietly. "I tried to understand you. There's a difference."

"Is there?" I lean forward, letting some of the bite show. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're trying to understand me again. Like you think you have some right to my history, my motivations, my—"

"Your secrets," he finishes. "Yes. I think I do have that right. Because whatever you're not telling me, it matters. It's the reason you built an empire instead of building a life. It's the reason you treat people like they're temporary. It's the reason you're sitting there right now, terrified that I'm going to figure it out."

I stand up. I need distance, need air, need to not be in this room with his cedar-smoke scent and his too-accurate observations.

"I think we're done here," I say.

"Sit down, Evelyn."

There's nothing threatening in his voice. That's what makes me listen. He's not commanding—he's asking. There's a difference, and I'm apparently fluent in the language of that difference.

I sit.

"I'm not going to push you," he says, and somehow that's worse than if he had. "Not right now. But I need you to understand something. I'm not the man I was seven years ago. And I'm going to invest in your company, not because the numbers are good—though they are—but because I believe in what you're building. Because I believe in you."

"Don't," I say. It comes out like a warning. "Don't do that."

"Too late." He stands, and I watch him cross the distance between us with the kind of careful deliberation that suggests he's aware of every inch. "I'm investing five million dollars. The terms are in the folder. My team will coordinate with yours on the details, but I wanted to tell you personally."

He's standing close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating from him. Close enough that my body is doing things my mind is actively rebelling against. This is the problem with attraction—it doesn't care about your carefully constructed walls. It doesn't care that you have a daughter who needs a mother with her priorities straight. It doesn't care that you've built a life specifically designed to prevent this kind of vulnerability.

"Why?" I ask, and I hate that my voice sounds small.

"Because seven years ago, you were the most interesting person I'd ever met. And you still are." He reaches out, and I think—for one crystalline moment—that he's going to touch my face. Instead, his hand stops just short, hovering in the air between us. "And because I'm hoping that maybe this time, you won't disappear."

I don't move. Don't reach for him, don't pull away, don't do anything except exist in this moment of suspended possibility. If I move, something changes. If I move, I have to make a choice.

"You should go," I say finally.

"Probably." He drops his hand. "But I'll be back. For the meetings. For the quarterly reviews. For whatever excuse I can manufacture to be in this office, in this space, with you."

"That's not professional."

"No," he agrees. "It's not."

He leaves before I can say anything else, and I sit there in my office chair, breathing like I've just run a marathon, trying to remember why I thought I could keep him at arm's length. Trying to remember why I thought distance was possible when every cell in my body is magnetized toward him.

My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number:

Five million dollars. No strings attached. But Evelyn? There are always strings. I'm just patient enough to wait for you to figure out which ones matter.

I delete it immediately, which accomplishes nothing because the words are already burned into my brain, already worming their way into the parts of me I've spent seven years trying to starve.

The meetings start the following Monday.

I tell myself it's fine. I tell myself that I can compartmentalize—that I can be professional and brilliant and impenetrable while Sebastian Ashford sits across from my conference table, asking questions that are ostensibly about supply chains but are really about me.

The first meeting goes fine. Professional. We discuss logistics, timelines, integration strategies. His venture capital team is thorough and competent, which is infuriating because I wanted them to be incompetent. I wanted an excuse to resent him.

Instead, he's good at this. He's good at seeing the vision beneath the numbers, at understanding not just what I've built but why I've built it. It's the kind of attention I've been starving for, the kind of recognition that makes you want to bare your throat to someone.

By the third meeting, I'm certain he's doing this on purpose.

"Your supply chain is vulnerable here," he says, pointing to a section of the prospectus. We're alone in the conference room—his team left an hour ago, and I should have left too, but I didn't. Apparently, I'm making poor decisions. "The factory in Vietnam has a single point of failure."

"I'm aware," I say. "I'm working on diversification."

"How long?"

"Six months. Maybe eight."

He nods, then sets down his pen and leans back in his chair. It's a small movement, but it shifts something in the energy between us. "Have dinner with me."

"No."

"You didn't even think about it."

"Exactly," I say. "I didn't need to. The answer is no."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not interested in mixing business and personal."

"You're mixing them right now," he points out. "You're just doing it in a way that's less efficient. Less honest."

"I'm being professional."

"You're being scared." He stands, and I watch him move around the table with the kind of predatory grace that should be illegal. "Which is interesting, because I've never known you to be scared of anything."

"You don't know me," I say, but he's close enough now that I'm having trouble remembering why that matters.

"Not anymore," he agrees. "But I want to. That's the whole point."

"The point is the investment—"

"The point," he interrupts, "is that I've spent seven years wondering what happened to you. Wondering why you ran. Wondering if you ever thought about me, even once, the way I thought about you."

The confession hangs in the air between us, and I realize with a spike of panic that he's being sincere. That this isn't a game to him. That his obsession is genuine, which somehow makes it more dangerous than if it were calculated.

"Don't do this," I say quietly.

"Have dinner with me."

"Sebastian—"

"Dinner," he repeats, and there's something in his voice that sounds almost like a plea. "Just dinner. One evening where you don't have to be the CEO of Harper Sustainable. Where you can just be Evelyn."

"I don't know who that is anymore."

"Then let me remind you."

He reaches out, and this time he doesn't stop. His hand cups my face, and the contact is so gentle, so careful, that it nearly destroys me. His thumb traces my cheekbone, and I can feel my pulse accelerating, can feel the careful architecture of my resistance beginning to crumble.

"This is a bad idea," I whisper.

"The worst," he agrees. "Dinner tomorrow. Seven o'clock. I'll pick you up."

"I didn't say yes."

"You didn't say no either." He drops his hand, and the loss of contact is almost painful. "Seven o'clock, Evelyn. Wear something that makes you feel like yourself, not like a CEO. I'll be there."

He leaves before I can argue further, and I sit alone in the conference room, trying to remember why I thought I could keep him out. Trying to remember that I have a daughter, a life, a carefully constructed future that doesn't have room for men who smell like cedar smoke and look at me like I'm the only thing worth understanding.

My phone buzzes. Lily's school is sending a photo from art class. She's made a clay figure—a woman with her arms spread wide, like she's about to take flight. Or fall. It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

That's you, Mom, her teacher's note reads. She said it was how she imagines you when you're being brave.

I stare at the photo for a long time, watching my daughter's interpretation of courage, and I make a decision that I'm going to regret.

Tomorrow at seven o'clock, I'm going to let Sebastian Ashford take me to dinner.

And I'm going to tell him absolutely nothing that matters.

It's a lie I'm already preparing, a half-truth I'm already rehearsing. But as I gather my things and head for the elevator, I can't shake the feeling that I'm running out of time—that the distance I've maintained for seven years is collapsing, and soon there won't be anywhere left to hide.