(Laura POV)

I stared at the message for a long time reading it over and over again.

'You don't need to come home, you have nothing left here.'

There was no name from the sender, just the number that sent it. But something told me it is either from Luciana or Betty. I tapped on it, scrolled up through the thread, and there it was, the same number that had sent me that message back when I first left the house, the one warning me not to come back home.

I still suspect that it is from Luciana. She was always after the money, I don't know how my father never saw through her fake facade.

I set the phone down on the counter and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, willing myself not to cry again.

The knock on my door came a little after seven, and when I opened it, Priya was standing there with two plastic bags in one hand and a look on her face that was somewhere between determined and gentle.

Before I could say a word, she pulled me into a hug. "How are you doing? And I'm not taking no for an answer."

"Priya, you didn't have to…"

"I know I didn't have to. I wanted to." She set the bags down on my kitchen counter and started unpacking containers some kind of noodle dish, spring rolls, a chicken soup that smelled like ginger and something warm. "I know you haven't eaten yet. Come sit."

I sank onto one of the stools at my counter, watching her move around my kitchen.

"I talked to Mr. Holloway," Priya said, pulling out some plates and dishing out the food. "I told him what happened. He wasn't thrilled, obviously, because when is he ever, but he knows. What would you like to have?"

"Thank you," I said quietly. "I don't think I would have been able to handle him all by myself. Just give me anything that will go down my throat easily."

"You wouldn't have had to. I made sure of that." She slid a bottle of water and a plate of noodles with chicken soup toward me. "By the way, did you already send in something official? For the leave, I mean. HR usually wants it in writing, even for something like this."

I opened my mouth to say yes, and then stopped, because the truth was I hadn't. I'd told Priya. I'd told Tia. I'd sat here for hours letting the day fall apart around me, and somewhere in all of it, the actual, practical step of requesting time off had slipped through completely.

"I haven't," I admitted. "I completely forgot. I don't even know how I forgot something that basic."

"Laura, your father died this morning. You're allowed to forget things." Priya pulled out her phone, thumb already moving. "Do you have the HR email pulled up? Let's just get it done now, before it becomes one more thing hanging over you."

I found my laptop where I'd abandoned it that morning, and sent a message to HR informing them of my father's passing, asking for two weeks, promising to follow up once I knew more about the funeral arrangements.

"Okay," Priya said, setting her fork down after we'd both picked at the food for a while. "Now. Tell me you have a bag packed."

"I haven't Priya, I don't think I will be going back to New York."

"Why?" Priya asked, surprise lining her face.

I rubbed my temples and picked up my phone to show her the text message that I received. "There is nothing left for me there."

“Oh… dear” she dropped the phone and pulled me to the couch “You need to pay your father a last respect dear. I can come with you if yo want.”

"I know. But”

“Go home Laura and have closure, you have been through a lot.” She was already up pulling me along and moving toward my bedroom. "Come on. I'll help you pack."

I followed her, mostly because I didn't have the energy to argue, and stood in the doorway of my own closet while she pulled things down my clothes.

The next morning, she drove me to the airport.

“Call me once you land.” Priya said. “Never forget you are not alone.”

“I will” I said returning back the hug.

As I approach the counter, the woman behind it typed my confirmation number in, frowned, typed it again, and then looked up at me with an expression I recognized immediately as bad news trying to find a polite way out.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am, just a minute." She typed into her system again. "It looks like there's been a mix-up with your booking. This flight shows as already checked in under your name."

"That's not possible," I said, pulling out my phone to show her the confirmation email. "I just booked this last night. I haven't checked in for anything."

"I understand, but the seat's already been assigned in our system, I going to need to rebook you..."

"I don't have forty-eight hours. I need to be there for my father's funeral." My voice climbed, sharper than I meant it to

"I'm very sorry for your loss, ma'am, but I don't have any earlier availability I can offer you."

She tapped away at her keyboard, printed something out, and slid the slip across the counter along with an apology I barely heard. I grabbed it, my bag, and what was left of my patience, and turned away from the counter.

As I turn around to walk away, I dumped into someone my bag toppling sideways, a splash of hot drink dripping down my shirt.

I looked up, already halfway through an apology, and the words caught in my throat.

The sharp line of his jaw, shadowed with the kind of stubble that looked deliberate rather than lazy, was the first thing that caught my eye. Then his amber eyes the same unreadable stare I remembered all too well.

He wore a grey suit that fit like it had been made for exactly this body and no other, the jacket open, a watch on his wrist that probably cost more than the apartment I'd just packed up. His hair was cut shorter than the last time I'd seen him, and there was something harder in his face now, something I couldn't read.

Nathaniel Cross stood before me.

Chapter Four

(Laura POV)

Nathaniel Cross. The man that is always on the front cover of every magazine.

The Billionaire bachelor, splashed across business magazines and gossip columns in equal measure, the one whose face I'd seen staring back at me from newsstands more times than I could count over the past two years, usually under some headline about a merger, an acquisition, or which billionaire's daughter he'd supposedly been seen with that week.

I remember the last time I saw him two years ago.

"You do realize the Arson account was mine before you came in and stole it," Nathaniel said, sliding into the seat across from me at the industry dinner.

"Stole it?" I raised an eyebrow, unable to stop a small smile from tugging at my mouth. "I believe the term you're looking for is outperformed."

He didn't smile back, though something in his eyes suggested he wanted to. "You know my company have been after that contract from a while now."

"You had a proposal that arrived a week late and a projection that underestimated their growth by a factor of three." I leaned back, enjoying this far more than I probably should have. "I had a better pitch, Mr. Cross. That's all there is to it."

"There's always a next quarter."

"There's always a next quarter," I agreed. "And I intend to win that one too."

Nathaniel Cross has always stand out, he was sharp, relentless, and infuriatingly good at his job, and somewhere in all that competition between our companies, without either of us admitting it out loud, something had curdled into more than professional rivalry. If not for the contract that we always share between us, The Cross would have been the leading organization in the region by now.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Nathaniel said. His voice carrying that same dry, controlled amusement I remembered from every boardroom and gala we'd ever crossed paths in.

My gaze shot back to his, it seems this last few hours I have been getting lost in my thought a lot.

"I am so sorry for bumping into you," I replied, staring down at my stained shirt. "What are you doing here, Nathaniel?"

"Flying, same as you, apparently badly, given the circumstances." He glanced down at the coffee stain spreading across his shoe, then back up at me, something almost amused flickering across his face. "Though I suppose I should ask you the same thing. Last I heard, you'd disappeared off the map entirely. No industry events, no company listings under your name. I assumed you'd left the business world altogether."

"I did," I said. "I left a lot of things."

Something in my voice must have caught his attention because his expression shifted, the sharp edges of his usual composure softening just slightly.

"I heard about your father," he said, quieter now. "I'm sorry, Laura. I mean that."

Hearing him say my name after two years of Ms. Whitfield across conference tables, after everything sent an unfamiliar feeling down my spine catching me off guard more than I wanted it to.

"Thank you," I said, and for once, I didn't have a sharp comeback waiting behind it.

"Whatever else was between us," he continued, "I always respected him. He was a hard man to compete against, but a fair one. That's rarer than people think in this industry."

"He was," I agreed quietly, though even as I said it, I thought of the office, the denied leave, the last words he'd ever said to me ‘’you're better off without him’ and wondered whether "fair" was really the word I'd have chosen if Nathaniel had known the whole story.

We were still standing there, caught in that strange, charged silence, when the same woman from the check-in counter came hurrying over.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry to bother you again," she said, slightly out of breath, "but I wanted to confirm. We've checked every available option, and I'm afraid there's genuinely nothing except that there is a forty-eight-hour window. I know that's not what you wanted to hear, especially given the circumstances, but I didn't want you waiting at the gate for nothing."

"Forty-eight hours," I repeated, the words landing heavier the second time, now that they were being confirmed rather than just feared. "There's really nothing sooner? Not even standby?"

"I checked every flight on the board, ma'am. I'm very sorry." She hesitated, glancing briefly between me and Nathaniel, "If anything opens up, I'll call the number on your file immediately. I promise."

"Thank you," I said, though the words came out flat, all the fight draining out of me at once. She gave a small, apologetic nod and hurried back toward her counter, leaving me standing there with my bag at my feet and two full days suddenly stretched out in front of me like a wall I had no idea how to climb.

"Forty-eight hours," Nathaniel said quietly, watching me. "That's a long time to sit in an airport."

"I don't have forty-eight hours," I said, more to myself than to him, my voice starting to crack in a way I hated. "The funeral is in three days. If I lose two of them sitting here…"

"You won't," he said simply.

I looked up at him. "What?"

"You won't lose them. I have a plane." He said, "I am also about to leave and go back to New York within the hour. If you need to get to your father's funeral, I can have you there faster than any standby list this place is going to manage."

I hesitated, running through every reason this was a terrible idea the history between us, the company rivalry, the fact that two years of professional animosity didn't exactly evaporate because he'd offered me a favor at an airport gate. But then I thought about the funeral, about Luciana's cold, clipped text, about how much I needed to just get there and stop fighting every single piece of this trip.

"Fine," I said finally. "New York. But I'm not thanking you for this."

"Wouldn't dream of expecting it," Nathaniel said, already turning toward the exit, that same maddening half-smile still in place. "Come on, Ms. Whitfield. Let's get you home.”

(Nathaniel's POV)

As I was walking towards the plane field with my personal assistant, I caught sight of a familiar lady I hadn't seen in years.

Laura Whitfield the lady I'd been dreaming about for two years now.

I can't quite remember when it started, but all I know is that I always found myself wanting to see her dismantle my pitch with nothing but a raised eyebrow and a sentence that landed harder than anything my own board had said to me in months. She had this way of tilting her head slightly when she was about to win an argument, like she already knew the outcome and was simply waiting for the rest of the room to catch up. Dark hair that she always kept pulled back in something severe and professional, though it never quite disguised how striking she was sharp cheekbones, warm brown eyes that missed nothing, a mouth that curved into something dangerously close to a smirk whenever she'd bested me on a deal. She dressed like she meant business and carried herself like she'd never once doubted she belonged in any room she walked into. I remember thinking, even then, that I'd never met anyone who could make losing feel almost worth it. Every quarter after that, I told myself the only reason I looked forward to seeing her name on a rival proposal was the competition. It was easier than admitting the truth that I looked forward to seeing her, regardless of what deal either of us was chasing.

And then, two years ago, she simply vanished.

No announcement, no farewell circuit through the industry events she used to dominate, no listing under her name anywhere I could find.

I never understood, back then, why her absence bothered me as much as it did. I understood it a great deal better standing across from her at that gate, watching her try to hold herself together over news I didn't yet have the full shape of, and feeling something in my chest tighten in a way two years hadn't managed to dull in the slightest.

She looked different than I remembered thinner, maybe, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the flight, her hair looser than she used to wear it, a few strands falling loose around her face like she hadn't had the energy that morning to care. And still, somehow, she was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in two years.

The walk to the plane was quiet. Once we'd boarded and taken our seats, the air hostess walked toward us.

"Good morning, sir, ma'am." The name tag on her dress read Elena.

I turned toward Laura to ask her what she wanted.

"Just water, please," Laura replied, looking out the window.

"Why don't you relax and let me help you with your bag," I said, standing up from my seat across from her and taking her bag. "Try to rest before we land."

"Okay," she said, sounding tired, her fingers working at the seatbelt buckle with more difficulty than the mechanism actually warranted.

"Here." I leaned forward, a jolt running through me the moment our hands touched. She pulled hers back immediately, clasping them in her lap.

My hands found the belt beside hers, guiding the clasp into place with a practiced click. As my gaze lingered on her, I could feel the warmth radiating off her skin, could see the fine tremor still lingering in her fingers from where we'd touched, could smell whatever she'd worn that morning something faint and fruity.

She looked up at me then, closer than either of us had been in two years, and for a second neither of us moved.

If I just moved a bit, I could kiss her right there. I remembered the breathless kiss we'd had at a charity event we'd both been invited to, the two of us standing too close in a hallway, mid-argument.

"It's not my fault you can't keep up," I'd said to her.

"You know I wanted that contract. You went behind my back to sabotage it," she'd screamed in my face, stepping closer.

"Can you prove that?"

Before she could reply, I'd decided to shut her up.

The moment my lips touched hers, I'd never felt so lightheaded in my life. The kiss started slowly as she parted her lips, and I groaned as our tongues intertwined. Her hand curled into the front of my shirt like she needed something to hold onto, and I cupped her jaw like I'd been waiting for this moment to happen. She tasted like strawberry.

When she pulled back, her eyes were wide, startled, like she'd surprised herself as much as she had me. "That shouldn't have happened," she'd whispered.

I nodded, still holding her close.

Neither of us moved to put the distance back between us.

If only she'd waited then, before walking away.