Chapter 79: Mrj

You're right — Chapter 1 has sarcasm, physical description with attitude, sharp back-and-forth banter, present tense, and a section break with . What I wrote was too soft and melodramatic, nothing like that voice. Let me rewrite Chapter 7 from scratch to actually match it, then check in before I carry that same voice through the rest.

Chapter 7 — Under the Table

Richard picks the restaurant. Windows facing the street, obviously, because subtlety isn't a thing rich men do.

There's already a photographer set up across the road when we pull in. Doesn't even try to hide. Just stands there with his camera like he's waiting for a bus.

"Your dad's dinner spots always come with an audience?"

"Only the ones with cameras attached." Caleb parks. "Consider it a feature, not a bug."

"Cute."

Inside, the place smells like money and overpriced bread. White tablecloths. A menu with no prices on it, which I've learned is never a good sign. Caleb pulls my chair out before I sit, which would be sweet if I didn't know it's for the room, not for me.

"Sit up straight," he mutters, dropping into the chair beside me instead of across. "He notices posture before he notices anything you actually say."

"Great. I'll add that to the list of things I'm apparently being tested on tonight."

"Welcome to dinner with Richard Kessler."

"Sounds delightful."

"It's really not."

Richard arrives seven minutes late, unbothered, like the whole restaurant was built specifically to wait for him. He orders wine for the table without asking either of us what we want, because apparently that's a courtesy reserved for people who matter.

"I have a proposal," he says, once the bread basket's been set down and ignored. "Sixty thousand. Double the original number. In exchange, we drop the sixty-day clause. Full year. Through the draft. No matter what happens."

I nearly choke on my water. "Sixty thousand."

"Binding." He swirls his glass, doesn't drink from it. "Everyone has a price, Mia. I find people get very uncomfortable admitting that, right up until the number's big enough."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"It's supposed to be a fact."

Caleb's jaw is doing the thing it does when he's holding something back. I've learned to read it over the last week. Not anger exactly. Something closer to exhaustion that's been sitting there for years.

"I'll think about it," I say, because I've already figured out this isn't a table where you get to say no and keep your dignity intact.

"Don't take too long." Richard sets the glass down with a click. "Offers like mine have shelf lives."

Under the table, Caleb's hand finds mine. Grabs it. Doesn't let go.

I don't pull away. Not because it means anything. Because his grip is the only steady thing at this table.

"I need my mother left out of this," I say, keeping my voice level even though my pulse is doing something ridiculous. "She's not a bargaining chip. You don't get to use her."

Richard studies me the way you'd study a stock you're deciding whether to buy. "Interesting girl," he finally says, to Caleb, not to me, like I'm a specimen and not a person with ears. "Fine. We'll leave her illness out of the terms."

"Great. Glad we settled that like reasonable adults."

Caleb's hand tightens around mine. A warning, probably. I ignore it.

Dinner drags on another forty-five minutes. Richard talks draft rankings and combine numbers like I'm not even at the table, and honestly, that's the version of him I prefer. Caleb answers in short clipped sentences, the kind you use when you're trying not to say something you'll regret.

His hand stays locked with mine under the tablecloth the entire time. Neither of us lets go first. Not when the check comes. Not when Richard stands without so much as a goodbye and walks out like he's got somewhere more important to be, which he probably does.

"That went well," I say, once the door closes behind him.

"That's the best it ever goes."

"Comforting."

"Wasn't trying to comfort you."

"Wasn't expecting you to."

We drive home in his truck, streetlights sliding past the windshield in long yellow smears. I'm more tired than I want to admit, the kind of tired that sits in your bones after a night of performing for an audience that never once clapped.

"You okay?" he asks, at a red light.

"Define okay."

"Fair."

My eyes are heavy before we even hit the highway. I remember thinking I should stay awake, should say something smart or sharp to fill the silence, and then I don't remember anything at all.

I wake up in my own driveway.

Not because I meant to. Because my neck's stiff from sleeping at a bad angle and the truck's engine is off. There's a jacket over my shoulders that isn't mine. Caleb's, obviously, since I'm not currently dating anyone else who owns a truck.

He's sitting there, hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead like he's been doing it for a while.

"How long was I out?"

"Whole drive."

"You could've woken me up."

"You looked like you needed it more than you needed to say goodnight."

I sit with that for a second, not sure what to do with a version of Caleb Kessler who watches me sleep in a driveway instead of waking me up and moving on with his night.

"That's weirdly considerate for someone who once called me manager girl for three months."

"I contain multitudes."

"You contain a truck and a trust fund."

He almost laughs. Almost. "Get some sleep, Mia."

I climb out before he can see whatever's happening on my face right now, because I genuinely don't know what it is, and I'm not in the mood to find out with an audience.