Chapter 14 Longing
Knight and Rowe Publishing gleams above the building entrance in polished metal letters. I stop a few feet short of the doors and look up at it, my neck tilting back.
I was adopted as a child. Joanne and Cyrus Foster....well off and respected. Growing up, it became obvious, painfully so, that the adoption had mostly been my mother’s idea. She wanted a child and my father agreed. In the way men like him agree to things they never intend to fully participate in.
He wasn’t cruel, that’s the frustrating part. He provided, made sure I had everything.....best schools, private tutors, summer programs that looked impressive on paper. I never wanted for anything material. But there was always this distance.
I felt it early, learned to measure it. And, like a fool, I spent years trying to close it. I chased grades like they were proof of worth, top of my class every year. I joined debate and dominated it. Tennis, because he liked tennis. I won awards, trophies, plaques with my name engraved neatly beneath words like ‘excellence’ and ‘distinction’. My mother beamed at every ceremony.
My father was never there.
Standing here now, I let my gaze drift over the building again. He owns this....it's founded by Cyrus Foster.
I remember the first time my mother asked me what I wanted to be. I was too young to know how dangerous honesty can be.
“I want to be a writer,” I said, without hesitation.
It surprised her. It surprised me, too, a little. But it was true. I’d read books obsessively, and I remember thinking....I could do this. Not just do it, but be good at it. Maybe even love it. Writing felt like possibility. Like a place where effort turned into something real.
My mother believed in me. She asked questions. Bought me notebooks. She read everything I wrote, even the bad things, especially the bad things. Told me stories were muscles, you had to tear them a little to make them stronger.
Then three weeks before my high school graduation, she died....
A ruptured cerebral aneurysm. No warning. No illness to brace for. She went to bed with a headache and never woke up. I remember standing in the hospital hallway, staring at a doctor’s mouth moving, convinced that this was a mistake that would resolve itself if I waited long enough.
It didn’t.
But I coped because I had to. I held onto the years I’d had with her like proof that she’d existed. That she’d loved me. I cherished it because it was all I had left.
My father changed after that. Or maybe he didn’t. Not long after the funeral, he told me that writing wasn’t going to get me very far. Which had sounded conflicting coming from the owner of a publishing firm. That if I wanted relevance, I should do something that actually mattered to the family business.
To Knight and fucking Rowe.
So I did, I studied hard. Publishing. Literature. Business. I worked my way in and then up. Senior editor. Literary agent. I turned debut authors into bestsellers, negotiated foreign rights, salvaged dying manuscripts, spotted talent early and shaped it carefully. I fixed problems before they became visible. I took on responsibilities no one asked me to take and excelled at them anyway.
I became indispensable.
And still, no seat on the board. No real say. He never introduced me as his son. Never corrected anyone when they assumed I was just another ambitious employee. I told myself that acknowledgment was coming. That one day he’d look at me and finally decide I was enough.
Then he remarried...a woman half his age. Polished and sharp in the way people confuse with competence.
A year ago, he made her CEO.
I wonder what he'd do if he ever found out I’m gay. He’d probably think it’s just another disappointment in a long line of things I haven’t lived up to.
I step inside, already resigned to the familiar dull ache of another day that will feel like nothing from the inside. The glass catches my reflection as I pass. The cut of my suit. And then... Ryan's glasses.
They’re still hooked into my pocket, I stop and unhook them. Hold them gently in my hand, thumb brushing the frame without thinking. And then I smile. It surprises me enough that I almost laugh at myself. I hardly smile anymore. Not like this. Not without effort.
Those few minutes with him have lodged themselves somewhere deep. I feel a pull that hasn’t let go since I first saw him. I want more. Not casually. Not politely. I want to know all of him. What he sounds like when he’s not careful. What he avoids. What hurts. What steadies him. I want to get close in a way that feels reckless and inevitable all at once.
I’ve been drowning for longer than I care to admit. And Ryan Ashbrook makes something dangerous bloom in my chest. The thought that maybe, just maybe, life could be something worth living again.
I’m both thrilled and scared by it all, like it’s all a tangled mess of emotions I can’t quite untangle. And maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I want to be tangled in it, if only for a little while.
I slide the glasses into my pocket, I can feel something inside me stir. I walk to the wall and lean against it, my fingers instinctively pulling my phone out of my pocket. I tap the screen absently, then stop as I think back to the way he'd seemed when he stood to leave. He’d been off.
Is he uncomfortable with me? The thought comes out of nowhere, but it sticks. I run a hand through my hair, letting out a frustrated breath. But no. He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t want to be there. He wouldn’t have stuck around. Maybe he was just tired. Or maybe he’s just not a morning person. I can’t help but smile at the idea of him being a grumpy morning person.
I pull up his contact and type a quick message.
“You lied.”
I hit send, then shove my phone back into my pocket as I start walking toward the elevators. It’ll probably take a while for him to respond, if he ever does. But a few steps later, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, surprised to see a message already.
“What about ?”
I laugh, a mix of relief and surprise. I type back quickly, “You said you drink coffee. Yet you only took a single sip today.”
I send it off and continue my walk, getting into the elevator. It’s shocking how distracted I am by him. By the time I’m sitting at my desk in my office, my phone buzzes again. I glance down, expecting a short response. Something dismissive or maybe a dry remark. But it’s not at all what I expected.....
“What did you do while you looked at my picture?”
I blink, staring at the words as if they’ve been written in a foreign language.
The question’s so unexpected, so out of character for the Ryan I just spent time with, that it completely throws me off. The Ryan I was with earlier hadn’t shown any signs of this kind of boldness. Hell, he’d blushed when I mentioned the picture.
A jolt of heat runs through me as I type my response, my fingers a little unsteady on the keys.
“What do you think I did?”