No debates. No arguments. She was willing to give me everything I wanted right then and there. I just had to say yes. I had to submit.
But what would it cost? Like that little girl back in New Orleans, what weighed the heaviest on my mind was what I’d have to lose to live the life Harmony was offering.
There was no contest.
No reason for me to think about it.
The woman watched me closely, her pleased, effortless smile returning to the mysterious sneer I’d caught during our first meeting. Now I got it. She wasn’t sexy. She wasn’t sly. She was running a hustle and wanted me to be part of it. Duncan was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve this.
“He built this company from the ground up by himself.”
Harmony’s smile lowered and she straightened her back. “Come on, Nash, don’t get soft on me.” She shook her head, laughing at me like she couldn’t believe I hadn’t already agreed. “I don’t think you understand how much money we’re talking about here.”
“Oh, I got a good idea.” I picked up my bag, slipping my hand in my pocket. “Old money folk,” I said, staring back at her. “Y’all some hard mother fuckers.”
“Nash—”
“A wise man told me once, money ain’t everything in a world worth living. Seems like the kind of world you live in, Harmony, just ain’t the kind of world for me.” I opened the door, watching her as she stared, open-mouthed at me. “Think I’ll take my tech somewhere else.”
Outside in the lobby, Daisy and the contracted programmers we’d hired to pound the code paused their conversations and hung up their calls to listen to us.
I nodded to a few of the staff that had been with me from the beginning, a couple who followed me into the elevator, and I left the building, leaning against the wall wondering why I didn’t feel worse. Truth was, I did have something to lose. Something I thought could never be mine again. But it had nothing to do with investors, or programming, or even my precious code. It was something a lot more personal.
Sookie had been scared. Up there on that chain, watching the people she loved most in the world stare up with her frozen in fear, in terror, I realized I wasn’t sure if I’d ever loved anyone like that. Nat, maybe. My mom, once. But now? Did I love someone enough that losing them would shatter my world? I wasn’t sure.
I thought about that the entire way home when the homeless man on the train farted and snored as slept against the broken subway window. I kept thinking about it when I gave my seat, the last one on the bus, to an exhausted-looking pregnant woman who seemed like she held a bowling ball under her shirt and the damn thing weighed a ton.
Love was for suckers. I’d always thought that. It had been a mantra I kept on a loop in my head anytime a female got a little too attached. Anytime I had the inkling to get that way too.
Until Willow.
Until that night in my apartment. Until the entire room smelled and felt like her. Until a week had passed since she walked out and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d lost her. Had I even had her to begin with? I had no clue. But damn if it hadn’t felt like I had.
She occupied my thoughts all the way to Brooklyn. She stayed there as I made it to my apartment, as I changed into my gym clothes and got in a five-mile run through the park, even managed to make as far as the Old Stone House, knowing she wouldn’t be there, not on a Thursday, not during the week. Still, Willow invaded my thoughts until I couldn’t see the sidewalk in front of me. Until I stopped running altogether and shuffled back to my building like a punk too winded, too worn out by the day to do more than remember the taste of her skin and just how sweet her laugh had sounded.
Midnight, three hours later and a shower, a decent hoagie, and two Blue Moons still didn’t manage to make me sleepy or wear me down. I thought about Sookie and what she felt as she died. That had been lodged in my chest like a spear-sized splinter. Funny thing about those dreams; they didn’t seem like dreams at all. Not the ones about Sookie. Not the ones about the library and the big son of a bitch in love with that redhead. I felt it all—that fear, that love, that powerful lust. It came at me like a wave, sticking me in the chest, constricting my breathing until my eyes burned. Then Willow took over, wrestled away the dreams and filled me up like a spirit, taking away the voice that tried in vain to remind me I didn’t need anything or anyone. I’d walked away from one person today. God knew I had no problem doing that. But Duncan and his slick ways were nothing like Willow. He didn’t haunt me. His smile, his laugh, the gleam in his eye did nothing for me; not like Willow. She overpowered me like no one ever had.
“Shit,” I said to myself, sitting up in bed because that faint jasmine scent still hung onto the sheet and pillow. Something came over me then. It was the urgency to be rid of her, to exorcise her from that room. I stripped off the sheets, pulled the pillows from their cases and grabbed the comforter. Willow had been wrapped up in it, her naked body against the thick fabric and I wanted her gone, just then. I wanted her out completely.
I ran down to the laundry room and stuffed everything into the washer, and poured in bleach and detergent, determined to eradicate her. I promised myself I wouldn’t think about how much that jasmine had comforted me, how the smell of it got me sleepy, kept me there. I wouldn’t think of how the night before I’d missed her so much the pillow got tucked under my chin, how I’d fallen asleep smiling from the smell on the fabric.
It didn’t matter now. Now there would be nothing for me—no business, no Willow and I’d have myself back. There wouldn’t even be dreams, not with Sookie being gone. Not with her story at an end.
The machine rumbled to life, rocking me as I leaned against it, closing my eyes at the rhythm, and I scrubbed my face, wondering why I couldn’t get the sick feeling, the regret from my stomach.
Returning to my apartment, I found the living room dark and quiet. I grabbed the tennis ball on the console and the remote to let Coltrane speak to me. That should work. It had before, though not that first night. Not when Willow interrupted my entire world and tugged me into her apartment.
“Shit.” Another recall and I was back where I’d been in my bedroom, thinking about that first night, and the others afterward, thinking about that kiss on the roof and the sting of her leaving my place.
She was a witch. I’d known that for months. She worked some kind of wonderful spell on me, and no matter how I fought it, I loved being under her power. Outside, the night was inky black and perfectly still. No wind, no rain, nothing that would keep her from the roof. Nothing in that apartment would keep me from it either.
My chest ached a little as I climbed the stairs and I didn’t think it was because of the exertion. Some part of me knew when I took my last step and opened that roof deck door, that I’d find her out there, so when she wasn't there, that ache in my chest tightened even more.
The cityscape was boring, Brooklyn always had been. The only thing remarkable about it was the bridge in the far distance, but that was more New York than Brooklyn no matter the name or how close it was to us. Out there in the city, everything moved and bustled. In Brooklyn, on my roof, everything went in slow motion. Especially when I turned and with a jolt, spotted Willow hunkered down, her head hidden behind the long back of the lawn chair as she rested in it.