Cate doesn’t say much as she slides into the passenger seat of my rental car. It’s an Audi—the best they could do on short notice at the airport I flew into a couple of hours away from here—but she doesn’t seem to care. She doesn’t say much as I steer the car away from her sister’s house, or when I navigate straight to the main street of the town, which is of course called Main Street.

She doesn’t say much, but she never lets go of my hand.

If she feels anything like what I’m feeling, she’s searching for what she wants to say to me, but there aren’t enough words in the whole world to describe it.

I park the car in front of a storefront between a bookshop and a café. Cate turns to me, one eyebrow raised. “You didn’t come all this way to take me out for coffee, did you?”

I laugh, and some of the tension in my gut eases away. “If you want coffee, we can get some right now. But no, I didn’t come here for that.”

“What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see.”

The storefront has paper over both the huge front windows, blocking the inside from view. Cate follows me tentatively, and when we reach the door and I pull a key from my pocket, her mouth falls open.

“Jax—why do you have a key to this building?”

I lead her inside. I had a crew come in overnight to freshen the space, which is an empty canvas for any kind of business you can imagine. Everything is newly white and smells like possibility.

“What’s that?”

She’s spotted it.

At the back of the room, smack in the middle of the wall, is a single desk. It’s an antique—one of the ones they used to use at the old New York Times offices during the newspaper heyday. I purposefully chose it to be the opposite of the sleek furniture that crowds every inch of the Basiqué offices.

This is a space for Cate.

Dropping my hand, she moves toward the desk, and as she gets closer I hear the tiny gasp that escapes her.

“What is this, Jax?”

She turns to face me, her eyes shining with so much delight I think the room gets brighter. On the desk is a nameplate. I woke up one of my business vendors in the middle of the night to get it made before I flew out of LaGuardia, so it’s been tucked in one of my bags since yesterday.

After I left my mother’s hospital room, I flew to the largest available airport in Cate’s home state and got in after midnight. I debated driving to her hometown in Winthrop Harbor right away, but decided that would look a little insane, so I booked a room at the best hotel in town.

This morning I drove to Cate’s old address in Winthrop Harbor. Sandra Sarzó gave it to me after I dressed her down for the way she handled my request about transferring Cate’s duties over the following months. Lucky for me, Cate’s emergency contact is still her mother, so there wasn’t much of a search to be done. When I showed up at their home this morning, Cate’s father shook my hand and, after several minutes of pleasant conversation that nearly killed me, he let me know where Cate’s sister lives in Beechford.

Which brought us to this building.

I bought it hours after leaving Christian at the club two nights ago.

No matter what happens between us, I’m leaving Cate with the one thing she needs more than anything: security.

The nameplate on the desk reads:

Catherine Schaffer

Editor-in-Chief

“It’s for you,” I say simply.

“The nameplate?”

“The building.”

Cate shakes her head, smiling helplessly. “Why in the hell would you buy me this building in Beechford, Jax?”

I cross over to her and take her hand.

“I shouldn’t have done what I did about your job at Basiqué. That was wrong. I know that now.”

“Jax, I—”

“No, let me finish. You should know that I never intended for you to feel like you didn’t have any options. I had several ideas for businesses you’re more than capable of running, and I wanted to talk about them all with you. When things started happening with my mom, I didn’t get the chance, and then Sarzó—” I let out a frustrated breath. “That’s all irrelevant. The point is, you have options, and one of them is to stay here in Beechford, close to your family, and run your own publishing imprint.”

“What?”

“You told me once that if you could do anything, you’d be in charge of your own publishing house. I’ve been working with my business manager to establish one in your name. It doesn’t matter where in the world it’s located—I can guarantee that people will be breaking the door down to have their work published with you. And you can take it in any direction you want. Books. Periodicals. Internet sales. People are working on it right now to get everything off the ground. All you need to do is run it.”

Cate wrinkles her forehead. “I can’t run an entire company.”

“Yes, you can. If you can survive Sandra Sarzó for a year, you can run any company you want. But you can leverage all of my resources for business advice, if you want to.”

“Why are you doing this, Jax?” She looks up at me, eyes wide, hopeful, anxious.

“Let me show you one other thing before I answer that.” I move behind the desk, open one of the drawers, and pull out the portfolio, opening it and turning it so she can see the papers inside.

“I want you to understand that all of this is yours—no strings attached. These documents are proof that this company and all its assets—which come with startup funds and five years’ worth of salary for you and any employees you hire—belong to you even if…”

“Even if what?”

“Even if you’re done with me.”

She puts a hand over her mouth, and I can’t control the pain in my heart, can’t get a handle on the tightness in my throat. I’ll give anything to her. But I need to know. I can’t wait any longer.

“Are you done with me, Cate?”

One long moment passes.

Then she shakes her head, tears in her eyes.

I hold my breath.