He woke up the next morning clutching the letter against his chest. He had fallen asleep in the studio, on the floor next to Olivia’s sketchbook. He stood up and unkinked his neck. Rolling his head from one side to the other, the room seemed to spin. If he was going to be dizzy and wake up with a headache, he might as well have spent the night drinking, he thought bitterly.

But instead of feeling sorry for himself, he dusted off his shirt and pants and left the studio for the kitchen. He needed to move forward. If he lost a client at work, he wouldn’t just wallow.

He thought about it. No. This isn’t like that at all. If I lost a client at work, I would just look for a new client. But Olivia isn’t a client. She isn’t an employee. This isn’t about work. This is about love.

With his mind a little clearer, he set the letter on the kitchen counter and poured some water into the coffee maker. He fumbled with the grounds. His neck still hurt. His nose was congested from crying the night before. He wasn’t used to this feeling—this feeling of failure.

“I have to get her back,” he said to himself as he stretched. “There’s no other choice. I can’t live the rest of my life like that. Curled up in a ball, on the floor, crying all night.”

He thought of what Olivia might be going through at that moment. The possibility that she had done the same thing that night broke his heart.

The coffee maker gurgled in the background as he rested his elbows on the counter and hung his head. What if I did that to her? What if I made her cry? With my inaction yesterday… The previous day’s events came flooding back to him. Why had he frozen in front of his father and brother? What had caused him to leave his wife hanging out to dry like that?

It couldn’t just be because I’m afraid of my father, is it? He thought about the possibilities. It’s because I was going to be caught. I’ve never done anything to warrant getting in trouble before.

That was his brother’s job. When they were growing up, it was his brother who was always getting in trouble. He remembered the look on Rashad’s face as he pointed at Olivia and accused her of stealing from him. It didn’t come from a place of concern for his brother. It came from a darker place. Jealousy and bitter anger. Rashad had done it to hurt him. That snarky smirk on his face was going to be forever ingrained in his mind.

Yasin pulled his phone out of his pocket. Before he mended things with Olivia, there was something else that he needed to do.

* * *

“Thanks for meeting with me, Father,” Yasin said. Rashad and Nylah sat on the couch across from him. His father was sitting upright in his chair. They all looked like they’d had a pretty rough night. “I know that I have some explaining to do.”

“Where is she?” Maalik asked. “Where is Olivia?”

“I’ll explain that in a minute,” Yasin said. “First, I need to explain how we met.”

And with that, his story began. He started with the night of his birthday. He’d needed to find a wife, fast, and when he’d heard about the job listing the company had posted, he’d gotten what he thought, at the time, to be a brilliant idea.

“The idea,” he said. “Was that I would hire a woman to be my wife. We would get married and we would be a wonderful couple as far as you and the public were concerned; however, she would live her life separate from mine.

“I had no interest in having a wife, and yet I wanted to be a father. So, I asked her to help me achieve that, too. Through insemination, we would get her pregnant with my child, and she would bring the child to term. After that, I would raise the child on my own, while she lived her life as she wished, only coming back to pose as my wife when necessary.”

“That’s so cold,” Nylah gasped.

Yasin shrugged. “I didn’t think of it that way,” he said. “I thought it was a perfectly fine plan. Until I met Olivia. Meeting her changed my life, and I fell in love with her. By the time I had realized what had happened, we had already signed the contract. She was to be my wife and bear my child.” He choked back tears. “I don’t know how she felt about me. We never talked about it. It wasn’t professional.” He scoffed. “But who was I kidding?”

“We could tell,” Nylah said.

Yasin looked up at her. “You could tell?”

She nodded. “We could tell that you loved her.” She shrugged. “Or, at least, I could.”

To his utter surprise, it was his father who spoke next.

“You can’t hide that amount of chemistry,” Maalik said. “Nor can you fake it. She loved you, too.”

Nylah nodded. “She lit up whenever she talked about you. It wasn’t just a job for her. I think she fell for you, too.”

“Oh, son,” Maalik said. “You should have said something to her.” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid that we scared her away.”

Nylah started to cry. “I like her. I like her a lot.” She got up from her seat and gave Yasin a hug. “Yasin,” she said, pulling away. “You need to go after her.”

“Yes,” Maalik said. “Go tell her everything you just told us.”

The three of them looked at Rashad, who looked solemnly at the ground. “This is all my fault,” he said. “I didn’t realize that you were in love. I just knew you were hiding something.”

“It is my fault,” Yasin said. “I’m sorry to have misled all of you.”

“Yes, yes,” Nylah said. “Go after her already.”

Yasin let out a chuckle as he wiped the tears from his eyes. He stood up and moved to leave.

“Tell her that I’m sorry,” Rashad said. “For how I treated her and what I said. Or, better yet, bring her back here and I’ll tell her myself.”

Yasin nodded and smiled.

Rashad stood up and gave his brother a hug before Yasin left, determined to win back the love of his life.