Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

It was not just sex, what he and I were doing. He knew it, and so did I. And now . . . what now? What did people do, once they acknowledged that they had something—someone—to lose? What was expected of me? What if Eli decided that he didn’t want me?

It was untrodden territory, and I felt scared and nauseated.

Calm down, I told myself, taking a deep breath. Get yourself home. Take a damn shower.

Tiny sleepily escorted me to the front door. He stared up at me with small, hopeful eyes, and before slipping out, I found myself reaching out. It took me about three attempts, but I managed to clumsily pat him on the head—and shockingly, I didn’t screw it up. His tail swung in delight, and I smiled. Maybe there was hope for me, after all.

I didn’t notice the sunrise until I was in my car. I hadn’t seen one in months, maybe years, and the golden light beckoned me home and bathed the street in a warm, gentle glow. My eyes burned, as though unable to contain the emotions of the past few days. There had been plenty, many of them confusing, and I had to hit my sternum with my balled-up fist before starting the car.

I was about five minutes from home when my phone rang.

New York City was only one hour ahead, but Nyota was the kind of “work hard, play hard” person whose early mornings were likely to be spent at the office—or staggering home from the club. Still, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d received a call from her at such an odd hour.

“Is Tisha okay?” I asked when she picked up.

“I hope so. She better not be dead, because I have zero time to go scatter her ashes at some meaningful but hard-to-reach location. If there’s a mountain to climb or a boat to rent, you’re going to have to take care of it.”

“Sure.”

“Nice. Consider this a legally binding agreement, because I will hold you to it.” She sounded exceedingly satisfied. “Were you able to give those statements to Harkness?”

“Yes. It’s nice of you to check on it at”—I glanced at the dashboard clock—“six forty-two a.m.”

“Yeah, that’s not what this call is about. What’s that noise? Are you driving?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well . . .” A pause. Nyota sighed, and alarm tingled in my belly. “I think you should pull over. I have something very important to tell you, and it’s pretty fucking atrocious.”





35





CAN’T HAVE BOTH





ELI

Eli was so fucking giddy, even his own damn dog found him irritating.

“I know, I know. Not ideal,” he told Tiny during their morning walk, when he kept glancing back with a forlorn expression, as if wondering where his new favorite human had gone. “She’ll come over again soon.”

He was certainly going to try to lure her back tonight. And maybe it wasn’t going to be too hard—because she’d as good as acknowledged that she wanted to be with him. He knew it, and Rue knew it, too. Together, they were different. Unlike anything before—or after, he suspected. And last night she’d finally given them a fighting chance.

“Just trust me,” he told Tiny when the lovelorn puppy eyes wouldn’t stop. “And stop pining. It’s undignified.”

His morning was full of off-site meetings, and he glided through all of them. “Eli! Why do you look so much better than usual?” Anton asked him when he strode through Harkness’s lobby. Eli considered firing him on the spot at the implied insult, but the paperwork would have delayed his reunion with his one true love: texting Rue.

Which was delayed anyway, when Hark impatiently gestured him inside from the glass window of a conference room. “Do you ever pick up your damn phone?” he asked before Eli had even closed the door.

“Not during meetings, no.”

“What about when the meetings end?”

“Depends on how annoying the caller is. Are you conducting a survey pertaining to habits around electronic devices, or is there something you need to tell me?”

“It’s about Kline,” Minami said. Eli glanced at her and Sul for the first time. Noticed their serious expressions.

The tension in the room finally cut through his good mood. “What happened?”

“The documents your girlfriend gave us,” Hark said. A minute earlier, the words would have made him smile. Hark’s tone, though, gave him pause. “The lawyers went through them.”

“Already?”

“Not that time consuming. She sent precisely what we needed.”

Yup, that was his girl. “And?”

Hark’s mouth twisted into a smile. “Florence’s fucked, Eli. She’s underwater on her ratios, the audited financials might as well have been written in crayon on a diner menu, and she’s got fifteen material contingencies under the couch cushions. But you know what’s fucking brilliant?”

Eli shook his head.

“The insolvency clause. If Kline is unable to meet its financial obligations or pay off its debts, the lender will be able to convert the debt into equity—or claim ownership.”

“We knew about that already.”

“But we didn’t know how bad off Kline was. And that it’s never going to be solvent by the end of the second quarter.”

“That’s June thirtieth,” Eli said unnecessarily. Everyone at the table already knew.