Page 77 of The Dating Contract

“I couldn’t wait to show you,” he said. “I just am glad I’m getting the chance to.”

He could see she wanted to smile but there was something stopping her. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer, just took his hand. “Let’s walk through the exhibit,” she said. “We need to talk afterwards anyway.”

Her tone was ominous, but he knew if he pushed, he wouldn’t get anything out of her. So he nodded and walked through the halls of the museum, his fingers entwined with hers.

But they stopped at a glass exhibit case, and she pointed, the bright nail polish on her fingers leading the way, the lights on a runway. “It’s why I left the party.”

He looked closer, recognizing the item in the case as a mask, the mask he’d contributed lettering to at the Tzedakah Exchange gala. “You left because of a mask?”

She laughed, and for a second the sadness he saw in her dissipated. “No,” she said once she’d regained her composure. “I left because of a client. The client that inspired the mask.”

He nodded, but he didn’t think she was going to give him more, not there and not with that expression on her face.

“Anyway,” she said as she dropped his hand. “There are always clients and stories and things, but the way ours goes now needs to be private. Do you want to come over to my place? I’m closer.”

His jaw dropped and he didn’t know what was happening. “Um…of course?”

“To talk,” she said. “Although it’s probably better if we go to the Stars and Icing I saw on the corner. Better place to chat.”

Which meant a few things. She was managing reactions.

But all the same, it seemed like she was holding back.

What was going on?

He nodded. “Okay.”

*

It was abright, beautiful, Manhattan afternoon when Leah left the museum, Samuel walking by her side. She’d shoved her hands into her pockets to keep from reaching out, the same way she’d reached out to him so many times before.

If this day was different, she’d be walking with him, their fingers intertwined like their lives had become. But now, they were tangled, twisted, knotted, on the way to being cut thread by thread.

Truth to tell, Leah realized the threads that connected them had been cut long before. She’d been thinking the worst as she left Liam’s party but the days of all-nighters, where Carly’s contract and her next cup of coffee had been the only things on her mind followed one after the other. This contract had been harder to negotiate than any other she’d ever done, but it was important. The time was worth it, and when the negotiations had finished, Leah wanted to collapse and she had.

Until she remembered that the outside world called and Samuel left texts and emails.

Each text, each email fed into her guilt, draining her and reminding her why she was a horrible bet.

Now, she and Samuel had settled into one of the small booths in the back of the 13th Street location of Stars and Icing, the chocolate pudding freeze they’d ordered in beautiful glass bowls in front of them.

And yet all of the chocolate in the world couldn’t support her through this conversation, and soothe the wound she was about to create. Sometimes, the things she had to do were painful, but there was no choice.

None.

“So,” he said. “Are you okay?”

Which was one of those million-dollar questions; innocuous, and yet not at the same time. Pointed. “No,” she said. “I’m not okay.”

He nodded, and she could see his body change, from the slight relaxation of someone about to eat dessert to someone who was bracing themselves. “What’s wrong?”

Now she was in it. Now she had to say something, and make it clear, whatever it is. “I can’t do this,” she managed. “I can’t continue with the contract.”

If she concentrated, she thought she might hear the sound of his jaw breaking on the table, but it only looked that wide. His eyes looked like endless chocolate pools of sadness, which hurt.

“What?”

---