Page 103 of The Photograph

Realization hits me like a ton of bricks. I’m an idiot. Why didn’t I join the dots on this sooner? I don’t even have the option of whether to go to Seoul or not—there’s no one else. Some of the team are doing well now, but no one is expert enough or up to speed enough to set up a satellite office.

“I’ll go to Korea,” I say, dropping a present with bows on into her lap.

“What?” A huge smile breaks across her face. “Just like that?”

“I’ve been thinking about it since you asked me, and I think I should go.”

“Are you sure, Des? You don’t need to …”

“No. I like it out there. The client is great. It’s a fabulous country, and it might be helpful to escape New York for a while. A change of scene would do me good.”

The business needs me out there.Joneeds me out there. Lorna was spot on: I’d be a fool to turn this down. It will catapult my career into the stratosphere, and leaning into the one thing that’s going right in my life right now is the sensible course of action. Not to mention what it will do to my shareholding if we grow this company. I like Korea. What difference does it make where I am? Mitzi can come with me.

“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Jo says. “Depending on what you want to do, and if you set it up well and find some talented people, I’m thinking a couple of years to get things moving and working. It could even be a blueprint for other countries.”

“That sounds ideal actually.”

The office door clicks, and Jo peers around me as I turn to see James, earbuds in and frowning. Taking them out, he gives us both a wan smile as he arrives at his desk.

“What’s up?” he says.

“Des is going to go to Korea.”

James fiddles with something on his backpack as he nods, and I don’t like the way he’s not meeting my eyes.

“Is that okay? I know you volunteered if I didn’t go and …”

“It’s fine.”

I narrow my eyes at him. What is he not saying here?

“Are you and Jane still not …”

Blowing out a long breath, he nods. “We’re still split up.” His voice catches. “And we’re still not talking about it.”

He pinches his fingers over the bridge of his nose, and I turn around to grimace at Jo who just widens her eyes at me. Grabbing his arm, I steer him into the boardroom. His head is still down, looking at his shoes, as we come to a stop beside the conference table.

“We’ve been together ten years,” he whispers, swallowing. “Correction, weweretogether for ten years.” He presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

I step into him and pull him into a hug, and his arms come up my back as he hangs on to me.

“What do I do?” His voice breaks next to my ear.

This hollow devastated feeling I have about Alex: How would I feel if we’d been with each other for a decade? My stomach roils.

“What’s happened?”

“She’s found someone else,” he whispers.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I lean back to look at him and take him by the shoulders. The way Jane looked at him every damn time I saw them like he was God and Adonis rolled into one.

“We had an argument. I mean that always happens, yeah? Nothing is ever plain sailing and when you’ve been with somebody a long time … But she went home after it and we weren’t really speaking and she reconnected with an oldboyfriend, and it’s like … She’s talking about moving back to Ohio.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Jane I’ve met.”

“Yeah, she isn’t particularly impulsive. That’s why we get on so well.” His eyes meet mine and fill with tears, so I pull him straight back into me again.

“You know this is a platonic hug, right?” I say into his shoulder. He’s so damn tall. “Don’t go getting any ideas.”

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