Page 123 of Finding Jess

She nodded, finally feeling some small ounce of relief. Talking about the software always made her feel better. Something about focusing on the fine details and inner workings of the code calmed her. It all made perfect sense, even when the other things in her life didn’t.

“Okay,” he said, letting out a breath. “Starting with the bad news.”

She glanced up at him, the ease she’d felt just a moment before instantly evaporating.

“Han quit.”

“What?” Sam hissed.

Han was by far her favorite developer on their team. He was one of the people she loved working with. It was people like him who made all the work they collaborated on so enjoyable.

And that was one of the reasons why she loved doing what she did—collaborating with exceptional minds who pushed her to think in entirely new ways about what she was trying to build.

“Yeah,” Caleb muttered with a tight frown. “Sorry.”

He continued onto the next string of things they had to catch up on. But Sam couldn’t grasp any of it.

All she could think about was what the next two years of their lives would look like.

Relentless work with none of the people they enjoyed.Working for a huge corporation where they were just one of thousands of tiny pieces on the board.In another new place. A place where they wouldn’t have anyone they knew.

No one they cared about.

Caleb leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, watching her carefully. “What’re you thinking?”

Sam rubbed her temples, staring down at the contract but not really seeing it. “I’m just trying to think it through,” she muttered.

“Are you?” Caleb asked, his tone curious rather than accusatory.

Sam looked up, meeting his gaze. There was no judgment in his expression, only concern. She hesitated, then leaned back in her chair with a long sigh. “I miss how it was at the beginning.”

He watched her for a moment, then sighed. “I miss it too. Sometimes.”

She looked up at him, surprised. “You do?”

He loosed a breath, frowning. “Sometimes I wonder if we made the right call.” He gave her an apologetic look, and for the first time, she could see an edge of remorse in his eyes. “I knowI pushed it on you. When we first started getting clients. All the moving and—”

He stopped, shaking his head. “Those first few months after we left New York,” he continued, his voice soft and careful in a way she rarely heard. “You seemed so—miserable.” He shook his head, staring down at the table between them. “I thought maybe it was because you’d left Jess.”

Her body constricted instinctively at the sound of her name.

“But then,” he continued, “after we hired Han and some of the others, you seemed—better. I thought maybe you just needed more help. And if we kept getting new clients and hiring, then you’d go back to your old happy self.” He looked up at her. “And you did. Or—well, you mostly did.”

She swallowed, thinking back to that first year after New York. He was right. She had been miserable. She’d thrown herself so deeply into the work that she couldn’t see anything else—couldn’t think about anything else. And she was happy—or at least, content. In her own way.

Caleb stared at her, his lips pursing. “Do you remember what I told you when we first quit and started this company?”

Sam let out a dry laugh. “That we were broke and needed money?”

Caleb chuckled. “Okay, yeah, I probably said that too,” he admitted. “But no. I’m talking about when you asked me what my vision for all of this was. What I wanted out of it.”

Sam’s brow furrowed as she thought back. She could still picture the dingy apartment they’d rented, the smell of takeout that had fueled those late nights. But slowly, the memory came into focus.

“That all you wanted was to work with the most brilliant people in the industry,” she said, her voice soft with the recollection. “To see how they thought, and felt, and operated. What drove them to be who they were.”

Caleb nodded, his eyes taking on a fond look she’d never seen in him before. “Do you know who I was talking about?”

Sam blinked, caught off guard. “Uh—I don’t know. The clients?”

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