Page 91 of Call Me Mrs. Taylor

Okay. Still in a bad mood, apparently.

Tori goes in for the kill.

She asks where he’s from.

How he was raised.

What his relationship is like with his family.

How many friends he has, and how long they’ve been around.

What he wants for his future.

And he tells her. All of it.

Not reluctantly. Not like he’s being interrogated.

He answers like he wants her to know.

Like her opinion of him matters.

But at a certain point, it feels like he’s answering pointedly, and for my benefit. It’s like he’s telling me,watch and learn, bitch, this is what you do when you’re with somebody.And I hear that. I do.

It’s just…scary.

I don’t want him to know the real me.

He can’t know the true ugliness inside. He’d never love me.

But he’s here, though. Suffering through my aunt’s questions. Forme. And it makes my chest tight. My pulse flutter.

He’s telling me, loud and clear, that he’s mine. That he’s in this.

And that tells me I’m right.

I’m so fucking right for getting rid of anything that stands in our way.

25

Ace

I stand at the site, watching the morning sun bounce off the steel beams as my team finalizes the concrete pours for the last set of piers. We’re ahead of schedule, under budget, and the city inspectors have barely found anything to nitpick.

It’s coming together.

The final tensioning of the cables will happen next week. After that, load testing. We ran the models already, and everything checked out.

I feel good as hell.

Even my team is in sync. They’re down there talking my language, their voices carrying over the hum of the equipment.

“Post-tensioning’s holding at spec,” Jamal says, double-checking a set of numbers on his tablet. “We’re good.”

“Nice,” I say. “What about the deck segments?”

“Pour’s almost done,” he says. “And curing’s on track.”

I nod, surveying the site, feeling that deep satisfaction that comes with doing shit right. No shortcuts. No guessing. No wishful thinking. Just math, planning, and execution. Fuckingscience.

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