Page 17 of The Breakup Broker

Maddy

Are you on your way? Wine and chocolate will be waiting.

Ivy

And shoulders to cry on if needed.

I gathered my things, tucking away the remnants of my professional persona. Two failed meetings. Two breaks from the script. Two cracks in the foundation of everything I’d built.

“Thanks, Marcus.” I stood, legs steadier than I deserved. “For everything.”

“You know,” he called after me, “some things are supposed to break. Makes room for something stronger to grow.”

I pushed through the door into the late afternoon sunshine, his words tangling with Charles’s in my mind. Some things matter more than clean breaks. Some things are supposed to break.

As I boarded the train to River Bend and headed for Cork & Crown, I wondered—maybe some things weren’t meant to break. Maybe they were meant to bend, to change, to grow.

Maybe it was time to find out.

Cork& Crown’s familiar warmth wrapped around me when I pushed through the door. Gloria looked up from polishing wine glasses, her usual smile fading as she took in my face.

“Oh, sweetie.” She reached for a bottle without asking. “That bad?”

“Henry bad.” My voice cracked on his name.

Her hands stilled on the wineglass. “Our Henry?”

As if there could be another. As if anyone else could shatter my professional persona so thoroughly. I sank onto my usual stool, dropping my head into my hands. “He was my mark today.”

“Well, shit.” The curse sounded foreign in Gloria’s elegant voice, like a diamond slipped into a pile of gravel. She set a glass before me, the deep red liquid catching the early evening light. “Where are my daughter and Ivy?”

“Here!” Maddy burst through the door with Ivy right behind her.

“You look worse than you did this morning,” Ivy said, sliding onto the stool beside me.

“That’s because this morning, I only had to deal with Henry.” I took a long sip of wine, savoring the warmth as it spread through my chest. “This afternoon, I had to be professional.”

“How’d that go?” Maddy asked, hopping onto the stool on my other side, her eyes brimming with curiosity.

"I may have been projecting my unresolved Henry baggage onto other people's breakups."

Gloria snorted. "May have?"

"Okay, fine. I definitely did." I stared into my wineglass, the liquid catching the light like a mirror I didn’t want to look into. "It's a problem."

“You think?” Ivy raised an eyebrow but eased it with a teasing grin. “Do we need to stage an intervention?”

“No intervention necessary,” I muttered. “Just … a reminder to keep my personal baggage out of my professional life. Clearly, I need it.”

Gloria shook her head, half-laughing. “Well, at least you’re self-aware. That’s step one, right?”

“On a scale of one to the dove incident,” Maddy said. “How bad did it go?”

“I sabotaged my reputation.” I took another long sip. “Years of perfect composure, ruined because Henry Kingston got engaged in my territory.”

“Almost engaged,” Ivy corrected, signaling Gloria for another round. “And technically, you did your job. Caroline’s message was delivered.”

“Along with some bonus commentary.” I swirled the wine in my glass, the buzz hitting faster than usual—probably because I’d skipped lunch, opting instead to hide in a bathroom and question my life choices.

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