Page 11 of Best In Class
“Sir, we love?—”
“Boy, you keep playing Romeo with my daughter, and I’ll make sure every door slams shut on every goddamn opportunity you’ve got. I’ll fire your mother, kill your scholarship, get you pushed out onto the streets. She’s not in your league, boy. You know that.”
I do. I’m a half-black man in Savannah, raised by a single mother who scrubs other people’s floors. Luna sleeps on imported Italian sheets.
Nathaniel isn’t just threatening me, he’s reminding me of my place.
“My daughter won’t appreciate that I have interfered in what she thinks is a secret. So, you need to end this in a way she believes it. Got it?”
Yeah, I got it.
I made it easy for her to hate me.
I let her think I cheated. I broke up with her in the coldest, most cowardly way I could.
She can forgive a lot. I know her big heart. The one thing she can’t and won’t forgive is infidelity.
And she didn’t.
She stayed at Georgia Tech.
After I graduated, I tried to talk to her, but that was a debacle. She hurt me. She hurt my pride.
“Really, Dom, you think I’m going to be with someone like you?” she jeers when I try to talk to her.
“Moonbeam—”
“I’m a Steele. Got it?”
“Snobbery doesn’t suit you,” I grit out.
“The thing is, Calder,youdon’t suit me. I think one should date one’s peers, don’t you agree?”
That was it.
I left for New York, where I had a job offer, thinking a change of scene would help me outrun the wreckage.
Spoiler alert:It didn’t.
I worked hard. I won awards. I started my own firm. Iwasgoing to be Luna Steele’s peer even if it killedme.
“Come on, Dom,” Lev urges. “You were a kid without resources.”
“Yeah, I was poor,” I say in self-disgust. “And smart and ambitious.”
And terrified!So, I let Nathaniel win and walked away from the only girl I’d ever loved, wouldeverlove. She’s my soulmate. I know this.
Lev watches me like he’s trying to decide whether to punch me or pity me.
“I should’ve told her back then, forced it. I should’ve fought harder for her.” I wear regret like every other moron who lost something precious—with the fit of a tailored garment.
“You gotta forgive yourself, Dom.” Lev shakes his head. “You were twenty-one. You didn’t even know how to fight for yourself, let alone for her. Now…it’s different. You’re different.”
Yeah, now I’ve got awards, clients with deep pockets, and my name etched into the glass walls of museums and skyscrapers. Now I’m a man who rebuilt his entire life brick by brick—and still ended up standing in front of the same woman, knowing damn well I’d tear it all down if she asked.
But there is a difference.Now, even if I were penniless, I’d still be doing what I was, trying to make it right with her. I’ll never have the kind of money she has, but that doesn’t matter now as it didthen. I didn’t know who I was, now, a decade later, I do. But more than that, I knew that what made me wasn’t my bank account, it was my resilience, it wasmy grit, it was my confidence that no matter what, I’d be fine.
Granted, winning the Pritzker gave me some of that, but I now had it. Now that I did, I wanted to haveher.
