I SAID YES TO HIS BEST FRIEND

"If she hadn't blown it, we might've already—" My ex was drunk, stumbling on his feet, still singing the praises of the woman both families had lined up for him.

Except the more he praised her, the more he circled back to me. To the woman he'd broken up with two years ago. He said I was calculating. Pushy. Hardheaded.

That bending, even once, in front of his mother, was like asking me to die. Then he broke off. He looked down and sighed. "Forget it.

Let's not talk about her." Through the bedroom door, I heard him start up again. "What about you?

I hear you got a girlfriend after you came back." "...Are your folks happy with her?" Chapter 1 The living room went quiet.

Harrison answered, amused. "What kind of question is that?" "I'm the one marrying her. Not my parents." That shut Patrick up for a second.

It took him a while to pull up one corner of his mouth and put on the voice of a man who'd been through it. "You." "You're thinking about this way too simply." He leaned back, and the conversation wandered off on its own, back to his ex. "You have no idea what she put into chasing me.

Every trick in the book." "To engineer a runin, she'd walk half the campus every day, from the architecture school clear over to the business school, just to eat lunch." "All those campus activities, and she never signed up for anything except the ones I was running.

Event ends, everybody leaves, and she has to stay behind and clean up.

Cleans and cleans, and in the end it's just the two of us, and she's waiting on me to drive her home." "The year we graduated, my parents wouldn't let me bring her home to meet them.

So I kept that from her and told her I wanted to make it on my own, and she didn't say a word about it.

Just rented a place with me for two years." Patrick sighed. "So I still can't figure it out." "Seven years she stuck it out.

Why wouldn't she give in to my mother, one time?" "She was that upset that day—so why was she still set on ending it?" Realizing he'd let too much show, Patrick patched over it. "So—" "When you actually get to that point, I'd like to see it." "How are you going to handle your parents?" Harrison said, "Then you won't get to see it." Patrick stopped short. "She's met them?" "Yeah." Harrison laughed low. "And they like her.

Very, very much." Patrick sat there a moment, then laughed along with him. "Fine.

You always did have the luck." He pushed off the couch to stand. "I'll have someone drive you," Harrison said. "Too much trouble," Patrick mumbled. "I'll just crash here." And without waiting to hear what Harrison thought of that, he shuffled off toward the hallway.

I heard it and opened my eyes. Not long after. The bedroom door handle dipped. The door opened a narrow crack and stopped. A rustle of movement outside it.

Patrick's voice came, blurry. "Somebody in there?" Harrison, blocking the door, answered easily. "Yeah." "My girlfriend." ... The air went still.

Patrick pulled his hand back without thinking, most of the drunk gone out of him.

He looked at the door, then at Harrison, and then he laughed, low. "—You dog." He raised a hand and pointed at him. "You just got back and you're already moving this fast." Harrison didn't answer.

Patrick looked away and turned toward the entry. "All right, I'll leave you to it." At the door, he stopped again. Chapter 2 "Harrison." "Yeah?" Harrison looked up.

Patrick stood with his hand on the door, and didn't move for a moment.

When he spoke again, the smile in his voice had gotten more genuine. "Congratulations." The front door closed all the way. Not long after, Harrison eased the bedroom door open.

In the low glow of the floor lamp, our eyes met. He stopped midstep. "I woke you after all." I shook my head.

He lay down beside me and pulled the slipped corner of the duvet back over my shoulder. "Sorry. I asked you over so I'd get one good night with you before the trip.

I didn't expect company." "It's fine." I paused. "That man just now..." "Oh. Friend of mine since we were kids.

When he's had too much, he likes to come find me." Harrison hooked an arm around me and pulled me in, and started telling me about him, in detail, the way people talk before sleep. "He had a girlfriend for years.

They were down to wedding plans, and then his family objected and it ended." "Ever since the two families set him up with the girl he's with now, every time he gets drunk he calls me and pours out the same old grievances, over and over." Harrison sighed. "I've heard it so many times that sometimes I can't tell whether he really resents his ex or just never got over her." Under the covers, my fingers curled. "Harrison." "Mm?" "Are you two... close?" "Yeah." I paused. "How close?" Harrison looked down at me, puzzled.

It took a moment before he laughed. "Put it this way. To borrow Patrick's words, we're blood brothers." "All these years, plenty of projects.

Our families work together too." That stopped me for a second. "Oh. I see." A thread of moonlight came through the curtains and fell slanting across the foot of the bed.

What I'd had ready on my tongue got harder to get out.

Then Harrison bent his head and touched his lips to my temple. "I'm beat." He gathered me closer. "You have work in the morning and I have a flight." "Get some sleep." I swallowed the rest of it.

He reached over and turned off the light. In the dark. His thumb found the engagement ring on my left ring finger and moved over it. The way you'd get a child to sleep. Slowly.

Once. Then again... Looking back. The Braddocks never said to my face that they were unhappy with me.

They only made request after request, and sent Patrick to talk me into giving in. Where the wedding would be. What date. Which style of ring.

I worked at matching what they wanted, every time. Until the last time.

At a family dinner, Patrick's mother told me that after the wedding, Patrick would be going to Singapore to take over the branch office. "Hand off whatever you're working on as soon as you can." "Once you're married, quit and go with him." She paused. "I already called your managing partner." I froze, and turned to look at Patrick.

There wasn't a trace of surprise on his face. "You knew?" "Only since last month." "And you kept it from me this whole time?" "It wasn't settled yet—" Patrick's mother set down her soup spoon, and the porcelain made a cold little sound. "It's settled now." "Newlyweds don't live apart.

If you must work, find something once you're there." I couldn't believe it. "So that's how it goes?" "My job, where I stay or go—none of it needs to be run by me first?" Her face darkened on the spot.

The dinner broke up badly. On the drive back, Patrick was still working on me to apologize. Chapter 3 "Whether we go is something we can still discuss.

Did you have to contradict her in front of the family?" "Telling me after the two of you decided isn't discussing." I looked at him coldly. "It's notifying." At first Patrick kept his patience.

He went from "it's only two years" to "then do it for me." When the soft words ran out, so did the patience. "If you won't give even that much in front of my family, you won't be happy once you've married in." "Tate, you have to understand.

You're not just marrying me." "You're marrying the whole Braddock family behind me." Looking at his face, at how obvious all of it was to him, I gave a bitter little smile.

Neither of us said anything for a moment. I lifted my hand, slid the ring off my finger, and set it calmly in his palm. "All right.

Then I won't." I had, after all, hoped to go from campus to a wedding dress with him. It still took me a long time. Before I'd really digested those seven years. ...

After Patrick and I broke up, I redirected my application for a project posting to the Netherlands.

My firm was part of the old harbor redevelopment in Rotterdam, doing joint design with Herman's team.

The sheer exhaustion of the work could always hold down the noise that kept coming up in my head. A year of that, and then I met Harrison.

A wet overcast afternoon with some light left in it. The old mill building sat under a film of gray mist, and from any distance you couldn't make out a person clearly.

The day's field survey was finished. A few wall connections turned out not to have been fully measured, so I turned back partway.

I'd just ducked through the site fencing when I saw a man I didn't know standing inside, his phone aimed up at the trusses. I frowned. "Excuse me.

You can't just take pictures in here." His eyes went to my phone. "Then why are you taking them?" I flashed the badge hanging on my chest. "I'm the architect on the project.

Are you?" "No." "Then please put the phone away—" "I'm with the project study team." He pulled a visitor pass out of the inside of his coat. "Site access and photography were both cleared in advance." When his escort caught up, he looked at me and smiled. "Can I take pictures now?" Me: "..." ...

I found out later. His team was putting together a hotel project in an old industrial district back in the States, and they'd come to Europe for early case studies.

The Rotterdam stop, as it happened, had been arranged by Herman, the design consultant on our project. The next time we ran into each other was at a lecture Herman gave.

I went to the restroom a few minutes before it started, and when I came back, someone was in the seat I'd saved. When I saw who it was, I didn't bother being polite.

I walked up. "Excuse me. That's my seat." Harrison looked up, then at the chair. "Your name on it?" I bent down and pulled out the book I'd tucked against the side of the chair.

I tore the paper band off the cover, ripped away the extra N at the end of my name, and stuck the corrected band to the chair back. TATUM WREN. "It is now." Harrison: "..." ...

At that point Harrison's study trip was barely half over.

Herman often arranged guides to walk the team through adaptive reuse sites around the city, and when they went out to meet people, he'd bring me along.

One thing and another, and Harrison and I got to know each other a little.

Sometimes, after a site visit, he'd make a point of hanging back behind the group and ask whether I wanted to get dinner.

When the weekend was coming up, he'd ask me to an exhibition in advance.

It meant a long loop around the harbor district, and he'd say offhand that it was on his way, and drive me home.

Chapter 4 Day after day of that roundabout attention, and I started to catch on. That day, we came out of the exhibition hall. The gray had finally broken.

Long gusts came across the Nieuwe Maas and ran all the way up against the embankment.

Harrison bought two coffees, handed me one like it was nothing, and started planning a route for lunch. He stood there scrolling his phone, his face calm.

None of the arrogance rich sons usually carry. Something easier and gentler instead.

A few days earlier, Herman's assistant had let slip that Harrison's work on the Rotterdam stop had actually finished long ago. For over a month he hadn't left.

He'd rearranged the rest of his schedule. Thinking about that, I suddenly couldn't bring myself to say the no I'd been about to say.

A few steps on, I stopped. "Harrison." "Mm?" "Are you pursuing me?" The question caught him flat. The wind off the water carried a faint damp.

It lifted the hair off his forehead and put color in his cheeks. "...Is it that obvious?" I looked at him. "You'd rather it weren't?" "No, not really." "You still haven't answered my question." Harrison looked down and pressed the coffee cup in his hand.

When he looked up, his eyes were steady. "Yes." "I'm pursuing you." He paused and took a breath. "If it's making you uncomfortable—" "Then pursue faster." "...What?" He stared. "I go back to the States in the second half of the year.

You don't have much time left." ... I'd just gotten to the office. Zadie dropped a stack of line drawings on my desk and handed me a coffee. "Wren, the west mill building.

I kept it, the way you wanted." I took them and had a look. "Review this afternoon?" "Mmhm." She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. "Before the partners get in, go over it with me one more time..." The industry had been in a slump for a few years, but Quarry Lane had found solid footing in adaptive reuse and district redevelopment.

When the Rotterdam harbor project moved into its final phase, I actually had a few directions I could have gone.

Around the same time, the Quarry Lane partner who ran that group reached me through Herman. After I'd seen their South Side site, I said yes to Quarry Lane.

The design was mine and Zadie's together. Before I officially started, she'd already pulled me into a few internal design meetings.

In them, she argued for tearing down the worstdamaged building on the west side. I held out for keeping the original trusses.

The two of us went at it for twenty minutes in front of the partners, neither giving an inch.

The meeting ended, the smoke hadn't cleared, and she was already saying, perfectly easy about it: "Wren, there's a new noodle place that opened near here.

Want to grab something before we head back?" I understood at once, and smiled. "Sure." A month and change into the job.

We were sharing lunches, trading coffees, talking now and then about small things that didn't matter. Not close enough yet to trade romantic histories.

She knew I'd grown up in a small town, that my family was ordinary.

I knew she had a boyfriend the two families' elders had introduced her to, that his family had money, that it hadn't been long. That was all. Until that afternoon.

The forecast when I left that morning said clear all day, so I hadn't even brought an umbrella.

Then, near the end of the day, the sky dropped dark and raindrops the size of beans hit the glass curtain wall.

In the space of a few minutes, there was a sheet of water over the front steps. Chapter 5 Of course my car was in for service.

I borrowed an umbrella from the front desk and stood under the overhang, trying to get a ride. A black Maybach pulled up slowly at the steps. The passenger window came halfway down.

Through the rain, Zadie waved at me. "Wren, it's pouring. Let me take you!" I checked my phone again. The wait had gone from twentysome minutes to over thirty.

I stopped arguing, opened the umbrella, and went over fast through the splashing. "Thank you. Sorry to put you out." I got the umbrella down and lifted my head.

And ran, with no warning at all, into a familiar pair of eyes in the rearview mirror. Patrick was in the driver's seat, one hand resting on the wheel.

For a moment his eyes held still. Then he looked down and away, first. Zadie made the introductions, smiling. "My boyfriend.

Patrick." Then she turned her head to me. "Tatum Wren." I looked toward the driver's seat and nodded politely. "Hello." Patrick's profile tightened.

His eyes stayed on the center screen. Nothing. For a while there was only the rain, drumming thick on the roof. The smile on Zadie's face started to stiffen.

She tried, "Pat?" Still looking straight ahead, Patrick finally spoke. "The back door isn't shut." "..." I opened the door again and shut it properly. "Sorry." The rain poured in with the door and was shut back out with a thud.

But the door was closed and the car still didn't move. After a while, Patrick turned his face.

He looked right at me and said, flat and precise: "Still not shut." Something in me went irritated, for no reason, and I reached for the handle again.

He said, impatient: "Did you catch your hem in the door again?" "..." The second it was out, the car went silent. Zadie was digging through her purse. At that, her fingers stopped.

I