Chapter 2

Cara

A few days later, I found a new café by accident.

It was on the corner of Aldwich and 5th, directly across from a glass-and-steel high-rise that caught the morning light and reflected the blue, cloudless sky.

I didn’t know this part of the city well. That was the point. I had taken the train four stops further than I needed to, walked two blocks in the wrong direction, and then found myself standing in front of a café called Groundwork. It had a green awning and a chalkboard menu visible through the window.

The chalkboard was clean and precise. No whimsical calligraphy. No daily affirmations. No artsy charm. Just coffee, and prices.

I went in.

It was nothing like The Last Drop.

The Last Drop had black-and-white photos on the walls and mismatched chairs. It was the kind of place that wanted you to stay and make something creative. Groundwork had clean lines and expensive leather seating. People were here to get caffeinated before returning to their real lives in the office buildings that lined the street. The customers were business casual, suits and pencil skirts with Bluetooth earpieces. They were people who billed by the hour.

These were not my people.

That was exactly why I chose it.

I pushed my sunglasses up my nose and got in line. They were big, round, tortoiseshell sunglasses, the kind that covered half of my face like a mask. The woman ahead of me was on a call. Her voice was quiet, short, and clipped, like she was managing some kind of monetary crisis. The man behind me was reading something on his phone with a worried frown, like he was absorbing bad news. Nobody looked at me. I was, in this context, completely unremarkable—just an ordinary woman in a yellow sundress and a cream cardigan. I had wandered in off the street and presumably would wander out again shortly.

These weren’t the type of people who read romance books. They had probably never even heard of Cara Lennox.

Still, the sunglasses stayed on. Just in case.

“What can I get you?” The barista was older than Jess, efficient, pleasant in a way that didn’t require anything from me except my order and my payment.

“Flat white,” I said. “Large.”

“Name?”

“Cara.”

She typed it without looking up. No flicker of recognition. No careful smile.

I could have kissed her.

I found a table by the window. Normally I preferred walls at my back, but the chair was deep and well-made, and the window looked out onto the street. My eyes kept drifting to the high-rise beyond it—all mirrored glass and intention, climbing the sky with confident certainty.

I opened my laptop.

One thousand, four hundred and twelve words.

But I had showered this morning. I had braided my hair into two plaits. I had put on a yellow dress because yellow was bright and optimistic.

I was going to sit in this chair in this café full of people who had no idea who I was, and I was going to write something if it killed me.

I put my fingers on the keys.

The cursor blinked.

Outside, a cloud drifted by and the high-rise caught the light differently, all that glass going briefly gold before settling back into its usual cool silver. I watched it for a moment.

Somewhere up there, behind one of those identical windows, someone was probably having a very important morning. The kind of morning that had consequences and trajectories and outcomes that mattered.

I looked back at my screen.

Write something, I thought. Write anything.

I forced my fingers to move.

She had been beautiful once, before the world got its hands on her.

I stared at the words.

It wasn’t the novel. But Leanne had cancelled the contract for the third novel, so it didn’t really matter.

It wasn’t anything, really. But it was a sentence, and it was mine, and for the first time in one thousand, four hundred and twelve words, it hadn’t felt like pulling something out of dry concrete.

I wrote another one.

Then another.

I didn’t look up for a long time after that.

The café had shifted into its late-morning rhythm by the time I surfaced. The early rush thinned out, and the leather chairs filled with the quieter second wave. Laptops were open to spreadsheets and the occasional long phone call was conducted in a low, serious voice.

My flat white was long finished. I hadn’t noticed.

I had a whole page of new sentences. I didn’t know what they were, or where they were headed. But they existed, which was more than I could say for yesterday. Or the day before, or the month before.

I flagged down a passing staff member for a refill and leaned back in the deep chair and let myself breathe for the first time in three days. The sunglasses were still on. The braids were still tight and neat. The yellow dress was doing its job.

Fake it, I thought. Just keep faking it until something real shows up.

I glanced up at the high-rise across the street. All those windows. All those lives stacked neatly on top of each other, ordered and purposeful and contained. I had always written about people like that—people who had built walls so perfectly constructed you could live inside them for years before you noticed there was no door.

I wondered, idly, who was in that building.

I looked back at my screen and poised my fingers over my keys.

The door to the café opened.

I didn’t look up immediately—the door had been opening all morning. But something shifted in the room. The barista behind the counter straightened almost imperceptibly. A man at a nearby table glanced over and stared longer than was merely curious.

The man who entered was tall, and he wore a dark, expensive coat. He walked to the counter with an unhurried stride. He didn’t scan the room the way most people did. His eyes went directly to a table near the back—the one I now noticed had been empty all morning despite the café filling steadily around it. His gaze then swept once, briefly, across the rest of the space.

They passed over me without stopping. I had a brief impression of an impossibly handsome face. A long, straight nose, dark slashing brows, sharp cheekbones, and a strong jaw.

Money, charisma, and good looks.

Some guys had all the luck.

The barista was already making something for him without being asked. He was obviously a regular, and she knew his order. He said something quietly to her, and then walked over to his table.

I forced my eyes back to my screen.

I didn’t know why my heart was beating slightly faster than it had been a moment ago. Probably the coffee.

I’d had a lot of coffee.

I closed my laptop, gathered my things, and left the mystery man to whatever kind of morning belonged to a CEO god.