He Chose His Ex, So I Chose My Empire novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: No Name On It

"I'll be there," I told her in the doorway. "Not at the back."

I walked past her to the elevator.

The board's letter landed in my inbox at 3:41, nineteen minutes early.

...

Hugh came to Dogpatch on Monday with a lawyer and a folder.

He didn't come up in the freight elevator.

He knocked on the brick by the door, under Jo's purple sign.

"We're open," Jo said. "Unfortunately."

The team stopped typing.

The grant writer turned his dog photo slightly toward the door.

Hugh put the folder on the church-sale table in front of me.

"An amended gift letter," he said. "The ten million follows the Initiative here. No name on it. No seat. No 'founding donor.' It can't come back to me, and I can't attach anything to it later."

I opened the folder.

The lawyer had used a lot of words to say what he'd just said in four sentences.

I read every one of them anyway.

"If I take this," I said, "it isn't your money anymore. It's theirs. The kids'. You don't get a plaque, a thank-you card or a phone call when the first one moves in."

"I don't want one."

"You'll want one."

"Then I won't get one."

I looked at him for a long time.

He didn't take off his watch.

He didn't look away.

"Pen," I said.

The analyst handed me one.

I signed as the director of First Key, and I made Hugh sign under me, and I made the program manager witness it, because she enjoyed it the most.

"That's done," I said, and closed the folder. "Thank you, donor."

"You said no thank-you."

"That was the last one."

He almost smiled.

He turned to go, and I heard myself say it.

"Friday."

He stopped.

"I signed a lease last week," I said. "Potrero Hill. One bedroom, a kitchen the size of a phone booth. Friday at seven. You're cooking."

Jo put her face down on her keyboard.

Hugh stood there in my bare warehouse.

"I don't cook," he said.

"I know."

"Then why..."

"Because I want to watch you try something you're bad at."

...

He was bad at it.

He was magnificently bad at it.

By seven-twenty the smoke alarm in my new apartment had gone off twice, and he was standing on my one stool, fanning it with the lid of a pizza box he'd sworn we wouldn't need.

"It's a sear," he said.

"It's a fire."

"It's a controlled sear."

"Hugh, the fish is on fire."

He climbed down, looked at the pan and turned off the burner with enormous dignity.

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