Chapter 1

The doorframe caught her between the shoulder blades, and the wood thudded so hard Lena saw a burst of white behind her eyes before the rain even hit her face.

Dorian's hands were still flat on her collarbones, pushing, and his voice came from somewhere above the roaring in her ears. "You don't belong on my floor."

The bills came next.

A fistful of twenties and fifties, still warm from the register drawer he'd emptied two minutes ago, snapped past her face like startled birds. They caught the wind and scattered across the wet sidewalk, sticking to the concrete, sliding into the gutter, darkening as the rain soaked into the paper. One landed on her shoe.

She looked down at it.

"This is the last time you come near my restaurant," Dorian said, and his breath smelled like bourbon and the mint he chewed when he was angry. "The last time you walk into my dining room and ask for anything. You hear me?"

The doorway of the restaurant — their restaurant, the one they'd built together from a failing diner and a second mortgage — threw warm golden light across the rain-soaked sidewalk. The Friday dinner rush was in full swing inside. She could hear the low hum of conversation, the clink of glasses, someone laughing at the bar. On the other side of that warm light, forty people were eating food she'd helped invent. She could name the specials on tonight's board without looking.

"Seven years," she said.

Her voice came out steadier than she expected. That surprised her. She'd practiced this conversation so many times, in the shower, in the dark, in the parking lot of the grocery store where she worked now, and every time her voice had cracked or broken or failed her entirely. But here, now, with the rain soaking through her thin jacket and his hands finally dropping from her shoulders, she sounded almost calm.

"Seven years we worked for this place," she said. "I was here before the first table was bought. I stained the wood on that hostess stand myself. I — "

"You were a line cook." Dorian's laugh was quick and loud and he swept one hand back through his black hair, resetting it perfectly like the gesture was a punctuation mark. "A good one, I'll give you that. But this restaurant — "

"Ours," she said again. "Half of it. On paper. Signed."

The laughter stopped.

Behind him, in the warm light of the dining room, she could see the shape of Marielle moving between tables, her auburn bob swinging, her bracelets catching the light. She was wearing the coral silk blouse Lena had seen in a shop window last month and couldn't afford. Marielle was saying something to a table of four, and they were laughing, and she looked like she owned the room.