Page 4 of Best In Class (Savannah's Best #7)

Dom

T he Alley Cat Lounge is a Savannah institution.

It smells like jazz, good bourbon, and bad decisions.

Tucked below street level, down a narrow stairway, the bar glows with amber light and the weight of mistakes made after one too many drinks.

Lev and I are at the bar, drinks in hand, not talking…yet. We don’t need to fill the silence. That’s the thing about growing up together—you don’t have uncomfortable silences, but this one is heavy with Lev’s discontentment with me.

He takes a slow sip of his IPA. Lev is a wine snob, which means he only drinks wine at home from his cellar, and when he’s out, he sticks to beer.

He has Luna’s eyes, and they have the same Steele temper, though Lev wears it better, or rather hides it better. He’s the calm before the storm. Luna is the storm.

“You gonna tell her the truth?” he asks, casually, like he’s not tossing a live grenade on the table between us.

He found out the truth only recently, and only because of a slip of his father’s tongue. Now, he knows and he’s insistent that I tell Luna.

“You think it’ll help?”

“I think you owe her that much.”

He’s not wrong. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to tear the scab off something that still bleeds. “First, she doesn’t want to talk to me about?—”

“ Please , I know that you know how to push a conversation where you want it to go.”

He’s not wrong. “I don’t think she’s gonna forgive me because I was a coward with a reason.”

“No,” Lev agrees bluntly. “I think she might understand why you were a coward. There’s a difference.”

Not for Luna, who lives in the black and the white.

In her psyche, there are no grays. You made a mistake, you’re out.

I don’t think it’ll matter that I, the son of Abigail Calder, the erstwhile housekeeper of the Steele mansion, did what I had to do to be able to build a life that would give me the right to fight for Luna. To earn her.

I managed to get into Cornell. Luna was at Georgia Tech. We’d managed a long-distance relationship. It was messy, imperfect, and intense as hell.

Until I torched it.

I was finishing my third year at Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning—on a scholarship, barely hanging on financially, juggling three jobs, studio reviews, and professors who saw potential in me.

I was living on about three hours of sleep a night.

Falling fucking apart while Luna was thriving.

She made Georgia Tech look easy. Still aced every exam, and still managed to make time to love me.

She talked about transferring to New York. Applying to Columbia. NYU.

“We could get a place together.” She curls up against me in my shitty dorm room that smells like wet concrete and ramen.

I panic. Not because I don’t want her near me—God, I do. But because her future is bright, polished, and well-funded. And mine is hanging by a thread since Nathaniel Steele cornered me a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting my mother.

“You think you’re in college on merit?” he says arrogantly. “Son, you’re in Cornell because I allow it.”

“Sir—”

“I know about my daughter and you. It’s not happening. You end this.”

“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, you don’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. I was going to be Luna Steele’s peer even if it killed me.

“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, would ever love. 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 did then .

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 was my 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 have her .

“I couldn’t stand it if I’ve lost her forever.”

Lev finishes his beer, then looks at me dead on. “Then tell her the truth.”

My gut twists.

“What the fuck are you afraid of?” Lev asks in exasperation when he sees my expression.

“Everything,” I murmur.

The only thing heavier than the guilt is the fear that telling Luna will only confirm what I’ve always been afraid of, that I was never enough for her in the first place.

“Of course, I find you here,” a voice calls from behind me and saves me from answering Lev.

Gabe Rhodes and I have known each other for a long time, as I worked on a couple of Rhodes hotels on the East Coast, including their flagship one in New York.

I give him a quick hug. He joins us at our table.

“Aurora said she, Luna, and Stella are coming here for drinks…so no surprise Dom’s here,” Gabe teases.

“In his defense,” Lev remarks lazily, “I suggested the Alley Cat, so he doesn’t have an ulterior motive.”

I ignore him.

Luna will be here , I think giddily.

Okay, so maybe I’ve been half stalking her since I came back to Savannah. Finding ways to be with her while she looks at me like I’m a serial killer .

Lev thinks I’m torturing myself.

He’s right. I am.

I perk up when I see Stella, Aurora, and Luna come into the Alley Cat.

She predictably sighs when she sees me. I smile. She makes me happy. Even when she’s pissed with me, being around her makes me happy.

Talk about being whipped!

I wish she’d give us a chance. Maybe Lev is right. Maybe I should tell her what happened. Maybe….

“Seriously, Dom, you’ve got to get a life,” Stella mocks when I stand up and hug her.

“I didn’t know.” I raise both hands, palms out. “Lev suggested meeting here.”

I give Aurora a quick hug. I recently got to know her—she’s not from the old days, and she looks exactly like the kind of woman I’d see Gabe with, the antithesis of his ex-wife, who was a fucking nightmare.

Aurora, in contrast, is soft, gentle, full of joy, and with a spine of steel.

We connected as soon as we met, probably because we’re both half-black in a lily-white Savannah world.

Then I turn to Luna. “How are you, Moonbeam?”

She lets out a long breath and mutters, “Fine.”

I can smell her. She’s changed her perfume, which makes sense; she’s not a teenager anymore. She now wears a light rose Jo Malone. She used to wear Marc Jacobs’ Daisy when we were together. I think the rose suits her better. I think everything suits her perfectly .

What’s that song about when a man loves a woman ?

Since Stella’s husband, Noah, will be joining us, we move to a larger table. I sit next to Luna. We order drinks and some snacks—everyone is talking and laughing. It’s an easy Friday evening after work.

“The meeting went well yesterday.” I make small talk with Luna.

“Yes. I think we have an excellent project team.” She isn’t always a bitch to me, sometimes, she’s too tired, especially after a long day, and then she just treats me like someone she knows but doesn’t dislike.

I don’t like it.

As long as I can piss her off, she’s mine. If she starts to treat me like an acquaintance, it will break me in ways I don’t know.

“Except Camy.”

Predictably, she rolls her eyes. “Does your girlfriend need to be part of this?”

“She isn’t my girlfriend,” I say.

Damn it, woman, I haven’t touched anyone else in nearly two years. Not since I realized I couldn’t live without you. Not since I started trying to find the courage to come back to Savannah—to you.

“All evidence to the contrary,” she snaps.

“Moonbeam, is every boy you’re with a boyfriend?” I challenge.

She glares now. “I don’t date boys.”

“Please, what was his name? Jeremy?—”

“Oh, and Camy is the epitome of a woman?” she scoffs.

Stella gives me a look that says, ‘ Stop riling her up .’

I can’t do that. As long as I can get a reaction from Luna, she’s mine.

“Camy is a beautiful woman,” I say softly.

“And what the fuck does that have to?—”

“Dom, heard you turned down the Frescobaldi museum project in Florence?” Gabe interrupts Luna’s overheated response.

“Yeah.” I take a sip of my drink and hope he’ll leave it at that.

“You turned it down?” Luna demands, incredulous.

I shrug.

“Why?” she asks.

The Frescobaldi family is one of the most well-known names in the wine industry worldwide, and particularly in Tuscany. However, a project like theirs would require me to live in Florence for a year, and as much as I love Italy, there’s no way I can live there and get Luna back in my life here .

“It’s the wrong time,” I murmur.

“Maybe if you’d said yes to that, then you wouldn’t be making a nuisance of yourself on my hospital project,” she throws at me.

Lev lets out a loud and long sigh. “Luna, give it a rest, will ya? For a moment?”

Before Luna can rip her brother a new one, I slide an arm around her and pull her into me. It’s a friendly gesture, one designed to divert her and make me feel like I’m home.

“Stop it.” She pushes me away.

“I’m just trying to avert World War III here,” I joke.

I used to do this when we were kids. I’d hug her, or kiss her, or hold her, or hold her hand, depending upon how old we were, to stop her from flying off the handle. An intimate gesture to calm her.

It works. Like it always did.

Gabe pulls me aside as the evening winds down, his expression flat and unimpressed.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

I arch a brow. “Charming as always.”

“You really think pretending something’s going on with Camy is going to bring Luna back to you?”

“I’m not dating Camy,” I mutter, more than a little pissed that he’s seen right through the stupid ploy.

But the truth is, I needed to see Luna react.

Her jealousy, the way she seethes when Camy’s name comes up—it soothes something raw in me.

Makes me believe she still cares, even when I’m scared shitless that I’ve already lost her for good.

Gabe shakes his head. “Yeah, you know that. Camy clearly doesn’t. And Luna sure as hell doesn’t.”

“Gabe—”

“You’re a grown man,” he cuts in. “Act like one. Go after her like you mean it.”

“I am,” I grumble.

“By what? You think not telling her that the only reason you’re on that hospital project is because you fought for her is somehow noble?”

He’s not wrong. He knows Tommy Minton, knows precisely how the politics in this town work—old, Southern, sexist as hell .

“At least Tommy’s just a misogynist and not a racist since he wanted me on the project,” I say with a dry laugh.

Gabe doesn’t crack a smile. “Dom, you’ve been circling her for a year. It’s time to stop waiting for the stars to align and just go get her.”

I throw my hands up. “She won’t talk to me. Not about us.”

He claps a hand on my shoulder. “You’re gonna be fine! Trust me. At least you didn’t tell Luna—in front of half of Savannah—that she’d make a terrible mother.”

I laugh despite myself. Gabe had done that to Aurora when he was jealous and drunk, and saw her out with another man after a breakup. Took him months to crawl out of that hole. But now he’s got her. The woman he fought for. The love of his life, in his bed, in his home.

“She loves me,” I say, more like a prayer than a certainty. “I know she does. She just needs to forgive me. See past the shit I’ve done. Let herself admit it.”

“It’s been a year since you moved to Savannah,” Gabe says quietly.

“Yeah, I know, Gabe, ‘cause I’ve been counting the fuckin’ days,” I snap. “I’m the one who’s been on my knees while she keeps kicking me in the ribs with her damn boots.”

Gabe smirks. “You always do things the hard way.”

Yeah, I do, especially when it comes to Luna.