Page 45 of Knot Your Sunshine (Snugverse Romcom #2)

Chapter forty-two

Josh

My fingers hover over the keyboard, but they won't move.

Her face fills my vision instead. Violet eyes wide with betrayal. The way her voice cracked when she said we didn't see her as an equal.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see stars.

Why, oh why did we treat her like she'd shatter at the first sign of trouble?

What if she's really gone? What if we lost her because we couldn't see past our own need to shield and protect?

Because we couldn't treat her like the capable woman she—

A knock breaks through my spiral.

Silence.

Another knock, harder. "Josh?" Keanu's voice, muffled through the door. "Come on, man. I know you're not sleeping. Your light's on."

I stay silent, staring at my laptop screen where code blurs into meaningless symbols.

"Josh, please. Let us in." That's Noa. Of course he's here too.

I wait another ten seconds, making them sweat, before calling out flatly: "It's open."

The door opens and I turn to the window instead of facing them. The ocean stretches endless and dark, moonlight painting silver lines on the waves. Somewhere out there, dolphins are probably still playing. The world keeps turning even when mine has stopped.

"Josh." Noa's voice, closer now.

I say nothing. Let the silence stretch until it becomes uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry."

Three seconds pass. I count them in my head. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three.

"For what?" My voice comes out deliberately neutral.

"I screwed up. You were right to be angry. My need to control everything... it clouded my judgment, and I made the worst possible choices. I failed as a leader. I failed you."

"M'kay."

"Josh, please." Keanu's voice carries that particular note it gets when he's trying to keep everyone friendly. "Just listen to what Noa has to say."

"Why?" I still don't turn around. "What's going to change? She's gone. We broke her trust. The math's simple: trust broken equals relationship over."

"Except there's no way I'm letting our scent match leave because I screwed up." Noa's voice builds with each word, conviction replacing despair. And despite myself, I find my attention sharpening.

"And what exactly are you going to do about it?" My voice softens slightly, losing some of its edge.

"I don't know yet. Only thing I know is I can't do it alone. Hell, even Keanu and I can't. But with your help... the three of us, there's nothing we can't do." His voice drops. "We need you, Josh. Now more than ever. So we can save our omega's dream... and possibly our relationship with her."

I finally turn. They're both standing there, wearing the same devastation that's been eating me alive. Noa's right. Whatever slim chance we have of fixing this mess, it only exists if we work together.

"You suck, Noa." The words scrape out rough.

My throat closes. I have to swallow twice before I can continue.

"But I'm sorry too." The tension in their shoulders eases slightly. "Nobody forced me to go along with you. I made that choice. This is on me too. On all of us."

The admission burns in my throat, but it's true. I could have spoken up. Could have insisted we include her. Instead, I calculated that the risk of upsetting her was worth avoiding.

I calculated wrong.

But even as I've been drowning in regret, another part of my brain has been working. Finding patterns. Seeing anomalies. Numbers that don't quite add up the way Chadwick presented them.

"I've been digging into the raw franchise data." My voice shifts, gains energy. "The stuff Chadwick's been using for the attribution reports."

I turn the laptop toward them, revealing the chaos on my screen.

"The data is a complete disaster. Every franchisee seems to report differently.

Some use daily totals, others weekly. Some include product sales, others just services.

No standardization whatsoever." My fingers start moving, pulling up windows, highlighting inconsistencies.

"Chadwick's supposedly been turning this chaos into clean reports, but the math ain't mathing.

I think we're missing the real story because the source data is deliberately obscured. "

Keanu leans in, his reflection joining mine in the screen. "Can you fix it?"

"Already started." My fingers fly across the keyboard, opening my code editor. "I've been building a program to clean it up, standardize everything, make it actually comparable."

I show them the code, hundreds of lines that will parse through the mess, identify patterns, standardize formats, reveal truth hidden in noise.

"This function here identifies date formats and converts them all to ISO standard. This one normalizes revenue categories. And this—" I point to a particularly complex section, "—this accounts for the different reporting frequencies and creates true daily averages."

Their faces reflect the screen's glow, hope flickering in their eyes.

"Once this runs, we'll see what's really happening. Not Chadwick's version. The actual, complete picture."

I execute the program. A progress bar appears, pixels filling green as thousands of data points get cleaned, sorted, transformed. The terminal fills with scrolling text:

Processing franchise001_miami.csv... Standardizing date formats... Normalizing revenue categories... Calculating daily averages... Complete.

Processing franchise002_atlanta.csv...

"Twenty minutes," I tell them, watching the progress bar inch forward. "Maybe thirty."

We sit in silence and watch the screen like it holds our salvation.

Which I pray it does.

* * *

"Whoa, that's wild," Keanu breathes, staring at the results my algorithm produced.

The screen shows clean, organized data, patterns that were previously invisible to us jumping out immediately.

"But—this means—" I pull up comparison charts, my fingers flying across the keyboard, barely able to keep up with what I'm seeing.

"Yes." Noa straightens, and I watch the transformation happen.

His shoulders roll back. His chin lifts.

The semi-defeated alpha who walked through my door becomes the strategic leader who helped us build an empire.

"And that just gave me an idea." He pulls out his phone, eyes blazing with purpose. "Something that could fix everything."

He looks at us, determined. "I need you both with me for this."

Keanu and I exchange glances. Whatever Noa's planning, we're in. We nod.

Noa hits call and puts it on speaker.

The phone rings twice before a crisp, professional voice answers. "Naomi Quinn."

"Hello, Ms. Quinn. This is Noa Hale. I'm calling about our partner, Mia Everly. I know it's late... or early, but we need to talk."

The pause stretches so long I check the screen to make sure the call hasn't dropped. The timer keeps counting: five seconds, six, seven.

"Mr. Hale." Her voice could freeze lava. "Mia is my client. I don't think—"

"I understand she's your client," Noa interrupts smoothly. "But if you have her best interests at heart, you'll want to hear what I have to say."

"Mr. Hale, if this is some attempt to manipulate my client—"

"It's not. I have a new offer for her. Unconditional. One that gives her everything she wants and more."

Another pause. I can practically hear her weighing options through the phone, calculating risk versus reward for her client.

"You have thirty seconds," she finally says.