Rylann smiled. “That was Shane. God, I haven’t spoken to him in years.” Her eyes swept over the place, the flickering candles having transformed the normally semi-seedy college bar into a romantic setting. She stepped closer and curled her fingers into his shirt. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Kyle brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Anytime, counselor.”

“I CHOSE POORLY,” Rylann said, eying Kyle’s plate from across the table. “I should’ve gone with the curly fries instead of the regular.”

“Yep, you should’ve.” Kyle picked up one curly fry and generously set it on her plate.

She looked offended. “One fry? That’s all I get?”

“You’ve got to live with the consequences of your decisions. How else are you going to learn?” He smiled and popped another curly fry into his mouth.

The Perrier-Jouet had begun to take effect, bringing a pretty flush to Rylann’s cheeks. While normally not a huge champagne drinker, even Kyle had to admit this one wasn’t half-bad. True, one probably didn’t often pair a three-hundred-dollar bottle of bubbly with cheeseburgers and French fries, but that was about as fine as the dining got at the Clybourne.

Kyle’s cell phone buzzed with a new message, and he checked to make sure it wasn’t Sean, the executive from Silicon Valley he’d hired to be his second in command at Rhodes Network Consulting. “Sorry. My business line has been flooded with calls ever since the Twitter announcement,” he said to Rylann. “Sean’s going through all the messages now. I told him to call me if there’s anything that can’t wait until tomorrow.”

She leaned in interestedly, reaching for her champagne glass. “So what’s the next step for you?”

“I set up meetings and begin pitching to potential clients. The two graduates I hired from U of I start work on Monday, and then we’ll be ready to rock and roll. After that, I cross my fingers and hope there are some people eager to get in bed with the Twitter Terrorist.” He flashed her a cheeky grin. “Metaphorically speaking.”

Rylann cocked her head inquisitively. “I’ve been curious about something. What was it that made you change your mind about the corporate world? Back when we first met, I remember you saying that you wanted to teach.”

It was a perfectly innocuous question. And Kyle knew he could answer it vaguely, the same way he’d answered that question many times before. But as he sat across from Rylann, one day away from the nine-year anniversary of his mother’s death, he thought maybe it was time to open up about that part of his life. He kept telling himself that he wanted all of Rylann—perhaps, then, he needed to let down a few of his own walls.

So he cleared his throat, trying to decide where to start. “My perspective on things changed after my mother died. It was a rough time for my family,” he began.

KYLE. THERE’S BEEN an accident.

For as long as he lived, he’d never forget those words.

He had known instantly from his father’s voice that it was serious. His grip had tightened around the phone. “What happened?”

“It’s your mother. A truck hit her car when she was coming home from a drama club rehearsal. They think the driver might have fallen asleep at the wheel—I don’t know, they haven’t told me much. They brought her into the emergency room thirty minutes ago, and she’s in surgery now.”

Kyle’s stomach dropped. Surgery. “But…Mom’s going to be okay, right?”

The silence that followed lasted an eternity.

“I’ve sent the jet to pick you up at Willard,” his father said, referring to the university’s airport. “A helicopter will meet you at O’Hare and take you directly to the hospital. They said we could use the heliport.”

Kyle’s voice was a whisper. “Dad.”

“It’s bad, son. I feel like I should be doing something, but they…they say there’s nothing…”

Shock began to set in at that very moment, when Kyle realized his father was crying.

The drive to the airport, the forty-minute flight to Chicago, and the helicopter ride to the hospital’s rooftop had all been a blur. Some hospital staff member—Kyle couldn’t have picked his face out of a lineup two minutes later—rushed him to a private waiting room in the trauma surgical unit. He’d burst through the door and found his father standing there with an ashen expression.

He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, son.”

Kyle took a step back. “No.”

A tiny, drained voice spoke out from behind the door. “I didn’t make it in time, either.”

Kyle turned and saw Jordan standing in the corner of the room. She had tears running down her cheeks.

“Jordo.” He grabbed her and pulled her into a tight embrace. “I just spoke to Mom yesterday,” he whispered against the top of his sister’s head. “I called her after my exam.” She’d been so damn proud of him.

His heart squeezed painfully tight as his eyes began to burn.

“Tell me this isn’t happening,” Jordan said against his chest.

There was a knock on the door, and a doctor dressed in blue surgical scrubs entered the room.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said in a somber tone. “I wanted to ask if you would like to see her.”

Jordan wiped her eyes, then turned around to face the doctor. Both she and Kyle looked expectantly at their father.

He said nothing.

“Some people find it comforting to say good-bye,” the doctor offered kindly.

Kyle watched as his father—a self-made mogul praised for his business acumen and decisiveness, whose face had been on the covers of Time and Newsweek and Forbes, a man whom Kyle had never once seen hesitate in any decision—faltered.

“I…don’t…” his father’s voice trailed off. He ran his hand over his face and took a deep breath.

Kyle put his hand on his father’s shoulder, then turned to the doctor with their answer.

“We’d like that. Thank you.”

Kyle quickly realized, right from those very first moments in the hospital, that his dad was having a hard time handling the many decisions that needed to be made with respect to his mother’s wake and funeral. To help alleviate that burden, he moved into his father’s house and took over most of the arrangements. It was a grim, emotionally draining time, and certainly not something he’d ever envisioned himself going through at the age of twenty-four—selecting readings and prayers for his mother’s funeral, and the outfit she would wear in the casket—but together, he and Jordan managed to do what needed to be done.

After the funeral, his original plan had been to stay at his dad’s place for another week or so, helping him sort through all the phone calls, sympathy cards, flowers, and e-mails that flowed in every day. Given the empire Grey Rhodes had built, there was an incredible outpouring of people who wanted to offer their condolences, and Kyle and Jordan did the best they could to keep up with all of it.

But when that first week passed, things still seemed no better. His father showed little interest in receiving visitors or speaking to friends and family on the phone, preferring instead to spend the days alone in his study or go for long walks around the estate grounds.

“Maybe he needs to talk to someone. A professional,” Kyle said to Jordan one night when they were sitting at their parents’ dining room table, picking halfheartedly at a lasagna someone had dropped off the day before. They could feed a small nation for a month with the number of casseroles, lasagnas, and baked macaroni and cheeses they had stacked in the refrigerator and freezer. No matter that their father could practically buy a small nation.

“I already tried suggesting that to him,” Jordan said. “He says he knows what’s wrong: that Mom’s dead.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she quickly shook them off.

Kyle squeezed her hand. “It’s just the grief talking, Jordo.” He had half a mind to march into his father’s study right then and tell him to pull his shit together for Jordan’s sake, but he doubted that would help. And he certainly understood his father’s pain; they were all struggling to make sense of their mother’s death.

He decided to stay in Chicago for another week. And then two weeks became three. There weren’t really any good days, just bad days and slightly better days. Eventually things progressed to a point where his father was willing to see friends and family, which Kyle assumed was a good sign. But his dad continued to show absolutely no interest in his company—and the business-related calls, voicemail messages, and e-mails began to pile up, all unanswered.

Thus, it came as no surprise when, three weeks after his mother’s funeral, Chuck Adelman, the general counsel of Rhodes Corporation, called Kyle and asked to meet with him. In addition to working for the company, Chuck was his father’s personal attorney and had been one of his best friends since college. Kyle agreed to meet him for lunch at a restaurant only a few blocks from the company’s downtown headquarters.

“Your father isn’t returning any of my calls,” Chuck led in after they ordered.

“From what I can tell, he’s not returning anyone’s calls,” Kyle said matter-of-factly.

Chuck spoke in a quiet tone, his eyes kind. “Look, I understand. I was there when your parents first met—it was Hash Wednesday, and we were on the quad. Your father spotted your mother sitting under a tree, on a blanket with her friends, and said, ‘That is one totally groovy chick.’ He walked over and introduced himself, and that was it for both of them.”

“Oh my God. My parents told Jordan and me that they met in a bookstore, fighting over the last Classical Civilizations textbook. They were stoned at the time?” Having gone to the University of Illinois for six years, Kyle knew exactly what people did on the quad on Hash Wednesday.