Ravi cocked his head, eyes soft and, worse, kind. "The imperturbable Sora Gallegos. You get knocked down, you get up swinging and demolish the competition. I can't tell you how much I respect that."

"This is the first I'm hearing of it," she quipped, dry. He had never noticed her.

"That's fair. I haven't given other people the admiration they deserve, or the respect. I'm a vain egotist. I'm an indecisive liar who expects decisive honesty in return. I haven't been a good person. I've made people suffer. As a result, some people don't trust me. Some even hate me. This has been the case for longer than I want to admit, but I can own that now. That's the difference. I'm different."

"Why are you here, confessing your sins to me, of all people? I'm nobody." In a world where her sisters Hana and Aiko existed, Sora was a consolation prize. She didn't see the shame in knowing her role.

"That's the thing, S. You've never been a nobody. Not to me. You're too tough for that, and too damn beautiful too."

Sora lapsed into silence a second time and Ravi took that as his cue to go on. She would have thought an artist could understand the value of silence.

"Hana shouldn't have done what she did. Not to get back at me. Not if it hurt you in the process. You didn't need to be involved with all this."

She could see them in her head, her sister and her husband in her bed, their loving murmurs and soft promises of the future shared between lingering kisses. She dreamt of little else in the solitary hours between day trips to the park with Tommy and trips to the boardroom to meet her Board of Directors. Sleep was in short supply in the Gallegos-Himura household.

"Do we have to talk about this? I hate talking about it. It was stupid and it was selfish. It was wrong." So, so wrong. If only more people agreed. Hana gets to have everything, even what's mine. Fair was far from fair.

He rounded her desk and took her hand. She hadn't realized how cold it was until it was wrapped in his. "I'm sorry you lost your husband."

She croaked, a failed laugh. "I'm sorry my husband was a lout. I didn't lose anything or anyone worth keeping." She would believe that someday, she was sure of it. She had loved Anthony for fourteen years. She had given him her youth and heart. She had put her career on hold to watch his thrive from the cheap seats. "If he was worthy, he wouldn't have strayed quite so easily. Again. I forgave him and he did it again. I think I was the only one surprised about him."

"I'm the wrong person to ask, I've never been a fan."

She smiled past the moisture gathering in her eyes. Tony Himura and Ravi Misra were two of the biggest egos L.A. had seen. It wasn't any wonder they butted heads whenever their paths crossed, or that their love lives were a pair of tangling vines. Powerful, creative minds attracted powerful, creative lovers. It so happened they'd attracted the same ones time and again.

"Tell me something I don't know. Really, anything. I don't want this to be how I spend the next year. I don't want to be upset anymore. Tell me something I don't know, please." She lowered her head to let her hair fall into her eyes. God forbid Ravi see her cry.

Ravi rubbed her shoulder. "I don't know if you know this or not, so I'm going to tell you anyway. Anthony was wrong, S. They were both wrong. They shouldn't have betrayed you, not for anything. They shouldn't have lied to you when you needed their support. They should have been there for you."

Sora had been sick in mind and body. Death had followed her like a spectre, haunting her breaths. She'd been sure that death was imminent and instead of banding together to help her, they had helped themselves to each other.

"She was my sister. I thought she loved me."

Ravi swept a wide hand up and down her back. "I want to believe she does. She's just used to getting her own way, and we're all used to letting her have it. Hana doesn't like the word 'no'."

"Why should she? Nobody says it to her. Tony didn't. I was losing my mind and Tony still didn't say no." She brushed the backs of her hands across her face, appalled at smearing her makeup that was supposed to be tear-proof. That was her life nowadays, shopping for cosmetics that could keep up with the rising tide of her emotions from hour to hour. "I hate him."

"You don't hate him, he gave you Tommy."

"I think I'm the best judge of who I hate, Ravi. Tommy is the only good thing he's ever done for me. Fourteen years of believing in him and forgiving him and trusting him and he threw me aside for her. It's sick. It's wrong." She was my sister. Sora was no longer sure Hana still deserved the title.

"I know it is. Karma's real and it will catch up with him. There's nowhere far enough to run." Ravi gently drew her to his chest where she immediately buried her head. "Look at his life, now: him out and you in. Him without you when you were the best thing he's ever seen."

"Not since Hana."

"For now. She didn't seem very interested their fairy tale when I saw her today."

"You went to see her?" She drew away to read the answer in his face. He lied too well to believe his words.

"I went to see my father; I thought he should know his oldest had come home."

"I'm no Manny, but I'm happy to see you again, surprisingly-no offense."

Ravi grinned a touch, that boyish smile of his, all dimples, that could make Hana melt in the cold of winter. Sora was beginning to understand and feel the heat of it herself. He brushed a lock of hair from her face, leaving her warmer inside than the gesture warranted.

"Not a bit taken," he said. "I haven't always comported myself well. I don't think I realized how badly I did until I was on the outside looking back in. I've never been an outsider before. Not sure I like it, but it was necessary for a lot of reasons. The things I saw in myself and the impact I had on others-that was a wake-up call."

"Is this your midlife crisis talking? Most men just trade-in for a younger wife and buy a Maserati."

"Would it be a cliché to say I've been there and done that?"

Sora shrugged under the weight of his arms. It would be the truth which they both knew that all too well. Ravi's track record of proclaiming true love and losing interest was long and storied. No less than her sister's or that of anybody else they knew. Maybe it was the city. Los Angeles might have been the City of Angels, but it gave Las Vegas a run for its money in sin. It was the capital of having it all or dying to get it. Should any of them be surprised that its denizens were far from saintly? They would have to be fools. And maybe they were, or she was. To expect better from the people who claimed to love her, who took her needs into consideration only when their desires permitted. I never needed saints, she reflected. I just needed the truth.

She'd gotten her truth in the end. Truth and humiliation. Countless excuses for behavior that was inexcusable. When excuses had soured the air and crocodile tears had soaked her shoulders, she'd gotten cold recrimination. She'd gotten bitterness for her machinations masquerading as illness and her self-righteousness. She had gotten the ruins of a marriage and home, and she had gotten the blame. In the end, she supposed, all the fanfare hadn't amounted to much, since she also got payback. This office in the middle of downtown Los Angeles was proof of it. So was their house (now her house) in the Hollywood Hills. Her fat bank account. Her continued good mental and physical health. Her ability, infrequent as it was, to laugh. That was her revenge served steaming.

Only sometimes...just sometimes, it didn't feel like victory enough.

"I think we've all been around the block a few times by now. I won't hold it against you."

"Makes you a better person than me."

"I'm not. I just don't want to look back anymore. There's nothing good behind me. Why should I?"

Ravi gazed at her, his brow furrowed in sympathy and something like...thoughtfulness. Thoughtful was new.

"I've got news for you, some good and some bad. The bad is that you've had a few shit years. You got burned by people you loved, you got hurt, you got sick. The good news is something: You got out from under the bad; you healed, you got better. You even got some payback. But here's the best news, S. The best. You've got a future. It's different than the one you planned, it seems lonelier right now, but it won't always be like that. You've got a future as bright as you can make it and it starts tomorrow." He squeezed her shoulders and peered into her eyes as though he could make her believe by sheer force of will.

He almost managed it.

"You are going to have the best year of your life. No more pain. No more betrayal, just joy and friendship and love. You deserve it."

"Starting tomorrow, huh?"

There it was, that smile again.

"All right, I lied about that part. It starts right now."

He drew her into a bear hug that shocked the breath out of her as much as it brought tears back to her eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been hugged. How isolated had she become that a hug could blindside her? Still, she let herself cling to him for just a while. For now, she could let him do the standing tall.

"Guess we're hugging it out for New Year's, huh?"

"Damn right we are." He held on tighter.

Sora rested her cheek on his shoulder and let herself breathe. There were no disasters brewing on the horizon. No heart attacks. No broken hearts. No life-changing revelations. Sora was alive. Tommy was alive. Ravi was changed, Ravi was home.

For the first time in sixteen months, Sora had hope.

The pop and whistle of fireworks sounded outside her plate glass windows in time with the hollers of her inebriated staff down the hall. Explosions of color lit L.A.'s skyline in stark relief against the violet sky. Last year was done and over. A new year, a new life could begin. Maybe Sora was finally ready to let it.

"Happy New Year, Ravi."

"Happy New Year, S."

Maybe she Sora could have it all...with him.