Chapter 8 — The Man Who Came Back

Jamie came into the building with me, then announced he was going to buy noodles downstairs.

I knew he wasn't hungry. He knew I knew.

I let him have the excuse.

Owen took me into my office to review a message from our lawyers while Ethan waited in the conference room.

Ten minutes later, I heard Jamie say, "You might want to stop before that gets embarrassing."

I opened the conference room door.

Ethan stood near the table with his shirt partly unbuttoned. Jamie stood beside the window, my coat draped over one arm.

Ethan stared at me.

"I thought you were—"

"Standing behind the curtain?" I asked.

Jamie held the coat out.

"An unfortunate resemblance."

I took it from him.

"Why didn't you tell him who you were?"

He glanced at Ethan, then back at me.

"He started talking before I could. Then I wanted to know what he'd say."

"And now you've heard it. Outside."

His jaw tightened.

For one second, I saw the man from the stage again. Then I touched his hand, and he looked down at me.

"Twenty minutes," I said.

"I'll be here."

He left. I closed the door and turned back toward Ethan.

"Button your shirt."

His fingers shook.

I waited until he sat down before taking the chair opposite him.

"What did you come to say?"

"That I made a mistake. That I know what I lost."

"You knew I was here before you lost me."

He looked at my ring.

"Seeing you with him was different."

I had wanted Ethan to notice when I wore a new dress. When I waited at a restaurant after a meeting ran late. When I offered my hand and he found a reason to keep his own occupied.

I hadn't wanted another man to be the thing that made me visible.

"Sloane planned the photographs," he said. "I was drunk. I didn't understand what she'd done until afterward."

"I believe she threatened you. I saw the messages."

His face lifted.

"But that doesn't explain why you posted the announcement," I continued. "Or why you let me pay to protect you and then stopped answering my calls."

He swallowed.

"I was angry with you."

"For what?"

"For making it so easy to need you."

The sentence hurt precisely because it was honest.

"I never asked you to need me."

"You never had to ask. The roles, my mother's bills, the school I couldn't keep funding. Every good thing in my life ended with your name on it."

"You could have told me you wanted things to change."

"I didn't want to sound ungrateful."

"So you decided to hurt me instead?"

He covered his face briefly.

"I didn't think it would end like this."

"You thought I'd wait."

He lowered his hands.

Neither of us needed to say more about that.

"I love you," he said at last.

I looked at him, at the face I had once searched for in every room.

There were things about him I still loved. His kindness toward people who couldn't repay it. The seriousness with which he had once talked about acting. The young man who had sat outside a hospital ward with me before his career began.

They were real. They just weren't enough to make this a relationship I wanted again.

"You cared about me," I said. "You also kept treating my affection like a debt you had to settle before you could touch it."

"I can stop."

"I stopped waiting."

His eyes filled.

"Is he better than me?"

"He isn't ashamed of wanting me."

Ethan looked down.

"I was ashamed of wanting things I hadn't earned."

"I wasn't a prize you had to afford."

His breath broke on the way out.

I let him sit with it. For once, I didn't offer to make the feeling easier.

"Could I come back to the company?"

"Owen can discuss work when you're free of your Mercer contract. I'm not promising that as a way to soften this conversation."

He nodded slowly.

"I suppose that's fair."

When he stood, he looked older than he had when he arrived.

"I'm going to put things right," he said.

"Do it because they need putting right. Not because you think it'll bring me back."

He held my gaze, and for a moment I believed he understood.

After he left, I found Jamie in the corridor with noodles growing cold in his hands.

"You didn't need to humiliate him," I said.

He looked away.

"I know."

"Then why?"

"Because I spent too long watching him have the place I wanted. I didn't like seeing him walk back in as if he could still choose it."

The admission was ugly enough to feel true.

I took one of the containers.

"He doesn't choose for me. Neither do you."

He looked at the closed conference room door.

"Did you ever think about going back?"

"During the conversation? No."

The answer eased something in his face, but not everything.

"You can miss somebody and still know you don't want the life you had with him," I said.

Jamie looked at me again.

"I'm trying to learn which part belongs to me."

"The part where I come out and want to see you."

He set his container down carefully.

"That part I like."

I stepped closer. He moved his hand toward me, then waited until I took it.

I hadn't wanted to spend the evening repairing his jealousy as well as closing my past. But hearing him admit the fear instead of disguising it made me willing to stay there another moment.

"Then be here," I said. "Without tricks."

Jamie's face tightened, then he nodded.

"I won't do it again."

I set the food on a nearby table and reached for his collar.

He bent toward me immediately, then stopped himself.

"You're still angry."

"A little."

"You can stay angry and kiss me. I won't misunderstand."

I almost laughed.

Instead, I kissed him slowly enough to feel the tension leave his shoulders. When I drew back, his eyes stayed closed for a moment.

"There," I said. "You don't have to compete with a memory."

He looked at me then, vulnerable beneath all that beauty.

"You make it sound easy."

"It isn't. That's why I'm telling you."

At home, he stayed close without asking about the conversation again.

I fell asleep with his hand beneath mine.

After midnight, the phone rang.

Ethan had been in a serious collision. The hospital had my name in his healthcare paperwork.

I sat up so abruptly that Jamie woke.

"Vivian?"

I held the phone tighter.

"Which hospital?"