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I reeled. “What?”
His eyes were searching mine like he was trying to peer into my soul. “The vandalism charge on your record is for damage to a sports car. What happened?”
The sudden change in topic was so jarring, I had to take a moment to mentally re-align myself. “Where did that come from?”
“It's been bugging me since I saw it. Like an itch in my brain I can't scratch,” he said. “You were set on an incredibly clear life trajectory, then derailed at the very last second. I don’t get it.”
“Why are you so weirdly stuck on this?” I asked, frowning at him. “For the last time, I did a stupid thing, I got caught, I paid the consequences. End of story.”
“No, Sanchez. You spent your entire academic career working toward utter perfection, then picked up a brick, and shattered it all to bits just three weeks before graduation. I'm willing to bet my right arm that you hadn't so much as stolen a stick of gum before then, so what happened?”
“You didn’t know me back then. How are you so… sure…”
…
Oh my god.
“What's his name?” I asked. My heart was starting to palpitate, pumping every drop of blood in my body up to my head. “The guy that Mandy cheated on you with. You said he's a lawyer? What's his name?”
When Alice had said “MJ” was coming to the party, I'd assumed the “J” stood for Mandy’s middle name.Like an idiot.
Adrien flinched, taking a step back.
“Joshis yourcousin?” I shoved myself off the countertop. “Joshis the person she's engaged to?Joshua MotherfuckingGoldman?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?” I yelled. Sparks tingled under my skin, cooking my flesh.
“Right now.” He raked a hand through his dark hair, the tips of his ears bruising. “I was getting there, I swear.”
“Adrien, what the fuck?”
“I can explain.”
“Let me guess. You wanted to get back at Josh for sleeping with your fiancée, so you orchestrated this whole thing to fuck with him. By fuckingme.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
Holy shit. I’d been so stupid.
Iknewthings weren’t adding up. He’d claimed he knew who I was because Alba kept framed pictures of me on her desk, but that couldn’t have been true. Because for every picture of me on her desk, there would have been three of Olive, and he didn’t know who she was.
But I’d had just enough alcohol in my system that night not to question it.
“Okay, Ria, you have every right to be angry with me, but I really need you to hear me out on one thing: I didnotsleep with you to get back at Josh, okay? None of that—us—was fake. I swear.”
I swatted his hand away when he reached for me, a hot mixture of anger, hurt, and betrayal thrashing in my chest.
I didn’t need to know what his tell was to know he was lying. Of course that was why he’d slept with me, called me pretty, told me the things he had.
What? Did Ireallythink that Adrien Cloutier wanted to take me out on dates? Did Ireallythink he’d meant it when he said he wanted to tell people I was his for real? That he’d fantasized about us cuddling?
Was I really that naïve?
The thrashing in my chest began to boil up to my throat, cheeks, eyes. I blinked it back, refusing to shed a single tear in front of him—overhim.
“What exactly was your plan when you brought me here? What were you thinking?” My heart squeezed out a string of fluttery pulses that pulled at my gut. I felt sick. “Were you really going to tell me? Or was it supposed to be a horrible little surprise when he showed up to the party?”
His expression said it all. “You have to understand how angry I was,” he tried, holding a palm up. It was clear how much effort he was putting into keeping his tone even and calm. “After the breakup, I threw myself into work. It all happened around the time my dad retired, and… no one thought I could do it. The media, the board. I was too young, too arrogant, too inexperienced. And I decided to prove them wrong. I put everything I had into the East Asian expansion, Ria. It was—is—my baby. I’d been planting seeds and working on the plan before I even became CEO. That investment wasn’t just about the money and resources the Japanese firm was going to provide. It was about building confidence with my board of directors. Proving that I could do this job, and I could do it well.”
