Page 37 of Waiting for You

He'd told me on the sidewalk that things were better this way. He'd calmly said we should go our separate ways, and my delusional brain had decided his rejection carried some coded message, some romantic promise that really meant come find me the second you pick the lock on your cage.

The man had meant what he said.

I stayed pinned to the hardwood against the locked door until the crying burned itself out. My eyes were dry and heavy, the skin of my face tight and salt-masked, the dark room ringing with a quiet that felt total.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

I'd kept my father's private number blocked for months. I'd done it during a brutal stretch when his demanding calls were flooding my screen, back when I didn't have the armor to survive whatever corporate transaction he was going to force on me. I unblocked the contact. The restriction vanished, and three missed-call notifications populated the screen, all of them from his office.

I dialed him back.

He answered on the first ring.

"Did you block my line?" His voice was a clinical plateau, not raised in anger, not sharp with offense. I could picture the set of his jaw, his eyes already fixed on the verdict, while he waited for me to confess. "I've been calling your cell for days."

"Yes," I said, matching his ice. "I blocked you."

A long silence held the line.

"Why are you calling me at this hour?"

I stared at the floorboards, tracing the grain bleeding through the dark.

"You asked about my thoughts on Andrew," I reminded him, my tone even.

He hesitated a fraction of a second.

"Have you evaluated the arrangement?" he pressed, his corporate register clicking into place.

"I have."

"And what's your verdict?"

My mind flashed back to the suite doorway, to the red nightgown, the toothbrush, the words Violet's friend.

"I'll meet him." I kept my voice level. "I want to get to know him."

The line went quiet.

"Good." The single word came out settled and certain, the decision already finalized in his mind weeks ago, me a piece of inventory finally catching up to the ledger. "I'll arrange the introduction."

The line went dead.

TEN

SLOANE

I woke up, stayed still, and stared at the ceiling.

Xavier was in a bed with that stunning woman, and the sapphire ring hidden in his jacket was meant for her finger. So this was what consequences felt like. I knew the jagged shape of this heartbreak. I'd sculpted this disaster with my own two hands eight years ago, and now I was lying paralyzed in a grand mansion, staring up at the lonely ceiling I'd built.

I let myself lie there and drown in it.

I replayed the rainy afternoon in his first cramped apartment, the one with the busted couch spring that bit you if you sat down wrong. I'd been mid-rant, doing my worst impression of a furious man complaining about a diner, waving an invisible fork around, and Xavier had folded in half on that terrible couch.

"Stop," he'd gasped, his face buried in his hands. "Stop, I can't breathe, you're going to kill me."

"That's the goal," I'd said, and he'd looked up at me, eyes still wet from laughing.