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The echo of her offer followed me back to the table, where my friends were finishing up their lunch.
“Is everything okay?” Vivian asked as I retook my seat. “You were gone for a while.”
“Yes.” I reached for my glass, desperate to alleviate the uncertainty clogging my throat. Xavier, Caroline, Pen…it was too much all at once, and my head throbbed with an impending migraine. “Everything’s fine.”
CHAPTER43
Sloane
When it rained, it poured.
Apparently, bad news didn’t observe the holidays, because after I returned to the office, I’d gotten slammed with crisis after crisis. Jillian had checked into Perry’s parting warning about Asher and found a video of Asher and Vincent DuBois getting into a fistfight. It hadn’t hit the wider internet yet, and I’d spent a good two hours ensuring it never would.
Once I put outthatfire, I’d had to deal with panicked calls from a CEO who’d been caught banging a restaurant hostess in a bathroom stall, a movie star who’d been arrested for attacking a paparazzo, and a socialite who’d left her limited-edition Dior bag somewhere between Paris and New York (I’d redirected her to her assistant. I didn’t get paid enough to hunt down transatlantic luxury bag losses).
It was my busiest workday of the year, and by the time I caught my breath, it was ten at night. I’d sent Jillian home hours ago, so it was just me, a sad dinner of instant ramen, and the ominous countdown to midnight.
Two hours.
I swallowed a mouthful of greasy noodles. My migraine had worsened since lunch, but that didn’t stop me from doom scrolling on social media to avoid thinking about Xavier.
Yesterday, his presence had filled the room. Today, the office felt empty without him, like a film stripped of its soul.
One hour and forty-five minutes.
I gave up eating and tossed the remaining cold noodles in the trash. I’d finished my work, so why was I here instead of at home, enjoying a nice movie with a glass of wine?
Because the Empire State Building is a twenty-minute walk away.
Because going home means you’ve made your choice.
Because this is the last place you saw him, and you feel closer to him here than anywhere else.
I groaned and dug the heels of my palms against my eyes.
If only I had a magic eight ball to tell me what to do. I’d always prided myself on my decisive nature, but when it came to Xavier, I was a mess.
He drove me up the wall sometimes, but he challenged me like no one else did. He pushed me outside my comfort zone while making me feel safe enough to do so, and he’d made me laugh, cry, andfeelmore than anyone else I’d ever met.
Younger me had been convinced that what I’d had with Bentley was love, but it wasn’t until Xavier that I realized Bentley had been a mere prologue to the real story.
Me and Xavier, the most unlikely of couples. Opposites in so many ways, yet similar in so many others. He knew every part of me intimately—mind, body, and heart—and he loved me not despite butbecauseof my flaws.
We’d seen each other at our worst, yet we’d fallen in love anyway.
A marble fist grabbed my chest and squeezed.
There’s no catch. Believe it or not, not everyone is out to get you all the time.Caroline’s voice wormed its way into my consciousness.
I never thought there’d be a day when she said anything helpful, but sitting there alone, in my dark office, while the man I loved waited for me minutes away, her words struck hard.
There’s no catch.
I was afraid it’d hurt more if Xavier and I broke up down the road, after I’d gotten more attached, but I wasalready in love with him, and it already hurt so much I couldn’t think straight. I’d cried for the first time in my life, and I was eating instant ramen alone in my office at night, for Christ’s sake.
The same office where we’d met.
The same office where he’d given me the ultimatum.
