You Chose Your Assistant, So I Called the Man I Rejected Three Times

EVELYN'S POV

Adrian didn't ask why.

"Get out of the cab," he said. "Wait in the lobby. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

He made it in eleven.

I was standing just inside the glass doors with my suitcase when a black Range Rover pulled to the curb. The doorman, Frank, had been pretending not to stare at me for ten minutes. He stopped pretending when Adrian stepped out into the rain without an umbrella.

He was taller than I remembered. Dark coat, no tie, his hair already damp at the temples. He came straight to me, took the handle of the suitcase from my hand, and looked down at the broken wheel.

"This thing's seen better days," he said.

"It's mine."

Something shifted in his expression, like he understood exactly what I meant by that. He didn't say anything about Cayden. He didn't glance up at the eleventh floor. He loaded the suitcase into the back, opened the passenger door, and waited until I was inside before he shut it.

When he slid behind the wheel, he turned the heat up without asking.

"Where do you want to go tonight?"

Not *what happened*. Not *are you sure*. Just where.

I watched the wipers sweep the windshield twice. "My father's house. In Greenwich."

He nodded and pulled into traffic.

We were on the highway before I made myself say it. "Adrian."

"Mm."

"I meant what I said about marriage."

His hands didn't move on the wheel. For a long moment I thought he hadn't heard me over the rain.

"I know you did," he said. "That's why I'm not going to ask you to repeat it until you've slept."

---

My father had left the porch light on.

He was asleep by the time we arrived, but the housekeeper had made up my old room, and there was a note on my pillow in his blocky handwriting. *Welcome home. We'll talk in the morning. Love, Dad.*

I sat on the edge of the bed holding it until my phone started buzzing.

It was 2:14 a.m.

The first text came in alone.

*Why is your key on the counter?*

Then another, thirty seconds later.

*Where are your clothes?*

I pictured him standing in the closet with the light on, staring at the empty hangers on my side. The silk dresses still there. The jeans gone. I wondered how long it had taken him to notice the difference.

Then the calls started.

I let the first one ring out. The second. By the fourth, the screen had gone dark and lit up again so many times my hand was warm from holding it.

Eight years, and he had never called me four times in a row. Not when my mother was in the hospital. Not when I'd gotten food poisoning in Lisbon and spent a night on a bathroom floor while he was at a conference in Zurich.

On the fifth call, I answered.

"Evelyn." He was breathing hard, like he'd been pacing. "Stop this. It was one press conference."

I almost laughed. Even now, he thought this was a tantrum he could talk me out of.

"Are you there? Evie, say something."

"I'm here."

"Okay. Good." He exhaled. "Where are you? I'll come get you. We'll talk about this like adults."

"We're not going to talk about it," I said. "We ended the moment that press conference did."

Silence. Then the sound of something heavy hitting the counter, maybe his keys.

"You're not serious."

"I left my key. I took my things. What part of that looks like a joke to you?"

"Don't do that." His voice sharpened. "Don't make me the villain here. I told you it was complicated."

"You told the whole country you've loved someone else for ten years. That's not complicated, Cayden. That's math."

"Vanessa is..." He stopped. Started again, quieter. "What I feel for Vanessa is something I can't pretend away. I've tried. You don't get to decide what someone feels."

"You're right. I don't."

"But you and I have eight years. We have a life. That apartment, the way you know how I take my coffee, the way you know when I've had a bad day before I even open my mouth." He was pleading now, and somehow that was worse than the anger. "You know me better than anyone. Don't throw that away because you're hurt."

I looked at my father's note, still in my hand. At the faded wallpaper I'd picked out when I was fifteen, before I'd ever met Cayden Sherman.

He wanted me to keep the life. He just wanted her to have the love.

"I didn't throw it away," I said. "You did. In front of the whole world."

"Evelyn..."

I hung up.

He called back immediately. I turned the phone face down on the nightstand and listened to it buzz against the wood until it stopped. Then it started again.

Down the hall, a door opened softly. Adrian appeared in my doorway, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow. He'd taken the guest room when I'd told him it was too late to drive back to the city.

He looked at the phone, then at me.

"Do you want me to make it stop?"

"No." I wiped my face with the heel of my hand, surprised to find it dry. "I want him to hear it ring and know I'm not picking up."

He leaned against the frame and stayed there, not coming closer, not leaving, until the phone finally went quiet.

---

I slept maybe three hours.

When I came down the stairs at eight, the house smelled like coffee. Adrian was in the front hall, shrugging off his suit jacket. He'd clearly driven somewhere and back already. There was a garment bag over the bannister and the collar of his shirt was open.

"I had someone bring me clothes," he said before I could ask. "You looked like you'd want company for breakfast."

I opened my mouth to answer, and the doorbell rang.

Then it rang again, three short jabs, impatient.

I knew that rhythm. I'd heard it on our apartment door a hundred times when he'd forgotten his key.

I froze on the bottom step.

Months ago, half-asleep on the couch, I'd told Cayden that my father still lived in the house on Ridgeview Lane. I'd said it once. I didn't think he'd been listening.

"Evelyn!" His voice came through the heavy wood. "I know you're in there. Just let me talk to you. Five minutes, and you'll understand."

Of course he believed that. He'd always believed that if he could just get me in a room, I'd soften.

Adrian draped his jacket over the bannister beside the garment bag. He glanced back at me once, a quick look, asking.

I didn't stop him.

He walked to the door and opened it.

From where I stood, I could see Cayden on the porch in yesterday's navy suit, the tie I'd picked out hanging loose around his neck. His face was already set in the expression he used when he was about to win an argument.

It fell apart the second he saw who was standing there.

His eyes moved from Adrian's open collar to the rolled sleeves to the jacket on the bannister behind him. I watched him put it together, slowly and badly.

"Blackwood," he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Adrian didn't move out of the doorway. He looked at Cayden for a long moment, the way you'd look at a delivery that had come to the wrong address.

"She's not going home with you."