He Hid Me for Five Years, So I Said Yes to His Rival

CLARA'S POV

The buzzer went off at 7:14 the next morning.

I hadn't slept. I was standing in my kitchen in yesterday's mascara and an old Columbia sweatshirt, watching the coffee drip, when the sound cut through the apartment.

I didn't answer. A minute later, I heard a key turn in the lock.

Of course. He'd had a key for five years.

Noah walked in still wearing last night's suit pants, his shirt wrinkled, no tie. He looked like he'd spent the night in his car. He probably had.

"You turned your phone off," he said.

"I turned you off. The phone just went along with it."

He set his keys on my counter like he lived here. I watched him do it, and something in my stomach twisted.

"Clara, I know how last night looked."

"It looked like an engagement dinner, Noah. With a brooch."

He didn't deny it. I'd half expected him to. Some small, pathetic part of me had hoped he'd say it was his father's idea, that he'd been blindsided, that he was going to fix it.

Instead, he pulled out one of my kitchen stools and sat down.

"The Carrington deal is the condition," he said. "Dad won't put me on the final succession list without it. Sterling needs their capital, and we need their people in D.C. The board knows it. My cousin knows it." He rubbed his jaw. "It's a year. Maybe a little more. Once I'm locked in, once nobody can move me, I'll start unwinding it quietly."

"Unwinding it."

"Engagements end. People drift. It happens all the time."

I poured my coffee and didn't offer him any.

He leaned forward, softening his voice into the one he used in the dark, the one that had kept me waiting for five years.

"Nothing has to change between us."

I stared at him.

He meant it. That was the worst part. He actually believed he could stand next to Evelyn Carrington at galas and then let himself into my apartment afterward. He'd built a version of his life with room for both of us, and he thought I should be grateful there was a spot for me.

"When did you know?" I asked.

"Clara—"

"When did your father tell you about the Carringtons?"

He looked down at the counter.

The silence stretched long enough that I heard the refrigerator hum.

"It wasn't last week, was it?" I said.

"No."

"A month?"

He didn't answer.

"Noah."

"Three months," he said quietly.

I set the mug down because suddenly I didn't trust my hand.

Three months ago, we'd toured that loft in Tribeca, the one with the skylights. He'd stood in the empty second bedroom and said it would make a good nursery, and I'd laughed and told him not to get ahead of himself. Two months ago, we'd lain in bed arguing over Lisbon versus Kyoto for the first trip we'd take once we were public. Three weeks ago, he'd said *soon* into my hair.

"You looked at apartments with me," I said. "You picked out a nursery."

"I wasn't lying about wanting that."

"You were engaged."

"I wasn't engaged yet. I was negotiating."

"Every time you said *soon*," I said, "you were already planning to give her that brooch."

He stood up, frustrated now, pacing to my window and back. "You think I wanted this? If I walk away now, I lose everything I've worked for. Ten years, Clara. I've given that company ten years. I'm doing this for us."

"No," I said. "So you chose the thing you couldn't lose."

He stopped.

"And assumed I was the thing you could."

For once, he had nothing ready.

I walked to the counter, picked up his keys, and worked the brass one off the ring. My key. The one I'd had copied for him on our first anniversary, wrapped in a ridiculous little velvet box.

I held it out.

He didn't take it. "Don't do this."

I set it on the counter in front of him, then picked up my phone.

"What are you doing?"

I opened the calendar app. The shared one, the private one, the one I had created and shared only with him. Five years of color-coded lies. *Meeting, 8 p.m.* *Gym.* *Late dinner.* *Client call.* Every one of them was him, in my bed or my kitchen or my car.

"Clara."

I hit *Delete Calendar*. The app asked if I was sure.

I was.

I watched them disappear one by one as the sync ran. Tuesday. Thursday. My birthday last year, which he'd labeled *Board prep*. Gone.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, and I saw his face change as his own screen started emptying.

That was the first time I'd ever seen Noah Sterling actually panic.

"Stop it. Clara, stop." He came around the counter and reached for my phone, and I stepped back. "You're really throwing away five years over one engagement?"

I almost laughed.

"Noah," I said, "you got engaged."

He stood there with his empty calendar glowing in his hand, like I'd taken something from him. Like he was the one who'd been robbed.

---

He didn't leave.

I took a shower. I went to my study and answered emails I wasn't reading. When I came back out at noon, he was on my couch with his laptop, taking calls in a low voice, like this was a standoff he could win by outlasting me. At three, he ordered Thai food for two. I didn't eat it.

At six-thirty, I went into my bedroom and shut the door.

I didn't wear green. I picked a black dress, simple, cut a little lower than I usually allowed myself. I did my makeup properly this time. Gold earrings. The heels I'd stopped wearing because Noah said they made me too tall next to him.

When I came out, he was standing in the hallway.

His eyes moved over me slowly, and I watched his jaw tighten.

"Where are you going?"

"Dinner."

"With who?"

For five years, I'd never had an answer to that question that he didn't already know. Every dinner, every weekend, every holiday plan had been arranged around him.

Now he was asking like he had the right.

It struck me as genuinely funny.

I picked up my clutch and dropped my phone inside. "You have a fiancée, Noah. Go ask her where she's having dinner."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you get."

I left my laptop open on the kitchen counter where I'd been working, grabbed my coat, and opened the front door.

"Clara." His voice cracked a little on my name. "Whatever you're doing, this isn't you."

"You don't know who I am when I'm not waiting for you," I said. "Neither do I. I'm going to find out."

I closed the door behind me.

In the hallway, my phone buzzed inside my clutch. I pulled it out.

My mother.

*Driver is downstairs. Destination: Howard Grand Hotel, 8 p.m. Adrian is expecting you.*

And on the other side of my door, I heard the soft chime of the same message landing on my laptop.

Then I heard nothing at all.

I knew exactly what he was staring at.