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Dennis took a drink of his beer, studying Jason carefully. "You also said she looked horrified when he announced he was staying in the city."
Jason dropped his hands, meeting his friend's gaze. "She turned pale. She looked like she had seen a monster."
"Because maybe he is one," Dennis pointed out. "Look, I am not defending what she did. Lying to you is a huge violation of trust. But fear makes people do incredibly stupid things. You know what that guy did to her in London. You know how much power he had over her life. Is it possible she lied because she was terrified of how you would react?"
Jason stared at the wooden floorboards. His heart was a battered, aching mess inside his chest. He wanted to hate her. He wanted to pack his truck, drive out to the lake, and erase the memory of her vanilla perfume. But he couldn't. The image of Lily sobbing in the corridor, begging him to let her explain, tore him apart.
"She was crying," Jason admitted, the confession scraping against his pride. "She begged me to listen."
"Did you?"
"I walked away. I set the flowers down and I walked out."
Dennis leaned back in his chair. "You are a builder, Jase. You fix things. You don't abandon the site just because you found a cracked foundation. You assess the damage and you figure out if it can be repaired. You love this woman. I have never seen you look at anyone the way you look at Lily. Do you really want to throw it all away without hearing her side of the story?"
Jason closed his eyes, fighting the intense sting behind his eyelids. He envisioned Lily’s smile, the way she curled into his side on the couch, the brilliant light in her eyes when she talked about her firm. He loved her. It was a terrifying, undeniable truth.
"I have to talk to her," Jason agreed, his voice thick with emotion. He gripped the neck of his beer bottle. "I know I have to hear her out. But I can't do it tonight, Dennis. I am furious, and I am hurting, and if I stand in front of her right now, I might say something unforgivable. I need to cool my head first. I don't want to break us permanently."
Dennis nodded, understanding the boundaries Jason was setting for himself. "Sleep on the couch tonight. Give it a day. Then go get your girl.”
Chapter Ten
Lily
The heavy steel doors of the elevator slid shut with a ruthless, echoing finality, sealing Jason away.
Lily stood paralyzed on the hardwood floor of the corridor, staring at the blank metallic panels as if sheer willpower could force them back open. The air in the hallway suddenly felt too thin, too cold. Her lungs burned. Every frantic gasp for oxygen felt like swallowing shattered glass.
He was gone.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, she turned her head. Her blurred vision landed on the massive boardroom table. A bundle of pale lilac sweet peas rested against the dark, polished mahogany. They looked painfully out of place in the sterile corporate boardroom—fragile, beautiful, and entirely innocent. A quiet, elegant testament to a man who had shown up just to celebrate her success, only to be gutted by her own cowardice.
The rhythmic, arrogant click of dress shoes approached from behind.
"He walked away rather easily, didn't he?" Ethan remarked, his rich voice laced with a fabricated, poisonous sympathy. "If he truly cared for you, he would have stayed to fight."
The crushing grief suffocating her chest instantaneously mutated into a blinding, white-hot rage.
Lily spun around. Ethan stood there, his hands casually tucked into the pockets of his tailored trousers, looking immaculate and terribly victorious. He had orchestrated this entire nightmare. He had trapped her into working the weekend, dangled the Vanguard contract over her head, and timed his relocation announcement for maximum destruction.
But the most agonizing, flesh-tearing truth of all was that she had handed him the weapon. She had loaded the gun by lying to Jason in the first place.
"Do not speak about him," Lily warned. Her voice wasn't a scream; it was a low, feral vibration, carrying a lethal intensity she didn't know she possessed. She marched up to Ethan, stopping inches from his chest, refusing to yield an inch of ground. "You think you won. You think detonating a bomb in my relationship clears the path for you to step right back in."
Ethan’s jaw tightened, a flicker of irritation crossing his polished features. "I am merely pointing out that a foundation built on secrets is bound to crumble. You belong with someone who understands your ambition, Lily. Someone who shares your world. We speak the same language."
"You do not know me anymore," she fired back, hot tears of absolute fury spilling down her cheeks. "You knew a girl in London who trusted you blindly. That girl died the second I opened your office door and saw what you were doing. Jason built me back up. He offered me grace, and safety, and respect—things you clearly know absolutely nothing about."
She stepped around him, her heels clicking aggressively against the floor, and marched to the head of the table. She gently gathered the sweet peas into her arms, cradling the delicate, fragrant stems against her chest like a lifeline.
"You forced your way into my city and my agency," Lily continued, turning back to him, her voice freezing over into pure, unadulterated ice. "We have a signed contract with Vanguard. I will honor the ink on that paper. But outside of this building, you do not exist to me. Do not call my personal phone. Do not look at me unless it is about a deliverable. If you try to cross the line, Ethan, I swear to God I will walk away from this firm and leave you explaining to the Vanguard board why their prized multi-million-dollar acquisition just imploded."
Ethan’s arrogant mask finally fractured, revealing a flash of genuine, unmasked panic. "Lily, be reasonable—"
"Stay away from me."
She didn't wait for a response. Clutching the sweet peas to her racing heart, she turned her back on him and practically ran down the corridor, pushing through the heavy fire doors to take the emergency stairs. She couldn't bear to stand in the same elevator where Jason’s heart had just broken.
