CHAPTER 1. Noah #2
The twist in my chest tightens, and before I can stop it, I’m back in Rick’s penthouse, morning light spilling over rumpled sheets. His fingers tracing lazy patterns on my bare shoulder, his voice a whisper against my ear.
“I wish we could stay like this,” he said, and I believed him. Believed every syllable, every pause between the words. “Just you and me. Nothing else.”
But there was always something else. His family’s expectations.
The Scott investment banking legacy stretching back three generations.
The carefully cultivated image of Richard Scott, heir apparent, who dated the right women, attended the right events, and never, ever mentioned that he spent every Tuesday and Thursday night tangled in sheets with Noah Caldwell, the gay son of Daniel Caldwell, founder of Caldwell Holdings.
The son who chose to work for a nonprofit instead of stepping into the empire.
For three years, I lived for those nights.
For the stolen moments in his car. In darkened restaurants in neighborhoods where no one would recognize him.
In hotel rooms paid for in cash. For the way he looked at me when no one else was watching, as though I was the only real thing in his carefully constructed world.
“Dad wants me to date Melissa,” he told me one night, his face pressed into the pillow.
I turned toward him. “I thought you told him you weren’t dating.”
He nodded, like he hated it. “I told him I needed to focus on work, but he doesn’t want to hear it. So I might need to…date her. Just for a bit.”
“Are you serious?”
His hand stilled on my hip. “Noah, you know it’s just for pretense. I love you. I just can’t come out. Not now. It’s too complicated.”
Complicated. That was the word he always used. Our relationship: complicated. His sexuality: complicated. The possibility of a future together so complicated it might as well have been written in hieroglyphics.
And then, six months ago, the text message. After years of whatever we were. After months of me pretending it was fine that he kissed girls for the cameras and introduced me as a friend.
Three sentences I can still recite from memory:
I can’t do this anymore. It’s not fair to either of us. I’m sorry, Noah, but I can’t be gay.
I can’t be.
Like it’s a fucking choice.
I tried calling him. Tried talking to him, asking if he was spiraling or scared or just overwhelmed.
But he wouldn’t let me past the surface.
Every conversation stalled out at the same place.
He was sorry. He repeated it like a script, voice even and carefully neutral, as if he’d already made up his mind and didn’t want to deal with my reaction.
A week later, his Instagram filled in the rest.
Black tie. Crystal chandeliers. The annual Whitmore Foundation Gala, judging by the step-and-repeat behind him.
His arm wrapped neatly around Cassidy Whitmore’s waist. Cassidy with her perfect blonde waves, her Stanford MBA, and a father who golfed with Rick’s father every Sunday at Lakeside Country Club.
Rick always said dating Cassidy was out of the question.
She was “too important.” Her whole family was.
Apparently that had changed.
I threw up when I saw the photo. Actually threw up. Then I cried for three hours straight, until my chest hurt and I couldn’t catch a full breath. After that, I blocked him on every platform, deleted his number, and tried to carve him out of my life like something malignant.
Six months passed. I told myself I was better. Functional. Over it. And for the most part, I was.
Until I remembered what was waiting for me this weekend—my father’s birthday celebration.
The Scotts and the Caldwells have spent holidays together for as long as I can remember—summer barbecues, ski trips, birthday dinners—but I haven’t seen any of them since Rick and I broke up.
His parents never miss my dad’s birthdays, so Rick won’t either.
And if he’s coming, he won’t come alone.
I’d bet the entire balance of my savings account—all three hundred and twenty-nine dollars—that he’ll show up with Cassidy on his arm and introduce her as his very appropriate, very heterosexual girlfriend.
My parents will be thrilled, because Cassidy is exactly the kind of girl people expect Rick to date.
And she’s not just some society princess—she’s an heiress to a massive empire, just like he is, which makes them look perfectly matched on paper.
Meanwhile, I’ll stand there smiling and nodding as if I didn’t spend three years in his bed, hoping one day we’d stop hiding and tell our parents the truth.
“Noah.”
Connor’s voice pulls me back.
I blink and realize I’ve been staring somewhere past him, my hand still wrapped around the door handle.
God. He must think I’ve completely lost it.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Hangover brain.”
Connor doesn’t react to that. He just gives me a slow once-over, which somehow makes it worse, because I know exactly what he’s seeing.
“About your proposition,” he says, meeting my eyes again. His tone is so neutral I can’t tell if he’ll laugh in my face or tell me to never speak to him again.
Heat crawls up my neck. I open my mouth to repeat that I’m sorry, that it was a mistake, that I was out of my mind—
“Is it this weekend?” he asks instead. “The birthday thing?”
The question throws me. I blink at him, my sluggish brain scrambling to catch up.