Chapter 15
Quinn
Afew months later, we were invited to the Jamesons' yearly pool party. The same faces I'd been orbiting for the better part of a decade.
Naomi and I had continued seeing each other. And it was starting to feel like a real thing. A real, permanent, life-changing thing.
I'd stopped waiting for the catch. That was new for me.
For years I'd loved her the way you love something you're certain you'll never be allowed to keep.
But somewhere in the last stretch of Fridays and slow mornings and her toothbrush appearing next to mine, the bracing had quietly stopped.
She kept choosing me. I'd started to believe she'd keep doing it.
Which was why walking into the Jamisons' that afternoon felt less like arriving somewhere and more like arriving as someone — half of a thing, finally, instead of the man alone by the bookshelf.
Naomi came in on my arm, and I felt the room register it — not with surprise anymore, that had worn off weeks ago, but with something warmer.
Marcus hugged her too long, and so did Nina.
She belonged here. She always had, even in the years she'd spent shrinking herself down to fit beside a man who took up all the air.
We'd barely gotten drinks in hand before Nina found us, delighted with herself, the way she always was when she had something to share.
"So," she said, low, leaning in. "You two hear about Aaron?"
"Do we want to?" I said.
"Tia finally left him." Nina looked entirely too pleased. "Strung it out for months, apparently. I think she was waiting to see if he'd land on his feet — get the new place, the whole reset." She shook his head. "And then it sank in that he couldn't. And, poof. Gone."
Naomi didn't react much. A slight lift of one shoulder, a sip of her drink. She'd never once, in all these weeks, brought Aaron up on her own, and she didn't start now. If anything she looked faintly bored by him, which was its own quiet victory.
But something in me settled. He'd made her sign that prenup fifteen years ago — cocky, certain he'd be able to get away with the cheating. He'd built the box himself. And when it came time, the box had opened for her and closed on him. Tia had just taken a few months to read the terms.
Earlier this morning, Rick had told me that Tia was going to come but had cancelled last minute feigning illness when she found out Naomi and I were going to be there. Aaron had been invited too, but never RSVP’d.
Someone had just cannonballed into the pool when Aaron walked in, and I knew before he'd crossed the threshold that he was drunk.
Not a happy drunk, but the sloppy kind, the kind that comes in already looking for the fight it's decided it deserves. His collar was wrong. He scanned the room the way a man scans for enemies, and found us near the drinks, and something in his face curdled.
"There she is," he announced, to no one, to everyone. "My dear ex-wife."
A few heads turned. Marcus started toward him. "Aaron.” His voice was stiff. “Glad you can make—"
"Don't." Aaron put a hand up without looking at him.
He was looking at Naomi. "Nobody's glad.
Let's not do that." He took a glass off a passing tray and drank half of it.
"You all just love this, don't you. The redemption arc.
Poor Naomi, finally free." His voice climbed.
"You have no idea what she's actually like. None of you."
"Aaron." Nina said carefully. "Control yourself in my home."
He ignored that too. "I introduced her to every single one of you. This was my table." He gestured at the room with the glass, sloshing it. "And the second it got hard, you all just — pivoted. Like I was nothing."
Nobody answered him. That was the part he couldn't stand, I think — the silence. He'd come in loud enough to drown out a room, and the room had simply gone quiet and let him hear himself.
"And you." He found me, finally. Registered me, maliciousness in his eyes. He laughed, ugly. "The wannabe? That's who she picked?" He shook his head. "You’ve never deserved anything you got. You know she only chose you to spite Tia. She doesn’t even like you.”
"Careful," I said. Quietly.
Realizing he’d get nowhere with me, he swung back to Naomi. "You took the house." His voice cracked on it, and there it was — under all the venom, the self-pity, the wound he'd been drinking to cover. "You took the house, Naomi. Left me with nothing. After everything."
"You wrote the terms, Aaron." She said it gently, almost kind, which was crueler than anything I could have managed. "I just signed them."
“You asked for those terms. You’re a conniving bitch who planned it all along.”
Naomi finally reacted, that perfect veneer of hers breaking.
“Sure. Sure, I did. I planned it all along. I planned for you to cheat on me with my best friend. I planned on you to give her the four-thousand-dollar necklace that I wanted, while you gave me a card for our anniversary. I planned all of that. And I did it five years before when signing that prenup.”
I saw it before it happened.
Aaron’s face changed—something ugly twisting behind his eyes—and then his hand was on her wrist, fingers digging in like he thought he could still claim her. Like she was something he could just take.
I didn’t think. I moved.
One second, his grip was bruising her skin.
The next, my hand was on his, twisting just enough to make him gasp, to make him let go.
He stumbled back, his breath coming sharp, his eyes wide with shock.
I didn’t give him time to recover. I stepped between them, my body blocking Naomi completely, my voice low and steady.
"Touch her again," I said, "and I’ll make you regret it."
His face went pale. Not from fear—though he should’ve been afraid—but from something worse. Recognition. The realization that he’d lost. That she wasn’t his to reach for anymore. That the man he’d spent years trying to best was the one standing between him and everything he’d thrown away.
Marcus stepped in then, his hand closing on Aaron’s arm. Not a friendly grip. A warning. "Okay," he said, voice calm. "You’re drunk. Let’s call you a cab."
Aaron didn’t fight him. He just stood there, his chest heaving, his eyes burning like a man who’d just woken up from a long, stupid dream. Then he turned and let Marcus lead him away, his shoulders slumped like he’d finally understood the weight of what he’d done.
I didn't move until they were gone.
Then I turned to Naomi. Her wrist was faintly red where he'd caught it before I'd pulled him off, and I cupped her face in my hands, thumbs brushing along her jaw. "You okay?"
She nodded, but her pulse was still going under my fingers. "Yeah. I'm fine."
I exhaled, slow and controlled, like I was letting go of something I'd been holding for years. Then I pulled her against me, my arms wrapping around her tight, like I could put myself between her and all of it — even the parts already behind us.
"Alright," Nina said, clapping her hands, gamely trying to rescue her own party. "Who needs another drink?"
She caught Marcus by the elbow on her way past. "I told you not to invite him."
"I'm sorry." He looked genuinely stricken. "I didn't know he'd be like that." He turned to Naomi. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine." She rubbed her wrist and gave him a small smile to let him off the hook.
"He won't be back," Marcus said. "Not if he can't behave himself. That's done."
And there it was — the unspoken part, the thing nobody had ever quite said out loud.
We were the ones who'd been invited. Both of us. Somewhere between the phone call to And After and the wedding where she'd walked in on my arm, it had simply become fact: Naomi and Quinn were a couple. You couldn't cut her without cutting me. It was easier — more natural — to keep us both.
None of that had been the plan when we started. When we started, it was supposed to be nothing. A favor. A performance. But this was what it had quietly turned into somewhere along the way, without either of us noticing the line we'd crossed.
We were a couple now. Not the pretend kind.
And I held her a little tighter, right there in the middle of Nina's rescued pool party, because for the first time in ten years I wasn't standing at the edge of anything. I was part of it.