Chapter 8
Several months pass.
I fill them with work. The winter gala, the spring donor series, a corporate retreat I design from scratch that brings in the highest engagement scores in company history. My name is on every program, every brief, every follow-up report. Not Jason’s. Not anyone else’s. Mine.
Gideon and I eat lunch together most days. On the terrace when it’s warm, in his office when it’s not. We talk about donors and budgets and life in general.
The whispers at the office fade. Not because people stop noticing, but because the work speaks louder than the gossip.
Nellie Queen sends me a handwritten note after the winter gala.
You’re the reason I still give to this foundation.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I pin it to my office wall, next to the framed copy of my consulting contract, which was the first professional document that ever carried my real name.
Then, Jason comes back.
He shows up on a morning I’m reviewing gala proposals. He asks the receptionist for Gideon, and the receptionist calls me, because my name is now the one people call when someone wants access to the forty-second floor.
“He wants five minutes,” the receptionist says.
“With Gideon?”
“With you.”
I let him up. Not for him. For me. I want to see what’s left.
Jason sits across from my desk with his hands between his knees. He’s thinner. The Tom Ford suit is gone, replaced by something off a rack that doesn’t quite fit through the shoulders.
“I made an error in judgment,” he says. “I came to apologize.”
I wait.
“I knew.” He swallows. “I knew what I was doing was wrong. Not at first. I told myself we were a team. That it didn’t matter whose name was on the final project because we were building something together.
But we weren’t building it together. You were building it and I was carrying it into the office and taking the credit, and I let myself believe I deserved it because it was easier than admitting I couldn’t do it on my own. ”
“You called me a sounding board,” I say. “In front of Gideon. In front of the board. You said more times than I can count that I kept you comfortable so you could work, so you could come up with these brilliant ideas as if they weren’t mine.”
“I know.”
“You told me I was better behind the scenes. That Bella inspired you. That she was on your level and I wasn’t.”
“I know what I said.”
“Do you know what it costs to hear those things from the person you built your life around? From the person you loved and trusted?”
He closes his eyes. Opens them. “I made the biggest mistake of my life. I took advantage of you. I took your work and I took your trust and I took our life and I threw it all away for a woman who never really loved me.”
“Jason.”
“I’m asking you to forgive me. Not to take me back. I know that’s gone. But I need you to know that I see it now. All of it. What you were. What I lost. I will spend the rest of my life mourning what I destroyed.”
I look at him. The man I married. The man who ate peanut butter sandwiches on our honeymoon and dreamed about Tom Ford suits and board meetings and the version of himself that people would admire.
He’s sitting in an office with my name on the door, asking me to forgive him, and I can see that he means it. The pain is real. The regret is real.
It’s not enough.
“I can’t forgive you for the way you discarded me. It was cruel and I won’t absolve you of that. It’s something you’re going to have to live with,” I say. “I can forgive you for the work that you took credit for because I let you do that. I thought it was what was best for us, but it wasn’t.”
He nods. It’s a small nod, nothing like Gideon’s. A nod that knows it’s getting less than it asked for and has no right to ask for more.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask.”
“Are you happy?”
I think about it. The office. The terrace. The man who waits without pushing.
“I’m getting there.”
He stands. He buttons his jacket and walks to the door. He pauses there the way he paused in the catering lounge hallway, the way he pauses every time he’s leaving a room where I am.
“I saw the way he looked at you that day, Rayna… Gideon… He looked at you like I used to. He’s a good man, Rayna. I hate that, but he is.”
“I know.”
He leaves. The door clicks shut. I sit in my office and let the quiet settle, and I think about the word forgive and whether I meant it or whether I just decided to stop carrying his weight. Either way, it’s lighter in here now.
Bella arrives later that day. She doesn’t ask for Gideon. She asks for me.
I meet her in the lobby because I still don’t want to be in a confined space with her.
She’s still polished, but the polish has a crack in it now.
The cream blazer is gone. The sunglasses are gone.
Her hair isn’t perfectly slicked back the way it always was before.
She’s wearing something simpler, and her eyes are red at the edges in a way that concealer can’t quite hide.
My shoulders tense the second I see her. My body knows this woman before my brain catches up, and whatever composure I’m wearing tightens a half size.
“Can you please talk to my father,” she asks.
“About what?”
“About unfreezing my trust. About letting me back into the foundation. About forgiving me.”
“That’s between you and him, Bella.”
“He listens to you. He listens to you more than he listens to me, and that’s...” She stops. Her jaw works. “That’s my fault. I know that’s my fault.”
It’s the first honest thing I’ve ever heard her say.
“I can’t fix your relationship with your father,” I say. “But I can tell you that he didn’t do any of this to punish you. He did it because you showed him who you were, and he believed you.”
She leaves. I don’t know if she heard me. I don’t know if it matters. My shoulders don’t unclench until the lobby doors close behind her.
That evening, Gideon finds me on the terrace. I’m standing at the railing with my hands in my coat pockets.
“Jason came to see me,” I say.
“He did?”
“Bella, too.”
I look at him. The silver at his temples. The glass in his hand. The steadiness that I stopped calling patience months ago and started calling something closer to devotion.
“I think I’m done making you wait.”
He sets down his glass. He doesn’t reach for me. He stands here, close enough that I can feel the warmth from him, but he lets me be the one who closes the distance.
I take his hand.
“Rayna Booth,” he says. “I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“I’d like that.”
He dips his head and kisses me.
It’s warm and tender and laced with promise.