Chapter 17
17
Ethan
P hilip cancels our client call with zero warning. I find out why halfway through the afternoon.
Hell, everyone in the office does.
I hear his voice before I see him.
Loud. Abrupt. Cutting through the low hum of Friday afternoon and Maggie’s stammering of shock and warning like a goddamn storm system.
My blood runs cold.
He’s supposed to be in St. Lucia. Our meeting was meant to be over fucking Zoom. So what the fuck is he doing here?
No. No no no ?—
He’s not supposed to be back for weeks . And I don’t have a fucking plan on how to keep his niece and my lifelong plans from colliding and going up in a blaze of un-glory.
I shoot up from my desk, heart in my throat, and step into the hall just in time to see him barrel past Maggie’s desk.
He’s moving fast for an old man—toward me. Toward my office. Jaw tight. Face thunderous.
And behind him, frantic but just a step too slow, is Pia.
She looks pale. Terrified.
Tear tracks stain her cheeks. Fuck.
He went to find her before coming to me?
And what the hell was she doing out of my sight anyway? I want to reach for her, comfort her, but her uncle is barrelling right at me.
“Philip—” I start.
“Don’t,” he snaps, eyes like ice. “Don’t speak. Don’t you dare speak to me.”
He storms into my office, and I follow on autopilot, Pia frozen in the hallway. My mind races, trying to figure out what tipped him off.
Who saw something? Who said something?
But I already know. People talk. People whisper. And I’ve been reckless.
With my hands and my eyes and my cock and her tight, addictive pussy. But as my eyes flicker to her again, I realize I’ve also been reckless with her emotions. Maybe even her heart.
The door slams behind us with Pia on the outside. I barely hold back an infuriated growl at that as he spins on me.
“You fucking son of a bitch.”
I deserve that. “Philip, I can explain?—”
“Did you think I wouldn’t hear about it?” His voice is a roar now, slamming into me like fists. “That I wouldn’t come back early to see it for myself? Of all the women… And forget the fact that she’s your intern, she’s also my fucking niece! Are you out of your mind?”
I step forward. “She’s not just an intern?—”
“Save it, Villiers. Jesus Christ.” He runs a hand down his face, pacing like a man who’s two seconds from exploding. “I trusted you. You were supposed to protect her. Look out for her. Not make her your next fucking conquest—” He breaks off, chest heaving.
“She’s not just a conquest.” The words slip out before I can stop them.
Philip freezes. Turns. “What?”
I swallow hard. “I didn’t plan it. But she means… something to me.”
He stares at me for a long moment. And then—he laughs. Low. Bitter. A sound that slices through me worse than yelling.
“Wow,” he says. “ Something? I’ve watched you negotiate impossible, cutthroat deals and yet you can’t define what you’ve been doing with my niece beyond something ? You really think that makes it better, don’t you?”
“Fine. I don’t know what it is yet, but that doesn’t make it not real,” I offer, cringing at the undertone of pleading in my voice.
He moves toward me, jaw locked. “Are you seriously telling me you want to play house with a twenty-year-old girl? You think I was born yesterday?”
“I think you should take a beat and hear me out.” Even though I have zero idea how to fix this. How to put the terrifying emotions in my chest into words.
“Bullshit. You’re saying this so I can un-fuck your life and your prospects. Hell, you might even have had the harebrained idea of using her to make sure you get what you want. Either way, it’s not going to fly. I’m not dragging my firm’s reputation through the mud.”
I feel it before he even says it. The whistling silence before the bullet train skids off its rails, the calm before the crashing roar of my life plowing into a concrete wall at four hundred miles an hour.
“What the fuck are you saying, Philip?” I ask through numb lips.
“I’m saying the deal we had about you being named partner? That is so far off the table it might as well be in Siberia.”
Icy rage builds in my veins. “You won’t fucking dare. I will sue your ass into next millennia?—”
“You can try. And you’ll find out that this old dog still has some bite. You made your bed, son.” His eyes flash. “Now lie in it. But you lie in it alone, because if you come within one foot of Pia, I’ll end you.”
Then he’s gone. The door slams behind him so hard the glass rattles.
I don’t breathe. I can’t.
For a second, all I hear is silence. The ringing in my ears. Then the roar comes. It arrives with crushing pressure in my chest.
I look out the glass wall of my office.
And there’s Pia.
Still standing in the hall. Arms crossed, tears falling freely now.
Fuck. She heard everything. Including my floundering on exactly what she means to me.
I should go to her. Hold her. Tell her it’s going to be okay.
But I’m rooted to the spot. I can’t move. Not right now. Not when I can’t see straight. Not when everything I’ve worked for just crumbled to dust because I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
So I do the one thing I can manage. I reach for the remote, turn the glass cloudy so it blocks my view of her, kills our eye contact.
Because if I stare at her another second, I’ll shatter.
Because if I call fuck it to Philip’s threat, stride to the door and scoop her up into my arms the way I want to, I’ll be doing the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.
I can’t forget that Pia has no one to rely on besides her uncle. And I can’t jeopardize their relationship by staining it with my needs.
And I don’t know how… but it looks like I’m going to have to learn to exist without her.
* * *
Pia
My feet feel like lead, weighed down with anvils when I finally move.
I sense Maggie trying to get my attention, but I don’t… can’t look at her. I don’t want to hear I told you so. Hell, I don’t want comfort or sympathy.
I just want to disappear.
I don’t remember how I get to the elevator.
How I manage to hit the lobby button with my whole fucking body shaking.
The only thing I remember clearly is the look of cold fury and disbelief on Ethan’s face after Uncle Phil stormed out. The threat everyone in the firm had heard.
Ethan stared straight at me then, his eyes still livid.
Then he turned away. Clouded his glass.
Rejected me in front of everyone.
Uncle Phil’s unexpected appearance in the general counsel’s office where I was waiting on draft term sheets for Maggie had shocked me into blurting out the truth when he’d demanded to know if the rumor he’d heard was true.
The flash of guilt I felt at his disappointment had fled quickly enough. Because yes, I’m only twenty years old, but I’m an adult. And I’d never planned on lying about my involvement with Ethan if it came to it.
I just didn’t expect it to come to it this fast.
Not when I was grappling with knowing I was ass over teakettle in love with Ethan Villiers. That I’d probably fallen in love with him that first morning when I’d flustered my way through asking him for directions to where the other interns were.
It’d been especially humbling when Uncle Phil had shaken his head, looked at me like I was some fragile, broken , and ruined thing he had no way of fixing. Like he hasn’t been able to fix my dad all these years later.
But it hurt even worse in that split second before the glass had blocked my view of him, Ethan— my Ethan, the man who’d promised to take care of everything—looked right through me like it was my fault his world had come crashing down.
I’d believed him.
I’d believed in the way he’d taken care of me in and out of bed. The way he’d touched me like I mattered.
But I was wrong. When it’d counted, he’d turned away.
Because he loved something—his ambition, his reputation, the partnership—more than he loved me. When it came down to choosing?
He didn’t even hesitate.
He threatened to sue Uncle Phil instead of fighting for me.
The elevator doors open to the lobby, and I stumble out into the cool marble silence, feeling like I’m moving through water. I don’t recall flagging down a cab, but somehow I make it back home.
I don’t go to my apartment. I go upstairs. To his.
I let myself in with the spare key. The one he gave me when he’d smirked and said I practically lived there anyway. The key that now feels like an invitation rescinded. A gift I’ll have to return because it was only ever on loan and not for keeps.
I close the door behind me and lean against it, my throat tight.
His scent is still in the air—soap and coffee and intoxicating sandalwood. The apartment is still. Too still. Like it’s waiting for something that won’t come.
I move slowly.
Packing the small things. My toothbrush. The fuzzy socks he always teased me for. The tiny shorts that made his eyes blaze without fail. The silk scarf he pulled from my neck once just so he could kiss the curve of my throat.
My fingers close around a book I left on the coffee table. The French copy of Wuthering Heights. He hated it. Called Heathcliff a melodramatic bastard.
I hold it to my chest and hitch-laugh.
Then hate myself for the inevitable tears that follow.
But I don’t stop it. I sense it’s the first of many, and all I’ll be doing is holding back a fracturing dam with a Band-Aid.
So I take my time to cry and to pack.
Because some part of me—some stupid, desperate part—is still hoping Ethan will come through that door.
That he’ll be breathless and angry and apologetic and mine.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t come.
And eventually, there’s nothing left to pack.
Back in my own apartment, I don’t turn on the lights. I crawl into bed still in my clothes, bury my face in the pillow that still smells a little like his shampoo because it’s become my favorite thing to use, and let more tears come.
They’re hot. And ugly. And completely silent.
Because I learned not to cry too loud in that boarding school hidden in the Swiss mountains, because crying meant punishment. And as the nuns had scathingly reminded me then, and as it echoes through my mind now, crying doesn’t change anything.
Not when no one ever stays.
Dad didn’t. Mother didn’t. Uncle Phil did, briefly. But now I’m a disappointment, and he’s gone.
So is Ethan.
Despite all my hopes. Despite giving him everything.
Even when I thought maybe I was finally someone’s first choice.
I hate that I hoped then and hope now. I’m terrified that this love will break me.
And I hate that if he knocked on the door right now, I’d open it.
* * *
Ethan
I took a shoulder to the head during football practice once. I remember the agony, then the feeling of weightlessness as I hit the deck. Then ten times the agony as I wondered if this was what impending death felt like.
All of that pales in comparison to how I feel once the enormity of what I’ve done hits me.
Once I tear out of my office like the unhinged asshole I am and find Pia gone.
Jesus. I sat in my office like a goddamn coward while the woman I love walked out—and maybe out of my life. More concerned with Philip’s words ringing in my head like gunfire.
You were supposed to protect her.
I should’ve moved the second that door closed. Should’ve gone after her. I didn’t.
I check her desk. Empty.
“Where is she?” I bark. Or maybe I croak it.
Maggie gives me a look I can’t even process right now.
After an eternity, she lifts her hand and points at the elevator.
I fly to it, but the elevator button won’t light up fast enough. When it opens, I shove past people, my throat aching like I’ve swallowed broken glass.
I’m not fit to drive. I know this. But fuck if I’m waiting around for my car service. The ride home is peppered with a dozen calls to Pia’s phone, all of which go unanswered.
Please God. Please.
As if he senses the urgency, Stanley is standing at the elevators, holding one open with concern—or maybe pity?—on his face.
I’ll thank him later.
I head straight to my place, hoping—praying—that she went back to the only home she’s had these past weeks. Mine. Praying my stupid rejection hasn’t broken us forever.
The apartment is still. And empty.
There’s a space on the bathroom counter where her toothbrush used to be.
The scarf I always wrapped around my hand to pull her in? Gone from the hook. Every sign of her—wiped clean.
I walk through the rooms like a ghost. And I panic.
Real, chest-tightening, gut-wrenching panic.
What if she left the building?
What if she went back to St. Lucia with Philip, distraught, thinking yet another person had abandoned her? Again.
“No.” The word is ripped from my tormented soul as I sprint out, taking the stairs down three at a time.
My heart is jackhammering by the time I reach her floor. I raise my fist and hammer on her door so hard the wood shakes.
Nothing.
Again.
Fuck. Pia. Baby, please.
Just as I raise my hand for a third time…the door cracks open.
And there she is.
Barefoot. Wrapped in a giant hoodie. Her face blotchy. Eyes red and swollen.
My heart crushes .
“Pia—”
“What do you want?” Her voice is hoarse, flat. “Didn’t get a last word in at the office? Came to make sure you completely crushed me?”
“Baby, I fucked up. Christ, I more than fucked up. I—I should’ve come to you. I shouldn’t have left you there on your own. Please… Pia…”
“I don’t… it’s too late, Ethan.” She tries to close the door, but I block it with my hand.
“No, please. Don’t shut me out. Not yet. Not until I say what I should’ve said the second Philip walked out that door.”
She crosses her arms. “Let me guess. That you’re sorry. That you didn’t mean to put your career above me. That you were just… what? Scared?”
Astute. As al-fucking-ways. “Yes. All of it,” I admit, chest open, heart exposed. “I was scared. Not of losing the partnership. Of being the cause of you losing what was important to you.”
She blinks, lashes wet again. “What are you talking about?”
“I know about your parents. I know you haven’t felt like you belonged anywhere in a long time, hell, maybe ever. I thought that if I caused you to lose Philip, I’d never forgive myself.”
Her look is almost pitying. “But you were forgetting one vital thing.”
I nod. “I know. For a stupid second, I forgot that I belonged to you, just as much as I hope you belong to me. That I would move fucking mountains to be everything and everyone to you so you never had to feel alone again.”
I take a step forward, close enough to feel her trembling.
“I shut you out, let you feel rejected. I wasted a full fucking hour. I didn’t come after you because I thought—God, I thought I had more time. I spent the last hour thinking maybe I could let Philip take you away from me. Give you the home and the care and attention you need. But I can’t. I’m too fucking selfish. I want you . I want to be the one who gives you everything you need, however and whenever you need it. I fucked up, baby, and I’m so fucking sorry.”
Tears slip down her cheeks again. “It was horrible, watching you shut me out like that. I thought my life was over.”
“I know. And I’ve never regretted anything more in my life.”
I fall to my knees. Right there in her doorway. Grip her hips when she doesn’t kick me away like I deserve. “I’m sorry, Pia. I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you were second place. You’re not. You’re first. You’ve always been first since the second I saw you. Hell, you rule my mind and body even when I need a clear head. But I’m done fighting how you make me feel.”
She stares down at me, silent. I gather her close. Closer . Press my forehead to her belly. Look up into her beautiful blue eyes.
“I love you, baby. And I’m not asking you to forgive me now. I’m just asking you to let me prove it. Every day. For as long as you’ll let me.”
There’s a long silence.
She whispers, “You said you would fix it. Then you broke my heart.”
“I know. And I’ll spend the rest of my life putting it back together.”
Her bottom lip trembles. Her arms slowly uncross. She touches my shoulders and my breath shudders out of my lungs.
Her fingers spike into my hair, lifting my chin.
And then—she steps back. “Come in.”
* * *
Pia is curled against my chest, still wearing her hoodie, still sobbing softly every few minutes. I don’t know how to make it stop and it’s fucking killing me.
“Baby, please.”
“ C’est rien .” She hiccups.
It’s not fucking nothing, I want to snarl, but I keep silent, vowing that once this upheaval is over, she’ll never shed another tear unless they’re joyful ones.
I can’t stop touching her, so I don’t even try.
My fingers slide through the silk of her hair, down the line of her back, over the soft swell of her hip. Every inch of her feels like a miracle I almost lost. That I might still lose.
“I love you,” I murmur into her temple.
She shifts slightly. “You already said that.”
“I’ll keep saying it,” I whisper. “Forever, if I have to. Until you believe I’ll give it all up if that’s what it takes to keep you.”
She lifts her head, frowning slightly, guilt swimming in her luminous eyes. “But I don’t want you to give it all up. You worked so hard for that named partnership. And now you’re?—”
“I’m not losing anything if I have you.” I sit up, pulling her gently into my lap, cupping her face. “I’m good at what I do. If it’s not at this firm, it’ll be another. But there’s only one you , Pia. I’ll never be that reckless with you again.”
She’s quiet for a beat. Then, “I hate how I left things with Uncle Phil.”
“I know,” I say softly. “And I’m going to fix that too.”
“Ethan—”
“He was pissed, and he put the blame where it belonged. On me. But he hurt you too, and I’m not fucking having that.” I kiss her temple again.
Pia insists on coming with me, and I don’t even think about refusing her. I’m secretly pleased and relieved that my little mission puts that determined sparkle back into her eyes and dries her tears.
Thanks to a quick call to Maggie and a promise to up her bonus to the ten percent she was angling for all those weeks ago when I foolishly thought dumping Pia on her was the right course of action, I track Philip to his home address seven blocks away.
He doesn’t look thrilled to see me when he opens the door twenty minutes later. “You’ve got a nerve coming here after the way you’ve compromised my niece.”
“I didn’t come here to defend myself,” I say. “I came to tell you the truth. What happened with Pia… it was real. It is real. I know you’re pissed with me, but you owe your niece an apology. She didn’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire between you and me. And she needs to know you’re not angry with her.” My steady glare dares him to argue differently.
His jaw ticks. “Does she know you threw away your future for her?”
“I haven’t thrown anything away,” I reply. “I love her. She is my future.”
There’s a long pause. Then Pia steps out from behind me.
Quiet, poised, stronger than I’ve ever seen her. “And just so we’re clear, Uncle Phil, the last thing I feel is compromised.”
She moves to my side. Looks up at me, and the bright, beautiful emotion in her eyes makes my heart lurch.
“I’m sorry you heard things that may have been… unsavory,” she tells her uncle. “But I’m not ashamed of what I feel for Ethan. He loves me.” Her eyes hold mine, and she smiles. And fuck , the sight of her gorgeous dimples makes me weak . Grateful that I get to see them again. For a lifetime if I play my cards right.
“I love him,” Pia continues, making me weaker, desperately grateful. “And I think you know you’d be a fool to let him walk away. He’s the best person for this firm. And I’d hate to watch you regret that when you calm down.”
Philip stares at her like he’s seeing her for the first time. “Pia, you’re young, only?—”
“Twenty years old. I know. Everyone keeps reminding me. But I know what I want. I want Ethan. And I need you to respect that,” she insists firmly.
Philip’s lips thin for awkwardly long beats, then he nods. “Well, if you’re sure?” he pushes softly.
She reaches for my hand and squeezes. “I’ll never love anyone like I love him,” she says. “We’re in this together. Always.”
And I’m wrecked .
Absolutely wrecked by her.
Philip rubs a hand down his face. Then sighs. “You’re right. I was angry. Protective. I apologize for how I reacted.” He eyes me. “To both of you. It’ll take some getting used to though, so I might need a minute.”
I nod. “I get it. If someone touched her the way I did, distressed her the way we both did, I’d react the same.”
Philip gives a half-smile. “Well, come in. I think we have some celebrating to do.”
Two minutes later, champagne in hand, even for a defiant Pia who insists she’d drunk it many times…in Switzerland, Philip holds out his hand to me.
“Congratulations… partner .” He laughs. “I have to say, it would’ve stung a helluva lot if I had to officially fire you. Glad I don’t have to now.”
I nod, equally relieved.
Another half hour and we’re back in Pia’s bed.
My good girl is on her hands and knees, showing her daddy just how much she loves him by taking him deeper than she ever has.
And when I come, I bellow my loudest, hoping the whole building hears. “I fucking love you, baby girl.”
“ Je t’aime aussi .”