Evelyn
There’s something about the arena at night.
Especially when the team is on the road.
The usual rush of voices, footsteps, and ringing phones has long since faded, leaving behind a hush that settles into the bones of the building.
It’s the kind of silence that makes every small sound louder than it actually is.
The hum of the overhead lights. The distant groan of old pipes.
The faint scratch of my pen across the paper, even though I’ve been reading the same paragraph for the last ten minutes without absorbing a single word.
I should have gone home hours ago. Instead, I’m sitting behind my desk, jacket draped over the back of my chair, heels abandoned beneath it, a half-finished glass of sparkling water on a coaster beside my laptop.
The city glows outside the tall windows, Chicago spread out in glittering ribbons of light. For once, it does nothing to soothe me.
My gaze drifts to the line of framed photographs on the credenza against the wall. Team events. Charity galas. Opening-night fundraisers. Smiling faces frozen mid-laugh, perfectly posed, every image curated to suggest a life that has unfolded exactly as intended.
It’s a lie, of course.
What I’ve learned is that most polished things are.
A muscle tightens low in my stomach. I know exactly why my thoughts refuse to settle.
Hugh.
It’s absurd how easily that man can disrupt my equilibrium even after all these years.
A glance from across a room. A murmur pitched low enough for only me to hear.
The weight of his stare lingering far too long at dinners, games, and meetings when he should be nothing more than another familiar face in the crowd.
And yet his presence has never felt that simple.
With an exhale, I pick up the file in front of me again, forcing my eyes to focus on the numbers.
A soft knock on the door jerks me from those thoughts. There’s only one other person who’d be in the building at nearly nine o’clock at night.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the folder. “Yes?”
The door opens, revealing the man who refuses to be evicted from my mind.
One hand remains curled around the handle as the hallway light spills across one side of his face while the other remains in the shadows.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit, the knot of his tie loosened ever so slightly, as though he’s tugged at it at least once before coming here.
His hair is touched with silver now, and the lines at the corners of his eyes are deeper, so different than the young man I used to know.
Unfortunately, age suits him.
It makes him look less like the reckless golden boy I once loved and more like what he truly is now—a man who has lived, lost, and learned how to carry the weight of it through life.
I feel very much the same.
His gaze finds mine and holds. “May I come in?”
For one ridiculous heartbeat, I can only stare. Those four small words shouldn’t matter. But there’s something about the restraint in his tone, paired with that deliberate distance, that scrapes against a part of me that has no business still being this tender where he’s concerned.
Even a month ago, Hugh wouldn’t have bothered to ask. He would have barged in, shut the door behind him, and leaned against it with a lazy confidence that would make my pulse skitter.
This man now waits.
And I hate that I notice.
I give a slight nod. “Yes, you may.”
After stepping inside, he closes the door behind him. There’s no swagger or easy charm being deployed like a weapon. It’s just Hugh, careful in a way that feels far more disarming than his arrogance ever did.
I set the folder down. “Whatever you need to speak with me about must be important if it couldn’t wait until the morning.”
“It is.”
I gesture vaguely toward the chair opposite my desk. “Then sit down.”
Instead of taking a seat, he remains standing a few feet away, hands loose at his sides, posture composed, though there’s a tension in it I recognize.
Interesting.
When he remains silent, I clear my throat. “What did you want, Hugh?”
He stares at me for a long moment, as if deciding where to begin. “What I need to discuss has nothing to do with the team.”
“Oh?” I fold my hands neatly on the desk. “Then I have even less patience for this conversation than I assumed.”
A flicker of pain crosses his face. Or maybe I’m wrong and it’s just exhaustion.
“The penthouse is quiet without you there.”
The words land with the force of a blow as I stare at him. Outwardly, I remain still. Inside, though, something shifts enough to leave me off balance.
As much as I don’t want to understand what he means, I do. The intimate dinners he cooked for us. The way we would silently sit in the same room, reading together. The opera tickets he bought because he knows how much I love it. Sleeping side by side, never touching yet always aware of each other.
The steady, inescapable gravity of him these past months left an indelible mark on me. And the quiet has gotten to me too, and that’s the problem. Instead of feeling relief when I left, I just feel…
Lonely.
My chin lifts a fraction. “If you came here to be nostalgic, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”
“I came here to say something I should have years ago.”
A chill slides through me as I push back in my chair, unable to sit still. The office feels too small, as if all the oxygen has been sucked from it. I rise and move toward the window, folding my arms as I stare out at the city. Lights shimmer against the dark glass.
“And what is that?”
Silence stretches long enough that I almost turn back before the words rasp out of him.
“When I ended our engagement, it wasn’t because I fell out of love with you.”
The world stops as I slowly turn back to him. Hugh hasn’t moved. He stands exactly where I left him, his shoulders squared.
“I’m sorry?”
His jaw flexes. “I still loved you when I ended our engagement.”
Laughter bubbles up inside me. “That is a spectacularly cruel thing to say after all this time.”
“I know, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Oh?” I take a step toward him before stopping myself.
“Do you have any idea what it cost me to survive that? What it took to let myself believe you had simply stopped loving me?” My throat tightens as I force myself to hold his gaze.
“Because that was far easier than imagining you’d loved me and left anyway. ”
His eyes close briefly, as if each word is painful.
When he opens them again, they’re darker. “It was about survival.”
The air leaves my lungs in a shallow rush as confusion and dread crash over me. It’s a sick, sinking sensation because I don’t know where this is going, only that it’ll rip open the wounds I’d long thought were healed.
I force myself to ask, “What does that mean?”
He exhales slowly. “It means my father wasn’t a good man.”
Some part of me has always known that Malcolm Landry was hard and controlling.
He was cold in the way men of a certain generation and breeding often think of as strength.
He intimidated rooms by merely entering them, and looked at people like pieces on a chessboard.
Valuable only if they could be moved in a strategic way that benefited him.
“And I wasn’t strong enough to fight him when I should’ve.”
The words drop between us like stones.
For a second, all I can do is stare. Despite my best efforts, my voice comes out sounding unsteady. “Fight him over what?”
Hugh’s throat works once. “My father had already arranged it.”
I blink.
Arranged what?
The answer comes before I can ask.
“Dana was never a choice. She was part of a deal.”
For one horrible second, I don’t understand. Even though I hear the words clearly, my mind refuses to assemble them into anything coherent, as if doing so would require acknowledging a reality too grotesque to accept.
“A deal,” I repeat.
He nods once. “A merger. Assets. Land. Political influence. The kind of arrangement powerful men call practical when what they really mean is profitable.” Bitterness roughens the edges of his voice.
“My father had been negotiating it for months without my knowledge. By the time I realized what he’d done, the contract was final. ”
I stare at him, nausea curling low in my belly. “No.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No.” The word comes out sharper this time. If I allow myself to believe what he’s confessing, the entire architecture of my life threatens to collapse. “You’re telling me that your father bartered your marriage like a business transaction?”
“That’s exactly what he did.”
“And you expect me to believe you had no choice in the matter?”
His gaze never wavers. “He threatened to give Astrid to one of his mafia cronies. There was no way I could risk calling his bluff.”
I press a hand to the edge of my desk, needing to feel something solid beneath my fingertips as the room tilts. “How old was she then? Sixteen?”
“Yes. She wouldn’t have been able to withstand something like that. She’s always been…” He pauses, searching for a word to describe his younger sister. “Fragile.”
I don’t understand how a father could be so cruel to his own children.
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
For decades, I’ve lived with a very specific version of how our story ended. Painful, yes. Both humiliating as well as devastating. But simple in that Hugh chose another woman. I built an entire life around surviving that heartache. And I vowed never to be hurt like that again.
And now the man I once loved with all my heart is standing in my office telling me that none of it had been a choice at all.
My gaze snaps back to his. “You still let me believe it.”
He flinches. “I had to.”
I laugh again, but there’s not a drop of humor in the hollowed-out sound. “Did you?”
“Evie—”
“No.” I hold up a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare call me that. Not now.”
His mouth closes.
I turn away for a second, staring blindly at the photographs on the credenza. Smiling faces and beautiful lies. My chest hurts so much, it’s a challenge to pull air into my lungs.