Chapter 16 Erik
The penthouse is exactly as I left it.
I stand in the doorway of my own home and feel nothing.
I should be relieved. This is my space, my sanctuary, the place where I’ve always been able to think clearly without the distraction of other people and their needs.
For two weeks I’ve been living in a cramped apartment that smelled like Nolan, sleeping beside him, touching him, letting him get under my skin in ways I never intended.
Now I’m free.
The word rings hollow even in my own head.
I unpack my bags. Clothes in the closet, toiletries in the bathroom, laptop on the desk where it belongs. Everything returns to its proper place. By the time I’m done, you’d never know I was gone at all.
I shower, scrubbing away the last traces of his scent that clung to my skin. The water runs too hot but I don’t adjust it. The slight burn feels appropriate somehow.
I spend the day at the office catching up on the thousand things that have accumulated while I’m away, throwing myself into the work so I don’t have to think of him.
It’s nearly midnight when I finally get home and into bed. The sheets are clean and cold, hotel-fresh from the service that comes while I’m away. They smell like nothing.
As I’m drifting off, I find myself reaching across the mattress automatically, my hand seeking warmth that isn’t there. The instinctive action jolts me awake.
Stop it, I tell myself. It wasn’t real.
I can still hear his voice on that recording. The slurred confession, the admission that everything he’d told me was a lie born from anger and wounded pride. He played me from the beginning.
All of it was manipulation. A con artist running his game, and I fell for it completely.
Rage is easier than whatever else I’m feeling. I wrap myself in it like armor and stare at the ceiling and don’t sleep.
Work is supposed to be my refuge.
For the first two days after cohabitation ends, I throw myself into it completely.
I fill my days with back-to-back meetings, strategy sessions, the quarterly review I’d been putting off.
I respond to emails at three in the morning and schedule calls for six AM and fill every minute with tasks that require my attention.
It doesn’t help.
Nolan’s face keeps intruding. Not the version of him that I know is true—the liar, the manipulator, the omega who admitted on recording that his accusations were fabricated.
No, my traitorous brain keeps serving up the other Nolan.
The one who laughed at my terrible cooking and looked so devastatingly vulnerable when I held him through the worst of his heat.
I’m in the middle of a budget presentation when I realize I’ve been staring at the same slide for five minutes without seeing it.
“Erik?” Sara’s voice, careful and professional. “Should we take a break?”
I blink the spreadsheet back into focus. “No. Continue.”
She does, but I catch her exchanging a look with the CFO that says she’s noticed something is wrong. Everyone has noticed something is wrong. I can see it in the way they look at me.
The presentation ends. I approve things that probably deserve more scrutiny. I go back to my office and close the door.
I keep thinking about the last morning. Had he known, even then, that it was all going to crumble? Had he been calculating how much longer he could maintain the fiction before I discovered the truth?
Or—and this is the thought I can’t let myself finish—or had he believed it too? Had he let himself get lost in the same fantasy I was building?
It doesn’t matter. The recording is clear. It’s his voice, his words, his admission that everything was a performance designed to hurt Alistair and ended up hurting me instead.
I should feel vindicated. Alistair was right all along, and my company’s reputation remains intact. I have documentation proving that every accusation against us was groundless.
Instead I feel hollow.
Nolan didn’t even push me on what he did wrong. He didn’t fight, didn’t demand explanations, didn’t try to convince me that whatever I’d discovered was a mistake or a misunderstanding. He just accepted my coldness like he’d been expecting it all along.
Because he knew. He knew what I’d find if I dug deep enough, and when I finally found it, he didn’t bother trying to maintain the lie.
That’s proof, isn’t it? His silence is proof that the recording was genuine.
I wish it made me feel better.
Anna shows up on day three without warning.
I’m in my home office at the penthouse, trying to review contracts I’ve already reviewed twice, when I hear the front door open. For one absurd moment my heart lurches—
“Erik? Are you home?”
Not Nolan. Of course not Nolan. Why would Nolan be here, using a key I never gave him, walking into my penthouse? Obviously, it wasn’t him.
Office,” I call back, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
Anna appears in the doorway a moment later. Her expression shifts from casual greeting to sharp concern in the space between one breath and the next.
“Jesus, Erik. What happened to you?”
I glance down at myself. I’m in yesterday’s shirt, wrinkled from sleeping in it. There’s a coffee stain near my hip. It didn’t matter when I spilled it this morning. I wasn’t planning on going out today anyway. I haven’t shaved since... when? I can’t actually recall.
Okay, I admit to myself, I’m not as put together as I usually am.
“I’m fine.”
“You look like death warmed over.” She crosses the room and perches on the edge of my desk, studying me with the particular intensity of someone who’s known me my entire life.
“And you’re wearing yesterday’s clothes, which means you either didn’t sleep or you slept in them, and neither of those options is ‘fine.’”
“Anna—”
“The cohabitation ended. I know. Sara mentioned you’ve been working insane hours since you got back. She’s worried. I’ve been giving you space, but clearly that was a mistake.” She leans forward. “What happened with the omega?”
“Nothing happened.” The lie scrapes my throat. “The cohabitation ended, and now we’re done. That was always the plan.”
“Erik.” Her voice softens. “I’ve never seen you like this. Even when Dad died, you were…functioning. This is different.”
I want to tell her she’s imagining things. I want to pull rank as her older brother and shut down this conversation before it goes any further.
Instead, to my own horror, I hear myself saying: “Alistair Wallace brought me a recording.”
Anna goes very still. “Who’s Alistair Wallace? A recording of what?”
“Alistair Wallace is Nolan’s ex-fiancé. He’s the one we bought the research from.”
“Go on.”
“It was from a few years ago, apparently. Wallace recorded him. Nolan was drinking, upset about how things ended between them.” I pause, struggling to keep my voice even.
“He admitted everything on tape. He said he made up the accusations against me because he was angry. Nolan West is a liar and a con man. Exactly as we thought he was.”
The words sit between us, heavy and ugly. Anna is quiet for a long moment.
“His voice?” she finally asks. “You’re sure it was his voice?”
“I know his voice, Anna.” Better than I want to. Better than I should, after only two weeks. “It was him.”
She nods slowly, processing. “Okay. So you’ve been vindicated, and the omega has been exposed as a liar, and everything is resolved.”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you look like you’ve just been to hell and back?”
Because I was starting to love him. The thought surfaces before I can stop it, raw and terrible and true. Because I was falling for him, and I thought he was falling for me too, and finding out it was all a game is somehow worse than if we’d never connected at all.
I don’t say any of that. I can’t.
“I started to trust him.” The admission feels like pulling glass from a wound.
“During the heat. Before. He was... not what I expected. And I let myself believe that maybe we could make something real out of this arrangement.” I laugh, and it comes out hollow.
“I feel like an idiot. Like I walked into a con with my eyes open and still managed to get played.”
“You’re not an idiot.” Anna’s voice is firm. “You gave someone a chance.”
“It feels like foolishness.” I don’t look her in the eye. I’ve never been someone who is open with their feelings, but even I can’t hold this dam back and Anna is the one person who will always be there for me.
“Yeah, well, trust usually does when it gets broken.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand, brief and warm. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to trust someone. It’s natural.”
I want to argue with her, to list all the ways I should have known better, should have seen through the act. But her hand is warm on mine and I’m exhausted.
“Dad always said that successful people don’t let feelings cloud their judgment,” I hear myself say. “And he was so right. My judgment went right out of the window with Nolan. I fucked up. I was going to stay with him.”
“Dad was wrong about a lot of things.” Anna’s voice carries an edge now. “You know that. He spent his whole life pushing people away in the name of strength, and what did it get him? A heart attack at sixty and a lot of people who feared him and only a few who loved him.”
“Anna—”
“You’re just like him sometimes. You know that? All this control, all this distance.” She holds my gaze. “Ignoring your emotions isn’t strength, Erik. Managing them, sure, but you’re not doing that. You’re locking them away until they can’t help but come out and overwhelm you.”
I laugh because it’s either that or cry, then I grin at her. “You’re not completely wrong.”
She opens her eyes in mock surprise. “Oh my god, the great Erik Nilsson admitting I’m right and he’s wrong?”
“I didn’t say I was wrong. Only that you might be right. Come now, Anna. Baby steps. One day I’ll be wrong and I’ll even admit it. Maybe not today.”
She grins back and squeezes my hand. “Actually, you know what? Let’s me and you go do something. Right now. Go out and do something fun.”
“I have work.”
“Your work will survive an afternoon without you. When’s the last time you took any time off that wasn’t forced?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“Come on.” She stands, pulling at my arm. “We’re going out. Mini-golf, maybe. Or a movie. Something mindless and fun. You need a distraction.”
“Anna, I really don’t think—”
“Remember when we were kids? We used to go to the movies every weekend. You’d let me order whatever gross slushy combination I wanted, and I’d let you get the popcorn with too much butter.”
I do remember. Such a simple thing but it always felt like an enormous treat.
“One afternoon,” Anna says. “Just one. Consider it preventative maintenance. Keep you from completely falling apart before the week is out.”
I look at her. “Fine,” I say. “But I’m choosing the movie.”
Her grin is triumphant. “Deal. But we’re definitely getting the gross candy.”
The theater is mostly empty for a Tuesday afternoon showing of some comedy I’ve never heard of. Anna buys an obscene amount of snacks and insists on sitting in the exact center of the middle row, claiming it provides “optimal viewing experience.”
For the first twenty minutes, I can’t focus. My mind keeps circling back to Nolan.
On screen, something ridiculous happens. A character falls into a fountain while trying to impress their love interest. Anna laughs, that full-body laugh she’s had since childhood, and something in my chest loosens fractionally.
I let myself sink into the seat. The movie is stupid in the best way—low stakes, absurd situations, nothing that requires thought or emotional investment. Just color and motion and jokes that are predictable but still somehow land.
Halfway through, I realize I’m actually watching. Not just staring at the screen while my thoughts spiral, but genuinely following the plot, such as it is.
Near the end, during a scene so melodramatic it circles back to sincere, I find myself laughing. Actually laughing, the sound startling in my own ears.
Anna elbows me gently. “There he is.”
The movie ends. Credits roll. We sit in the darkness while the theater empties around us, neither of us moving to leave.
“Better?” she asks.
I consider the question honestly. The ache is still there, deep and persistent. Nolan’s face is still lodged in my mind. Nothing has been resolved or fixed or made okay.
But the world feels slightly less grey than it did this morning. The weight pressing down on my chest has lifted, just enough to let me breathe.
“Better,” I admit. “Not good. But better.”
“That’s a start.” She stands, stretching. “Same time next week? We could make it a thing. Sibling bonding. God knows we didn’t get enough of it growing up.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Maybe means yes,” Anna replies and I don’t contradict her.
I gather the empty popcorn container, sticky with butter residue. “Thank you. For coming over. For... this.”
“That’s what family is for.” She hesitates, then adds: “You know you can call me, right? When it gets bad? You don’t have to handle everything alone.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
We walk out into the afternoon sunlight, and it feels brighter than I remember.
That night, I can actually sleep.
Not well—I still wake twice reaching for someone who isn’t there—but sleep nonetheless. Progress.
I think about the agreement I made with Nolan.
The marriage, the cohabitation, the arrangement to pay for Ellie’s treatment in exchange for his compliance with Bureau requirements.
Technically, legally, I’m bound to continue funding her medical care regardless of what happened between us personally.
The petty part of me wants to stop the payments. Let him feel some consequence for the deception, some price for playing me like a fool but that would be punishing Ellie for her brother’s sins, and whatever else I’ve become, I’m not that person. The treatment continues. A deal is a deal.
The apartment, though.
That cramped space with its thin walls and its lingering scent of him, that’s mine.
It’s my apartment. He shouldn’t be in it.
It made sense when I didn’t think it would mean anything to me but that’s changed.
I want it back. I want to sell it or gut-renovate it or do whatever it takes to erase every trace of those two weeks from existence.
I make a mental note to ask Sara about the options. There might be legal complications, given the Bureau’s ongoing requirements, but surely there’s a way to get him relocated somewhere else into somewhere I don’t own.
I don’t want him in my space.