Chapter 5
Isabelle
We passed through the elaborately engraved limestone archway, past the large atrium on our way to the sculpture court, where
the auction would start at any moment.
I had never been to any glitzy events like this until my best friend got serious with a guy who was at the center of Manhattan
high society. Henry was a regular Prince Charming and Selena enjoyed being part of his world, but she also appreciated having
a familiar face nearby, and I dutifully fulfilled the role.
But Selena had grown more confident in these circles now, and these days it felt more like I was the kid-friend to her and
her fiancé’s couple-parent energy. Still, she kept inviting me and never left me alone.
“So, what are you bidding on?” I flipped through the extensive auction packet. Tonight’s offerings included items from across
the spectrum of art, media, and sports.
For some reason, my eyes kept wandering back to Austin’s listing. My stomach tilted, just like it had when I saw him here.
I was used to seeing that athletic build, wavy brown hair, and marginally annoyed set of cerulean eyes in scuffed-up, grass-stained training gear.
But neatly dressed in a well-tailored tuxedo with his hair slicked back, he looked .
. . well, it reminded me why he’d made such an impression with the ladies back in his Premiere League days.
“There’s a piece by a reclusive photographer coming up for auction later.” Selena opened her booklet to the page she had earmarked
and showed it to me. It was a landscape of the Alps. I’d barely paid attention to the arts section when I’d flipped through
the pamphlet earlier. Selena was the creative one, not me. “Henry’s been trying to find this piece for me, and apparently
it’s being auctioned tonight.”
“Sorry to intrude on date night,” I said so quietly that it was almost lost under the sounds of our heels clicking against
the stone floors and the soft conversation that wisped around the room.
“Don’t apologize. I invited you.” Selena’s eyes moved up and around the stone columns as we settled at a high-top table. The
lit-up sculptures that were part of the Met’s permanent collection served as meeting points for the guests, each surrounded
by a few tables for drinks and conversation. “Besides, I checked your calendar, and you weren’t working tonight. I figured
this was probably more fun than sitting in your apartment stewing. I’m not even going to ask if you cyberstalked him.”
She was right. I’d already found Francesca’s social media, and she was so perfect it was painful.
Voluminous brown hair, perfectly tousled in every picture.
Her outfits were effortlessly put together.
There weren’t any pictures of her with Blake, though.
When I started scrolling deeper to see if she’d ever posted photos with other guys and clicking on the profiles of every friend she’d been tagged with, I realized I was spiraling into a full-blown, Verdejo-fueled cyberstalking spree.
Selena caught my expression and nodded. “And, you’re doing me a favor, too. I’m pretty sure Henry ran off to try to get the
collector to sell it before it goes up for auction, so I could use the company.”
“You can return the favor by buying me a—”
The end of my sentence was cut off by flowing brown hair and a pair of silver-gray eyes. Like it was happening in slow motion,
she stopped at the table next to ours, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She took a sip from her wineglass, then let out
a perfect, short laugh at something someone said.
My mouth hung slightly open. I tried not to stare directly, but it was her.
Francesca Cole.
The heaviness became jagged in my stomach, swelling into something painful.
“What are . . .” Selena looked over her shoulder and followed my line of sight. She paused for a second. “Oh.”
After scrolling through so many of her social media photos, I would have thought seeing her in person wouldn’t catch me off
guard—but it did. Which was ridiculous because I didn’t know this woman. But she might have come with a date. My eyes darted
around in dread.
“Is Blake here?” Selena whispered and glanced around the room, too. When she turned back to me, my eyes were already fixed
on something else. Something sparkling.
The glittering diamond on Francesca Cole’s finger.
“Oh . . .” Selena’s mouth went wide as her eyes followed mine.
My vision blurred. The room spun.
Disappointment and sheer humiliation compressed around my throat. They were engaged, and all this time I thought he was my . . .
The room became muffled under the sound of my heart beating loudly in my ears. Something close to adrenaline ran through my
veins, lighting a spark that sent furious heat through my body.
Don’t react. Not here.
It hurt. Viscerally.
What if I had followed him to California instead of insisting on the better residency program in New York? What if I had spent
more time visiting instead of taking on more research? Maybe then I would have been living out my own version of happily ever
after. That ring would have been sparkling on my finger.
Did I choose wrong?
“I’m fine,” I choked out, taking a step back. Francesca probably didn’t know who I was, but still I hoped she wouldn’t see
me.
I couldn’t have chosen wrong. If I had—all these years of working late evenings and weekends, bailing on my social life, and putting
my personal life to the side—what was all of this for? What was a life partially lived, alone and tired all the time, in service
to?
“Isa . . .” Selena whispered. “Do you want to leave?”
“The bidding starts at twenty thousand,” the auctioneer called in the background. I could just barely register it.
The setting crashed back on me at the sound of a gavel slamming against the podium.
I rolled my shoulders back. Being wounded felt weak. And nobody was going to see me look weak. “Of course not. Who cares, right?”
The pain hardened into something else, smoothing over the momentary crack in my resolve. Blake was the one who chose wrong,
and I was going to make sure he knew it.
“Right.” Selena gave my hand a quick squeeze.
Across from us, Francesca’s perfectly polished voice suddenly called out, “Twenty thousand!” She lifted her paddle, the ring
glinting on her finger.
Selena’s eyes narrowed and she mumbled something under her breath. She tapped her paddle against her hip. Her weight shifted
between her legs.
“Forty thousand!” Selena raised her paddle, her usually soft expression hardening to steel.
“Selena . . .” I cautioned with surprise. “What are you bidding on?”
I glanced up to the podium, but there wasn’t any object on display. We hadn’t gotten to the arts portion yet.
Francesca didn’t look in our direction before she countered. “Sixty.”
“I don’t know, but she’s not getting it,” Selena whisper-shouted to me. “One hundred thousand.”
Selena’s bid silenced the room.
“One hundred and fifty,” Francesca countered a bit louder. For the first time, she glanced to us for a passing second.
A slow, humiliating prickle stung along my skin. I was five feet from a woman I knew more about than I should have. And to her, I was a complete stranger.
“Two hundred,” Selena called back.
Every eye in the room volleyed between Selena and Francesca.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
My hands shook as I opened the booklet, eyes racing across the numbers to find whatever item could be this competitive.
I’d looked at this page before. It was the sports section.
And the item up for auction was a four-week intensive with the American Footballer himself.
My stomach hollowed. Blake was a huge Premier League fan. Francesca was viciously bidding against Selena for Blake. Because of course she would, she was his fiancée and this was something he’d love.
“Put her out of her misery.” Henry, Selena’s fiancé, reappeared behind us. He handed her a drink, then pressed a kiss on her
head as his shoulders rumbled with a silent laugh.
Selena grinned.
“One million,” she called casually, like she was ordering a latte.
The room went completely silent aside from Henry’s, now audible, chuckle.
“One million.” The auctioneer’s eyebrows shot up and stayed there. “From the exuberant soon-to-be Mrs. Amari. Do we have one
point one million?”
The room stayed silent.
“Sold.” The gavel banging against wood drew every eye back to the auctioneer. “A foundation record to paddle number seventeen.”
Henry looked down at Selena inquisitively.
“I really wanted to win.” She casually patted his chest. Then the corners of her eyes dipped as they met mine. “Are you okay?”
No.
“It’s not a big deal.” I tried to shake off the deep soreness that settled across my chest and shove it into the corner of
my heart where I kept everything else I didn’t have time for. “I don’t care.”
When I saw them together at the wedding, I couldn’t react like this. I never aspired to be a humble loser and I wasn’t about
to start now.
I needed a drink.
While Selena was waiting for the landscape photo to go on auction, I decided that I’d try to make myself invisible at the
bar. All I wanted to do was go home, but that felt like admitting defeat, and if I just made it through the night, I’d feel
better. But on my walk to the bar, a pair of crystalline eyes, confused more than anything, caught mine.
It was a befuddled Austin Cade.
Under the archway that led to the main bar in the atrium, we passed each other, and he stopped me. Curiosity lined his forehead.
I took in a breath to explain, but he beat me to it.
“Jesse just told me your frien—”
“I can explain that.” I put my hand up and tried my best not to look as defeated as I felt. “But I really need a drink first.”
His eyes softened and he tipped his head in the direction of the bar about twenty feet away. That look—one I didn’t know well
so it took a second to identify—was pity.
God, tonight was mortifying. Not only was the guy I’d stupidly thought I’d end up with, my one, engaged to someone else; now I got to explain why my best friend just spent seven figures on four weeks of lessons or
something with Austin.
When we got to the bar, I ordered a drink and tapped the cool, polished wood. I had promised an explanation. “So . . .”
“You have a little crush on me?” Austin deadpanned, so seriously I knew he was joking. He was being nice, and that only made
me feel even more humiliated. He pitied me and he didn’t even know why. “That’s why you had your friend buy that?”
A laugh, one I wasn’t expecting, popped out from between my lips. I smiled, thankfully, at him. Even though I didn’t want
to accept his kindness, I sort of had to.
I leaned my side on the bar and faced him. “Selena only bought it so someone else couldn’t.”
The corner of Austin’s mouth tipped up before immediately straightening. He turned and leaned against the bar as well. “Seems
a little—”
“Petty?” I cut him off and cocked my head. “I don’t know what to tell you. Selena can be petty. And she’s getting awfully
comfortable with that Black Card.”
This close, I could make out every detail of his face.
The lines along his forehead deepened for a moment before smoothing out.
Then he chuckled lightly. His expression became brighter.
He looked more like that Austin I’d seen in interviews on TV years ago.
I found myself wondering how he went from the American Footballer to the surly man living quietly in Manhattan.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” I added, chipper. I was going to fake being okay until I actually was and, right now, I needed
to think of anything else. Anyone else other than Blake, because in that moment it all felt too heavy. “For helping your foundation.”
“Taking credit?” His upbeat tone felt a little forced. Instead of asking why I needed a drink, he seemed content with trying to distract me from the reason.
And I was going to let him. “Shouldn’t you be charming donors instead of questioning me?”
He blinked a couple times and turned uncomfortably back to the bar. He tapped his hands on it like he was thinking.
“Charming donors is a lot harder when they aren’t your best friend,” he shot back. “See how easy it is when you don’t have
that loyalty on your side cutting checks.”
I crossed my arms.
“Watch and learn, Cade.” I patronizingly tapped his chest, the rich fabric and firm muscle beneath sending static up my arm.
I was smart enough to know I was being baited, but welcomed the distraction. My brain and my heart needed it.
I motioned for him to follow.