CHAPTER FORTY
After I got home and dropped off my suitcase, I went directly to Elevated. There was a new receptionist at the front desk, and she looked overwhelmed. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m here to see Franny.” She was the HR manager and had some paperwork for me to sign and a box of my things for me to collect. “I’m Everly Aprile.”
The receptionist’s eyes widened. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
It was very strange to be left in the lobby. This had been my second home for so many years that it was weird to be an outsider.
When the receptionist returned, she had Claudia with her, which I had not expected.
“Everly! I was hoping that we could chat. Would you mind coming into my office?”
“Sure.” I nodded.
When we got into her office, she closed the door and we both sat down. I felt a bit nervous, which was silly because it wasn’t like she could fire me.
“I want to hire you,” she said.
It was probably the last thing I would have predicted she would say. “What?”
“You will get the title of event planner and you’ll be reporting directly to me.”
“But what about Mr. Crawley?”
She narrowed her eyes. “What happened to you was wrong and ridiculous. I’ve already spoken to him and let him know that I would be doing this. You are an excellent employee and team player. It’s always been important to me to help other women succeed. You deserve that chance.”
A week ago I would have leapt at this opportunity, but now I had different plans. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate the offer, but I’ve decided to strike out on my own.” This had been one of the things I’d been planning over the last week. I knew starting my own company was a big risk, but I was ready to take some really big leaps. And thanks to the money Sunny had given me, I had enough to do it.
“Good for you, Everly. I would be happy to mentor you and help you get everything started.”
“Thank you!” Again, I hadn’t expected her response. “I will definitely take you up on that. And if you get any clients looking for a baby or bridal shower—”
“I will send them your way,” she said before I could finish my sentence. “Not that you’re going to need my help.”
She reached over and grabbed a pile of paper and pushed it toward me. “The word’s already spread, thanks to the work you did for the Belmont baby shower.”
“You mean the shower that got me fired?” The irony of that was not lost on me.
“I mean the shower that put your name on the map. Clients have been calling here and asking for you by name. This is a bunch of the messages and emails we’ve received and I’m giving them to you. This should help you get started.”
“But why don’t you keep these leads for yourself?” I suspected that it was what Adrian would have done.
“Because that’s not the kind of person I am,” she said. “Plus, like I told you, we’re not doing showers. But we would be happy to partner up with your new company for any clients who may need different types of events.”
I took the papers. “Thank you.”
She stood up and offered me her hand, and I shook it. I said, “I wish I’d been your assistant instead.”
“I wouldn’t have let you. I’d have promoted you within three months.” We walked over to her door. “Best of luck to you, Everly. You are going to be wildly successful.”
Wildly successful . The words pounded themselves into my brain as I walked toward HR.
One of the most amazing event planners in the business thought I was going to be wildly successful.
And she had given me the best start possible.
Despite the fact that I had been planning for a week what I would do and say when I saw Max again, all of my plans and backup plans went out the window when I returned to New York.
I considered calling him, but I knew he was going to come by at seven o’clock. I spent time getting ready because this was going to be an important moment in my life, one way or the other, and I wanted to be prepared for it.
Vella told me she was going to go say goodbye again to Otis. I tried to talk her out of it, but she informed me that she had to make her own mistakes so that she could better discover who she was.
Given that I’d made some not-so-great decisions lately, I didn’t feel qualified to stop her and just said, “Call me if you need help moving a body.”
Then it was just me in the quiet of the apartment, waiting, watching the clock.
Precisely at seven o’clock, Max knocked. I walked over to the door, took a deep breath, and opened it.
“Everly?” His mouth dropped open.
He looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept at all the entire week I’d been gone. It was the worst I’d ever seen him look. He was still drop-dead gorgeous, but lines of exhaustion and worry were etched on his face.
“Hi, Max.” Well, that was an entirely inadequate response for whatever was happening between us right now as we stood in the doorway.
He shifted his body and I saw his hands raise slightly, like he wanted to touch me, hold me, but he didn’t.
“Come in,” I told him. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
He came into the apartment and I closed the door behind him. My hands were sweating, my heart racing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this nervous.
I walked over to the couch and sat. Max did the same. He took off his coat, laid it on the arm of the couch, and then started wringing his hands.
He said, “I’ve imagined this moment so many times and now that you’re here and willing to talk to me, I don’t know how to start.”
“You could—”
“First, your job,” he cut me off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“No, go ahead.”
“With your job situation. My dad has a friend who is a friend of Elevated’s CEO. I will get your job back.”
“I don’t need you to do that.”
He misunderstood me. “I’m not trying to save the day here or anything, and I’m not trying to rescue you. I want to help you get it back because I am responsible for what happened and I want to make it right.”
“No, I didn’t say that because I wanted you to stay out of it. I’m saying it because I don’t want to go back to Elevated. I think I’m going to try and start my own company. I have some seed money thanks to Sunny and a list of potential clients.”
He gave me a shy half smile. “I thought you might say that, so I paid the graphics designer at the non-profit to make these up.” He took out his phone and opened an app and handed it to me.
It was a bunch of different logos and business cards with “Aprile’s Showers” on them.
My breath caught. This was unbelievably thoughtful and kind.
And exactly the kind of thing Max would do.
I gave the phone back to him, my hand shaking. “Thank you. But you should know that it wasn’t really your fault that I lost my job and I shouldn’t have blamed you. I’m sorry I did that. I was just really angry with you.”
“You had every right to be. And you’re not the one who should be apologizing here.”
I nodded.
Then he said, “What were you going to tell me earlier? You said ‘you could’ before I interrupted you.”
“Oh. You said you didn’t know how to start, and I was going to say that you could start at the beginning.”
“Right.” He nodded, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “So the night we met at the bar. I saw you crying and how sad you were. When I saw you smile at Basta, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And the only thing I wanted in that moment was to keep making you smile.”
“Oh.” I seemed to be saying that a lot lately. My nervous system was short-circuiting and my heart was thrashing around so hard in my chest I was sure it was going to disconnect itself from some important veins and arteries.
“I dream in Italian. Sometimes I hear someone speak and I translate it into Italian and then back into English. Which I know makes no sense, but I do it. I did live in Monterra for years while my father was the ambassador there. It’s where I went to high school. Italian was my primary language for a long time. Monterra feels like a second home to me, but I am American. And like I said, when I get around people speaking it, like everyone in that sports bar, I pick it up without realizing it, including the accented English.”
He had already explained this part of it—that the accent had been accidental because of his environment.
“So I didn’t set out to deceive you. I was speaking that way without realizing it. And when you pointed it out and you were so happy at the idea that I was Monterran, well, I didn’t want to take that away from you. I figured it couldn’t hurt anything. I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“But then you left your phone and coat behind.”
A wry smile from him. “And now some part of me wonders if my subconscious did it deliberately because despite me thinking I wouldn’t see you again, I really wanted to. I’d had so much fun talking to you and I wanted it to continue. I wanted to see you again.”
My heart was bonging loudly in my chest, strong enough to reverberate through the rest of my body.
“And again and again. And even when you said you were only interested in being friends, I kept coming back because I knew I wanted more. I knew that you were scared, but I wasn’t sure why. But one thing I was certain of—I thought that if I told you the truth, that I wasn’t from Monterra, you would stop spending time with me. I didn’t want to lose you. You told me the first night we met how much you hated people lying to you—that you couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t see a way to tell you and not lose you. It was selfish of me.”
“You know, there’s something Vella recently shared with me,” I said.
“The beauty pageant thing?” he asked.
My eyebrows lifted. “How do you know about that?”
“She showed me. I think when I was sharing with her about you and our situation, she felt obligated to return the favor. And she said she assumed you would tell me eventually, anyway.”
I shook my head. I would have kept her secret. “She didn’t want me to know about it because she thought it would change how I saw her. And it wouldn’t have. I would still like her regardless. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I would have liked you and wanted to be with you even if you weren’t from Monterra.”
“It’s more than that,” he said. “You were the first woman I’d ever dated who’d never heard of me.”
“Because Max Colby doesn’t exist,” I reminded him. His country of origin wasn’t the only thing he’d lied about.
“I know. I’m sorry about that, too. My whole life people wanted to be friends with me because of who my parents are. Paparazzi used to follow all of us around constantly. Especially during my parents’ divorce. Arabella loved it and couldn’t get enough of it. My ‘friends’ loved the money, the lifestyle, the attention. What I could give them instead of who I was. Since moving to New York, I’ve been using Max Colby. And you liked me. Not Maximilian Wainscott. You don’t know what that means to me.”
I wanted to comfort him, so I followed my instinct and reached out and took his hand. He gripped me tightly, the look of hope and surprise on his face making my heart ache.
He swallowed hard before continuing to speak. “You said once that you didn’t respect people with trust funds and I wanted your respect. Not just your respect. Your admiration. Your heart. I kept that part of me hidden from you because I was afraid.”
I looked at our joined hands, the way he held on to mine like they were a lifeline. “And again, it doesn’t matter to me that you come from money. I thought that we had similar backgrounds, but I don’t care that we don’t. It never mattered to me if you were rich or poor.”
He stayed quiet for a few seconds, as if considering what I’d said. “After we kissed that first time, I felt like such a jerk. I was lying to you but kissing you like that? It wasn’t fair to you and I didn’t know how to tell you. I knew I had to, but like you said, I was running away instead of dealing with my issues. Then before Sunny’s shower, when I heard your boss talking about taking you on a date, I thought I had lost you. I was so unbelievably relieved that you chose me that I couldn’t think clearly. All I knew was that I wanted you so badly that I couldn’t even remember where I was, let alone that I should be telling you the truth.”
He glanced over his shoulder at my bed. “I’m so drawn to you—you’re like this magnet that I can’t stay away from. I tried to put you out of my head after I found out about that date and I couldn’t do it. You were always there, no matter what I did. You were all I could think about. Then when things heated up here at your apartment, I again had to deal with the fact that I was lying to you, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to confess when all I want to do is touch you and kiss you whenever you’re close.”
I understood that sentiment all too well.
“When you told me that you loved me”—his hands squeezed mine again—“I was in shock because I’d known for a while that I had fallen in love with you and it was incredible and overwhelming to realize that you felt the same way.”
That revelation was a complete shock, like an arrow piercing my heart, sharp and fast and unexpected. I couldn’t breathe. Max loved me?
“And how could I lie to someone I love? A relationship is supposed to be based on trust, and I was lying. Over something so stupid and inconsequential. And I—”
“You love me?” I stopped him mid-rant, wanting to make sure that I’d heard him correctly. That I wasn’t imagining things.
“Of course I love you.” He said it like I should have known that already. “Who wouldn’t love you? You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.”
“You’ve never said that to me before.”
“I haven’t? That was another thing that I should have been telling you repeatedly once I realized it. It just all happened so fast and I fell so hard and so quickly.”
This was one of the variables I hadn’t been able to plan for. I knew Max liked me, was attracted to me, cared about me, but I didn’t know whether or not his feelings were as deep as mine. I’d hoped they were, but I hadn’t known.
“I’m really glad you love me,” I confessed.
“Why?” he asked, a hint of a laugh in his voice.
I had missed his laughter so much. “Because I was scared that you didn’t.”
He hesitated for a moment and then reached over to me, holding my face with his hands. “Everly, I will love you every minute of every day for the rest of my life. I will love you until my final, dying breath, and then whatever happens after that, I will still love you. If I was given an entire eternity to love you, it wouldn’t be long enough.”
Tears fell down my cheeks and he rubbed them gently away with his thumbs.
“In addition to always loving you,” he said softly, “I want to spend the rest of my life making you smile.”
“You’re not doing a great job right now,” I said through my tears, and this time he did laugh.
He leaned forward and pressed a soft, tentative kiss to my cheek. “Everly Aprile, I have been head over heels for you from the very beginning. Including literally when you nearly knocked me out in your boss’s apartment.”
“That was an accident,” I protested.
Max smiled at me again, but then his face quickly sobered. “I don’t know the exact moment that I fell in love with you, and I also don’t remember what my life was like before you came into it. I can’t bear the thought of having to spend another moment without you. I am so sorry for lying to you. Can you forgive me?”
“I love you. And Max, I’ve already forgiven you. But you have to promise to never lie to me again.”
“Never,” he promised.
“If I ask you whether or not you like my shoes—”
“I will tell you that I don’t care about shoes and have no opinion one way or the other and that you’re beautiful no matter what you’re wearing.”
“What did I just say about lying?”
He kissed my cheek again. “It’s not a lie, la mia lei. It is the truth.”
I remembered that phrase from our first night. It meant “my her.” That I was his, out of all the women out there.
A surge of joy and love filled me up, making me feel unbearably light and happy. “It’s okay with me if you still want to do the accent.”
“Really?” He sounded intrigued.
“Yes, feel free to whisper sweet Italian words anytime you’d like.”
Then he said something, but it was in a bunch of different languages and one word seemed to meld into another and I didn’t know what he’d just said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I just promised you in every language I speak to never lie to you again. And Everly, ti amo. Te quiero. W? ài n?. Je t’aime. Eu te amo. I love you in every language, too.”
What else could I do but kiss him? I leaned forward and softly pressed my lips against his. I heard his breath catch, how he held himself so still, as if he were trying not to scare me off.
It was a sweet little peck, but his entire body relaxed when I pulled back. When he finally seemed to understand that we were going to be okay. That I really did forgive him.
He said, “You know, you made me rethink everything in my life. What I thought about relationships, about marriage, about loving someone. You said I should find someone I enjoy being with all the time, someone I wanted to build a life with, someone who shared my goals and aspirations. My best friend. You were right. And that person is you.”
“Max,” I said, so touched.
We kissed again, gently, slightly longer, but still tentative on his part.
He rested his forehead against mine. “You thanked me once for saving you.”
“When that car nearly flattened me like Gumby?”
He smiled. “Yes. But you’re the one who saved me, and I didn’t even know that I needed to be saved. I am sorry that I’m not royalty, though.”
“I was waiting for a fairy tale, but you’re so much better than some story because you’re real. I would take every hardship and obstacle and misunderstanding if it means I get to be with you in the end.”
“And I would face down every evil queen and wicked stepmother, slay every dragon, to be with you,” he promised, kissing my hands.
“But I also want to be with you through all the mundane, routine, and ordinary moments, too.”
“So do I, la mia lei.”
“And speaking of hardships and shared aspirations, if I start my own business, I am going to have a crazy schedule,” I warned him. “I’ll never know when I’ll be able to see you. I’ll have to constantly work evenings and weekends to get it up and running.”
“I will support you a hundred percent in everything you do, and I will take whatever time you can give me. I’ll even rearrange my schedule so that I can be available whenever you are.”
“You would do that for me?” The tears were going to start falling again.
“I would do anything for you, Everly.”
“There is one more thing,” I said, scooting closer to him. “As you know, I don’t have a ton of experience when it comes to the more physical side of relationships. Maybe you could help me out with that.”
He gave me a wolfish grin. “You know how much I love helping others.”
“I’m counting on it,” I told him.
Then he kissed me for real and made the rest of the world completely fade away. Max was mine and I was his and nothing else mattered.
I had just climbed into his lap when he pulled his head back. “Did you make a list for today?”
At my expression, he laughed.
“Yes, I made a list,” I admitted.
“Am I on it?”
“You are the list,” I said. “I listed out the pros and cons of us being together and tried to write down all the ways this conversation might go. The only thing I didn’t know was how it would end.”
There was so much love in his bright blue eyes as he looked at me, gently caressing my face. “You know how our fairy tale ends. Happy Everly after.”