Chapter 7
The silence in the car was heavy with the residue of their performance.
Streetlights painted fleeting stripes across Ronan’s knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel, his movements tense.
The air still hummed with the ghosts of shared laughter and feigned intimacy from the gala, leaving a charged void that neither of them seemed willing to fill.
He could still feel the phantom weight of her hand on his arm, the scent of her perfume—citrus and pear, a bright splash in his sterile world—clinging to the fabric of his suit.
It had been a role, a performance.
So why did his pulse quicken every time he caught her scent lingering on his jacket?
Why did the words “my fiancée” roll off his tongue when he spoke to Andrew Beauchamp, natural as breathing?
The memory surfaced unbidden. Devney was spinning her story about the sunflower ring, her eyes bright with invented history, her voice carrying such conviction that he’d found himself leaning forward, drawn into her fiction.
In that moment, she hadn’t been his assistant fielding a crisis.
She’d been a woman weaving magic from thin air, and he’d wanted to step inside her story and make it real.
“Well,” Devney said, her voice quiet in the confined space. “I think they bought it. You’re a surprisingly good actor, Mr. Wilder.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. The compliment landed like a critique. He was a good actor because his entire life was an act—a carefully curated performance of control. But tonight had been different. Tonight had felt dangerously like truth.
“The role wasn’t demanding,” he said, his gaze fixed on the road ahead.
“Wasn’t it?” She turned in her seat, the movement slight but her focus on him absolute. “You had to pretend to be in love with me. For a man who refers to joy as an ‘inefficient allocation of emotional resources,’ I’d say that was a stretch.”
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The most difficult part of the night wasn’t pretending to be in love with her—it was remembering, with increasing difficulty, that he was supposed to be pretending.
Seeing the Beauchamps together—their easy rhythm, the unspoken understanding in a shared glance—had been like staring through a window into a world he’d deemed illogical and therefore unattainable.
“They have a genuine partnership,” she said softly, as if hearing the echo of his thoughts. “The way they look at each other, it’s like they’re on the same team.”
“No marriage is perfect,” he said, the words automatic, a shield he’d carried since he was a boy.
“Maybe not perfect,” she conceded, her voice gentle. “But it can be good. They respect each other.”
“My parents’ divorce left more scars than memories.” The words left him before he could stop them, dragged from a place he kept locked and barricaded.
The statement hung between them, stark and heavy.
“How old were you?” she finally asked, her voice calm in the dim car.
“Twelve.” Old enough to understand, young enough to be rewired by it.
A delivery truck swerved in front of them, and he braked hard.
“It was acrimonious,” he added, the word inadequate.
He could still hear the precise, cutting tone of his mother’s voice on the phone with her lawyer, discussing him as if he were an asset being divided. “The visitation schedule is non-negotiable,” she’d said, her voice like ice, while he sat at the top of the stairs, pretending not to listen.
“They were two intelligent people using their knowledge of each other as weapons. I wasn’t a witness to their war—I was ammunition. My father tallied the financial cost of every visit. My mother documented every minute he was late.”
He risked a glance at her. The passing streetlights illuminated a profound empathy in her eyes. It made him want to say more, to unburden himself in a way he never had.
“They turned love into a zero-sum game,” he finished. “Whoever cared less held all the power.”
“And you learned from them,” she said. It wasn’t an accusation.
It was recognition, understanding. And it was more devastating than any judgment could have been.
“I learned that emotional investment is a liability,” he confirmed, his throat tight. “In business, that clarity has served me well.”
“And outside of business?” she asked, the question so simple, so direct, it disarmed him completely.
He thought of his sterile apartment, his hollow social interactions, his life devoid of the messy, unpredictable reality of genuine connection.
“Outside of business,” he said, “it’s been efficient.”
She was silent for a long moment, the city lights sliding over her face as she processed his admission. “That explains so much,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
His hands tightened on the wheel. “Explains what?”
“Why you keep everyone at such a careful distance,” she said. “You build walls so high you can’t see over them. You push away anyone who might try to climb them. Even people who care about you.”
The car rolled to a stop outside her brownstone. The engine hummed, her words hanging in the air between them.
He turned to look at her, really look at her, for the first time since they’d left the gala. The sunflower ring on her finger caught the glow from a streetlamp. A fake ring for a fake promise that had just unearthed the most real part of him.
“Is that what you do?” he asked, his voice rough with an emotion he couldn’t name. “Care about me?”
She held his gaze, her green eyes steady and deep, searching his face as if she could read the truth written there.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
A current, both alarming and exhilarating, shot through him. Without a word, he shut off the engine. He exited, circled to her side and opened her door, the movement stiff, unpracticed.
She looked up, startled, before accepting the gesture and stepping onto the curb.
They walked up the short flight of stairs to her front door in silence, the city’s hum a distant roar.
She fumbled for her keys, her fingers clumsy.
When the lock clicked, she turned, her back pressed against the door, trapped between him and the entrance.
“Ronan.” she started, but his name trailed off as he took a step closer.
He was too close. He knew he was too close.
He could see the faint pulse at the base of her throat, smell the lingering scent of her perfume.
His hand lifted, driven by a need so sharp it stole his breath.
His fingers hovered inches from her cheek, the space between them crackling with unspoken words and untapped want.
He could feel the warmth radiating from her skin.
Touch her. The command was primal. Don’t.
This crosses a line. What line? There are no lines anymore.
He dropped his hand, the small movement feeling like a defeat.
“Goodnight, Devney,” he said, the words tight.
He turned and walked away without looking back, the image of her standing in the doorway—stunned, beautiful, and achingly real—burned into his mind. He didn’t leave right away. He waited in his car at the curb, watching until the light in her window flickered on, a small beacon in the darkness.
Driving back to his empty penthouse, he realized with startling clarity that the carefully constructed architecture of his life had been compromised. She had found a crack in the foundation. And for the first time, he was terrified he didn’t have a blueprint to fix it.