Epilogue 2 #3
Followed immediately by the memory of him saying no.
I groan into my pillow.
Then I fling an arm over my eyes and catalogue the damage.
Headache: moderate.
Dignity: critical.
Memory: unfortunately intact.
There are a handful of moments in my life I would like to retrieve, shred, and incinerate. Accidentally replying all to a board-wide email in my first year at Mercer. Calling Landon “needlessly theatrical” before realizing he was standing behind me. Wearing suede shoes to a January site visit.
Last night has just taken the top position by a comfortable margin.
I roll over and stare at my ceiling, which—rude—looks perfectly composed. Sunlight filters through the gap in the curtains with all the cheerful indifference of a universe that hasn’t personally made an ass of itself on a terrace.
I kissed Dominic.
No, that’s too passive, as if the kiss happened to me like weather.
I kissed Dominic back like I’d been waiting to do it for years and was angry with both of us for the delay.
Then I propositioned him with all the subtlety of a drunk heiress in a bad movie.
Then he declined on ethical grounds.
I press my face into the pillow and make a sound that should probably remain undocumented.
My phone is on the nightstand. I don’t want to look at it because looking at it may confirm there are messages, and messages would indicate that the rest of civilization continued to exist after my humiliation, which feels both implausible and offensive.
I look anyway.
Nine-thirteen.
Two texts from Audrey.
One from Serena.
One from Layla.
None from Dominic.
That last fact lands with a tiny, mean little sting I refuse to examine.
I open Audrey’s first because Audrey’s concern tends to arrive in bullet-point form and therefore feels containable.
Audrey:
Good morning. Hydrate.
Also, if you’d like me to dispose of a body, Logan says I’m not allowed to help, but I feel I should offer.
I shut my eyes briefly.
Serena:
Babe. You Irish-goodbyed. Are you alive?
Layla:
Morning! You disappeared before I could thank you for coming. Hope you had fun.
Fun. Layla thinks I had fun. Layla, who spent her wedding night blissfully unaware that one of her bridesmaids was outside propositioning a groomsman against a stone pillar like a woman auditioning for a cautionary tale about open bars.
I type back the only acceptable response to each.
To Audrey:
Me:
Alive. Hydrated. No bodies required yet.
To Serena:
Me:
Irish goodbye was strategic. I’ll explain at brunch.
I won’t explain at brunch. I’ll deflect at brunch.
To Layla:
Me:
It was beautiful. You were beautiful. Thank you for having me. x
I set the phone down. Pick it up again. Put it down. Pick it up.
No text from Dominic.
Which is correct. Which is what I asked for. I told him to enjoy his moral high ground, walked away, and didn’t look back. That’s what happened. He’s respecting the boundary I set, which is exactly what a decent man would do after a woman stormed off a terrace calling his integrity into question.
The problem is that I don’t want him to be decent right now.
I want him to text me something stupid and charming and slightly too honest, the way he always does, so I can roll my eyes and feel annoyed and not have to sit with the possibility that I broke something last night that I’ve spent three years pretending I didn’t want.
I get up. Shower. Stand under water hot enough to strip paint and replay every excruciating frame.
His thumb along my jaw. The way he said yeah, sweetheart? like he’d been holding those two words hostage for years and finally let them out on parole. The look on his face when he pulled back . . .
I turn the water hotter. It doesn’t help.
Here is what I know, now that the champagne has metabolized and my prefrontal cortex has resumed operations:
Dominic was right.
I hate that. I hate it with a precision and thoroughness I normally reserve for bad typography and people who reply all unnecessarily.
But he was right. I was drunk enough that my judgment had softened, my timing was terrible, and if he’d taken me upstairs, I would have woken up this morning with exactly the exit strategy he predicted—it was the champagne, it was the wedding, it didn’t count.
And it would have counted. That’s the thing I can’t get past. It would have counted, and I would have spent the rest of my life pretending it didn’t, and Dominic would have let me because that’s what Dominic does—he lets me set the terms even when the terms are designed to protect me from the thing I actually want.
I turn off the shower. Wrap myself in a towel. Stare at my reflection in the fogged mirror—flushed, mascara-stained, hair dripping onto shoulders that have carried the weight of every assumption anyone has ever made about what a woman who looks like me deserves.
Here’s what I’ve never told anyone in this group, and what Dominic will certainly never hear: I’ve been the joke before.
The girl a beautiful boy paid attention to—not because he wanted her, but because the wanting was the prank.
I learned young that when someone like Dominic Cruz turns his full, devastating attention on a woman like me, the safest assumption is that there’s a punchline coming.
That the laughter is just around the corner, and the only way to survive it is to leave before it arrives.
I have been leaving before the punchline for most of my adult life.
And last night, a man I’ve been bracing myself against for years had me against a pillar with his hands in my hair and my body saying yes and every exit I’ve ever built wide open—and he stopped. Not because he didn’t want me.
Because he wanted it to be real.
There is no punchline.
There never was.
I stare at my reflection—this body, this face, this woman who has been so busy protecting herself from a joke that isn’t coming that she almost missed the man who was never, not once, laughing.
“You’re an idiot,” I tell my reflection.
My reflection agrees.
My phone buzzes on the bathroom counter. I pick it up, expecting Serena with follow-up questions or Audrey with a hydration reminder.
It’s Bennett.
Bennett:
I need you in the office. Now.
I check the time. Nine twenty-seven on a Sunday morning, the day after his own wedding. Bennett Mercer doesn’t text people the morning after his wedding unless something is on fire, sinking, or both.
Me:
You got married twelve hours ago.
Bennett:
Aware. Nakamura’s board just called an emergency session. They’re threatening to collapse the secondary partnership agreement. I need you in Tokyo ASAP
My stomach drops.
Me:
How soon is ASAP?
Bennett:
Dominic is already booked on a flight tonight. I need you with him. You’re the only person who knows the contract language well enough to hold the room while he handles the relationship.
The room tilts.
Dominic. On a plane. To Tokyo. Tonight.
Dominic, whose mouth I can still feel on mine.
Dominic, who carried me through the most humiliating thirty seconds of my life with more grace than I deserved, then stood on a terrace while I told him I already regretted kissing him when I didn’t.
When I don’t. When the only thing I regret is saying it at all.
Thirteen hours in a business class cabin. Three feet apart. Minimum forty-eight hours on the ground.
With a man I kissed last night and then verbally eviscerated because he had the audacity to care about consent and timing.
Me:
I’ll be ready.
Bennett:
Thank you. You should have an email in your inbox with the details. Wheels up at seven forty.
I stare at the screen for a full beat, towel dripping onto the bathmat, pulse suddenly doing entirely too much for a Sunday morning.
Tokyo.
With Dominic.
Immediately after I all but threw myself at him and then accused him of sanctimony when he declined to take advantage of me.
Excellent. Perfect. Truly no notes.
I close my eyes and let my forehead thunk against the mirror.
“Well,” I tell my reflection. “At least the humiliation is going international this time.
Dominic Cruz is the perfect chaos agent.
Jenna Pemberton is the perfect counterweight.
Together, they'd burn the whole building down.
Three years he waited for her to crack.
One night against a stone pillar at his best friend's wedding, she finally did.
His morals forced him stop.
Her pride forced her to flee.
Twelve hours later, they're sharing a flight to Tokyo with the wreckage still smoking.
Jenna's always been the woman who leaves before anyone gets close.
Dominic's always been the man who refuses to take not now for an answer.
And the deal Bennett needs them to close? It won't survive either of them losing their nerve.
Some men learn restraint. Some women run out of road. And some altitudes change everything.
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