Chapter 37
Aubrey was staring out her office window. Again.
She reeled her attention back from the glittering skyline and faced her computer. It was getting late. Probably too late to
still be at work, considering her database had debuted two days ago and run smoothly since, and she was still utterly exhausted
from the three-week stint of constant coding and lack of sleep.
But she had no desire to go home to that single-bedroom apartment where the radiator knocked and the upstairs neighbors continuously
reminded her of how empty her bed was at night.
Maybe she should give herself a reason to go home. Maybe she should get a cat.
She ran her eyes over the code she’d spent the past half hour wrangling with.
Or not—a cat would mean one more thing to take care of, and she couldn’t even seem to care for herself, these days.
She hadn’t done Pilates in weeks. Since returning to Osos, she’d poured every ounce of effort into getting the database fixed, and managed to do so just under the deadline.
The program had gone live, and the upgraded algorithm had already identified a potential eight-way donor swap—which, if it succeeded, would be the first of its kind.
But while Jeff and her colleagues were busy clapping her on the back, Aubrey kept wondering where her heart had gone.
Maybe she’d left it in one of those roadstop trash cans on the bus journey back from Indiana.
Maybe some hapless cleaner had found it afterward and wondered who on earth had left such a sticky mess.
A knock interrupted her maudlin line of thinking. Jeff stood in her doorway, his dark hair staging its usual mutiny against
his efforts at combing. His tie hung askew and a smile lit his face. “Burning the midnight oil? Still?”
She hummed. “Nothing better to do.”
“Well, you could always go over your speech for tomorrow. You get that buttoned up yet?”
Tomorrow. What was tomorrow?
Oh, right. The gala. The one at which Osos was awarding her the Innovation Cup. Privately, she figured they were doing it
to make a very visible apology for what had happened, but at least Jeff seemed genuinely thrilled that she’d be getting recognition.
She forced a smile. “That’s what I’m working on right now, actually.”
Not true. She’d put exactly zero thought into what she would say tomorrow.
“Great. Glad to hear it. See you at the party, then?” He rapped a friendly good-night against her doorframe and went whistling
down the hallway. Off to his wife and two small children, who would probably piledrive him with hugs the moment he walked
into his house. Meanwhile, she was fantasizing about cats.
Aubrey squeezed her eyes shut and jabbed her fingers against her closed lids. God, what was wrong with her?
With a gritty sigh, she wheeled her chair back and gathered her things. She didn’t have to go home, but she didn’t have to
stay here, either. Maybe a walk in the cold would do her good. A movie. Dinner out.
Anything to make the time pass quicker.
Except once outside, she only made it two blocks before veering off into the alcove of an apartment building and pulling out
her phone. She scrolled to Paige’s text message from last week, hit Reply, then paused with her thumbs over the keys.
She’d done this so many times. Come this close to asking for Nick’s number, only to lock the phone again and slip it into her pocket, which she did now, too.
Four whole weeks had passed without a word from him. A month.
She’d endured it, because talking would only make things harder. And she would endure another month, then another twenty more.
She’d make herself.
Even if she had to get a cat.
Christmas Eve Eve.
It was a strange day for a gala, Aubrey thought, but attending a party did sound better than sitting at home, doing logic puzzles by candlelight and wondering whether to open a bottle of wine for
the express purpose of drinking a single glass.
So she pulled on her black satin evening gown. The dress required several different arm contortions to maneuver the zipper
up, but she managed.
She frowned at the full-length mirror. Had she lost weight? The gown sagged where it usually hugged, and the fit across her
chest could even be accused of gaping.
Lovely.
She found a safety pin and corrected the deficit, then did her hair and makeup. Those, thankfully, didn’t require any thought.
With her overcoat and dangly earrings in place, she took an Uber to the Manhattan Center, not wanting to brave the subway
in heels. She tipped the driver and stepped out into a sparkling, frosted holiday tableau.
The Uber drove off, but Aubrey remained on the sidewalk.
Across the street, a mother laughed and kissed her rosy-cheeked daughter.
A gorgeous young couple strolled by, her dark fingers interlaced with his light ones.
The two gave each other the kind of look that could only come from sharing a private joke.
All around, lights glistened while the cheerful honks of traffic peppered the air.
Aubrey wondered if it should fill her up. All these people, all this life, and yet she felt hollow in the midst of it, like
a hole punched in a piece of sequined paper.
“Aubrey?”
Her shoulders tensed. Oh, god, that voice. She turned.
A man approached, his lapels drawn up in an effort to hide his features.
“David.” Her teeth clenched. She’d hoped to never see the man who’d stolen her job again. “What’re you doing here?”
He darted glances side to side. “Hi. Sorry to show up like this, it’s just the only place I knew you’d be. Other than Osos,
of course, but I’m not welcome there anymore, which has been really hard, and—”
“What do you want?” she said coldly.
“Uhm.” A nervous flush blazed on his cheeks. “I just came to say sorry. In person.”
She waited a beat, then another. A car honked long and loud as it passed. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really. I’m a jerk, and I never should’ve taken credit for your project. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
She blinked. And waited for some kind of floodgate to open. Or for the heavens to part and proclaim that everything had righted
itself in the world. But nothing happened. “Well . . . thanks?”
“No problem.” David bobbed his head. “And I wanted to say I would’ve told Jeff myself, even if your boyfriend hadn’t come and made me.
I swear. The only reason I hadn’t is because I was still working up my nerve.
But I was going to tell the truth. You can understand that, right? You know I didn’t mean to—”
“Boyfriend?” She waved a hand to stall his soliloquy. “What boyfriend?”
“You know. Big muscly dude? Or maybe he said he was your friend. I can’t remember. I just . . .”
David went on. And on. Aubrey heard none of it. All the blood in her body puddled in her feet while static blotted out her
mind. Big muscly dude.
David’s lips stopped moving. Aubrey found her wits somewhere. “You mean a man came here? To New York? And made you confess?”
His brows flattened. She could practically see him second-guessing himself. “Well, it was more like he asked. Kind of nicely?
Or kind of threateningly? I don’t know. Like I said, I would’ve done it myself, even without him.”
The sidewalk tilted beneath her. “This man . . . Did he have dark eyes? Like, really dark?”
“Oh, yeah. Black, basically.”
“Oh. Wow. Okay.” She turned an aimless circle, wondered why, then floated away on feet that had somehow come unglued from
the rest of her. Nick had come here? To the city? While she’d been in Henderson? But when?
“Aubrey, wait. You forgive me, right? You—”
She waved a meaningless gesture over her shoulder and aimed for the Manhattan Center’s portico. Someone opened the door for
her. She glided in. A different someone pointed her down a hallway. She soon found herself in a festive hall filled with violet
light and sparkling silver tablecloths, where a third someone took her coat. Music blared. Faces swam by. She recognized most,
but struggled to retrieve names for them, even as she shook everyone’s hand.
Nick had come to New York. He’d gotten her job back for her.
Just . . . what?
Jeff appeared and introduced his wife, who had a German accent and smiling eyes. Aubrey tried to make conversation, but couldn’t
have said whether her questions made any sense. In the midst of her floundering, someone put a champagne flute in her hand.
All the while, the wheels in her mind spun, trying and failing to find purchase.
Why on earth hadn’t Nick told her? How could he do a thing like that and not even take credit for it?
She raised her glass to her lips. The warmth of the champagne raced down her throat and blossomed in her belly, then kept
going, cannoning outward, suffusing her whole body.
All this time, she’d believed he hadn’t fought for her.
Except . . . he had. Just not in the way she’d expected. He hadn’t fought to keep her, but he’d fought for her—her dreams, her wants, her needs. The only person he’d failed to fight for was himself. She’d just been too stupid, too scared
and blinded by her own wounded pride, to realize.
“Oh my god.” Aubrey put out a satin-gloved hand to steady herself. “Oh my god.”
Jeff’s wife blinked several times. “You are okay, yes? Your color is not looking so good.”
“I’m . . .” Aubrey’s chest heaved. She guzzled down the rest of the champagne. “Just a little dizzy. I’m sorry, it was so
nice to meet you, but I think I need to sit down.”
Jeff’s wife—Olga? Inga?—looked dubious, but didn’t protest as Aubrey teetered away and found a chair to sink into. She thrust
the empty glass away and spread her gloved hands against the glittering tablecloth.
God, she’d forgotten herself, hadn’t she? All those years ago, Nick had broken her heart, and afterward, she’d lashed the pieces back together with ropes braided from cowardice. And later, she’d expected him to fight for their future, when she herself had quit.
Well. As he would say . . . fuck that.