Chapter 28 #2
"Your mother mentioned once that you always wanted to spend Christmas in Quebec City.
That your family used to go when you were little, before—before things got complicated.
So I bought tickets. Two of them. December twentieth through December twenty-sixth.
They're yours if you want them. Both of them.
I'll go with you, or I'll let you take someone else, or you can go alone. Whatever you need."
He sets the tickets on the counter.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me. Not yet. I'm asking you to let me spend the rest of my life earning that forgiveness. To let me prove that what we have is real. That you were never the liability—I was. That I trust you. That I choose you. That I love you more than I'm scared of being hurt."
He takes a breath.
"This video has probably destroyed what's left of my professional reputation.
The board will use it against me. The business press will have a field day.
But I don't care. Because you deserve a public apology for the public humiliation I put you through.
You deserve to know that I'm fighting for us now. And I won't stop until you believe me."
He looks at the camera—at me—with so much vulnerability it makes my chest ache.
"I love you, Harper Beaumont-Kade. I loved you when you bathed me in tomato juice on a plane. I loved you when you made my kitchen smell like brown butter. I loved you when you charmed my grandmother and my friends and made my penthouse feel like a home. I loved you when you wanted to slap me across my smug face so many times.”
He exhales. “And I love you now, even though I don't deserve you. Even though I might have destroyed any chance we had."
The video holds on his face for a long moment.
Then it cuts to black.
The final frame is text:
Harper—I'm waiting outside your parents' house. I'll be here as long as it takes. —V
* * *
I stare at my phone screen, unable to breathe.
The video has 3.1 million views now.
The comments are exploding:
"I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING"
"This man just risked his entire career for his wife I'm—"
"THE APRON. THE COOKING METAPHOR. I CAN'T."
"If my future husband doesn't love me like this I don't want it"
"CEO OF THE YEAR? MORE LIKE HUSBAND OF THE CENTURY"
My phone rings. It's Margot.
"Did you watch it?" she demands the second I answer.
“Yes. I did. I just—"
"He's outside, Harper. Right now. I drove past Mom and Dad’s house ten minutes ago and he's standing on the sidewalk in a suit. In the snow. Waiting for you."
"He's—what?"
"He's outside. Go look out your window."
I stumble to my bedroom window and look down.
And there, standing on the sidewalk in front of my parents' house, is Victor Kade.
He's wearing the same suit from the video. No coat. Just standing there in the December snow, looking up at the house like he's trying to memorize it.
He's been out there for—
I check the video timestamp.
Thirty-eight minutes.
In nineteen-degree weather.
Waiting for me.
"Harper?" Margot's voice pulls me back. "What are you going to do?"
"I—I don't know—"
"Yes, you do. You're going to go down there. You're going to tell him you love him. And you're going to let him grovel properly."
"I look terrible. I'm hungover. I'm wearing pajamas with cartoon cats on them—"
"Harper. The man just made a public declaration of love that's been viewed by three million people. He doesn't care about your pajamas."
"But—"
"No buts. Get your ass downstairs before he gets hypothermia."
She hangs up, and I stand at the window, staring down at Victor, my heart racing.
He's really there. Standing in the snow. Waiting for me.
Fighting for me.
I grab my coat—the first one I can find, which happens to be a puffy winter monstrosity that makes me look like a overgrown marshmallow—and shove my feet into boots.
My hair is a disaster. My face is makeup-free and probably still slightly green from the hangover. The cartoon cat pajamas are visible under my coat.
I look like I've been hit by a truck.
But Victor is waiting.
So I run downstairs, through the quiet house, out the front door—
And stop.
Because he’s right there. Ten feet away. Looking at me like I’m some sort of walking, talking long-lost treasure that he’s just found again.
"Hi," he says after several seconds of staring.
I swallow. “Hi back to you.”
“So, you watched the video."
“I did. Turns out three million other people watched it too."
"I don't care about them. I care about you."
We stare at each other across the snowy sidewalk.
"You're going to get hypothermia," I say finally.
"Probably."
"You've been out here for almost forty minutes."
"Has it been that long? I stopped feeling my feet around minute twenty."
"Victor—"
"I meant every word, Harper. Everything I said in that video. I love you. I trust you. And I'm so fucking sorry for what I did."
My throat is tight. "You called me a liar. You compared me to Isabelle. You fired me in front of everyone."
"I know. And I'll spend the rest of my life regretting it. But I'm asking—begging—for a chance to make it right."
"How? How do you make that right?"
"I don't know. But I'll figure it out. Every day. For as long as you'll let me." He takes a step closer. "I found out Patricia was the mole. She was working with Vanessa Chu the whole time. She sent those screenshots to destroy us. To remove me as CEO. And it almost worked."
"Almost?"
"I fired her. Called Rachel. We're building a case for corporate espionage." Another step closer. "And I talked to Alexei. My brother. The one I punched."
My eyes widen. "You talked to him?"
"He's been trying to reach me for three years. Emails. Calls. Letters. I blocked all of it." Victor's jaw tightens. "Turns out—turns out he and Isabelle never cheated behind my back."
"What?"
"Isabelle realized she and I weren't working. That we didn't have what she and Alexei had always had—they’d met before Isabelle and I did. They dated and because of, I don’t know, timing and life, they split.
When she tried to end things with me, I.
.. I didn't handle it well. Told her she was making a mistake.
That what we had was good enough." He swallows hard.
“Apparently, after we were over, Alexei tried to stay away from her.
They both did. For months. But it was bigger than them. Like—"
He stops, looking at me.
"Like what I feel for you," he says quietly. "The kind of thing you can't fight. The kind that makes you rearrange your entire life just to be near someone. The kind that terrifies you because you know losing it would destroy you."
My chest aches. "Victor—"
"Alexei tried to tell me. That night at the yacht.
That's why he was there—Richard invited him specifically to ambush me, to make me lose control.
Alexei was trying to warn me, trying to explain, trying to apologize for how it happened even though neither of them actually betrayed me.
" His voice drops. "And I didn't give him a chance.
Just like I didn't give you a chance to explain. "
He's close enough now that I can see the exhaustion in his eyes, the vulnerability, the fear.
"I'm really good at pushing people away," he says quietly. "At protecting myself. At choosing fear over love. But I don't want to do that anymore. I want to choose you. Every day. Even when it's scary. Even when it's hard. Even when my instincts are screaming at me to run."
"Victor, it’s not—“
"I'm not asking you to forgive me right now.
I'm asking you to let me prove I've changed.
To let me show you that I trust you. That I believe in us.
That I love you more than I'm scared." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the plane tickets from the video.
"Quebec City. December twentieth. Two tickets. Say yes."
I look at the tickets. At Victor. At the man who just risked his entire professional reputation to tell the world he loves me.
At the man who's been standing in the snow for forty minutes just to see if I'd come down.
At the man who learned to make my signature dish and talked through every failure because that's his language of love.
And I realize: I'm done being scared too.
"Okay," I whisper.
"Okay?"
"Okay. Quebec City. Christmas. Us." I take a step closer. "But Victor—if you ever fire me in public again, I'm going to do a lot worse than pour tomato juice on you."
His smile is devastating. "Noted."
"And you're going to have to grovel. Extensively. For at least six months."
"I can do that."
"And you have to come to Sunday dinners. Every week. My mother already loves you more than she loves me."
"That seems fair."
"And Victor?"
"Yes?"
"I love you too. Even though your cooking is literally a crime against humanity.”
Boyishly gorgeous as he breaks out into a deep laugh, he closes the distance between us, pulling me into his arms.
And to be honest, his body is absolutely freezing. His suit is damp from snow, and there are literal icicles clinging to his long dark lashes.
And I have never been more enamored with him than I am in this moment.
I pull back to look at him. "Your lips are blue. We need to get you inside before you actually die."
"Dying for love. I could do worse.”
“You’d technically be dying from stupidity, but it would be very sweet.”
Grinning, he lets me pull him toward the house.
We’re almost to the porch, when I hear my mother's voice from inside.
"Jean-Luc! Victor is here! Set another place for lunch!"
Victor pulls back, laughing. "I think your mother just spotted us.”
“What do you mean ‘just’? She’s probably been watching us for the last ten minutes.”
He snorts. “I feel like I’m being adopted into your family like a stray cat.”
"You absolutely are. We like to call it our 'Beaumont Collection Program for Emotionally Available CEOs.' You're our first acquisition."
"Good. Because I don't want to be anywhere else."
We head inside, out of the cold, into the warmth of my parents' house.
Into home.
Together.