Chapter 32
CLEO
Ifound him on the balcony. The sun was setting over Rome. Our last Roman sunset. And Cash was standing at the railing with his back to me, shoulders rigid, still wearing his suit from the meeting.
“Hey,” I said softly.
He didn’t turn around. “How was shopping?”
“It was fine.” I set my bags down and moved closer. “How did the meeting go?”
“It’s handled.” Two words. Clipped and final. Like a door slamming shut.
I tried again. “Cash, what happened?”
“I let him out of the contract.” He said it like he was reporting the weather. “No penalties. Clean break.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Not exactly the reception I was hoping for after the day I had. The man I met all those months ago was back. Gone was the Cash from last night. Maybe I could get him drunk again. But that was wrong, right?
“Do you want a drink?” I asked. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“We’re flying out tomorrow morning. Early flight. I’ve already arranged everything.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “And then what?”
“Then we go home. Back to New York. Back to our lives.” He straightened his cuffs, a gesture I was starting to recognize as his tell when he was uncomfortable. “We can bury this whole trip in our memories. Like it didn’t even happen.”
His words hit like physical blows. It took me a second to get my bearings. He threw me off. Was that his intention?
“Like it didn’t happen,” I repeated, my voice sounding just a little wheezy. Like I’d just come up for air and was struggling to fill my lungs.
I was definitely struggling.
“It’s cleaner that way.”
“Cleaner.” I laughed. “Cash, this happened. We can’t just—I mean, the media knows about the engagement. Your family knows. Melody knows. We can’t erase it.”
“We can minimize it.” He was using his CEO voice now. The one I hated. “I’ll handle the press. We’ll do a quiet dissolution in a few weeks. Mutual decision, still friends, the usual script.”
“The usual script,” I echoed. “Do you even hear yourself right now?”
“I have ears.”
“No, seriously.” I moved around to stand beside him. I searched his face for any sign of the man who’d held me in the courtyard. “Where did you go?”
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“Bullshit.” My voice cracked. “You’re standing right in front of me and you’re a thousand miles away. What happened between last night and now?”
“Nothing happened. This was always the plan.”
“This is not the guy I was with last night.” The words were whispered. I didn’t know if I said it for him to hear or if it was just me saying it out loud to try and get my head straight.
“That man does not exist.”
I blinked back tears. Why did those words gut me?
He held out his hand. “I need the ring back.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“The ring. I need it back.”
My throat closed up. I looked down at my hand. The fake symbol of a fake engagement that had started feeling like something else entirely. I twisted it off and dropped it into his palm.
He closed his fist around it without looking at it. Without looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. The words came out barely above a whisper.
“I’m sorry I gave you mixed messages. I kissed you—I wanted you—and then I told you no.
” I was grasping now, desperate to find the right combination of words that would make him look at me the way he had in the courtyard.
“I took your money, I accepted this trip, I pretended to be your fiancée, and I enjoyed every second of it, and then I panicked when it got too real.”
“Stop.” His voice was gentle, which somehow made it worse. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“Then why do I feel like I ruined everything?”
“You didn’t ruin anything, Cleo.” He pocketed the ring. “This was always going to end. We both knew that.”
He turned back to the railing and stared out at the skyline. “You got a fantasy weekend, Cleo. Good food, good wine, ancient history. A few days pretending to be someone I’m not. But that’s all it was. Pretend.”
I felt tears burning behind my eyes and absolutely refused to let them fall. “You’re a liar.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re lying. To me or to yourself, I’m not sure which, but you’re lying.” I stood in the doorway. I couldn’t be close to him. I didn’t want to be tempted to touch him. “That man exists. I’ve seen him. I’ve talked to him. He’s real, Cash.”
“Go pack,” he said quietly. “We leave at six.”
The man I thought I knew was gone.
I went inside, picked up my shopping bags, and made it to my room before the tears started. I closed the door and leaned against it and let myself cry quiet, furious tears that I wiped away as fast as they fell.
I flopped on my bed and pulled out my phone. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound normal when Melody answered.
“You’ve been crying.”
So much for normal. “You can tell?”
“I know your voice, Cleo. What happened?”
I told her. All of it. The shopping disaster, Angelica Rossi, coming back to find Cash completely shut down, the ring. Cash.
“We’re flying home tomorrow,” I finished. “And I think I really fucked this up.”
“You didn’t fuck anything up.”
“I gave him mixed messages. I told him no and then I kissed him and then I told him no again.”
“Stop.” Her voice was firm, very mom-like. “Listen to me. Cash is doing what Bancroft men do when they’re scared. They shut down. They compartmentalize. They convince themselves that feeling things is a weakness.”
“He said the guy I danced with never existed.”
“He’s lying.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Because it’s true. Kent did the same thing to Sylvie. Austin tried to do it to me. It’s their default setting when things get real.”
“So what do I do?”
“You come home. You give him space to figure his shit out. And you focus on yourself and what you want.”
We talked for a few more minutes before she had to go. I hung up and sat on my bed and tried to believe that I would be okay.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Kept replaying the conversation on the balcony. Kept seeing the way he’d asked for the ring back like it meant nothing.
I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. My eyes were swollen from crying, and my head throbbed with the kind of dull ache that came from too little sleep and too many emotions. I dragged myself to the shower, hoping hot water might wash away some of the heaviness in my chest. It didn’t.
When I finally emerged from my room, rolling my suitcase behind me, Cash was already in the living area.
He wore a perfectly tailored dark suit with a crisp white shirt, looking every inch the billionaire CEO.
Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle to be seen.
It was like last night had never happened.
“Coffee?” he asked without looking up from his phone.
“Please.”
He poured me a cup from the carafe on the table and slid it across to me without ceremony. I noticed he’d already packed up his things. His laptop bag sat by the door alongside a sleek carry-on. Ready to leave Rome. And everything that happened here.
We drank our coffee in silence. I kept waiting for him to say something but he remained focused on his phone, typing away at emails or whatever important business demanded his attention.
Finally, he glanced at his watch. “The car has arrived.”
“Already?” I gulped down the rest of my coffee, burning my tongue in the process. “I thought our flight wasn’t until later.”
“We’re flying private.”
I blinked. “Private? As in a private jet?”
“It’s more efficient.” He said it like he was explaining why he chose one brand of cereal over another. “No security lines. No waiting.”
“Right. Of course.” I nodded like this was perfectly normal, like I flew on private jets all the time. “Very efficient.”
He picked up his bags and headed for the door without checking if I was following. I grabbed my suitcase and hurried after him. Goodbye Rome.
The elevator ride was excruciating. I stared at our reflections in the polished doors. Cash was immaculate like he could step out of the elevator and straight onto a runway. And then there was me. Slightly rumpled with puffy eyes I couldn’t quite hide. We looked like strangers.
The car was waiting as promised, a sleek black Mercedes with tinted windows. The driver took our bags and opened the doors. Cash immediately pulled out his laptop once we were inside, creating a barrier between us as effective as a brick wall.
“I have some work to finish,” he said, not looking up from his screen.
“Sure.” I turned to stare out the window as Rome slipped past, trying to memorize every detail.
I was leaving Rome with a suitcase full of designer clothes I’d bought out of spite after being humiliated, and a heart that felt like it had been shattered.
The flight home was excruciating. Cash worked. That was all he did—laptop open, phone in hand, completely absorbed in whatever crisis he’d created by walking away from the Rossi deal. He barely looked at me. He acted like I wasn’t even there.
I tried to sleep for the first hour. Failed spectacularly. Tried to read a book. Couldn’t focus. Finally, in desperation, I pulled out my laptop.
If Cash could bury himself in work, so could I.
I opened a blank document and stared at it. I’d been thinking about my business for months—years, really—but I’d never actually sat down and tried to articulate what it was. What I wanted to build.
What need do I want to fill?
I typed the question and stared at it. Then I started typing.
The words came slowly at first, then faster. I wanted to help young women who felt lost. Who were stuck in jobs that paid the bills but didn’t feed their souls. Who looked around at their lives and wondered, is this it?
I’d been that woman five years ago. Fresh out of college with a business degree I didn’t know how to use, working retail and wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake. Melody had saved me. She had given me a job, given me purpose, and been a friend who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
But not everyone had a Melody. I wanted to be that for someone. For lots of someones.
I wanted to help them connect with their inner child, the one who’d had dreams before the world told them to be practical.
I wanted to help them figure out what set them on fire and made them feel alive.
My goal was to help them figure out what they’d do if money and fear weren’t factors.
I wanted to help them grow into the women they were born to be.
My fingers flew across the keyboard. I outlined programs. Workshops. One-on-one coaching. Content strategy. Social media presence. Revenue models.
I got so absorbed I didn’t notice Cash watching me until I looked up to stretch my neck.
Our eyes met. For a second I saw something flicker in his expression. Something that looked like pride. Or longing. Or both.
Then it was gone.
I lifted my chin. Held his gaze. Refused to look away first. He was the one who looked down. Back to his laptop. Back to whatever wall he’d built between us.
I went back to my business plan. My heart was caught up in him. I knew that. Could feel it every time I looked at him, every time I remembered the way his hands had felt on my skin.
He was a new dream. But he wasn’t my only dream.
If this meant nothing to him, if he could really sit there and pretend Rome never happened, then it was better to end it now. Before I fell completely in love with him.
I focused on the future I was building for myself, with or without Cash Bancroft in it.