Chapter 45 Andrea
Andrea
Hi Andrea,
I didn’t want you thinking the result wasn’t genuine.
Liam
I stared at the email on my screen. Around me, keyboards clicked, and the printer by the window spewed out a proposal.
Eight bidders. It had gone for sixteen five. It was so close it might as well have been the same.
He’d texted me eight times since Friday, called too, and it was only Monday. Asking to see me, to talk it through. The first five or six times, my heart jumped when I heard one come in, and I rushed to open it, hopeful of something that made sense.
But none of them really said anything—he just denied it over and over, with no real explanation. No apology either. After that, I’d muted the conversation and told him to leave me alone. I didn’t want to look at them anymore, because it hurt too much.
Not talking to him every day felt like physical pain.
I read the message again.
For clarity.
He said it like it was just a correction, like I was his client or something, explaining the facts like we didn’t even know each other.
Did he think that would make me feel better?
Where was the human version of him who knew how to see inside me, squeezed my shoulders when he sensed I was nervous, held my hand in a crowd at a wedding?
The version of him I’d been falling for.
The laminate of my desk was cool under my palms, faintly sticky where someone had left a donut.
Why had he bid over the next top bid? There was no need. Sixteen thousand five hundred was … ridiculous.
My piece would have sold anyway.
I took a sip of my tea. It was too strong, the taste bitter and metallic.
The moment should have been mine, but he overwrote it. Made it safe and curated, a tidy little win with a pretty red bow on it.
He’d assumed I couldn’t handle the uncertainty, and then he’d circled back later to prove it didn’t matter anyway.
Here you go, Andrea. See? You did a good job, well done. There was nothing to worry about.
My cursor blinked in the reply box.
No. It was Liam who couldn’t handle it. He always had to decide what mattered.
“You’re sleeping with someone who never has to look at the people his decisions affect.”
When Toby had said it, I knew there was a kernel of truth to it. That was partly why it had pissed me off so much. How had Liam not thought about how this would affect me? Taking away my agency, my ownership of my own success?
But the real problem was worse than that. I’d thought he knew me, but he didn’t, if he couldn’t understand how sickened I felt when I looked at my friends, knowing I’d been protected while he’d broken their worlds apart.
What Liam had done wasn’t noble. It was callous and detached.
His higher purpose—if that’s what he thought this was—didn’t give him the right to trample over the people who were right in front of him. Every comic book villain thought the end justified the means, but it never did.
Liam, of anyone, should know that.
I just wished I didn’t miss him so much.
The way he used to look at me sometimes, like he was just happy to be near me.
How he always seemed so awkward at first when I teased him, but then he laughed with me anyway.
How he’d kiss the top of my head absentmindedly, like I was something precious.
The clean cotton smell of his T-shirts, the steady heat of him beside me, the low, gentle way he said my name.
How spending whole days with him made the world feel bigger and shinier, whether we were picking out bananas at Sainsbury’s or entertaining a cabinet minister in a castle.
The quiet thank-yous just for being next to him.
It had felt so safe … so normal.
And now there was just this space where he should have been, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
It was quiet in the office, with empty desks everywhere.
From the other side of the floor, Gerald glanced at me, then quickly looked away.
He’d been locked in rooms with Bonnie since the redundancies had been announced, apparently trying to ensure Novexia didn’t completely collapse with a third of the staff gone.
Maybe he gave more of a shit about the place than I’d thought.
Monish’s favorite mug was still there, where he usually sat—Slay All Day—pushed against the monitor stand like he meant to come back for it. There was a Post-it stuck to the screen with a smiley face and a client code that I didn’t recognize.
Kelly’s desk was empty. No photos. No mouse. Just some grains of soil in a ring from where her spider plant used to sit.
Monish, Kelly, and everyone else who didn’t make it just … never came back.
Thanks for everything, but you’re not welcome anymore—you’re just too expensive to care about.
I closed the email.
Could I explain all this to Liam? I imagined lining up the words and walking him through it carefully.
But I didn’t want to.
If he didn’t understand now, he wasn’t going to understand because I explained it better. And I didn’t want to see that look in his eyes, like he’d been with me in the boardroom that time …
Like he thought I was just … wrong.
I locked my screen and stood, pushing my chair in.
Everything seemed so gray and pointless now, like all the magic had gone. The gap between us felt huge.
He wouldn’t change what he was doing with Novexia. It was already too late.
And he couldn’t undo what he’d done with my painting. The auction was over.
It had sold, and that should have felt like something.
Instead, it felt like a thing that had happened to me, rather than something I’d done.