Chapter 10
DELLA
Three days after Axel left for Chicago, I find myself sitting across from Betsy at one of our favorite cafés, Persephone’s, a tiny bistro tucked between a bookshop and a vintage clothing store. The afternoon sun streams through the windows, highlighting the steam rising from my vanilla latte.
“So,” Betsy says, leaning forward with a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. “Tell me everything. And don’t you dare leave out a single detail.”
I feel a blush creeping up my neck, warming my cheeks. “We’ve been talking every night while he’s been in Chicago. For hours.” I wrap my hands around my mug, savoring its warmth. “He calls right at ten, like clockwork. Last night we talked until two in the morning.”
“Look at you,” Betsy says with a knowing smile. “Your whole face lights up when you talk about him.”
I bite my lip, unable to contain the smile that seems permanently etched on my face these days.
“He’s just... different, Bets. He knows what he wants and goes after it.
No games, no uncertainty.” I stir my latte absently.
“When we’re together, I feel like I’m the center of his universe. Like nothing else matters to him.”
“That’s how it should be,” Betsy says, nodding sagely.
“Conor was the same way. He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I’m going to marry you someday.’ I thought he was nuts.
” She laughs, the diamond on her left hand catching the light as she reaches for her cappuccino. “Turns out he was just sure.”
“Axel told me he doesn’t do casual,” I confide, my voice dropping to a near whisper despite the ambient chatter of the café. “That first night, he cooked dinner at my place. Said if we were going to do this, it had to be something real.”
Betsy’s eyes widen. “Wow. And you’ve only known him what—a month?”
“Three weeks,” I admit, feeling a flutter in my stomach. “Is that crazy? It feels crazy. And yet... it also feels right.”
“When you know, you know,” Betsy says with the confidence of a woman wearing a two-carat engagement ring. “Some men just don’t waste time once they find what they’re looking for.”
I think about Axel’s hands—strong, capable, slightly calloused—and how gentle they’d been on my skin. How he’d stopped us before things went too far, wanting our first time to be perfect. “He’s taking me away this weekend. To that luxury resort in the mountains—Blackwood Ridge.”
“The one with the private hot tubs on every balcony?” Betsy’s eyebrows shoot up. “Damn, girl.”
The waitress arrives with our shared dessert—a decadent chocolate lava cake with two spoons—placing it between us with a flourish. The rich scent of dark chocolate wafts upward, mingling with the coffee aromas around us.
“He gets back tomorrow night,” I say, digging my spoon into the cake and watching as molten chocolate pools onto the plate. “Then Friday morning, we leave for the weekend.”
“And you’re ready for this?” Betsy asks, her tone softening. “After everything with Jared...”
I nod, surprised by my own certainty. “I’ve never been more ready for anything. It’s like I’ve been sleepwalking through relationships until now, and suddenly I’m wide awake.”
“Speaking of the wedding,” Betsy says, seamlessly changing subjects, “we’ve finally settled on a venue—that converted barn in Hudson Valley. The one with the fairy lights and the—”
“Della.”
The voice slices through our conversation like a blade. My spine stiffens as I look up to see Jared standing beside our table, his lean frame casting a shadow across the chocolate cake. He’s wearing a new shirt—probably from that boutique on Madison he loves—his dark hair meticulously styled.
“Jared,” I say, my voice flat. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” he says, his eyes darting to Betsy, then back to me. “Privately.”
Betsy’s face transforms from warm friend to protective lioness in an instant. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Her voice is low but razor-sharp. “You had seven years to talk to her, to say whatever was on your mind. Seven years, Jared.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “This is between Della and me.”
“I’m busy right now,” I say, gesturing to Betsy and our half-eaten dessert. My heart hammers against my ribs, but my voice remains steady. “If you have something to say, you can write me an email or a letter. Something I can delete or tear up if I choose.”
“Please,” he says, and for a moment I see something unfamiliar in his eyes—vulnerability. “I was wrong, Della. I should have married you years ago. I always wanted to, I just—”
“Stop,” I interrupt, holding up my hand. The café suddenly feels too small, too warm. “That’s not true, Jared. You never wanted to marry me. Not really.”
“I did,” he insists, his voice taking on that whiny tone I’d grown to resent. “I do.”
I look at him—really look at him—and see him clearly for perhaps the first time. There is a slight sheen of desperation in his eyes, the way his confidence seems like a thin veneer rather than something solid and trustworthy.
“No,” I say softly, tracing the rim of my coffee mug with my fingertip.
“What happened is you got out on the dating scene and realized you weren’t the catch you always believed you were.
” The words should feel cruel leaving my lips, but they don’t.
They’re simply true, like raindrops falling from clouds.
“Women in their twenties aren’t impressed by a thirty-year-old man who still calls his mother every time he needs to make a decision. ”
Betsy makes a choking sound that might be surprised laughter, her eyes dancing above the rim of her cappuccino.
Jared’s face flushes red, the color spreading from his neck to his hairline like spilled wine on white linen. Tiny beads of sweat appear at his temples. “That’s not—”
“It is,” I say, my voice steady as a heartbeat, shoulders relaxed in a way they never were during our arguments in the apartment we once shared.
“And that’s okay. But what’s not okay is thinking you can waltz back into my life because you’re feeling insecure.
” I take a deep breath, inhaling the rich scent of chocolate and coffee that surrounds us.
“I’ve moved on, Jared. I’m seeing someone who knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to go after it.
Someone whose eyes don’t wander when he thinks I’m not looking.
Who doesn’t need seven years to decide if I’m worth committing to? ”
This guy,” Jared says, his voice edged with bitterness, jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle twitching beneath his clean-shaven cheek. “What makes him so special? You’ve known him, what, a month?”
“None of your damn business!” I snap, feeling a slight smile curl at my lips despite the tension crackling between us.
The café’s ambient chatter seems to fade away, leaving just us in this bubble of unfinished business.
“And what makes him special is that he sees me. Really sees me. Not as an accessory or a placeholder, but as a partner.”
Jared’s mouth opens, then closes, his perfectly whitened teeth flashing briefly before disappearing. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows whatever retort he’d prepared. For once, the man who always had a smooth comeback seems utterly at a loss for words.
“I wish you well,” I tell him, my voice softening as unexpected warmth blooms in my chest—a feeling I’m surprised to find is genuine.
I trace my finger along the handle of my coffee mug, no longer needing to grip it for support.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for.
But it’s not me, Jared. It was never me. ”
He stands there for a moment longer, his shoulders slumping like a deflating balloon as something like realization dawns in his eyes.
Then, without another word, he turns and walks away, his expensive leather shoes clicking against the polished floor, the brass bell above the café door tinkling a cheerful goodbye as he exits into the late afternoon sunlight.
Betsy lets out a low whistle, her crimson-painted lips pursed. “Holy shit, Del. That was...”
“Overdue,” I finish for her, picking up my spoon again, feeling the cool weight of the silver against my fingers. The chocolate cake still looks delicious, its molten center oozing onto the white porcelain plate, and suddenly I’m ravenous, my stomach growling in anticipation. “Very overdue.”
“I was going to say ‘badass,’” Betsy grins, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she clinks her spoon against mine, the sound bright and victorious in the warm, coffee-scented air. “To new beginnings and men who know a good thing when they see it.”
I laugh, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep and genuine inside me, cascading through the café like wind chimes.
My shoulders, tense for so long they’d forgotten how to relax, drop away from my ears as if invisible chains have finally fallen away.
“I’ll drink to that,” I say, lifting my cappuccino with steady hands, the porcelain warm against my fingertips.
As we scrape the last decadent smears of chocolate from our plates, I find myself thinking of Axel—of his broad shoulders and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiles, of the way his calloused thumb traces circles on my wrist when he holds my hand, of how he looks at me like I’m a sunset he’s been waiting all day to witness.
Tomorrow night, he’ll be back from his business trip, his voice no longer confined to late-night phone calls.
And then we’ll have the whole weekend stretched before us like a ribbon of empty highway, nothing but possibility on the horizon.
For the first time in my adult life, I’m not afraid of what comes next. The familiar knot of anxiety that once lived between my shoulder blades has dissolved, replaced by a humming anticipation that makes my skin tingle. I’m ready for it—for him—for everything.