Chapter Twenty-Two—Andrew
Ineed an hour. Just to process.
Nobody stops me. Liam steps back from his chair. Ethan says nothing. Riley watches me cross the kitchen and I don't look back. If I look back I won't go, and I need to go. I need some time to think.
The door closes behind me with a soft click that sounds too loud.
The Strip at this hour is a different city.
The clubs are dark, their lights still cycling on the wrong schedule, pulsing for no one.
A woman in last night's dress crosses the intersection ahead of me, heels dangling from one hand, phone glowing in the other.
A maintenance crew hoses down the concrete in front of a casino entrance, water running black into the gutters.
The fountains are still going. Nobody there to watch them.
I walk. I’ve moved around a lot since college. No place really stuck. Vegas was supposed to be the same.
The heat is already rising, thick and dry, carrying that particular Vegas morning smell: sun-warmed concrete, stale beer, and cigarette smoke baked into the sidewalks. By noon this stretch will be packed with bodies and noise. Right now it's just me and the city running on maintenance.
I need to play out the scenarios.
Scenario one: it's mine.
I run it straight, no hedging. If this baby is mine, what does that mean to Riley?
Does she want my name attached to this, the two of us permanently tangled in a way that can't be undone?
Or does the idea of it being mine make everything harder?
She spent weeks not telling me. Convinced I'd bolt the second things got real.
Maybe she's right.
I test that thought for half a block. It doesn't hold.
I met Connor Monroe at a networking event.
She never told him my name. Not once. Not when we were together. Not after I left.
Just another handshake. Another business card. He mentioned he was flying out to Portland that weekend to visit his sister. Said it offhandedly, the way people mention family when they’re killing time before the pitch.
Her name hit like a dropped weight.
I kept my face steady. Kept talking numbers. Like I hadn't spent years wondering where she ended up.
Hearing her name dragged every mistake I'd ever made straight back into the room.
I told myself it didn't mean anything.
That she probably lived halfway across the country from wherever I was at the time.
I'd never see her again.
But I didn't walk away from that handshake.
And I didn't forget her name.
I told myself it was just business.
That keeping the partnership made sense on paper.
But every time Connor mentioned her—I listened harder than I should have.
Walking away from Riley was the worst decision I ever made and I've known it every single day since. I can still see the look on her face when I shut that door.
She didn't cry. Didn't yell. Just stood there in that kitchen like someone had cut the power to everything inside her.
I was twenty-one and thought leaving would hurt less than watching myself ruin her.
The night before the kitchen confrontation.
I walked for hours. I don't remember most of the streets. I remember the bar I didn't go into. I remember the one I did, and three drinks that didn't touch anything.
There was a couple outside a restaurant. Her hand in his back pocket. Both of them laughing at something I'd never hear. Ordinary. Easy. The thing I was sure I'd wreck if I stayed.
I almost called her. Twice. My thumb sat over her name both times.
That was the problem. She kept trying to make it work. Every time I pulled back, she reached further. She'd have forgiven me for anything. She'd have forgiven me slow, over years, and watched herself get smaller to doit.
I couldn't be the reason for that.
So I decided to give her something she couldn't forgive.
I didn't plan the words. I needed a door that only locked fromher side.
The place smelled like garlic and butter. Dinner on the stove. Atowel slung over her shoulder like I'd interrupted something normal instead ofdetonating it.
She smiled when she saw me. That's the part that still guts me.
“You're early,” she said.
Like seeing me was still a good thing, even though I'd already decided to break her heart.
I didn't sit down or touch her. Didn't even say hello.
I just stood there like a coward with the ending already written.
“I slept with someone else.”
No buildup or warning. Dropped it into the middle of the room like it had no weight at all.
Nothing came at me. Not even a tear.
The spoon slipped out of her hand and hit the counter with asoft clatter that sounded too small for something that big.
“What?”
One word. Pure shock, nothing else in it yet.
I gave her nothing. No reason. No explanation. Because if I stayed to talk, I'd stay to beg. And begging meant hope, and hope meant staying, and I was certain I'd find some slow way to ruin her if I did.
Broken logic. At twenty-six it felt airtight.
I turned toward the door.
It wasn't the words. It wasn't even the lie. It was the turning.
“Andrew.”
Her voice, small behind me. Not angry yet. Just trying tounderstand.
I never turned back or gave her the chance to ask the questions she deserved answers to.
My hand closed around the doorknob, metal cold under my palm. The door opened, hallway air pushing in against my neck, and I stepped through it.
Left her standing in a kitchen that still smelled like dinner she'd made for me.
The door shut behind me.
That sound—small and mechanical and final—is the one I hear in my sleep.
I blink.
The Strip comes back into view. Heat rises off the pavement. The fountains still running behind me. Traffic humming past like nothing in the world just cracked open in my chest.
My hands are empty.
I circle back toward the building.
The kitchen is empty when I get back. Ethan and Liam have cleared out. Someone left a glass of water at Riley's usual spot. Everything looks normal but it isn't.
I go down the hall and stop outside her door.
My hand comes up. I hold it there before I knock. I want to know exactly what I'm going to say before she opens the door.
I knock.
Silence. The soft sound of feet.
The latch clicks.
She opens the door.
She looks exactly the way she looked in that kitchen all those years ago: like she already ran the worst-case numbers and decided to stand here anyway.
“I'm not leaving,” I say.
She goes still. “You said that earlier.”
“I want you to know that before anything else. Before we talk about any of it.” I hold her eyes. “I left you once. I know what that cost you. I'm not doing it again.”
“Andrew—”
“I'm not done.” My jaw is tight. I keep my voice level.
“Whatever you need from me—space, time, you want me to sleep on the couch for a month, you want me to clear out of the living room when you come through—tell me and I'll do it.
You set the distance. I'll stay behind it.
But I am not going to disappear. Space isn't the same as gone.
You can have as much of the first as you need. I'm done with the second.”
She's looking at me.
Her eyes are red at the edges still. Her hand rests on the door frame, fingers loose against the wood. My hand would cover hers exactly. I haven’t forgotten how that feels.
“I'm done leaving,” I say. “That's all. You don't have to say anything. I just needed you to hear it.”
If she tells me to leave now, I will.
Once was enough to break something in me.
I don't think there’s anything left that could survive it twice.