Chapter 34
SULLIVAN
The house felt so much bigger and so much emptier without her around. Bree had only been there a handful of times, usually overnight, and she’d left behind faint traces of vanilla lotion and laughter that somehow still lingered, making it impossible to stop thinking about her.
I poured another drink I didn’t want, but needed. The amber liquid sloshed against the crystal as I crossed the living room. Normally, I liked the view, but tonight, it just made me feel exposed.
Instead of staying in front of the windows like I usually did, I dropped onto the couch and stared at my phone like it might detonate. The last message I’d sent sat unanswered.
Me: Please just talk to me.
Before that, there had been missed calls, voicemails, and another string of texts I’d typed, deleted, rewritten, then sent anyway. Apologies weren’t something I was overly familiar with, and apparently, when I tried, I overcompensated, but the message thread didn’t even show as delivered anymore.
I swallowed a mouthful of scotch that burned all the way down and tapped her contact again, hitting call out of sheer, stubborn reflex. The automated message came instantly. “The number you are trying to reach—”
I ended the call before the voice had even finished. Clearly, she’d blocked me. I had suspected it would happen, but the realization that it actually had settled like a lead weight in my chest.
For a long moment, I just stared at the screen, waiting for anger to override everything else. Anger was familiar territory. Something I knew how to manage, but all I felt was a hollow, expanding quiet.
“Goddammit,” I muttered.
My grip tightened around the phone. Before I could think better of it, I hurled it across the room. It smacked into the far wall and shattered against the hardwood floor, pieces skidding like startled insects.
The sound was loud. Then that dissolved into silence too. I dragged a hand down my face, the sting of regret already creeping in.
Not for the phone. That was replaceable.
Everything else? Significantly less so.
I pushed myself off the couch and grabbed my laptop from the kitchen island, flipping it open with more force than necessary. The screen glowed to life and I pulled up my email, quickly typing out a message.
Need a replacement phone delivered first thing in the morning. Transfer data if possible — S.
Part of me wondered about the clipped tone, but I hit send anyway. My assistant was used to it. The laptop stayed open on the counter as I leaned against the marble, staring at nothing while the bourbon warmed my bloodstream in slow, unhelpful waves.
I should never have left the notes out.
The thought looped through my mind for the hundredth time since she’d walked out of that conference room. It had been a rookie mistake. I didn’t get careless with sensitive information. Not with acquisitions or restructuring and certainly not with personnel decisions, but I’d been distracted.
By a chocolate muffin, of all fucking things. Although it hadn’t really been the muffin itself. It had been the ridiculous hope that maybe she was easing toward letting us exist as a couple in public, but then she’d seen the screen and now we didn’t exist at all.
My jaw tightened as I thought back to her hard expression, her eyes bright with betrayal and her words sharp enough to draw blood.
No matter how many times I’d told myself she just didn’t understand the bigger picture, I couldn’t stop seeing the way she’d looked at me like she didn’t know me at all.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Plus, she shouldn’t have been reading my private files. The defensiveness rose fast and familiar from deep within. What she’d seen were executive decisions. Confidential.
She had no business digging through them, no matter whose name she’d recognized on the list, but even as the irritation flared, it fizzled out just as quickly. She would’ve found out eventually. The layoffs weren’t a secret. They couldn’t be.
Structural changes never stayed hidden for long, and I hadn’t intended to hide them in the first place. I’d expected pushback. Anger. Maybe even distance. I just hadn’t expected her to go nuclear like that, detonating our entire relationship in under two minutes.
The ache in my chest grew sharper as I pictured her standing across the conference table, her hands shaking as she shoved her bag over her shoulder and her voice cracking when she’d said we were done.
The finality in her eyes had been worse than the words. Like she’d already mourned whatever we were before she’d even walked out the fucking door. I drained the rest of my drink and set the glass down harder than necessary.
Short-term pain for long-term reward.
The phrase had guided half my career, the sentiment rational, necessary, and proven, but it sounded hollow now. Just about as hollow as I fucking felt.
I stared out over the city lights, trying to convince myself this was just another consequence to absorb and move past. Another sacrifice on the altar of forward momentum.
Instead, all I could think about was the way she’d looked at me like I’d shattered something sacred and the fact that I hadn’t even seen it coming.
A loud knock sounded at the door, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone trying the handle before knocking again, louder this time. “Sullivan, I know you’re home.”
Liana.
I closed my eyes briefly and scrubbed a hand over my face before pushing away from the counter. My head throbbed, whether from the scotch or the emotional whiplash of the last twenty-four hours, I didn’t know.
Probably both.
As I crossed the apartment, I stepped over the scattered remains of my phone and I pulled the door open, barely having time to register the worried crease between her brows before she launched in.
“You weren’t answering your phone and I needed to talk to you about—” She stopped mid-sentence.
Her eyes flicked past me, taking in the disarray, the glass on the counter and the half-empty bottle, the fractured pieces of phone visible from the entryway. Then her eyes snapped back to my face, widening slightly with instant, brutal comprehension.
“Oh,” she said softly. “That’s why you weren’t picking up, and why my code for your elevator didn’t want to work.”
She stepped inside without asking, kicking the door shut behind her with her heel like she’d done a thousand times growing up, back when we’d still been in the house where we’d hidden from thunderstorms together and shared contraband junk food after our parents had gone to sleep.
“You look like hell,” she said, but not unkindly.
“Thanks.”
She guided me toward the couch with a hand on my shoulder, the same way she used to steer me away from fights when we’d been kids, firm and impossible to ignore.
I dropped onto the cushions with my elbows braced on my knees, my hands dangling uselessly between them now that I wasn’t holding a glass anymore.
When I moved to go get it, she shook her head and sat down beside me, angled slightly so she could see my face. “I think you’ve probably had enough for now.”
“Funny. I distinctly remember handing you an entire bottle of champagne when it was you.”
“Fair enough.” She got up, poured herself a glass, and refilled mine, then came back and handed it over. “Alright. Tell me what happened.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “You already know.”
“I know there were layoffs being discussed. I don’t know why you look like someone kicked your dog, stole your car, and lit your house on fire, but I’m assuming Bree found out what you were planning?”
I hesitated, the instinct to deflect rising automatically after years of compartmentalizing, but tonight, those walls inside didn’t hold. “She found the list.”
Liana’s eyebrows lifted slightly, but she stayed quiet, letting me keep going.
“I left my notes open in the conference room. She saw one of the nurses being cut and it’s someone she knows.
Someone who apparently helped save her dad’s life years ago.
” I swallowed hard, my teeth grinding as I tried to bury the urge to hurl the glass across the room next.
“She lost it completely. Told me we were done.”
Liana leaned back slowly, absorbing what I’d said before she finally cocked her head at me. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you explain anything or did you go full corporate robot and start quoting cost-benefit analyses?” I shot her a look, but she didn’t flinch, just staring back at me expectantly. Patiently. “What did you do, Sullivan?”
“I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen,” I muttered. “She stormed out. Then she blocked me.”
Silence settled between us for a few seconds. Liana took a long sip of her drink and swallowed before she looked at me again. “I’m going to say something you’re not going to like.”
“Shocking.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Sullivan.”
I stared at the floor, my eyes narrowing to slits, but she wasn’t deterred.
“You’ve spent your entire adult life prioritizing efficiency, profit margins, and growth projections,” she said gently. “You’ve been very successful at it and I’m proud of you for that, but you don’t get to suddenly be surprised when those same instincts bulldoze your personal life.”
I bristled. “I’m not bulldozing anything. I’m running a hospital. People’s lives depend on—”
“People’s lives depend on the staff who work there,” she cut in calmly. “Including the woman you’re apparently in love with.”
Hearing her say it out loud was like feeling a red-hot poker being shoved through my heart, but I didn’t correct her. Liana nodded once, like my silence confirmed what she’d already suspected.
“You care about her,” she said. “That’s obvious, but caring about someone means you don’t get to keep them in a box that’s separate from your decisions. That’s not how relationships work.”
I leaned back against the couch and scoffed. “So what, I’m supposed to stop making necessary changes because it might hurt her feelings?”
“No,” she said evenly. “You’re supposed to decide what kind of man you want to be.”
I groaned. “Not this again.”
“Exactly this, because it’s still true,” she said. “Either you care about making money or you care about the girl. I’m not saying you can’t do both. I’m saying you don’t get to pretend they won’t collide and that when they do, you have to choose how you handle it.”
I exhaled slowly, frustration and exhaustion tangling together. “You’re acting like there’s an easy answer.”
“There isn’t,” she agreed immediately. “But there are options you haven’t explored because you hate anything that slows your timeline.”
I frowned at her. “It’s not my timeline, Liana.
There are people out there right now praying for the technology I’ve got but can’t use because we’re not operational yet.
People who are going to die if I don’t get that place up and running as fast as humanly possible, maybe even in time to save them. ”
“Your technology is available,” she said, shifting into that precise, razor-sharp professional tone she wore like a second skin, “Just not there and perhaps not all of it yet. I know you’ve got the best teams you could find working on a whole lot of different projects, but they’re already working on them. ”
I sat up slightly. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you have options,” she said simply. “You usually don’t want solutions that involve patience, but if you want her, you’re going to have to compromise.”
Fuck.
She leaned forward. “Look, I’m not telling you to blow up your business plan for a woman.
I’m just telling you to actually decide whether she matters enough for you to consider other paths.
If she doesn’t, fine. Own that. If she does, then you need to stop hiding behind progress and have a real conversation with her. ”
I rubbed my palms together, tension coiling tighter in my chest. Liana’s voice softened slightly. “Just, whatever you do, don’t be like Neil.”
My head snapped toward her. “I’m not—”
“Don’t lie. Don’t dodge. Don’t make decisions for someone else and pretend it’s for their own good,” she said firmly. “Have the courage to be honest and direct with her. Even if she hates what you say.”
The room went quiet again and I stared across the apartment, looking at the skyline that used to be proof I was winning at something, but I suddenly couldn’t remember what the prize was supposed to be anymore. Liana reached over and squeezed my shoulder before letting her hand fall away.
“Pull your head out of your ass,” she said gently. “Then tell me what you want to do.”
I didn’t answer, but not because I didn’t want to. It was because, for the first time in a very long time, I genuinely didn’t know.