Chapter Four: The Easier Part.

“Why?” I asked again. “Why should I stay away from him?”

Ethan shifted on his feet, the sketchbook still clutched in his hands like he didn’t know whether to give it back or use it as a shield. “Just trust me on this one, Liv.”

I almost laughed in his face.

“You spent a year teaching me not to trust you.” I crossed my arms. “And now you want me to trust your judgment about another man?”

That landed. I watched it land. His jaw flexed, but he didn’t have an answer for it, because there wasn’t one.

His eyes drifted to the contract again, still tucked under my arm where I’d carried it all evening. “Don’t sign it,” he said suddenly. “Whatever he offered you, don’t sign it.”

“Why does it matter to you?” I asked. “You’re with Ava now. Shouldn’t you be happy I’m moving on?”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about?”

He didn’t answer. He just stood there, frustrated, like he wanted to explain something he wasn’t allowed to say.

“If Ava matters so much,” I said quietly, “why are you here? Standing outside my door at nine at night, worrying about who I sign contracts with?”

Ethan opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was no version of an answer that didn’t make him sound exactly like what he was. A man who wanted to keep his new relationship and still control what happened to the one he’d thrown away.

“Go home, Ethan,” I said, and shut the door before he could try again.

I sat on my couch for a long time after that, the contract open in my lap. I read through it slower than before, past the trust clause, until I reached a page near the end I hadn’t paid much attention to.

An exit clause. After one year, either of us could walk away. No penalty. No forfeited property. No strings designed to trap me into staying longer than I wanted. I read it twice to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding it. I wasn’t. He had built me a door out before I’d even agreed to walk through the one in front of me.

I searched his name that night, not because I needed a mystery to solve, but because I needed to know if trusting him was foolish. Article after article said the same thing in different words. Damien Black did not make promises he didn’t keep. Business partners who worked with him for years used the word exact. Not charming. Not brilliant. Exact. A man who said a thing once and then did it.

That mattered more to me than anything else I could have found.

My phone rang while I was still scrolling. His name on the screen.

I answered, and his voice came through low and even, like always. “I heard Ethan was at your apartment.”

“How do you—” I stopped myself. I already knew he wouldn’t answer that question any better than the others.

“You don’t have to tell me what he said,” Damien continued. “I only want you to know something. If you decide no, I’ll make sure he never learns about the trust. That stays protected either way.”

I sat with that for a moment, the phone pressed to my ear, something in my chest loosening that I hadn’t realized was tight. “Even if I refuse you?”

“The choice is yours, Olivia. It was never going to come with conditions.”

He hung up without asking for an answer, without pushing, without reminding me of the clock running down on his deadline. He had called only to protect something of mine, even if I never gave him anything in return.

Nobody had ever offered me that. Not once. Not even when I had a ring on my finger.

My phone rang again ten minutes later. Ava this time, her voice bright and fast, already mid-sentence before I fully said hello. “Olivia, I need your opinion. We’re looking at venues, and I keep thinking about the garden one you loved, do you remember? I want your blessing, I really do, this would mean so much to me.”

She kept talking. Venues. Dresses. A future she was building out of the wreckage of mine, asking me to hand her my approval like a party favor.

I hung up without saying a word.

I sat alone afterward and stared at the contract again. For the first time, I wasn’t looking at the clauses. I was thinking about the man who wrote them.

A man who had protected my grandmother’s trust. A man who remembered how I took my coffee. A man who offered me a way out and then promised to respect my answer either way.

The realization unsettled me, because somewhere between the garden and that phone call, the contract had stopped being the thing I was afraid of.

I turned to the final page. My signature waited at the bottom. The pen felt heavier than it should have.

Not because I was afraid of marrying Damien Black.

Because I was afraid of trusting him.

My hand hovered over the line.

Then slowly, carefully, I lowered the pen.