Chapter Two

Ava’s POV

I didn’t let myself think too long.

The hallway was quiet, carpet thick under my shoes. Each step felt like I was walking away from the version of myself who had planned a careful, meaningful first time with a boy who had turned out to be a liar. That girl had been left behind in Vance’s bedroom along with the last of my trust. What remained was something rawer and less careful.

The restroom at the end of the corridor was single-occupancy. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

He was there, leaning against the marble counter with his arms loosely crossed, as if he had known I would come. The same calm expression. The same quiet authority. Up close he was even more solid than he had seemed in the elevator—broad through the shoulders, silver at the temples, eyes that watched me without hurry. The door clicked shut behind me. He reached past me and turned the lock.

For a moment neither of us spoke. The only sound was the low hum of the ventilation and my own uneven breathing.

“You’re sure?” he asked. His voice was low, steady, almost gentle. There was no pressure in it, only a clear opening for me to leave.

I should have left. Everything about this was reckless. I knew nothing about him except the way my body had reacted when he pressed against me in the elevator and the strange, hollow feeling that had been sitting in my chest since I walked in on Vance. I looked at the stranger in the expensive suit and realized I did not want to be careful anymore.

“I’m sure,” I said.

Something shifted in his eyes—approval, or hunger, or both. He pushed away from the counter and closed the small distance between us. One hand rose to my face, thumb brushing the edge of my jaw as if testing the shape of me. Then he kissed me.

It was not soft. It was deliberate and deep, the kind of kiss that left no room for uncertainty. I made a small sound against his mouth, and he answered by pressing me back against the door. His hands settled at my waist as the kiss left me breathless and uncertain of what I had just set in motion.

When he finally drew back, I struggled to steady my breathing.

For a moment, we simply stared at each other. I had never been this close to a stranger, never made such a reckless decision without knowing what would come next.

He brushed a strand of hair away from my face, his expression difficult to read.

“Are you still sure?” he asked.

I swallowed and nodded.

I had come here hoping to forget Vance, even if only for a few minutes. Yet standing in front of this man, I realized that forgetting was not as simple as I had imagined. I was hurt, angry, and desperately tired of feeling like someone people could discard without a second thought.

He seemed to understand more than I had said aloud.

He took my hand, and I let him hold it. The silence between us felt strangely intimate, as if we had stepped outside the world and its expectations.

I did not ask his name. He did not ask mine.

For once, I did not want to explain myself or defend the choices that had brought me here.

The moments that followed belonged to a private part of my life I wasn't ready to examine. I knew only that I had crossed a line I could never uncross, and that the stranger before me had become tangled up in a night I would not easily forget.

When I finally stepped away from him, my thoughts were still scattered. He straightened his suit while I tried to compose myself, smoothing my dress with unsteady hands.

“You needed to feel something else,” he said quietly. “I understand that.”

I didn’t know what to say. The hollow place inside me was no longer empty, but what had filled it was complicated and dangerous. I still did not know his name. I still did not know that the man standing before me was the same man whose money had kept me fed and educated for fourteen years.

He glanced at his watch, then back at me.

“I have somewhere to be,” he said. “But I won’t forget this.”

He unlocked the door, checked the hallway, and stepped out first. I waited thirty seconds, then followed on unsteady legs, trying to put the encounter behind me and prepare myself for the dinner ahead.

Somewhere above us, in a private dining room, my aunt was waiting to introduce me properly to her husband.

I did not yet know that I had already met him.