Chapter 3

Reid's POV

Greg wanted to talk me out of it, but I shut him down with a single sentence.

"Greg, I'm 35. I want to get married."

The screen of my phone was still lit up with a message from my mother.

"Everyone back home is talking. They're saying you threw yourself at some woman who doesn't even want you, and the stress of it put your father in the hospital again.

"Please, I'm begging you, how much longer are you going to drag this out? It's been ten years. Does it have to be her?"

I tilted my head back, forcing down the sting behind my eyes. Then, I opened the chat and typed back a reply. "Mom, I'm done waiting. Phoebe Mercer asked me to marry her. I said yes."

Phoebe was a former student of my mother's, and just as I had spent ten years chasing Maren, Phoebe had spent ten years waiting for me.

Greg sighed and added my name to the top of the layoff list. "Fine. I put you on there, but if Ms. Hale doesn't approve it, that's not on me."

I thanked him and went home to start packing.

Phoebe was coming to pick me up in three days, and when I looked at the date, something tightened in my chest. March 14th was the ten-year anniversary of the day Maren and I got together.

My phone chimed, and a cheerful automated voice filled the room.

"Mr. Reid Harding, in just three days it'll be your ten-year anniversary with Ms. Maren Hale! You two must be happily married by now, right? How's the view from Mount Carlisle? I wonder what your loving Maren has planned for you this time. Let me guess—"

I blinked hard and turned off the reminder, and a text from Maren floated up on the screen. "Working overtime for the next three days. Don't wait up."

She had forgotten our anniversary entirely, and she wasn't even trying to make the lie convincing.

Half an hour earlier, Roman had already posted on social media. "Ten years ago, you took on the whole world for me. Ten years later, I'll protect yours. That multimillion-dollar deal? I'm going to close it for you."

His black Maybach was parked outside the client's building, waiting.

But just a month ago, I had drunk myself into a stomach hemorrhage trying to close that same deal, and when I called Maren to take me to the hospital, she said, "Reid, you're 35. You can't get yourself to a hospital?"

She was three miles away, and she couldn't be bothered.

The difference between being loved and not being loved was obvious to anyone with eyes. I was the only one still foolish enough to cover mine and pretend otherwise.

I figured I probably wouldn't see Maren again before I left. But the very next morning, she kicked my bedroom door open and dragged me out into the snow in nothing but a thin pair of pajamas.

"Reid, I've been too easy on you for too long. You actually used that multimillion-dollar account as bait to set Roman up? Where is he? Tell me where you're hiding him."

Her eyes were cold and dark, and without any warning at all, she slapped me hard across the face.

My ears rang and I stood there trying to make sense of what she was saying, because none of it made sense. My voice came out raw. "Maren, I've never done anything to hurt him."

She pressed the lit end of her cigarette into the back of my hand, and I screamed before I could stop myself.

Maren smiled, and there was nothing warm in it. "Reid, you've been very bad."

She snapped her fingers and one of her bodyguards stepped forward with a tablet, pulling up a security feed. On the screen, my father, who was in the late stages of lung cancer, had been disconnected from his oxygen.

His scarred lungs couldn't pull air on their own, and within seconds his face started turning purple as his whole body seized with convulsions.

"That's my father! Don't hurt him!"

I threw myself at her feet and grabbed onto her legs, barely able to get a word out. "Please believe me. I didn't set anyone up. I don't know where Roman went."

"Oh, Reid." Maren let out a soft sigh and wiped the tears from my face. "You shouldn't have touched him. That was the one thing you should never have done."

She continued nonchalantly, "They say a late-stage lung cancer patient can last about three minutes off a ventilator. You've got 60 seconds left."

The countdown nearly drove me out of my mind. I begged her over and over again, slamming my forehead against the rough stone pavement until blood pooled beneath me, but Maren didn't flinch.

"Still nothing to say, Reid? Your father doesn't have much time. Ten, nine, eight…"

Every number she counted drained another shade of color from my face. I didn't understand how we had ended up here. I always believed that even if Maren and I couldn't grow old together, we would never become enemies.

Mom's voice came shrieking through the phone. "Reid! You ungrateful child! Are you trying to kill your father? Say something!"

My nails cracked against the stone as I clawed at the ground, blood dripping from where I had bitten through my own lip.

"Five, four, three, two…"

Just as she was about to reach one, something clicked in my head.

"I know where he is!"