CHAPTER 12

Serena's Pov

I did not plan to visit his office. I told myself that repeatedly while I stood in the elevator, sweating palms holding a white paper bag filled with croissants he used to adore. 

This was not surveillance. I was not spying. I was just… dropping by. What any good partner would do. 

The lie tasted bitter.

When the doors to the executive floor opened, I saw the receptionist's dubious expression and the way she turned away quickly, trying not to see me. That alone made my stomach twist. I forced a smile and went on, heels clacking against the gleaming marble as I arrived at the frosted glass doors of Dominic's office.

He did not notice me at first.

I lingered in the doorway. He was hunched over his desk, phone in hand, his thumb moving with mechanical precision. His face was tense, mouth tight, jaw set. The kind of face that usually preceded broken glasses and slammed doors. I took a slow breath and knocked gently.

"Dom?"

His head jerked, startled, and he closed his phone with a snap and laid it on the desk. Too quickly. As if it burned his hand.

"Serena." His voice was a narrow sliver of ice. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I brought croissants." I raised the bag offering, trying to sound casual.

He stood and walked around the desk, not towards me, but to the window. Framed against the gray skyline, he was all but a silhouette, twisted and unreachable. 

"Thanks, babe."

I walked further into the room, every step heavier than it needed to be. "I phoned last night. You didn't answer."

"I was busy."

Busy. One word. Cold. Dismissive. I watched him pretend to read a pile of papers, shuffling them unnecessarily just so he had something to do with his hands. 

"Tough morning?" I asked, falling into the chair in front of his desk. 

He didn't glance up at me. "You could say that."

My eyes flicked to his phone, still glowing face-down. I didn't have to guess what he'd been doing. I'd seen the same tense, irritated expression before, whenever Liana came back into the picture.

"Anything I can do to help?" I tried softly.

His pause was too long. "No."

It was the way he said it, no inflection, no softness. that made me understand I wasn't just being shut out. Maybe I was being replaced.

Since she came into the picture, everything has been a mess. The other day, he promised to focus on us and said he would handle things but with each passing day, he gets more withdrawn. Was this his “handling it”? 

I crossed one leg over the other, fighting to keep my voice level. "I noticed you got me flowers but I'm still yet to get them."

That got his attention. He looked up, his expression clouded. "You've been snooping through my accounts?"

"I manage the PR budget. It came up." I met his eyes, and didn't flinch. "Black tulips. Not my usual neither is it the client's."

His expression slipped for a second, then became impassive. "It doesn't mean anything."

“It does to me." I fired back.

He ran a hand over his face and sighed. "Some things are private, Serena."

That sentence was a slap. Painfully so. I was more than certain those flowers were for her but the fact that this man who claimed to love me and always spoke to me like I was the most important woman on earth had just hid this information from me, broke me. 

I stood up, face straight and voice emotionless.  "Right, some things are"

"Don't do that," he snapped. "Don't twist this.".

"I'm not twisting anything." I grabbed the bag of croissants and banged it on the corner of his desk. "I am taking it the exact way you meant it."

He did not try to stop me as I walked out and that hurt more than anything he could have said.

Later that evening, I sat opposite Cozy in a dark booth in one of her favorite eateries. No one can see me here or I'll be in deep soup. My brunette wig itched beneath my scarf, and my lips felt stiff beneath unfamiliar red lipstick. And with this ridiculous looking shades, I looked like somebody else, and that was the point.

“Tell me all about it," Cozy said, stirring her drink with a slow, deliberate swirl.

I didn't hesitate. I told her about the picture I saw the moment I entered his office. That post had popped up on my phone earlier and I dismissed it. If I recall, she was laughing with her hand in her hair, looking decidedly too at ease. I told her about the black tulips on the expense report, the way he refused to tell me who it belonged to and the way his voice dropped back into that hallow tone he used when he was upset. 

But more than that, I told her how my heart no longer jumped when I gazed at him. How that intensity, the pain and  the thrill, had bled into something more tenuous, distant. The love you give to a portrait of someone who no longer looks at you. Something cold. Fragile.

Like walking on a frozen lake, not knowing which step would send you through.

Cozy leaned back in the red velvet booth, lips against the rim of her drink before she spoke a word. " Black tulips, Smart choice. So... either he's lying to you  or he's not telling you everything huh?."

"Or both," I said softly.

She clinked her glass against mine with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "And you still want to be that woman?"

I didn't answer.

Because I no longer knew.

The silence sat between us like a skein of thin thread, tugging on something neither of us wanted to utter.

"Come on," she snapped, eyes narrowing with the kind of understanding only a woman like Cozy could possibly see. "You can't be rethinking this. Can you? You've come this far, you need fo finish this."

I still didn't say a word. I just looked at my drink, untouched, fingers tracing the condensation on the glass.

I was not just a woman observing her man slipping away. I was seeing him drown and maybe, maybe, I was the one who had started poking holes in the boat to begin with.

“There's a lot to do.” 

Cozy's eyebrow jerked up, but she didn't press. She simply gave a slow, complacent nod, as if she'd seen this game play successfully before. Unknown to her, the game had not even started. 

"Then do it. He won't see it coming," she said.

And I smiled again, very slowly but it wasn't friendly.

"No," I whispered. "He won't and he will be so full of regret when he finally sees it.".