Chapter 2

Alex POV: He Still Loves Her Too

I’m standing in the lobby of Kelly’s building, Jodie’s hand light on my arm. She’s chatting about the party tonight—something about the guest list, the champagne but her words slide off me like rain on glass. All I can think about is the woman upstairs . . . Dana.

The way her voice cracked when she asked why I’d gone cold. The way her eyes searched mine for answers I wouldn’t give.

Two weeks ago, I was ready to burn the contract and ask her to stay, forever. I’d fallen for her, quietly, and completely. Her laugh in the kitchen at three a.m., the way she tucked her red short hair behind her ear when she was nervous, the softness in her gaze when she thought I wasn’t looking. I’d never felt safer with anyone. Never wanted anyone more. And then I saw her.

A Thursday night. I’d finished a late meeting and decided to surprise her at that little jazz club downtown she likes. I walked in, scanned the dim room, and there she was, in the darkest corner booth, pressed close to some guy I didn’t know. His hand on her wrist. Her head tilted toward him like she was sharing a secret. The sight hit me like a fist. I turned around before she could see me, walked out into the cold, and spent the rest of the night convincing myself I hadn’t just watched my heart get handed to someone else.

I hired a private investigator the next day. I told myself it was to protect the contract, the arrangement, the lie we were living. But really, I just needed proof I wasn’t losing my mind. The reports came fast. Every meeting was the same: back booth, same club, same man. Always after dark. Always discreet. She never mentioned him to him, not even once.

So, I shut down. I stopped touching her. I stopped talking to her and let the silence grow until it was easier than the truth. Because the truth hurt too much: I’d fallen in love with someone else’s woman.

Jodie laughs at something on her phone, and I force a smile. She’s beautiful, uncomplicated, and interested. She doesn’t come with secrets or shadows. She’s safe in a way that doesn’t require trust.

Footsteps echo on the stairs behind me and I turn around.

Kelly appears, breathing hard, his eyes wide. One look at his face and my stomach drops. “She signed?”

Kelly doesn’t answer right away. He glances at Jodie, then at me. “I need a word with you. Alone.”

I excuse myself from Jodie with a quick squeeze of her hand and follow Kelly down the hallway, past the elevators, into a quiet corridor lined with framed paintings. He stops, turns, and lowers his voice.

“I noticed it a year ago,” he says. “The way you looked at her when she walked into a room. The way you’d cancel meetings just to have dinner with her. You fell in love with Dana, Alex. Don’t bother denying it. I’ve known you too long.”

I freeze for a moment, staring at him in disbelief. It was that obvious, huh. “Yeah,” I admit, the word scraping painfully out of me. “I did. I was going to ask her to stay. Tear up the damn contract and start over.”

Kelly’s expression lightens and he utters a sigh of relief. What would he say if I tell him I even made love to her, and that I want to do it all over again?

“She feels the same way. She’s in love with you. She just told me. She cried it out right there in my office.”

For a second I can’t breathe. Then the memory of that booth flashes again, Dana’s head close to this mystery man’s chest, the intimacy of it. The pain of that heartbreak twists its dagger into me again.

“There’s something you don’t know,” I say. “I had Dana followed by a private investigator. She’s been seeing someone. Same guy, same club downtown, every time in the back where it’s dark. He’s in love with her. I’m sure of it.”

Kelly’s brows shoot up. “You’re sure?”

“I saw them myself once. And the reports confirmed it. She never told me. Not a word.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “I fell in love with someone else’s girl. Made me feel like a fool. Like everything we had was just . . . convenient for her.”

Kelly studies me for a long moment. “What do you want to do?”

I swallow. “I’m done. I can’t—I won’t—chase someone who’s already chosen someone else. I’m too hurt to change my mind.”

Before he can argue, I hear footsteps again, and this one is faster. I instinctively know it is Dana because her perfume which I can’t get enough of hits my nose first and I swoon a little. Oh, the sweetness of her natural smell.

Dana appears at the top of the stairs. Her face is pale, her eyes swollen and red. In her hand is the stack of papers. She walks down slowly, and the way she does looks like each step costs her something.

She stops in front of us, she doesn’t look at me. Dana holds the documents out to Kelly. “I signed.”

Kelly takes them, mouth open, stunned.

Dana’s gaze meets my eyes for half a second and it looks devastated. She turns and walks past us toward the glass doors. The automatic ones slide open. She steps through, and is gone.

I feel it like a crack through my sternum. I thought I’d be numb by now. I’m not. My heart is breaking so hard I can barely stand straight.

Kelly stares at the papers, then at me. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life, Alex. You’re letting her walk away.”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I turn back to Jodie, take her hand, feel the cool press of her fingers. “Meet us at the party,” I tell Kelly in a flat voice. “Eight sharp.”

Kelly nods and goes out the door and I hear him calling Donna’s name.

Jodie smiles up at me, oblivious of how shattered I feel. I lead her toward the exit, my steps dragging a little. She’s nowhere to be seen outside. Maybe she has gone to meet that man.

My ego screams that I’m right. That I deserve someone who chooses me first, only me, that Dana’s silence was betrayal.

But beneath it is a quieter, more persistent truth I’ve tried to bury: I love Dana still, and desperately. Her sweet soul, her gentle hands, the way she made my too-big life feel like home.

And I just watched her walk away thinking I don’t want her.

The car waits at the curb. Jodie slides in first. I pause, and glance back at the building before getting in the car. The rearview mirror reflects my hard, closed off, miserable expression.

Kelly crosses the street, the papers me and Dana signed still in his hand. “Did you find her?”

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re right, man.”

That knife twists inside me again. I ask, “What?”

“There’s a guy, some dude named Derek. She was talking to him on the phone when I caught up with her. I think that’s him.”

I start the car, my lips pressed tightly together, my heart hurting. Suddenly, I don’t want to go to the party anymore. I want to confront Dana to ask who this mystery guy is, and if it’s true she fell in love with me.