LOGIN**Chapter Fourteen: At First, Yes**Andy arrived in eleven minutes, not forty. He must have been driving before she finished hanging up.Hannah opened the door and didn't step back to let him in right away. She just held the email up between them, Andy's own words facing him."Read it," she said. "Out loud. I want to hear you say it in your own voice."He didn't take the page. He didn't need to."'If I play this patiently, I don't just get Danny's company. I get everything he took from me the first time, including the girl he had no business marrying.'" His voice was steady, but something underneath it wasn't. "I know what it says, Hannah. I wrote it.""Then tell me what it means." Her hand was shaking, just slightly, holding the page like evidence in a trial she hadn't wanted to be part of. "Was I ever anything except a line item in your plan to ruin your brother?"Andy stepped inside without being invited, and for once she let him, because she needed to see his face when he answered
The knock came at nine in the morning, before Hannah had finished her coffee, before she'd even decided what the day was going to be.Gianna stood in the hallway in a coat that cost more than Hannah's rent, holding a single sheet of paper like it was a peace offering."I won't stay long," she said, before Hannah could speak. "I just think you deserve to see this before you get any further into whatever you think is happening with Andy.""I don't need anything from you.""You'll want this." Gianna held the paper out anyway. "It's an email. From March. Andy sent it to his old roommate from business school, the one who works in PR now. I imagine he never expected anyone but Marcus to read it."Hannah didn't move to take it."Read it out loud, then. If it matters so much."Something flickered across Gianna's face — mild surprise, maybe,
Andy didn't get back in the car right away.He stood on the wet sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, watching Hannah slide her dark phone into her clutch like she was closing a door somewhere behind her ribs."You're allowed to feel something about that," he said. "Twelve calls. That used to be the whole shape of your life.""I know." She looked up at him. "I keep waiting to feel something about it. Guilt, maybe. Or missing him." She shook her head slowly. "I don't feel anything. I think that scares me more than if I did.""It shouldn't.""Why not?""Because feeling nothing for Danny isn't the same as feeling nothing." Andy stepped closer, close enough that the streetlight caught the exact color of his eyes, the ones she used to draw wrong in crayon because no color ever came close. "You're not empty, Hannah. You're just not looking in his direction anymor
Priya called on Wednesday with an idea that solved a problem Hannah hadn't told her she had."I want to do a preview reception," she said. "Before the spring show. Press, a few collectors, low-key. Get people talking about the work before everyone else does." A pause. "Does Friday work?"Hannah looked at the calendar on her kitchen wall, at Friday circled three times in Andy's handwriting from the night they'd sat at her table dividing four days into a plan."Friday's perfect," she said.The gallery was warm gold light and quiet conversation by eight o'clock, Hannah's three canvases hung under careful spotlights at the center of the room. She'd changed outfits twice and settled on the green dress because it was the one that felt like hers, not the one Danny would have chosen for her.Andy found her by the second painting, two glasses of champagne in hand, dressed down in a way she'd never seen — no tie, sleeves rolled, like a man who'd decided tonight wasn't a performance."You're not
Andy called before the hour was up."It's a burner," he said, no greeting, straight into it. "Purchased three days ago with a card linked to a shell company Gianna's used before. My assistant traced it in twenty minutes. She wasn't even trying to hide it well."Hannah exhaled something that wasn't quite relief. "So it's nothing. She was just trying to scare me.""That part, yes." A pause stretched too long on the line. "There's something else. I'd rather tell you in person."They met at his penthouse, the same gray couch, the elevator ride up quieter than either of them managed to fill with small talk. Hannah sat upright this time instead of falling apart on it. Andy stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, and for the first time since she'd known this version of him, he looked like a man bracing for a verdict."I talked to a family lawyer this morning," he said. "Marcu
The gallery smelled like fresh paint and coffee nobody had touched in an hour. Hannah stood in front of the reviewer's table with her portfolio spread across it — six years' worth of work she'd stopped showing anyone, and, tucked at the very back, three new pieces she'd finished in the last ten days alone.Priya Okafor, the gallery's acquisitions director, studied the newest canvas for a long time before she spoke."This one," she said, tapping the corner of a piece Hannah had painted at two in the morning, all sharp blues and one thin line of gold cutting through the center. "Tell me about this one.""It's called *Before I Knew Better.*" Hannah kept her voice steady. "It's about finding out something you should have known years ago."Priya's eyebrows lifted, but she didn't ask for more. "I want it for the spring show. All three, actually, if you'll let me have them."Hannah's breath caught somewhere she hadn't expected. Nobody in this room knew she was married to a Vaughn, or estrang







