Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR : Dragged Back

~Zella's POV~

I went home and I did not leave. I locked the door, I closed every curtain, and I sat on the floor of my sitting room for about an hour before I moved to the sofa, and then I didn't move from the sofa for a very long time. The flat felt different than it had five days ago, smaller somehow, like the walls had shifted inward while I wasn't paying attention. I drank what was left in the kitchen cabinet. When that ran out I opened my phone, ordered more, and when it arrived I tipped the delivery driver too much because he smiled at me and it was the kindest thing anyone had done all day. I cried until I ran out of it. Slept. Woke up and started again. I kept thinking about the wedding dress hanging in my wardrobe, the one I hadn't looked at since I bought it, the one I had tried on alone in the shop because I wanted the first time someone really saw me in it to be Cole's face when I walked toward him. I didn't open the wardrobe. I didn't throw the dress out either. I just left it in there and drank and slept and tried not to think about Christmas Day coming and what it meant now.

My phone kept buzzing. Brynn, mostly. Texts first, then calls, then more texts when I didn't answer the calls, then calls again. I watched her name light up the screen over and over and I didn't pick up because I didn't have the words yet and I didn't want to cry on the phone and I knew the moment I heard her voice I would do exactly that. So I watched the screen and let it ring and eventually the battery died and I didn't charge it and then there was just silence, which was better. Silence didn't ask me anything.

On the fifth day someone started knocking on my front door like they were trying to break it down.

I ignored it. Pulled the duvet over my head and waited for them to leave. They didn't leave. The knocking kept going, steady and relentless, the kind of knocking that communicates very clearly that the person on the other side has nowhere else to be and has made a decision. I lay there for a full ten minutes listening to it before I dragged myself off the sofa, stepped over the two empty bottles on the floor, and opened the door.

Brynn stood in the hallway in a coat that probably cost more than my monthly rent, cheeks pink from the cold, hair perfect, looking at me like I had personally offended her by existing in this condition.

"Fifteen minutes, Zella. I stood in that hallway for fifteen minutes. It is freezing out there and your doorbell is broken and my knuckles are going to need medical attention, so I hope you're happy."

"Why are you even here? I told you the wedding was off."

"Exactly. That's exactly why I'm here." She looked at me for one more second and then walked past me into the flat without being invited, which was completely typical and also exactly what I needed even though I would not have said so.

She hit the light switch first. Then she crossed to the window and yanked the curtains open and the grey London daylight came flooding in and I immediately wanted to retreat because everything looked worse in the light, the bottles, the takeaway boxes, the clothes I had been wearing for three days, the general atmosphere of a person who had stopped caring about almost everything.

Brynn turned around and looked at the flat and then looked at me and said, "Jesus Christ, Zella. What have you done to yourself?"

"I'm fine."

"You are not fine. You look like something a cat dragged in and then dragged back out again because it changed its mind." She said it with the specific mix of horror and affection that only she could pull off without it being cruel. "When did you last eat something that wasn't from a bottle?"

"I had crisps."

"Crisps." She repeated it flatly. "Right." She reached for the television remote from the arm of the sofa , moving an empty mug to get to it and clicked it on, probably just to fill the silence, and the morning news filled the room. I was already turning away toward the kitchen when the headline stopped me.

I turned back.

Cole's face was on the screen. Beside him, Dara, in a dress I didn't recognize, both of them standing outside what looked like a registry office, smiling for cameras like it was the most natural thing in the world. The ticker at the bottom of the screen read: Tech entrepreneur Cole Briggs announces surprise to marry tomorrow on Christmas Day to personal assistant.

Christmas Day. My birthday. The day he had looked me in the eye and said 'I want to give you the day you've always dreamed about.'

I stood there with my hand still on the kitchen doorframe and watched Cole smile on my television screen on my birthday on the day that was supposed to be mine, and I felt something move through my chest that wasn't grief anymore. It was something flatter and colder than grief, something that felt a lot like the specific pain of understanding that someone had been planning this for a long time and you were the last person to find out.

"Turn it off," I said. My voice came out completely steady, which surprised both of us.

Brynn turned it off. She didn't say anything for a moment and I appreciated that more than I could explain, that she just stood there and let the silence be what it was without filling it with words that wouldn't help anyway.

Then she said, "Go and have a shower. Pack a bag. Light, a few days worth."

"Brynn..."

"I'm not asking, girlie. Go."

"I'm not flying anywhere. I don't want to celebrate Christmas, I don't want to..."

"Did I say celebrate? Did I use that word?" She crossed her arms. "I said pack a bag. My dad's jet is already cleared. We are leaving in three hours and you are coming with me and that is the full extent of the conversation we are having about this."

I looked at her. At the absolute certainty in her face, the complete absence of any possibility that she was going to take no for an answer. Brynn had always been like this, she didn't argue, she didn't persuade, she just decided and then waited for reality to catch up with her decision.

"I look terrible," I said.

"Yes. That's what the shower is for."

---

She took me to the salon the next morning. Sat me in a chair and told the stylist to do whatever she thought was needed and went and got us both coffee and came back and sat beside me and talked about everything and nothing, a film she'd watched on the flight, a bag she was deciding between, a nightmare client her friend had dealt with at work and didn't mention Cole once, didn't mention the wedding, didn't mention any of it, just talked in that easy Brynn way that made everything feel slightly more manageable than it actually was. By the time the stylist was finished I looked like a person again. Not a happy person, but a person.

Paris in winter had a different quality to London, the cold was the same temperature but the air felt lighter somehow, like it didn't know what I was carrying and therefore couldn't weigh me down with it, and I wasn't sure if that was the city or just the distance from everything I'd left behind in it.

That evening she dragged me to a party at the hotel we were staying in. Christmas night, she said. We were going to see it in properly and I was going to drink something that came in a glass with a stem and not a bottle with a screw cap and that was final.

The hotel was full, loud, all glass and gold light and the particular energy of a crowd that had decided tonight was going to mean something. I stood near the bar with a glass of champagne and watched the room fill up with people who all seemed to know exactly where they belonged in it. Someone nearby was already counting down to something. A couple near the window were kissing, not waiting for midnight, not waiting for anything, just doing it because they wanted to, and I looked away because it made something behind my sternum pull tight in a way I didn't want to feel in public.

I thought about Cole. I couldn't stop myself. I thought about him standing outside that registry office this morning with Dara beside him, both of them smiling for cameras on what was supposed to be my birthday, my day, the day I had been dreaming about since I was old enough to know what a dream was, and I finished the champagne faster than I meant to and reached for another one without thinking about it. The second one went down easier than the first. I told myself I was just celebrating like everyone else in this room, just seeing the year out like a normal person, just standing here with a glass in my hand being fine. By the third glass the edges of everything had gone slightly softer and the music felt less loud and Cole's face in my head was further away than it had been an hour ago, which was the closest thing to relief I had felt in five days.

That was when Brynn came back with a keycard pressed into my hand and a look on her face that meant she was pleased with herself.

"I have a surprise for you upstairs. Room 412. Go."

"What kind of surprise?"

"The good kind. Go, Zella, stop asking questions."

I went. I took the lift to the fourth floor, found the room, and put the card against the reader. The light blinked green. I pushed the door open.

The room was dark. Not empty.

There was a man already in the room, I could make out the shape of him sitting on the edge of the bed, and I assumed in that first moment, in the dark, that this was Brynn's idea of a gift, that she had arranged something. And I was tired and hollow and it was New Year's Eve and Cole was somewhere married to my cousin on my birthday and I had spent five days falling apart, so I made a decision. One night. Just this. Just something that was mine and nobody else's and meant nothing and would be forgotten by morning.

I didn't turn the light on.

I didn't ask his name.

The room smelled like a hotel room, neutral, clean, no trace of anyone's life in it and I thought that was appropriate somehow, that nothing in this room belonged to either of us, that whatever happened here would belong to the dark and nothing else.

What happened in that room was the first time in my twenty-two years that I had ever let anyone past the boundary I had held through six years with a man I thought I was going to marry. I hadn't planned it. I hadn't chosen it carefully. But when it was over I didn't regret it either, which felt like its own kind of information about who I was becoming and the stranger didn't Seems to believe that he just had sex with a stranger and it's happens to be her first.

Then someone knocked at the door.

The man beside me went still.

Three knocks, then a pause, then a woman's voice from the other side. "Hi, this is the service you booked for this evening. I'm here for..."

He was already sitting up. I watched him look at the door and then look at me and something shifted in his expression that I couldn't read in the dark.

He got up. Opened the door.

The woman in the hallway was dressed for a different kind of evening than a hotel party. She looked at him, then past him at me sitting in the bed, and her expression didn't change because this was presumably not the strangest thing that had ever happened to her in this line of work.

"So," the man said, not unkindly, reaching into his jacket pocket for his wallet. "You're not the wrong person. I just have the wrong situation." He handed her something and said a few quiet words I couldn't hear and she nodded and left without coming inside.

He closed the door.

Turned around.

Looked at me across the dark room.

"So you're not the escort," I said. My voice came out smaller than I intended.

"I'm not." He reached over and turned the lamp on.

The light came up between us slow and warm and I saw his face properly for the first time, dark hair threaded through with grey, jaw sharp, the kind of face that looked like it had seen enough of the world to stop being surprised by most of it. He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't fully name, not judgment, not amusement, something quieter than both, like he was trying to decide something and hadn't finished yet.

"And you're not who I thought you were," I said.

"No." He picked up his jacket from the floor and took something from the inside pocket. A card. He held it out to me across the bed, plain white, heavy paper, and I took it because I didn't know what else to do. Then he dressed quietly and efficiently, and at the door he paused and looked back at me one more time with that same unreadable expression.

Then he left.

I sat there for a long time after that holding the card. 'Evander Ashford.' A name that meant nothing to me an hour ago. I put it on the nightstand and lay back and stared at the ceiling and eventually Brynn called asking how I liked her surprise, clearly expecting something very different from what had actually happened in this room and I said it was fine and she talked for a few minutes before she end the call and I lay in the dark until sleep came.

---

In the morning she called from the lobby. "Come down, my dad just arrived."

I dressed quickly, put the card in my pocket out of habit, and went downstairs.

The man standing beside Brynn in the lobby was tall, dark-haired with grey threading through it, jaw sharp, dressed like someone who had never needed to try. He was looking at something on his phone when I stepped out of the lift and then Brynn said something to him and he looked up.

His eyes found me immediately.

He didn't react. Not a flicker, not a pause, nothing. He put his phone into his jacket pocket and when Brynn turned to me with that huge smile she saved for things she was proud of, he was already walking toward us at an easy unhurried pace, like a man who had absolutely no history with the woman his daughter was about to introduce him to.

"Zella, this is my dad." Brynn grabbed his arm with both hands, beaming. "Dad, this is Zella, my best friend I've been telling you about literally forever."

He looked at me.

Held out his hand.

"Evander Ashford," he said. "Nice to meet you."

His hand was warm. His grip was firm. His voice was completely level and his face gave absolutely nothing away and I stood there shaking the hand of the man I had slept with eight hours ago while his daughter beamed beside him and understood that this man was either the most composed human being I had ever encountered or he was made of something entirely different from the rest of us.

"Zella," I said. My voice came out steady, which felt like its own small miracle. "Nice to meet you too."

Brynn immediately pulled him toward the breakfast area, talking about the party, asking if he'd eaten, filling the air the way she always did. I followed a step behind and watched the back of his head and kept my hand from going to my pocket where his card was sitting and told myself to breathe normally.

He didn't look back at me once during breakfast. Not once. Not when I laughed at something Brynn said, not when I reached across for the juice, not when I excused myself twenty minutes later and said I needed some air. He just sat there with his coffee and talked to his daughter like I was exactly what he had said I was.

His daughter's friend. Nothing more. Nothing that required a second glance.

I went back upstairs. Sat on the edge of the bed. Took the card out of my pocket and looked at it for a long moment. Then I lay back, stared at the ceiling, pressed both hands flat over my face, and said it out loud because saying it out loud was the only way to make something feel real.

"So." My voice came out muffled against my own palms. "I slept with my best friend's father."