The next day, another arrangement arrives—orchids this time, their waxy petals bruising where I squeeze them before throwing them away. I almost text him a picture of them in the trash can, but stop myself just in time.
He never shows up in person. Not at first. I think he's scared he'll make it worse. Or maybe he knows I'd rather burn down the building than let him in.
I burrow deeper into my new routine—job-hunting, sleeping, avoiding Asher. Liam is back in London for reshoots, but he calls to check in every day. I lie and say I'm fine. The only person I see is my delivery guy, and he's too busy to care if I'm a little dead inside.
By the tenth day, I start to wonder if I even exist to anyone else anymore. The press stopped calling weeks ago. My friends—or the people who counted as friends, anyway—stopped calling long before that. Mina texts occasionally, but I don't even know what to say to her.
Miles Andrews called once to check on me, right after I flew home from Los Angeles. I didn't know what to say to him, either. He pretended that what happened with Asher wasn't my fault, but we both know it was. Mostly, I think he just felt bad about me getting hit by a car. The whole conversation was stilted and awkward, full of apologies on both sides. I doubt I'll ever hear from him again. I'm okay with that.
And then Asher disappears. No calls, no texts. The only proof I have that he even exists is the hole in my heart and the deliveries that never stop. But he doesn't reach out. He doesn't even explain his absence. He just…vanishes.
It should bring me comfort, but it doesn't. I spend the next fifteen days worried about him. Is he alive? In jail? Did he finally take the hint?
I hate that I don't know, and I hate that I'm even obsessing about it at all.
On the fifteenth day, I'm eating cold noodles in the dark when the doorbell rings.
My heart stutters and stops. I know it's him. It has to be.
I creep to the door to check the peephole. He's standing so close, I can see the scar on his jaw, the cut on his lower lip, the way his eyes flicker between hope and utter defeat.
He doesn't ring the bell again. He just stands there, like he's waiting for me to open it, like if he just wills it hard enough, I'll appear. The silence is a new kind of violence.
I press my forehead to the wood, close my eyes, and wait. My whole body is buzzing with the desire to scream at him, to pound on the door until my fists bleed, to let him in so he can hurt me again, properly, with his hands and mouth and the sharp edges of his love instead of with his silence.
Instead, I slide down the wall and sit, my knees pulled up, my cheek resting on the cool wood. I listen for his breathing on the other side, so faint I wonder if I'm imagining it.
"I know you're there," he says, his voice muffled through the door. "You don't have to open it or talk to me. I just…I just need to be here right now."
I don't answer, and he doesn't say anything else. We just stay that way for an hour, him outside the door, me on the inside, just…silent.
"Thank you," he rasps finally, and then I hear his footsteps retreating.
I don't move until I hear the elevator doors at the end of the hall.
My phone dings a minute later, another text from an unknown number.
I've spent every day of the last two weeks wishing I were with you instead of in rehab.
My heart thuds against my ribcage. He was in rehab? What the fuck?
I thought maybe that's where I needed to be to find some part of me that was worth saving. You know what I realized? You're that part of me. You're the only thing that's ever brought me peace, given me hope, or made me want to be someone worth saving. Thank you for doing it again tonight, when you owe me nothing. I love you.
Even though I swore I was done crying over him, I cry again anyway. And when I finally go to bed, I lie awake, the words of his text haunting me. I keep picturing the look on his face when he was on his knees outside the door week ago—the way he seemed so empty, like he'd finally realized I meant it when I said never again. Like, maybe, he was dying, too.
I wake up to a news alert the next morning.
BILLIONAIRE CEO ASHER BLACKSTOCK ISSUES PUBLIC APOLOGY FOR ANDREWS SCANDAL
There's a photo of him at a podium, his jaw set like he's ready for a firing squad.
My thumb hovers over the link. It would be so easy to read, to know what he said, to gloat in his shame. I almost do it, but then I remember the way his hands shook at my door last night, and I scroll past.
Just after noon, my phone rings again. But this time, it's not him.
Liam's name flashes on the screen. I stare at it for a full ten seconds, not sure I want to talk to him right now.
I answer on the fourth ring anyway, my voice a whisper. "Hey."
