I reached for the phone, my fingers brushing the silver gear cufflinks she’d given me. "Tell her I’ll be on time," I said.
My mother chuckled, the sound of a woman who had won a long-standing bet with herself.
I hung up and sat back, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face. This was the perfect life. The "no sex" rule I had enacted was going to be the death of me, but the payoff of seeing her work for me, of seeing her choose me every single hour of the day, was worth every agonizing minute of restraint.
Chapter 51
Julian
I checked my watch for the third time in ten minutes. The sharp tick of the Patek Philippe she gave me was feeding into my annoyance.
8:47 PM. Wednesday.
I had been waiting for her all day—for my present, for my grand gesture. She hadn’t come Monday or Tuesday, either. The bottle of Sancerre I’d overchilled for her was sweating onto my marble counter.
I had been prepared to forgive her. I’d brought her food. The food from the Lebanese place she’d told me about last week was laid out under silver domes on the table, the scents of warm pita and garlic turning stale. I’d even put on the fucking cashmere sweater she’d bought me.
By 9:30, the Sancerre was room temperature. The silence had teeth.
A familiar, icy dread began to pool in my stomach. It had the same chemical taste as the night I’d watched her taillights vanish a year ago.
No. She wouldn’t. Not again. She came back.
I called. Straight to voicemail. Her cool, recorded voice was a clinical slap.You’ve reached Elara Vance…I texted:Where are you?
Nothing. The blank screen offered no lifeline, no dancing dots. It was like she’d vanished. Again.
By the time the sun went down on the third night, my jaw was tight enough to crack a molar. She better be dead, I thought grimly. Or kidnapped. Or trapped under something heavy. Because if this was another disappearing act, I was going to burn something—maybe the entire East Coast.
I grabbed my coat and headed straight to her condo.
The lights were off. The air was stale. Her scent was gone.
My stomach dropped through the floor. My vision tunneled. All the blood in my body turned into cold, slick panic.
“Fuck,” I whispered, gripping the doorframe. “Not again.”
I stood there breathing like someone had punched me—because they had. She had. A year ago. And apparently today, too.
She was gone. Again.
I braced myself on her cold quartz island, head down, fighting for air. I’d let the walls down. I’d started to believe the fairy tale she was spinning. And she’d ripped the script away. Again.
Then a logical thought cut through the suffocating fear.The car.The GPS. My hands shook as I pulled up the app on my phone. The map loaded—a digital landscape of my own distrust. A single, blinking blue dot.
Not in D.C. I recognized the address immediately. She was parked at our old apartment.
My shoulders eased downward. I opened the app to the security camera, scrolling through the feed.
In the middle of our empty living room was Elara. Like a deranged fairy. Brent Faiyaz was a low thrum in the background. She was in my old Harvard sweatshirt, barefoot. Around her, onthe polished concrete, was a disaster zone of junk food: bags of chips, empty soda bottles, a torn plastic wrapper.
She was having a moment with herself.
My anger and fear burned away. I drove like the devil was on my bumper. I used my key. The music still played.
She turned, mid-motion, a chip in her hand. She didn’t jump. She just looked at me. Tired. And unapologetic.
“Why haven’t I heard from you?” My voice came out flat, lethal.
