He slid a hand over her still-flat stomach, and a crushing realization hit me. If I hadn’t let Vanessa wedge her way so deeply into my life, Tessa and I might’ve already been married with a baby of our own. Or if I’d just questioned the breakup text and gone to her apartment myself instead of letting my injured pride dictate my decisions.
I had to look away before either of them saw I was barely keeping it together. The weight of what I’d lost wasn’t abstract anymore. It was staring me right in the face, in the form of my best friend’s happiness.
Callie must’ve sensed I was struggling because she set her fork down and looked between Ethan and me. “Maybe you two should talk in private.”
Ethan stood and jerked his chin toward the hallway. “Come on.”
“Sure.”
I followed him into his home office, and when the door clicked shut behind us, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Start talking.”
“It’s a lot,” I warned.
“Then start with the worst of it.”
So I told him everything that mattered, beginning with what all I suspected Vanessa had done. Ethan didn’t interrupt me, but the muscle ticking in his jaw let me know how angry he was.
When I finished, he fisted his hands at his sides. “Fucking hell, she let you think Tessa dumped you.”
“I know.” I paced in front of his desk. “How the hell am I supposed to work with her now? The divorce bullshit was one thing, but knowing she sabotaged my life to force a marriage is a different level of fucked up.”
“You’ll need to be careful.” He leaned against the closed door. “You can’t just fire her when her father co-founded Langford Tech with yours. If you want Vanessa gone, you need something airtight that Rupert can’t easily refute or bury.”
I hated that he was right. “So I just keep pretending I don’t want to strangle her for how much she hurt Tessa?”
“Only publicly.” Ethan shrugged. “Behind the scenes, you quietly hire an investigator. Someone who can dig into her phone records, her financials, and her assistant’s activities from back then. The works. Vanessa isn’t a master criminal. There’s bound to be a trail somewhere.”
“Then I’ll just need to figure out a way to find it.” I felt slightly better now that there was something I could do. “But firing her still won’t be enough. I don’t know how to fix any of this with Tessa, or if I even can. But I can’t let her think I’m not willing to fight for us.”
Ethan asked the one question I’d hoped to avoid. “Do you have a plan? Because you’re gonna need one.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and mumbled, “Still working on it.”
“Be ready to grovel for a damn long time.”
My friend’swarning echoed in my head all day. I hadn’t gotten very far with my plan, but I’d decided on a first step. I didn’tthink it counted as groveling, though. Just something I should’ve done three years ago.
When I pulled up in front of Hale & Honey, the bakery’s windows were dimmed. The CLOSED sign was already flipped in the door, but I could see Tessa inside at the counter. I’d timed my arrival for only a few minutes after closing in the hope that I’d catch her by herself, and it looked like I was in luck.
I gently rapped my knuckles against the door, and her gaze snapped up to meet mine. She didn’t look away as she rounded the counter and crossed to the front. I hated how guarded her eyes were, but I had earned her wariness.
She unlocked the door but only opened it a few inches. “Why are you here?”
I reached into the inner pocket of my jacket and pulled out the neatly folded, knitted cashmere I’d kept all this time. Tessa gasped when she saw her mother’s scarf.
I held it out with both hands. “I found this on the hook behind my entryway closet door about a week after everything went to hell.”
“I thought you’d forgotten to put it in the box when…you know.”
Unfortunately, I knew too well what she’d assumed now that I’d found out she hadn’t walked away from me. “And I thought you forgot to take it with you. I could never bring myself to get rid of something that was the only piece of you I had left.”
Her expression wavered for a moment, but then her walls slammed back into place.
She drew in a shaky breath and opened the door just enough to take the scarf from my hands. “This doesn’t fix anything.”
“I didn’t think it would,” I murmured around the lump in my throat. “It’s just that I should’ve returned it a long time ago because I know how much losing your mom hurt you. I’m finally doing the right thing.”
She pressed the scarf to her chest as the silence stretched between us. There was so much more I wanted to say, but I needed to think of what Tessa needed first.
