Go to her. Some part of me screaming. Move. Now. Before she disappears again.
Someone stepped between us. A guest crossing the room, oblivious, carrying two glasses of champagne.
When the path cleared, she was gone.
I searched the crowd. The champagne table. The seats near the pergola. The path toward the exit.
Nothing.
She'd left. Seen me and left.
Of course, she had.
I set down my champagne. Made my excuses to Brian. Walked out.
The park stretched around me, the sounds of the reception fading as I followed the path toward the street. I stood on the sidewalk outside the garden gates, breath fogging in front of me, and told myself it was fine.
She didn't want to talk to me. She'd made that clear eight years ago when she stopped answering my letters. Stopped returning my calls. Let the silence stretch until it became permanent.
I'd accepted it. Moved on. Built a life that didn't include her.
Except I hadn't.
Not really.
I was still waiting for someone who'd already left.
I'd been trying to stop thinking about her for eight years.
Any day now, it was bound to work.
I hailed a cab. Went home to my empty apartment, surrounded by her words, carrying the weight of everything we'd lost.
She was still running.
And I was still letting her go.
CHAPTER 4
Sloane
I stoodin front of my closet for twenty minutes.
This was ridiculous. I was a professional. I'd interviewed senators and CEOs and convicted murderers. Faced down death threats from one of the most powerful families in New York and kept digging anyway. Built a career on walking into rooms where I wasn't welcome and asking questions people didn't want to answer.
I could handle seeing my ex-fiancé.
My ex-fiancé, who still made my heart race just thinking about him. Who'd looked at me across Brian's wedding reception with those gray-blue eyes and made me forget how to breathe. Who I'd run from like a coward instead of walking over and saying?—
What? What would I have said?
Hi, Garrett. Sorry, I ghosted you. Sorry, I stopped answering your letters. Sorry, I came back to New York and never once reached out, even though I think about you every single day.
I pulled a blazer off its hanger. Put it back. Pulled out another one.
Armor. That's what I needed. Something professional. Something that saidI'm here to work, not to rehash the worst years of my life.
I settled on tailored black pants, a cream button-down, a navy blazer that had survived three presidential campaigns and a corruption investigation. The leather messenger bag I'd carried since my first day at the Times.
