“You’re not fooling me, you know,” she said, her face buried in his shirt. “I know the truth.”
“And what’s that?”
She pulled back from his body, angling her face up to his, even though her eyes were still closed. “That you don’t really have it all figured out.”
“Is that so?” he asked, arching an eyebrow at her.
She nodded and opened her eyes just a sliver. Her face was illuminated by the watery moonlight through the windows, revealing the dark makeup still smeared across her pale cheeks, the faded pink of her lips. “Yup.”
He smiled. “And how do you know that?”
“Because you see me, but don’t forget…” She leaned in, knitting her brows together as if she were about to share some profound truth. “I see you too.”
He blinked down at her face. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, her head lolling to the side. Then her expression turned sad. “So stop finding excuses to leave.”
Huh. He usually knew what to expect from Emma, but he had not expected that. And he was increasingly uncomfortable with how often that happened. More often, recently. The last few years had flown by in a blur. The small venture capital firm he started a few years before was now one of the most successful in the country. And while he was proud of it, Knightley Capital had taken over his life. Eighty-hour work weeks, red-eye flights back and forth to the West Coast while he set up his firm’s second office in Los Angeles—there was barely time to think, let alone notice how the girl who had tagged along with him throughout his childhood had disappeared and left a woman in her place.
His expression didn’t reveal his thoughts—he was good at that. Instead, he just cleared his throat.
“Night, Woodhouse.”
She smiled and then started up the stairs.
He lingered for a moment, just to make sure she didn’t fall on her way up, then turned and went back the way they had come, letting himself out through the kitchen.
The caterers were clearing off the tables when Knightley returned to the reception. Margo and Ben were still there, slow dancing to a song playing from their cell phone. They didn’t notice as he walked by them and headed toward the line of trees that separated the Woodhouse yard from the Knightley one.
The path between the two was lit with more fairy lights, but Knightley didn’t need them to find his way. A few more steps and then his own house appeared, a wall of windows and steel that did a good job of hiding the building’s original brick exterior. And that had been the point, hadn’t it? A three-year-long remodeling project to erase the past.
The sliding glass doors opened up to his living room and the kitchen beyond. He used to dread being in his father’s house, which had been kept like a museum—dark and cold and filled with antiques that existed only to show off the family’s wealth. But after the old man died, Knightley had gutted the entire place. Every piece of furniture was tossed, every floor and corner redesigned to create a more relaxed modern aesthetic. Now it was finished, and no trace of his childhood home remained. He liked it that way.
He left a trail of his clothes along the floor, the stairs, as he made it to his bedroom on the second floor. By the time he sat down on the end of his bed, he was only in his boxers. Christ, he was tired. Happy and a little drunk, but mostly just tired.
His gaze went to the wall of windows that overlooked the backyard, to Emma’s bedroom just beyond the trees. There was a time, years ago, when she used to sit at her window and wavegood night to him, smiling with her braces on full display. She had thought it a novelty to have that nightly ritual; he had always taken it for granted.
Now, as he stared out at her dark window and the stillness beyond, it felt like something intrinsic to its function was missing. Something that left his own room feeling a bit hollow.
Jesus. He raked a hand through his hair, then down his face, and shook the thought free.
“Definitely too much whiskey,” he murmured to himself, and then lay down to go to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
As expected, Emma’s hangover was monumental. Thankfully, she had anticipated it. When she woke up Sunday morning, wincing at the bright sunlight invading her bedroom, she reached over to her nightstand where she had already laid out her Tom Ford sunglasses along with a bottle of water and two ibuprofen. When she stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, Fran had a cup of coffee and a contraband chocolate croissant waiting for her, exactly as planned. Emma smuggled both into the media room just down the hall, closing the door and curling up on the sofa to watch an intense marathon ofLove Island. And it worked. By the time she emerged hours later, she felt almost human.
Well, as much as she could. Did she want to think about how entire sections of the wedding reception were still a blur? No. Or how Knightley managed to get her to bed? Absolutely not.
So as the week began, she stayed busy preparing for her last year of grad school and ignoring the nagging worry about what she’d said or done, until Thursday arrived and it was time to meet Knightley for coffee before heading downtown to campus.
She looked across the table at him now, wondering how muchnew ammunition he had on her after that night. If she embarrassed herself, he didn’t let on. In fact, he had barely mentioned the reception since. Even now he only stared down at his phone, a bored expression on his face as he waited for his espresso.
They were sitting at their usual table at Vicarage Coffee, a small cafe on Madison Avenue just around the corner from her house. It was the kind of place that was always dark regardless of the time of day, and had four tables in a space that really only had room for three. But it was quiet and cozy and most important, convenient.
“Here you go, Emma,” the barista said as he approached with their drinks, barely acknowledging Knightley as he put his espresso and Emma’s latte on the table.
Emma smiled up at him. “Thanks, Zane.”
