You Chose Your Assistant, So I Called the Man I Rejected Three Times

EVELYN'S POV

The champagne had been sweating in the ice bucket for forty minutes.

I'd bought the good stuff, the bottle Cayden always pointed at in restaurants and never ordered because "we'll save it for when it means something." Two flutes sat on the coffee table of the apartment we'd shared for five years, polished until they caught the light from the TV.

On screen, Cayden Sherman stood behind a podium with the Sherman Group logo glowing at his back. Navy suit, the tie I'd picked out, his father's old seat finally his.

*When I'm really in control, Evie, we won't have to wait anymore.*

He'd said it in bed last winter, his mouth against my hair. I'd been waiting eight years. One more press conference didn't seem like much.

The questions were what I expected. Quarterly projections. Board restructuring. His father's health. Then a woman in the second row raised her hand, and I already knew from the way she smiled.

"Mr. Sherman, you're one of the most eligible men in the city. Any plans to settle down?"

A ripple of laughter went through the room. I set my phone on the cushion beside me and leaned forward.

Cayden didn't look at the camera.

He turned his head toward the side of the stage, where his private assistant stood with a tablet hugged to her chest. Vanessa Lane. Blonde, composed, the woman who scheduled his dentist appointments and reminded him of my birthday.

"I think it's time I stopped hiding it," he said. "The woman I've truly loved for ten years is Vanessa Lane."

The room erupted. Flashbulbs. Shouted questions. Vanessa pressed her hand to her mouth like she was surprised, and Cayden stepped away from the podium to take her other hand.

Ten years.

We'd been together for eight.

I sat there until the broadcast cut back to the studio anchors, who were grinning like they'd been handed a gift. Somewhere behind me, the ice in the bucket shifted and settled.

---

By the time I picked up my phone again, it was everywhere.

A clip of Cayden and Vanessa leaving through the side doors, her arm looped through his, his hand resting on the small of her back. Someone had already set it to a love song. Two million views in under an hour.

*CEO finally goes public with his ten-year love.*

*They've been together this whole time??? I'm crying.*

*The way he looked at her. That's what real love looks like.*

I scrolled until my thumb ached. Not one comment mentioned me. Of course not. Cayden had always said privacy was better for both of us, that the press would eat me alive, that he was protecting me. I'd sat in the back of every gala. I'd left every event ten minutes after him so no one would photograph us together.

I'd thought I was being patient.

I'd been invisible on purpose. His purpose.

At 7:12, my phone buzzed. His name lit up the screen, and for one stupid second my chest loosened, like part of me still expected him to say it was a mistake. A PR strategy. Anything.

*Don't get emotional about the press conference. It's complicated and I'll explain later.*

A second message came before I'd finished reading the first.

*Vanessa has to come with me to the celebration dinner tonight. It's important for optics. I hope you can understand.*

I read it twice. Then a third time, because I wanted to be sure I wasn't imagining the tone. The patience in it. The assumption that I would understand, because I always had.

He didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't say sorry.

He was managing me.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I could have typed a hundred things. *Ten years? You've been with me for eight. Who was I to you?*

I locked the screen instead.

---

The walk-in closet smelled like his cologne. I pulled my old suitcase down from the top shelf, the one I'd brought when I moved in, the one with a broken wheel he'd always told me to replace.

I didn't replace it. I was glad now.

My clothes went in first. The jeans I'd bought before I met him. The sweaters my mother had knitted before she died. The black dress I'd paid for with my own money. I left the silk ones he'd chosen, the ones he said looked better at the dinners I was never invited to.

My passport was in the drawer under his watches. I slipped it into the front pocket and zipped it shut.

In the living room, I paused at the bookshelf. The ceramic vase we'd bought on a weekend upstate. The framed print from the gallery where he'd kissed me for the first time. The leather armchair I'd spent three weeks choosing because he worked late and needed somewhere comfortable to read.

I'd picked out every piece of furniture in this apartment. The wine glasses. The rug. The curtains he'd never noticed.

None of it was mine. I'd built a home for a man who was in love with someone else, and he'd let me.

I didn't touch any of it.

The champagne was still sitting in the bucket, the ice mostly water now. I left it there too. Let him open it with her, if he wanted.

In the kitchen, I worked the apartment key off my ring. It was the one he'd given me five years ago with a red ribbon tied around it, the night he'd said, "Now you never have to leave." The metal was warm from my pocket. I set it on the marble counter, right in the center, where he couldn't miss it.

Then I opened a different thread, one I hadn't touched in a very long time.

The last message was from my father, sent two years ago on my birthday. *Your door is always open, sweetheart.* I hadn't answered. I'd been too proud to admit he'd been right about Cayden. Too stubborn to go back to a life I'd walked away from for love.

Eight years, and I'd never once written to him first.

My hands were steady when I typed.

*Dad, I'm ready to come home.*

I hit send before I could think about it, grabbed the suitcase, and walked out without looking back at the door.

---

The cab driver had the meter running before I'd buckled in.

"Where to?"

"Just a minute," I said.

He shrugged and turned the radio down. Rain was starting to spot the windshield, blurring the city into streaks of gold and red.

I opened my contacts and scrolled. Past Cayden. Past Vanessa, whose number I'd saved so I could coordinate his schedule with her. Past friends I hadn't talked to in years because Cayden thought they were a bad influence. All the way to the bottom, to a name I'd never once dialed.

*Adrian Blackwood.*

Six years he'd been in my phone. Three times he'd asked me for something, and three times I'd told him no. The last time was last spring, at a party I'd only attended because Cayden had a migraine. Adrian had found me on the terrace and said the offer would stand as long as I needed it to.

I'd laughed at him. I'd said I was happy.

My thumb pressed call before I could talk myself out of it.

He picked up on the first ring.

"Evelyn."

Just my name. No surprise in it, no question. Like he'd been expecting me, or like he'd been waiting long enough that it had stopped mattering when I'd finally call.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. The rain picked up. The driver drummed his fingers on the wheel.

"I'm here," Adrian said quietly.

I swallowed. "The offer you made me last spring... is it still open?"

A pause. Not a hesitation, exactly. More like he was making sure he'd heard me right.

His voice dropped low. "Dinner or marriage?"

I turned to the window. Eleven floors up, the apartment lights were still on, glowing behind the curtains I'd hung myself. The window that used to be mine. The window where I'd stood a thousand nights, watching the street, waiting for his car to pull in.

Nobody was standing there now.

"Marriage," I said.