Amara’s POV

The scream stayed lodged in my throat, refusing to come out.

I stood there, my hand still on the door, staring at something I would give anything to unsee at this moment.

Nicholas, Celine. My husband and the woman I'd only ever known as a name on his call log, his goddamn secretary, tangled together on the leather couch in his office like the world outside didn't exist.

She was straddling him on the couch moving against him like a snake moaning lightly while he squeezed her butts and sucked on her breasts.

For a second, I thought I was hallucinating. Maybe the near-accident on the road had rattled me more than I realized. Maybe I'd hit my head after all and this was some cruel joke my mind was playing.

But no. This was real, too real.

Celine saw me first. Her eyes went wide and she scrambled off the couch so fast she nearly tripped over her own heels, yanking her blouse back into place.

"Oh my God," she said, more to herself than to me.

Nicholas turned and for one full second, his face did something I'd never seen it do before. It went blank. Like his brain hadn't caught up with what his eyes were seeing.

"Amara…"

"Don't," I said, internally surprised my voice didn't shake. It was steady but my core wasn't.

I was in utter confusion and disarray.

"Baby, this isn't…. I can explain"

I almost laughed, almost. Because what was there to explain? I wasn't stupid. I'd seen the pictures Jemima shoved under my nose that morning. I'd told myself it was nothing. A business partner. A coincidence. I'd defended him in my own head like a fool.

And here he was, confirming every single thing I didn't want to believe.

"Amara, please, just let me—"

He took a step toward me and I took one back. That stopped him.

Celine had gone quiet, hovering near the window like she was hoping it might swallow her whole.

Smart woman.

If she knew what was good for her, she'd stay exactly where she was.

I looked at Nicholas, my eyes full of pain and disbelief. Was this the man I married? The man who held my hand at my parents' funeral. The man who told me he'd never let me feel alone again.

He looked smaller somehow. His eyes were filled with guilt.

Pathetic, I almost spat out.

"I have to go," I said.

"Amara, wait…"

I didn't wait. I turned and walked out of that office with my spine straight and my chin up, because if I was going to fall apart, it wasn't going to be in front of him or in front of that bitch whose breast he'd been shoving into his mouth.

I almost winced at that thought.

His executive assistant looked up as I passed her desk, already sensing something had gone terribly wrong. I didn't stop to explain. I didn't owe her one either.

"Mrs. Cole?" Nicholas called from behind me, his voice cracking slightly. "Amara!"

I kept walking.

The elevator ride down felt like it took a decade. I stared at my own reflection in the metal doors, waiting for it to crack the way I felt like doing. My hands had started shaking somewhere between the office and the lobby, and I shoved them into my pockets so no one would see.

The security guard from earlier gave me a small nod as I passed, the same one who'd let me up without question. If he noticed anything different about my face, he had the decency not to show it.

I made it to my car and sat there for a second, gripping the steering wheel like it was the only solid thing left in my life. My throat burned, my eyes burned but I refused to cry.

Not yet, not here.

Jemima's voice rang in my head. You know what to do.

She'd tried to tell me. Those weeks of soft hints, careful nudges, that folder she'd shoved across my desk this morning like a woman throwing a rope to someone drowning and I'd brushed it off every single time.

I told myself I knew my husband, lied to myself that we were fine.

God, I was such an idiot.

I started the car and pulled out of the lot, no real destination in mind. The streets blurred past, buildings and traffic lights bleeding into each other. I turned the radio off. I couldn't stand the sound of anything right now, not even silence.

At some point I realized I was crying. Quiet tears, sliding down my cheeks without permission, without sound. I didn't even wipe them away.

I just kept driving, my knuckles white against the wheel, my mind replaying the same image over and over like a broken record. Celine's wide eyes. Nicholas' blank face. The couch. The one we'd picked out together for his office two years ago.

I don't know how long I drove. Maybe long enough that the sky had shifted, dimming into that soft gray color before evening.

my phone had buzzed against the passenger seat more times than I cared to count.

I didn't look at it. I already knew who it was.

Eventually I spotted a bar tucked along a quieter street, one of those low-lit places with a neon sign flickering half its letters out. I didn't know the name of it. I didn't care. I just needed to be somewhere that wasn't my car, wasn't my house, wasn't anywhere near him.

I pulled in, parked crookedly, and sat there for a second with my hands still on the wheel, staring at the entrance like it might have answers for me.

It didn't. Of course it didn't.

I sobbed really hard, my mind racing through a lot of things.

My phone rang again and I spared it a glance. It was Jemima.

I didn't pick up, there was this crushing feeling and I wanted to get it off my chest.

I got out anyway, smoothed down my blouse, and pushed through the door, letting the noise and the lights swallow me whole.

As I stepped in, I heard a loud holler, something wheezing past my head and a shattering glass sound.

Amara's POV

I froze the second I stepped inside.

Somewhere near the counter, a man had shoved another one hard enough to send a barstool skidding across the floor, and a glass went flying, shattering against the tile and then amber liquid spraying everywhere and glass shards all over the floor.

What was I thinking?

A woman shrieked. The bartender was already yelling for someone to break it up, his voice sounding sharp over the music, and two men near the door moved fast to pull the fighting pair apart before it turned into something worse.

I stood there for a second too long, blinking at the scene like it belonged to someone else's life. Like I hadn't just watched my marriage fall apart forty minutes ago in an office two miles from here.

Nobody noticed me.

That was fine. I didn't want to be noticed. I didn't want to be seen at all, honestly. I just wanted somewhere dark and loud enough to drown out my own head for a while.

I skirted around the edge of the commotion, weaving past a cluster of women near the entrance who barely glanced my way, and found an empty stool at the far end of the bar, as far from the noise as I could manage.

My hands were still shaking when I sat down, so I pressed them flat against my thighs and took a breath that didn't do a single thing to calm me down.

"What can I get you?" the bartender asked, already sliding a napkin in front of me.

"Whatever's strong," I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else too. It was more steady than I felt, hollow in a way I didn't recognize.

He didn't ask questions, just nodded and got to work, pulling a bottle down from the shelf. I appreciated that more than he'd ever know. The last thing I needed tonight was a stranger asking if I was okay.

When the glass landed in front of me, I wrapped both hands around it and raised it to my lips.

The first sip burned going down, and for one blissful second, it was the only thing I could feel. Not the image of Celine's skin on my husband's mouth or the sound of my own name cracking in his voice as I walked away. Just heat, and the dull ache it left behind, spreading slow through my chest.

It didn't last.

The memory crept back in anyway, uninvited, the way it probably would for the rest of my life. Nicholas's blank face.

He couldn't even regard the couch we picked out together, the one I'd argued for because the leather felt right under my hands in the showroom.

I thought about the first year of our marriage, back when he used to leave sticky notes on the bathroom mirror before work, back when a two-minute phone call from him could carry me through an entire bad day. Back when I actually believed forever meant something to him.

I hated how much that memory still hurt more than the one from an hour ago. I hated that some stupid, stubborn part of me still missed the man from the sticky notes, even sitting here with proof that he didn't exist anymore. Maybe he never had.

The bar was loud around me, full of people laughing, clinking glasses, living lives that hadn't just quietly imploded in the span of a single afternoon.

I watched a couple near the window lean into each other easily as they flirted. I had to look away before the ache in my chest turned into something I couldn't hide at a bar full of strangers. I'd never felt more alone in a crowded room in my life.

I finished the drink faster than I should have and immediately regretted it, my head swimming slightly, my chest still tight with everything I hadn't let myself cry out yet.

I needed a minute. I needed air, or water.

I needed Jemima.

"Bathroom?" I asked the bartender.

He pointed toward the back, past a dim hallway lined with flickering bulbs, the light stuttering every few seconds like it couldn't decide whether to stay on.

I slid off the stool, my legs less steady than I expected, and made my way through the crowd, murmuring quiet apologies every time I brushed against someone.

The hallway was quieter than the main room, the music was muffled behind me now.

I walked further in, my phone's flashlight sitting useless in my bag, squinting at the shadowed doors ahead trying to figure out which one led where. Everything smelled like old wood and spilled liquor back here, and the further I walked, the more the noise of the bar felt like it belonged to a different building entirely.

I turned what I thought was the right corner.

It wasn't.

I collided with something solid and warm, and it took my brain a full second longer than it should have to register what — who….I'd just walked into.

A man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his hand braced against the wall beside a woman's head, her fingers tangled in the front of his shirt. They were kissing deeply, tongue and all like they had all the time in the world and hadn't noticed anyone else existed until I stumbled directly into them.

They broke apart. The woman blinked at me, annoyed, smoothing a hand down her dress like I'd personally offended her by existing.

The man just looked amused, one brow lifting up like I'd interrupted something mildly entertaining rather than intimate, his eyes followed me with an ease that made my face burn even hotter.

Heat flooded my cheeks so fast it almost hurt.

"Oh my God, I'm…. I am so sorry," I stammered, already stepping back, my hands raised like that might undo the last five seconds of my life. "I wasn't trying to— I was looking for the bathroom, and I just…"

I didn't wait for a response. I turned on my heel and half-walked, half-ran back the way I came, my face burning, my mind somehow finding room to be embarrassed on top of everything else it was already carrying tonight.

I made it to the bar and to my previous position.

Then I heard a voice from behind me, a low, almost sexy baritone.

"You were not even going to ask my name habibi?”

Amara's POV

I turned around slowly, half expecting to have imagined it.

I hadn't.

He was leaning against the wall at the mouth of the hallway, his arms crossed, that same infuriating amusement written across his face like tonight was shaping up to be his personal entertainment.

Up close, he was even more irritating than the two-second glimpse I'd gotten earlier.

He was tall, put together in that effortless way that told me his suit was very expensive and really handsome.

Not that I was fazed by expensive things, I had lots of them but my hazy mind wondered what a man of his caliber was doing here.

His dark eyes looked like they already knew something about me I hadn't said yet.

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked, even though I'd heard him perfectly.

"Habibi," he repeated, like the word was an answer instead of just making things worse. "You walked in on me, made a run for it, and didn't even leave a name behind. It feels rude."

"I said I was sorry." My voice rose as I replied to him, "It won't happen again. I promise."

"That's a shame." He pushed off the wall and approached me as I turned back toward the bar, looking easy and unbothered, like I'd invited him. "I was starting to enjoy the chaos."

"Well, I wasn't." I kept looking ahead, focused on the bartender who was mixing drinks. I glanced beside me and there was a stool there that was still empty.

A small mercy in an otherwise ruined night. "So if you don't mind…"

"I don't, actually."

I looked at him, suddenly speechless.

He slid onto the stool beside mine, uninvited, and signaled the bartender with two fingers like he owned the place. Maybe he did. I wouldn't have been shocked at this point.

"I didn't ask you to sit here."

"You didn't ask me not to, either."

I closed my eyes, praying for patience I did not currently possess. My head was still spinning from the office, from the hallway, from the entire catastrophe of a day and this man had picked the worst possible night to decide I was interesting.

Whoever he was.

"Rough night?" he asked, tilting his head.

"You have no idea."

"Try me."

"I don't know you."

"That's easily fixed."

"I don't want it fixed," I said, finally turning to look at him fully.

Somehow his profile and the way his face was angled made him look really familiar.

"I don't want company. I don't want to have a conversation. I want to sit here, drink my drink, and be left alone. Is that so hard to understand?"

Something flickered across his face. I don't think it was hurt but it looked like it that I almost felt bad.

Almost.

"Fair enough." He held both hands up in mock surrender and leaned back slightly.

For one blissful second, I thought that might be the end of it.

It wasn't.

"For what it's worth," he said, swirling the drink the bartender had just set in front of him, "you looked like you needed rescuing back there. Before you crashed my evening."

"I didn't need rescuing." My jaw tightened. "I needed a bathroom."

"Sure." He smiled like he didn't believe a word of it. "You've got that look, though."

"What look?"

"The one that says somebody ruined your whole day, and you're two seconds from falling apart. Then you're deciding whether to do it here, in front of strangers, or wait until you're alone in your car."

I froze.

He wasn't wrong. That was the infuriating part. He'd known me for four minutes and landed closer to the truth than people who'd known me for years.

"You don't know anything about me," I said in a tight low voice.

"I know enough." He shrugged casually. "Husband? Boyfriend? It has to be somebody, clearly, since you've got a ring on that finger and murder in your eyes."

My hand curled instinctively, like I could hide the ring from him, from myself, from the entire night.

"Don't," I warned.

"Did he cheat?" He asked it so plainly, looking so unbothered, like he was asking about the weather instead of picking apart the worst moment of my life. "That's usually the look. I've seen it before."

"Stop talking."

"Or is it the other way around? Did you…."

I didn't think. My hand moved before my brain caught up with it, and the sound of my palm against his cheek rang out sharp enough that a few heads at the bar turned.

The room went quiet for half a second. I withdrew my hand quickly, glancing at everyone like I was some junkie.

He didn't move, didn't even lift a hand to his face right away, just stared at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"I said stop talking," I repeated, my voice shaking now. Finally, after holding steady through everything else tonight.

I grabbed my bag off the counter and walked out. I didn't wait for a response. I didn't look back.

The night air hit me the second I stepped outside. It was cold enough to sting against my burning face.

I stood on the curb for a moment, willing my legs to remember how to work properly, willing my chest to stop feeling like it was folding in on itself.

I started walking toward my car, one hand pressed to my temple, the world was starting to tilt around me.

Too much had happened in one day. My body hadn't caught up to any of it yet.

I made it halfway across the lot before I heard my name being screamed.

"Amara!"

My name, shouted from somewhere behind me, it was quite raw and urgent enough that it sliced straight through the fog in my head.

I knew that voice, anytime, anywhere.