My thumb hovered over send. This would burn everything down. Their marriages, their reputations. One tap, and I wouldn't be the only one sitting in the ashes.

But then I saw Zane at sixteen, sharing his lunch with the quiet, awkward girl everyone ignored. I saw Jovi at eighteen, squeezing my hand and telling me I could borrow any of her clothes, her friendship a gift I never felt I deserved.

They were betrayers. They were also pieces of my only history.

I deleted the message. I threw my phone onto the passenger seat, furious with myself. I had the perfect revenge in my hands, and I couldn't do it. I was still, after everything, the girl who loved them too much. My only friends.

I drove for another hour. Ended up at a bar I'd never seen before, in a part of the city I didn't know.

I ordered gin. Straight. The bartender didn't ask questions.

My phone lit up then. Texts after texts made my phone shook the table with the vibration.

Jovi: Neri please. It was a MISTAKE. A moment of weakness. We can talk.

Zane: Baby please. Where are you? I'm freaking out. Let me explain.

I flipped the phone face-down and ordered another drink. It made me start to get drunk.

Then the hands found me.

"Hey, lonely girl. Come have fun with us."

A stranger held me. Beer breath. Cheap cologne. A hand on my waist, pulling me off the stool.

"Go away." My head tilted, I felt dizzy.

"Feisty. I like it." His smirk visible in my blur vision.

Then another hand from my other side. Stronger. I pushed, but my body wasn't listening. The gin had done its work.

"Stop." my voice low.

"She said stop."

The voice came from behind me. Quiet. Flat. Not loud, but it cut through the bar noise and made me shivered.

I felt the hands around pulled away strongly, I felt a slight tremble from them before the hands vanished. I turned. And he was there.

Vance. The heir of Blackwood family. His rich and cold aura had send the two men away from me.

He stood there in that expensive suit, grey eyes flat as winter. The same man who'd nodded at me this morning. The same man whose wife had just destroyed my marriage.

Something flickered in his gaze as he looked at me. He looked at me with the same gaze he had on his wedding day. Seven years ago, he saw me standing beside Jovi in an ugly bridesmaid dress, watching him marry my best friend. I'd caught him looking at me once that day. Just once. A glance. Then it was gone.

I'd forgotten until now.

"Can you stand?" he asked. I noticed he had a husky deep voice when he asked me that way.

I tried to stand but failed. The room tilted.

He didn't sigh. Didn't roll his eyes. Just slid an arm around me and half-carried me out into the cold air. His strong arm wrapped me securely as he half dragged me away.

I slumped against him. He was warm. Solid. Smelled like expensive wool and something sharp underneath.

He didn't ask my address. Didn't ask questions. Just took me to a hotel, he got us a room, dumped me on the bed like I was a sack of potatoes.

He was turning to leave when I grabbed his jacket.

"Don't go."

I didn't know why I said it. Didn't care. But I sound desperate.

"Please. Just... don't leave me alone."

He stood there. Looking down at me. His face was unreadable, but something in his eyes shifted-that same flicker from seven years ago, maybe. There and gone.

"Let go."

"Why does everyone pick her?" The words spilled out, ugly and broken. I completely ignored his order to let him go.

"Why am I never enough? Why my bed? Wasn't taking him enough? She had to take my bed too?"

I pulled him down. Found his mouth with mine. And consume his lip immediately.

The kiss was a disaster. Tasted like gin and tears. Desperation and salt. I was trying to feel something, anything... other than the gaping hole where my marriage used to be.

For one second, he was stone. He was too stunned by the sheer audacity I had. Kissing my own boss when I got drunk like this.

But then he kissed me back.

Hard. Demanding. Like he was just as desperate as me. His hand cupped my face, his thumb pressed against my jaw, and for a few seconds, there was nothing else.

All I could felt was the heat of our kiss. The need to claim each other. Just two people screaming without sound.

Then as he get his logic back, he shoved himself back. Breathing hard.

His eyes in the dim light were shattered. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand quickly. Brutal. As if he wanted to erase the kiss like it was a crime.

Then he straightened his jacket. Reassembled himself before my eyes. The mask of powerful cold CEO slid back into place.

"Sleep," he said. Voice rough.

He turned away without taking a second glance. Then he left me alone.

The door clicked shut.

I stared at the ceiling and didn't move for a long time.

***

Morning came like a hangover. Brutal and unforgiving.

The ceiling was unfamiliar. The bed too soft. I was panicked when I regained consciousness and learnt where I was right now. I checked on my body. I was still dressed. Weak sob of relief poured down on me.

But then the memory hit me like a tidal wave. A strong hand around my body, a collision between two mouth. I faintly smelled a man's cologne beneath the smell of alcohol all around me.

I gasped.

The bathroom door opened. Vance stepped out in a white robe, hair wet, face already composed. Looked at me like I was a problem he'd left on his desk overnight.

I remembered those grey eyes stared on me just before I pulled the man into my desperation.

No... Not him. Anyone but him.

He looked at me with a cold and calm expression as he was drying his hair with a towel.

I remembered the way he kissed me back with the same desperation I felt last night,

Did I just kissed Vance Blackwoodt? My boss?  

My stomach twisted, I felt a nauseous.  

More importantly, I kiss Jovi's husband at the same night I discovered she cheated on me with my husband. 

I clutched the blanket until my fingers hurt. I could feel the heat raised to my cheek, not entirely about my shame. But also disgust and rage.

My face turned completely pale. 

I spent all night calling them traitors.

Vance noticed my expression. He walked closer. Not toward me. But towards the table side where he took his watch and started wearing it around his wrist.

"You reek of a bar floor," he said flatly. "Shower. You have a 9:30 meeting. Lydia said you have the final numbers for the Harrington project."

The sheer normalcy of it stunned me silent.

"What?" I asked him in disbelief.

"Take a shower." He adjusted the cuff of his shirt. Checked his watch. As though last night belonged to someone else. As though my worst mistake was nothing more than an inconvenience.

"I... " 

I wanted to ask him about last night. I wanted to ask him why he hadn't pushed me away. Why he'd kissed me back. Whether he regretted it. Whether he despised me now.

But seeing his deep eyes staring at me like I was a part of some problem made me gulped down my own saliva.

"I understand." 

I stood up slowly, averting my eyes from his gaze and entering the toilet.

As the warm water washed over me, I kept praying that it would wash away the memory of the kiss and the betrayal that haunt me since last night.

I scrubbed my lips until they stung. But the kiss wouldn't disappear.

We left together fifteen minutes later. The hallway carpet was too thick. Our silence was a sick thing between us.

We turned the corner toward the elevators.

And there they were.

Zane and Jovi. By the ice machine. His arm around her. She leaned into him. They looked tired, worried... together.

They looked up as they sensed our presence.

Zane's eyes went from my wrinkled clothes to Vance's damp hair to the space between us. His face crumpled-not with anger, but with sick comprehension.

Jovi's hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes darted from me to him and back. Shock, then outrage. Perfect, hypocritical outrage.

No one spoke.

Then Vance's voice. Low. Clean. Carrying a lifetime of ice.

"Jovienne."

Just her name.

He took one step forward.

"There you are."

I'd spent the last fifteen minutes wondering if I'd become as selfish as they were.

Then I saw them together.

"Jovienne."

Just her name. It hung there like a verdict.

He took one step forward. "There you are."

Jovi shrank. The confident, radiant woman I'd known since childhood seemed to disappear into herself. She looked from Vance's impassive face to mine, her eyes wide with a panic I'd never seen. This wasn't a drama she could control. She was looking at two facts she couldn't spin: her husband and her best friend, the wife of her lover emerging from a hotel room together at dawn.

"Vance," she whispered. Her voice broke.

Zane found his voice first. A raw, protective anger tore out of him. He stepped slightly in front of Jovi-a protective gesture of a devoted lover shield her from danger, or anything that could hurt her. It hit me right into my chest.

That had always been his position. Her shield, her protector.

I'd always been the one standing beside him. Not behind him.

"What the hell is this, Nerissa?" His gaze burned into me, ignoring Vance entirely.

Vance answered. Quiet. Calm. Deadly.

"The question, Mr. Sullivan, is what this is." His cold gaze swept the inch of space between Zane and Jovi. "Are you here as her marriage counselor? Or as the lover she'll leave when it gets difficult?"

Zane flinched. "You don't get to talk to her like that."

"And you," Vance said, turning his full attention on Zane, "do not get to question my employee after you were caught with my wife. There's no confusion about who is more at fault here."

Jovi made a small, hurt sound. "Vance, please. Nothing happened with Zane. We were just talking. We fell asleep. It was innocent."

The lie was so weak, so insulting, that a bitter laugh almost escaped me. I saw the same disdain flicker in Vance's eyes, just a second before it was completely gone.

"You're not a convincing liar, Jovienne." He held out his hand, not to take hers, but as a demand. "We're leaving. Now."

Jovi looked at Zane. A silent, desperate message passed between them. I saw Zane's jaw tighten, the conflict in his eyes. the need to protect her fighting with the understanding that he'd lost any right to do so. That we'd lost it.

With a shaky breath, Jovi stepped away from Zane. She walked past Vance's outstretched hand, her head down, looking utterly defeated. She stopped by the elevator, a picture of beautiful misery, defeated by the frost of her cold powerful husband.

Vance gave Zane one last look of pure contempt. Then his eyes shifted to me.

Just for a second, his cold CEO expression changed. I saw something fierce and controlled-and a question. Are you with me?

Then he turned and joined his wife at the elevator. The doors slid open, then closed, and they were gone.

Leaving me alone with my husband in the bright, quiet hallway.

The fight seemed to go out of Zane the moment the elevator left.

"Nerissa..." he began. His voice was rough.

I thought he would apologize.

Instead-

"What were you doing with him, Nerissa?" His voice was sharp. Accusing. "What am I supposed to think?"

I stared at him. The audacity of it, after what I'd walked in on, was almost laughable.

He stepped closer. "I saw the way he looked at you. I saw you coming out of that hotel room together, both of you in the same clothes as yesterday. What am I supposed to believe?"

"You want to know what happened?" I heard my own voice, empty and hollow. "I went to a bar. I got drunk because I was too broken. I almost got attacked by two strangers. And then he showed up and stopped it. That's it."

Zane's face went through a series of emotions, relief, guilt, then suspicion again. "You expect me to believe that? That he just happened to rescue you? You spent the night in a hotel room with him, Nerissa. Don't tell me nothing happened."

I stared at him, stunned. The fact that he didn't believe me right now burned the guilt and shame I had felt before. I tugged at a smile so strained it hurt worse than crying.

"That' s right. I should have stopped expecting anything from you long ago."

I could feel the exhaustion settling into my bones. I was so tired of fighting for a man who had never fought for me.

I turned and left without a second of hesitation. I couldn' t bear to let my tears fall where he stood.

"Nerissa, wait, we are not done!" His footsteps hurried after me.

I pushed into the stark stairwell. The air was cool and smelled of cleaning products. I made it one flight down before my body gave out. I staggered to the wall, my stomach heaving, my forehead pressed against the cool, rough concrete.

Zane, years ago, kneeling on the bathroom floor. Me, sick with the flu. His hand gentle, holding my hair back. His other hand rubbing my back. His voice soft: "I've got you. Just let it go. I've got you."

The care in it. The deep safety of being looked after by the person you loved.

Now my body heaved again, empty, in a dirty hotel stairwell. The sickness wasn't from illness. It was from him. The man who once held my hair back now made me physically ill.

The door above banged open. "Nerissa!"

I pushed myself up, wiping my mouth. I didn't look at him as I went down the rest of the stairs and out into the cold morning. His hand caught my elbow.

"Please. Let me drive you home. Let's talk."

I pulled my arm free. "I'm going to work."

He finally really looked at me. Saw the damage he'd caused. His face fell. "Work? How can you go there? Are you going after... after him?"

I turned back to him slowly. Like I was finally seeing the man he truly was - for the very first time.

So that' s what I was to him. Just an attachment to a man, with no life of my own, no pride that belonged only to me.

"It has nothing to do with him. Because it's my job."

It struck me all at once how absurd it all was. And the anger I' d bottled up snapped clean through.

"And because unlike this marriage... It still pays me."

It was the truth, and it broke something in him. 

"At least the money I earn is mine. No one can take that from me."

I saw the shock on his face. I' d never spoken to him like this. Not once in all these years.

For five years, I'd built my life around Zane Sullivan.

I'd spent five years trying to be what he wanted.

Always waiting to be chosen.

Always hoping he'd finally see me.

And the truth was, he had chosen. Just not me.

I was done.

"No matter what happens to this marriage" I held his gaze. The words were quiet. Final.

I stepped into the morning crowd without looking back.

"No! Nerissa!"