After My Fiancé Publicly Claimed My Intern

Three days before Christmas, I left my office at four in the afternoon. My assistant almost dropped her coffee.

"Ms. Reed? You okay?"

"I'm fine, Kelly." I balanced two shopping bags on my hip and pressed the elevator button with my elbow. "Cancel my six o'clock. Reschedule the Milford call to Monday."

"Yes, ma'am."

The elevator doors closed on her stunned face. I caught my reflection in the brushed steel. Thirty years old. CEO of Reed & Co. First person in on Monday. Last person out on Friday. And tonight, for the first time in months, I was going home before dark.

Because tonight was the night.

Inside the shopping bags: a bottle of Barolo, the one Dawson always said tasted like his college dreams. Two thick beeswax candles. A tin of the truffle pasta from the little place on Mulberry he loved. And zipped into the inside pocket of my purse, a velvet box holding two platinum bands, engraved on the inside with a single date. The day he asked me. Six years ago.

Six years of hiding. Six years of "soon." Six years of "not yet, Bri, just give me a little more time."

Tonight I was going to tell him time was up.

My driver dropped me two blocks from the apartment because I wanted to walk the last stretch. The air smelled like roasted chestnuts and wet pavement. Christmas lights blinked in every window. A man on the corner played "Silent Night" on a saxophone, and I actually smiled at him. I dropped a twenty in his case.

That was the last easy breath I took.

I turned onto our street and stopped.

Dawson's black Audi was parked at the curb outside Marchetti's, the Italian place on the ground floor of our building. He was standing next to the passenger door. His coat was open. His hair was messy in the way it only got when someone had run their hands through it.

He opened the door, and a woman stepped out.

I knew her.

She'd started at my firm three weeks ago. My intern. My hire. Ainara Salazar, twenty-three years old, doe-eyed and soft-spoken, the girl who cried in my office on her second day because the printer jammed.

Dawson put his hand on the small of her back.

I stood on the sidewalk holding two shopping bags full of a life that didn't exist.

She tilted her chin up. He leaned down. They kissed on the mouth like they'd done it a thousand times before, unhurried, familiar, and when they pulled apart she laughed and he laced his fingers through hers and they walked into the restaurant together. Right past the window. Right past the couples having early dinner. Right past every single person on the street who happened to be looking.

Invisible only to me. Because I was invisible to him.

Someone bumped my shoulder. "Sorry, miss."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My mouth had gone completely dry.

I don't remember walking back to the corner. I remember the shopping bag handle cutting into my palm. I remember the wine bottle knocking against my knee. I remember getting into the back of a cab I hadn't called, and the driver asking twice where I wanted to go before I gave him my own building.

Upstairs, in the apartment we shared, half the Christmas garland was still taped to the wall from where I'd started decorating that morning. The tree stood bare in the corner. The lights I'd bought were coiled on the coffee table.

I sat down on the rug. I opened Instagram.

I typed her name.

Her profile loaded and my stomach dropped through the floor.

There he was. My Dawson. Front and center of the grid. September: the two of them at a rooftop bar in Brooklyn, his arm slung around her shoulders. Caption: My favorite view. October: pumpkin patch upstate, matching flannels. November: a candlelit dinner at Per Se, her hand on his cheek. Caption: My forever ❤️.

And on his wrist, in every single photo, glinting under every light, was the Patek Philippe.

The watch I'd worked eight months to afford. The watch I'd wrapped in tissue paper with shaking hands on his twenty-seventh birthday. The watch he'd told me he'd never take off.

He hadn't. He'd just never told anyone who gave it to him.

I scrolled and scrolled. My thumb went numb. Six months of them. Publicly. Tagged locations. Comments from his coworkers. Somebody named Mike had written have you told your parents yet lol on a photo from August.

His parents.

I'd been with him for six years and I had never met his parents.

I put the phone face down on the rug. My hands were shaking so hard the screen rattled against the wood.

All those years. I'm not ready, Bri. My career, Bri. It's complicated, Bri. Just a little longer.

He wasn't ashamed of relationships.

He was ashamed of me.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the light to fade outside the window. Long enough for the radiator to click on and then off again. Long enough that when I finally stood up, my legs had gone stiff and cold.

I walked to the kitchen. I turned on the tap. I splashed water on my face and it ran down my neck into my collar and I didn't care.

That's when I smelled it.

At first I thought it was the candle I'd lit earlier and forgotten. Then sharper. Plastic. Wrong.

A soft pop came from the wall behind the tree.

I turned.

A thin curl of gray smoke was rising from the outlet where I'd plugged in the Christmas lights.

As I watched, a spark jumped, caught the coiled wire, and the whole strand ignited at once with a soft, terrible whoosh. Flame raced along the baseboard toward the curtains.

"No," I said out loud. "No, no, no—"

I ran for the door. The knob was already warm. The hallway beyond filled with smoke in seconds, thick and black and alive, and I stumbled back inside coughing so hard my ribs cracked.

I dropped to my knees. My phone. Where was my phone. The rug. I crawled.

Half-hung garland caught fire above my head and rained sparks into my hair.

I found the phone. My eyes were streaming. I couldn't see the screen. I pressed the only name my thumb knew by heart.

It rang once.

Twice.

Declined.

A sob tore out of me that didn't sound human. The phone auto-dialed back, the way it does when you hit the call button twice by mistake, and this time it connected on the first ring, and through the roar of the flames and the alarm shrieking somewhere down the hall, I heard him.

Soft. Warm. Amused.

"Baby, stop, I'm trying to pour the wine—"

A woman's laugh, close to the receiver.

"Who is it?" she said.

"Nobody," he murmured. "Wrong number."

The line went dead.

The phone slipped out of my hand.

The last thing I remember, before the smoke closed over me like black water, was the smell of the truffle pasta burning in the bag by the door.