I Gave Him Six Years. I Won’t Give Him One More Chance.

One year ago today, I signed the divorce papers.

Tonight, I walked into the Harborview Charity Gala with Lila Moreau on my arm, and nobody in the room seemed to remember the date except me.

"Sterling!" Marcus Delaney raised his champagne glass from across the bar. He'd been my college roommate. Now he was my business partner and my biggest pain in the neck. "There he is. The free man himself."

Lila laughed softly beside me. She was a gallery curator I'd been seeing for three months. She was polished and easy, and she never asked where I was going.

"Free man?" she said. "That sounds like a story."

"Oh, it's a great story." Marcus clapped my shoulder. "Our boy here finally escaped. One whole year. Remember Elowen, Sterling? She'd call you four times during a dinner meeting. 'Did you eat? Are you cold? Should I bring your coat?'"

He pitched his voice high and sweet.

A few guys nearby chuckled.

I didn't.

"She ironed his shirts," Marcus went on, turning to Lila. "Herself. They had a housekeeper, and she still ironed his shirts. Woman had no life outside of him."

"That's kind of sad," Lila said.

"It's kind of creepy," Marcus said.

I swirled the whiskey in my glass and watched the ice spin. "She'll come back."

Marcus blinked at me. "What?"

"She'll come back," I repeated. "Sooner or later."

He started laughing. "Man, you say that like it's the weather report."

"It is." I took a sip. "Elowen doesn't know how to live without someone to take care of. She'll get lonely. She'll call. And she'll ask if she can come home."

Lila's smile slipped a little. She looked away, toward the dance floor.

Marcus leaned closer. "And if she does? You'd take her back?"

I didn't answer.

I didn't need to. The whole table already knew what the answer was. Elowen had been mine for six years. Quiet, steady, always waiting up with the porch light on. A year apart didn't change that.

Then the double doors at the end of the ballroom swung open.

The room shifted. It wasn't loud. It was the kind of quiet that ripples, where heads turn one after another like dominoes.

A woman walked in wearing a black dress with no back at all. Smooth bare skin ran from her shoulder blades all the way down to the base of her spine. Her dark hair was pinned up, and a few loose strands brushed her neck.

She was laughing.

She tilted her head toward the man beside her and said something that made him grin.

I knew that laugh. I just hadn't heard it in a very long time.

"Holy—" Marcus set his glass down too hard. "Sterling. Is that—"

"Elowen," I said.

I'd seen that dress before. She bought it two summers ago for our anniversary dinner. She came downstairs in it, nervous, twisting her hands.

*Too much,* I'd told her. *Change.*

She went back upstairs and came down in navy blue with sleeves.

Now she was wearing it in front of three hundred people.

"Who's the guy?" Lila asked.

"Kian Okafor." Marcus said the name like it tasted strange. "Runs Okafor Biotech. Thirty-four, single, and *Forbes* won't shut up about him."

Kian was tall, with broad shoulders under a perfectly cut tux. His hand rested low on Elowen's back, right where the fabric ended and her skin began.

My jaw locked.

They moved through the crowd toward the bar. Toward us. Elowen was still smiling up at him, still talking, and she didn't see me until she was close enough that I could smell her perfume.

It wasn't the vanilla one I bought her every Christmas. It was something new, something sharper, like citrus and cedar.

Her eyes landed on me.

I waited for it. The flinch. The flush in her cheeks. The way her shoulders used to curl in whenever she felt like she'd done something wrong.

None of it came.

Her smile stayed exactly where it was. She gave me a small, polite nod, like I was a business acquaintance whose name she'd half forgotten.

"Sterling," she said. "Good to see you."

That was it.

Marcus made a choking sound into his drink.

I stared at Kian's hand. His thumb moved slightly against her bare spine, a small, easy touch. She didn't pull away. She leaned into it.

The words came out before I could stop them.

"Elowen. Come here."

My voice was low and flat. It was the tone I'd used a thousand times across our kitchen, our bedroom, the back seat of the car. *Come here.* She always came.

She didn't move.

The silence stretched. Somewhere behind us, the string quartet hit a bright, cheerful note that didn't belong.

Kian glanced between us. His brows pulled together, and he bent his head toward her. "Hey. You okay? You feeling alright?"

"I'm fine." Elowen laughed softly. Then she reached up and straightened his bow tie with two quick tugs, like she'd done it a hundred times. "It was crooked. Come on, let's go in. I want to see the auction items before the good ones are gone."

"You sure?"

"Positive." She patted his chest. "You promised me the Monet print."

"I promised to *bid* on the Monet print."

"Same thing."

He grinned at her, and something in my stomach turned to stone.

Lila touched my arm. "Sterling, maybe we should—"

I shook her off without looking at her.

Elowen took Kian's arm. They turned to walk past us toward the main hall. She didn't glance at me again. She didn't hurry, and she didn't slow down. She just walked by like I was a pillar holding up the ceiling.

Her shoulder passed mine.

Citrus and cedar.

My hand shot out and clamped around her wrist.

She stopped. Her skin was warm under my fingers, and her pulse was steady. It was too steady.

Kian turned. "Hey—"

I ignored him. I pulled her half a step closer and dropped my voice so only she could hear.

"You brought him here on purpose," I said. "To piss me off. Didn't you?"