You Said We Had to Stay Secret, So I Married the Heir in Public

He showed up at 12:40 a.m.

I was still in the black dress, sitting on my couch with my heels kicked under the coffee table and my phone face down beside me. It had buzzed so many times in the last two hours that I'd stopped turning it over. Then the knocking started, three soft taps and a pause, the way he'd always knocked so my neighbors wouldn't hear.

When I opened the door, Adrian was holding a white bakery box.

"Peace offering," he said, lifting it slightly. "Lemon tart from Delphine's. I had Danny bang on the back door until the pastry guy gave up."

He'd changed out of the tux into a gray hoodie and a ball cap pulled low. The Oscar wasn't with him. Of course it wasn't. He'd probably left it with his publicist, along with everything else that belonged to the public version of him.

He stepped inside without waiting to be invited, the way he always had.

"You didn't go to the hotel," he said, setting the box on my kitchen counter. "I waited, Evie. I sat there with a bottle of champagne like an idiot."

"I'm sure that was hard for you."

He winced, but he was smiling. "Okay. I deserve that. You're mad. You're allowed to be mad." He opened the box and turned it toward me like a magic trick. "But I have a plan. I had Lauren book the cabin in Big Sur for this weekend. Friday to Sunday. No phones, no press, nobody but us. I'll make it up to you."

Two days.

He thought two days on a cliff with an ocean view could cover the moment he held another woman's hand in front of the entire world while I clapped.

I didn't touch the tart.

"Are you going to clear it up tomorrow?" I asked.

He blinked. "Clear what up?"

"Serena. Are you going to tell people it isn't real?"

For a second he looked at me like I'd asked him to explain gravity. Then he pulled off his cap, ran a hand through his hair, and let out a long breath through his nose. I'd never seen him look impatient with me before. Tired, stressed, scared, yes. Never impatient.

"Evie, no. I can't do that tomorrow."

"Why not?"

"Because it's working." He said it flatly, like it should have been obvious. "Do you know what my agent's phone looked like tonight? Cartier called. Two fragrance brands called. The sequel's marketing team is losing their minds. People love us together. If I come out next week and say it was fake, I look like a liar, Serena looks humiliated, and the studio buries the movie."

"So when?"

"After the release." He shrugged. "Six months. Maybe a little longer, depending on the press tour."

Six months.

I'd been ready for him to say a few weeks. I'd even been ready for him to apologize and not mean it. I hadn't been ready for him to have a timeline.

"You already talked about this with them," I said slowly. "Before tonight."

"It came up."

"It came up."

"Don't do that." He pointed at me, then seemed to realize he was pointing and dropped his hand. "Don't make it sound like some conspiracy. It's my career. It's our future, actually. Everything I'm building, I'm building for us."

He came around the counter and lowered his voice, gentler now, the voice he used when he wanted something.

"One more thing, and I need you not to freak out. For a while, you probably shouldn't come by my place. There are photographers parked outside the building now, and if anyone gets a shot of you going in at night, it turns into a whole story. Just stay away from the neighborhood until the promo winds down." He reached for my hand. "When the movie's out, everything goes back to normal. I promise."

Normal.

Normal was a side entrance. Normal was the third row. Normal was him kissing me against a hotel door and then thanking someone else on live television.

I looked down at his hand on mine, and something in me went very quiet.

He wasn't trying to figure out how to finally bring me into the light. He'd already made his plans for the next six months, and in every single one of them, I was the woman who came over after dark and left before sunrise. He'd just stopped by tonight to let me know my schedule.

I pulled my hand back.

"You booked a cabin," I said, "so I'd agree to be invisible for another half a year."

"That's not what this is."

"Then what is it, Adrian?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he laughed a little, like I was being dramatic. "It's me trying to take care of you."

I reached behind my neck and found the clasp of the necklace.

It was a thin gold chain with a tiny sapphire, barely bigger than a grain of rice. He'd given it to me six years ago, the night he booked his first real role, a three-line part as a bartender in a cop show. He'd bought it with almost his whole paycheck. I'd cried. He'd fastened it himself.

Then, a year later, when people started recognizing him in coffee shops, he'd asked me to tuck it under my shirt whenever we were out. "Someone might ask where you got it," he'd said. After that, it lived under my collar, against my skin, where nobody could see it.

The clasp gave way easily. Six years, and it took less than a second.

I set it on the counter beside the bakery box. Then I walked to the hook by the door, took down the brass key to his apartment, and brought it back. I put it on the counter and slid it across to him until it touched his fingers.

He stared at it.

"Evie. What are you doing?"

"You don't need to protect our relationship anymore," I said. "There isn't one."

The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere down the hall, a door closed.

Adrian looked at the key, then the necklace, then my face. I watched him wait for me to crack, to cry, to say I didn't mean it. When I didn't, he smiled.

It was the smile from the screen. Easy and warm.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. I get it. You had a terrible night, and that's on me." He picked up his cap and pulled it back on, leaving the key exactly where it was. "Take a few days. Eat the tart. When you've calmed down, call me, and we'll talk about Big Sur."

"I'm calm."

"Sure you are." He kissed the top of my head before I could move away. "I'll see you this weekend."

He let himself out.

I listened to his footsteps fade down the stairwell. I waited until I heard the street door slam and a car pull away from the curb, the way I'd waited a thousand times before. Only this time, I wasn't waiting for him to come back.

The necklace was still on the counter. So was the key. He hadn't taken either one, because he didn't believe he'd need to.

I picked up my phone and ignored the forty-three notifications. I scrolled past his name, past my friends from the studio, past the group chat that had probably exploded tonight, until I found the contact I hadn't opened in three months.

Grandpa.

The last message on the screen was his, from three months earlier. Call me when you've thought it over, sweetheart. The door's open. I'd never answered. I'd been too sure I wouldn't need it.

My thumb hovered over the call button. Then I pressed it.

It rang four times. I almost hung up. Then the line clicked.

"Grandpa," I said before I could lose my nerve, "is the Ashford proposal still open?"

Silence.

Not the silence of a bad connection. Someone was there, listening. I could hear the faint crackle of a fireplace, the low tick of a clock I'd known since childhood. Three seconds. Four.

Then a man spoke, and it wasn't my grandfather.

His voice was deep and unhurried, the kind that didn't need to be raised to fill a room.

"It is," he said. "If you're asking because you're ready, not because you're hurt."