"I don't need you to drive me home," I said. "And I don't need my boss watching me get dumped in real time."

Miles looked at the keys in his hand for a second. Then he slid them into his pocket.

He didn't come around to my side. He pulled out the chair across from me and sat, the long table still between us.

"Okay," he said. "Do you need quiet, or do you need to swear at someone?"

I opened my mouth to say neither. Nothing came out.

The air vent hummed. Somewhere down the hall, a printer jammed and someone cursed it.

"They got married today," I said.

That was all. My voice came out flat and even, like I was reading a filing deadline.

Miles didn't move. But his jaw went tight, and for a moment he looked at me like I'd cut myself and was pretending not to bleed.

"Then we'll sit here," he said. "As long as you want."

We sat there for eleven minutes. I know because I counted.

---

At 10:14 that night, Mom forwarded an invitation.

*Richard Bennett's Retirement Celebration. Harbor Yacht Club. Saturday, 6 p.m.*

Under it, she'd typed: *Grant and Paige will be there too, sweetheart. We can't let one breakup tear the whole family apart.*

One breakup. Like I'd dropped a glass.

My thumbs were already moving. *I won't be coming. Please tell Dad I'm sorry.*

Before I could hit send, my phone buzzed. Dad.

Dad never called after nine.

"Audrey." His voice was rough, like he'd been working up to this. "I know your mother texted you."

"She did."

"I'm not calling for her." He paused. "I want my daughter there. That's it. I won't ask you to forgive anybody. I won't ask you to smile at anybody."

I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes.

"Dad, I'm not sitting at their table."

"Then you'll sit at mine."

I laughed, short and wet. "Okay. I'll come."

---

The next afternoon, I was halfway through Miles's red notes when his phone rang on the desk between us. He glanced at the screen and sighed like a man facing a tax audit.

"Mother."

He put it on speaker. I don't think he meant to. I think he just didn't want to hold it.

"Miles, darling. Dinner Sunday, and the Sunday after. And the Carrow Foundation ball is on the twentieth. You're not coming alone again."

"I like coming alone."

"You *like* making me look like I raised a monk. Eleanor's niece is back from London. She's lovely. She does something with art."

"Everyone's niece does something with art."

"Sunday, Miles."

She hung up first.

I set down my pen. "Your mother is scheduling your love life."

"My mother believes a man attending alone is an open invitation for a blind date." He rubbed his temple. "Last year she seated me next to a woman who asked me to invest in her horse."

"Her horse."

"Not a horse business. One horse."

I snorted. He gave me a look. "Says the woman whose family is throwing her a party with her ex and his new wife."

"It's my father's party."

"It's a firing squad with an open bar."

I should have left it there. Instead, I heard myself say it, half joking, half not.

"You need a girlfriend who'll make your mother stop talking. I need a date who'll make my relatives stop pitying me. Want to trade services?"

He didn't laugh. He didn't say yes either.

He leaned back and studied me. "If we did this, would you feel like you couldn't walk away? Because I sign the checks?"

My spine went straight. "I report to Vivian Brooks. Not you. My reviews go through General Counsel. So don't make jokes about your title like it owns me."

"It wasn't a joke. It was a question."

"Then here's my answer. This has nothing to do with my salary, my review, or my promotion. Not one line of it. Or there's no deal."

Something in his face eased. Almost like relief.

"Good," he said. "Put it in writing."

---

We ended up at the café on Fifth after work. Two black coffees. My phone between us, a fresh note open.

"Six weeks," I said, typing. "Rule one. No payment for romance."

"I wasn't going to Venmo you for dinner."

"Rule two. Nothing affects work."

"Agreed."

"Rule three." I hesitated. "Ask before kissing."

He tilted his head. "Every time?"

"Every time."

"Fine. Rule four, either of us can end it. No reason needed."

I typed. "Rule five. If either one of us wants something real, we say so first. Before anything happens."

He was quiet a beat too long. Then he reached over and tapped the screen. "Add one."

"What?"

"You stop keeping up appearances for people who hurt you."

My fingers stalled over the keyboard. "That's not a dating rule."

"It's mine."

I typed it. Then I added one more and turned the phone so he could see.

*Rule seven: The boss does not make decisions for me.*

He read it. The corner of his mouth twitched. "That one's aimed at me."

"It has your name on it in invisible ink."

---

Monday morning, we sat across from Vivian Brooks and filled out the conflict-of-interest disclosure.

Miles signed the recusal form without blinking. "I'm out of every decision on Ms. Bennett's compensation, reviews, and project assignments. Effective now."

Vivian took the papers, scanned them, and stacked them neatly. She didn't ask a single question about us.

She just took off her glasses.

"I don't care what you two do on weekends," she said. "But if this ends badly, do not turn my office into a breakup scene. I mean it."

"Understood," we said, at the same time.

She put her glasses back on. "Get out."

---

Saturday, Miles knocked at exactly 5:30.

I'd expected a tux. Something loud. Something built to make Grant feel small.

He wore a dark gray suit. Simple. A white shirt, no tie.

I stood in the doorway touching the thin gold chain at my throat. Grant had given it to me three Christmases ago.

"Should I take this off?" I asked. "It feels like a statement either way."

Miles glanced at it, then back at my face.

"Wear what you like," he said. "You don't need to dress like you're trying to beat anyone."

I laughed. A real laugh, from somewhere low in my chest. The first one all week.

He looked almost startled by it.

I took the necklace off anyway. Because I wanted to.

---

The Harbor Yacht Club smelled like salt and expensive candles. Miles slipped my coat from my shoulders and handed it to the attendant.

Across the room, Grant's smile froze halfway up his face.

Paige, though, came at us glowing. "Audrey! You came! Oh my God, we have to get a picture. Everyone, squeeze in!"

"I don't—"

"Give me your phone, yours takes better ones." She plucked it from my hand right as I unlocked it.

She took the shot. Then another. Then she turned away, thumb moving fast across my screen.

"Paige."

"One sec, I'm finding the good one."

Same old Paige. Always deleting the ones where she wasn't the prettiest.

I held out my hand. She gave it back with a bright smile.

Miles leaned down, his voice low near my ear. "Can I hold your hand?"

I looked at him. He waited.

"Yes," I said, and slid my hand into his. It was warm and steady.

Paige tapped a fork against her glass.

The room went still. She rested her other hand on her stomach, slow and soft, and leaned into Grant.

"Since everyone's here today," she said, beaming right at me, "Grant and I have one more piece of good news."

"I'm thirteen weeks pregnant."

Paige said it like a birthday wish. Grant kissed her temple.

Thirteen weeks.

I did the math before I could stop myself. Three months ago, Grant had sat beside me at the jeweler on Madison, turning a platinum band under the light.

"This one," he'd said. "It looks like you. Simple. Strong."

That same night we'd argued, laughing, over Lisbon or Santorini for the honeymoon. He'd picked Santorini. He'd kissed my shoulder and called me Mrs. Mercer in a fake British accent.

Thirteen weeks.

It wasn't one mistake. It wasn't wedding stress. It was a whole season of lies, running right alongside the life I thought we were building.

I looked down. My fingers had gone white around the champagne flute.

"Oh my God!" Aunt Denise, Paige's mother, shot up from her chair. "A baby! Everyone, glasses up! To the new family!"

Glasses lifted around the room. Somebody whooped.

Mom turned her head and found me. Her eyes were soft. Hopeful. Asking.

Smile, Audrey. Help us get through this.

I set my glass on the table. The base hit the wood harder than I meant it to.

"I hope the baby is healthy," I said. "I really do. But I won't toast to how you lied to me."

The noise in the room didn't stop all at once. It sank, table by table, like a tide pulling out.

Grant stepped forward, one hand raised like he was calming a horse. "Okay. Let's be fair here. Audrey and I were done long before any of this. Everybody knows we'd been struggling. Paige just helped me through a hard time."

Uncle Ray nodded slowly. A cousin near the bar gave Grant a sympathetic little wince.

I almost admired it. He'd rewritten five years in two sentences.

"Struggling," I said. "Then why did you text me last Tuesday to pay the honeymoon balance before the deadline?"

Grant's mouth stayed open.

"I still have the message," I added. "You used three exclamation points."

Uncle Ray stopped nodding.

Grant came closer and dropped his voice. "Audrey. Not here. Think about your father."

"I am thinking about my father."

Behind us, a chair scraped back.

Dad was standing at the head table. He didn't raise his voice. He never had to.

He waved at the waiter beside the dessert cart, where a small white cake sat with *Baby Mercer* piped across the top in pink.

"Take that away, please."

The waiter froze. "Sir?"

"The cake. Take it back to the kitchen." Dad looked straight at Grant. "This is my retirement party. Don't use my name to ask my daughter to swallow this."

The waiter wheeled the cart off. One wheel squeaked the whole way.

Paige's face crumpled. The tears came right on cue.

"I never wanted to take anybody's place." She reached across the table for my hand. "Audrey, please. We're family."

I pulled my hand back before she could touch it.

Her tears dried so fast it was almost impressive. Her eyes slid to Miles.

"Wow. Okay," she said. "So that's why you showed up with your boss a week later. You needed everyone to see somebody still wants you."

Grant jumped on it. He turned to Miles with a thin smile. "You do know she's just using you to get back at me, right?"

Heads turned. Aunt Denise. Two cousins. Mom.

They were all looking at me now, at the exact thing I'd been hiding under the navy suits and the clean contracts. The question I'd been asking myself all week.

Was I just trying not to be the girl who got left?

My throat closed. I waited for Miles to say something smooth. *We've been in love for months. She's the best thing that ever happened to me.* Some line built to win.

He didn't say any of it.

He moved half a step closer, until his shoulder was beside mine, and he spoke only to me.

"Do you want to stay," he asked, "or do you want to go?"

That was it. No speech. No story.

Just a choice, put back into my hands.

Something in my chest unknotted. I didn't have to win this. I didn't have to prove anything to a room full of people who'd already picked their seats.

"Go," I said.

I crossed to the head table. Dad opened his arms before I got there.

"I'm sorry, Dad. I'll take you to dinner next week. Just us. Your choice of steakhouse."

He held me tight. He smelled like the same cedar aftershave he'd worn my whole life.

"Kiddo," he said into my hair, "you're not the one who should be sorry."

---

The terrace doors swung shut behind us, and the party noise went muffled and far away.

They opened again ten seconds later.

"Audrey. Wait."

Grant. Of course.

He didn't even look at me first. He looked at Miles. "You really think a guy like him is serious about a woman who just got dumped a week before her wedding? Come on. You're a rebound with a corner office."

Miles didn't answer. He just watched Grant like he was a bad clause in a contract.

I turned around.

"You're married, Grant," I said. "You got married. You have a baby on the way. So why are you still chasing me outside to check if anyone loves me?"

He blinked. His jaw worked. Nothing came out.

For once in five years, Grant Mercer had no answer.

Miles lifted a hand toward a club attendant near the stairs. "Excuse me. Could you help this gentleman back inside? His wife is waiting."

The attendant nodded and stepped up beside Grant. "Sir. This way, please."

Grant shot me one last look. Then he went.

---

The wind off the harbor pulled my hair loose from its pins and whipped it across my face.

I pushed it back. I had a line ready. *Thank you. You held up your end. We're even.* It was what the deal said.

Miles stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets. Not close. Not touching me. He'd stayed that exact polite distance all night, unless I said yes.

I didn't say the line.

I reached out and caught his sleeve. The wool was cool under my fingers.

"I want to kiss you," I said quietly. "Not so he can see."

He went very still. His eyes searched mine, careful and serious.

"Are you sure, Audrey?"

"I'm sure."

He took his hands out of his pockets. One came up to my jaw, light, like he was giving me one more chance to step back.

I didn't.

He bent his head and kissed me.

Every line I'd rehearsed in the car, every fake-girlfriend smile, every rule on that phone note, all of it fell apart. His mouth was warm. My hand tightened on his sleeve and then slid up to his collar, and he made a low sound against my lips that I felt all the way down my spine.

When we finally pulled apart, I caught a flash of movement through the glass doors.

Grant stood just inside, staring at us. His face had gone blank with shock.

I didn't turn around.

Miles brushed his thumb along the corner of my mouth, wiping away a smudge of my lipstick. His voice dropped lower than the wind.

"There's one rule I need to change. Right now."

My stomach sank. Here it was. Rule four. Either of us can end it.

"Okay," I whispered. "Which one?"

He didn't let go of my face.

"I've wanted to kiss you," he said, "since long before we ever made a deal."