Chapter Two

Eloise's POV

After Genevieve came back, Emmett never called. Not once.

And I didn't do what I used to do — lying in bed after the divorce, phone face-up on my chest, waiting for a message that was never going to come.

I knew exactly how bad it had gotten. Once, I staged a rear-end collision on the street he always took home, split my forehead open, and sat in the wreckage waiting for him to drive past. He did. He glanced over through the window, called Genevieve to go ahead to the private dining room, and had his driver call the police on my behalf. He didn't even stop the car.

Now, with less than two weeks before I left here, I was staying at Harper's villa outside the city. Every morning we pruned roses together in the garden. In the afternoons we read on the veranda, her with a gardening magazine, me with a novel I'd been putting off for years.

One evening, Harper set down her magazine and looked at me for a long moment.

"You're leaving," she said.

I nodded. She was quiet, then picked her magazine back up. "Good," she said simply. "You deserve better."

That was all. No protests. No questions.

Of everyone in the Grayson family, she was the only one who had never once let me down. It made me think of the day my mother died — I'd been on my honeymoon with Emmett when the housekeeper Quinn texted me. I read it in the bathroom, then placed my phone face-down on the sink and walked back out without saying a word.

I dropped my head and quietly swallowed the sting behind my eyes.

The week before I left, my grandmother asked me to pick up a gown from a boutique downtown — something she'd ordered for a friend's birthday banquet. The attendant was still fetching it from the back, so I flipped through the new arrivals on the rack beside me.

The glass door swung open, letting in a gust of cold air and the sound of laughter.

I didn't turn around. I watched them in the mirror.

Emmett had his arm around Genevieve's waist. She was saying something, tilting her head back, and he leaned down to catch it, the corner of his mouth curved in a way I had never seen on him before — loose, unguarded.

I looked back down at the fabric in my hands.

"That gown—" Genevieve moved to stand beside me, her gaze falling on the one the attendant had just brought out. "I want this one."

"This lady was here first—"

"This boutique is a Grayson property." Her tone was perfectly calm, like she was stating something beyond dispute. She tilted her head. "Emmett, I really love this one. I want it."

I looked up, and my eyes met Emmett's across the room. He was quiet for two seconds. Then he gave a small nod.

"Let her have it." I held the gown out to the attendant, then turned to get my coat.

The room stilled for a moment behind me. They were waiting for me to snap — to raise my voice, to run through the same old script I'd performed so many times before. I had never once disappointed them.

This time, I just picked up my bag and walked to the door.

Emmett stood watching the door long after I was gone, caught off guard in a way he hadn't expected. Genevieve had to say his name twice before he turned around.

I thought that would be the last of it. That Emmett and I had nothing left to say to each other before I was gone.

But on the night I officially resigned from my position as his assistant, he called.

"HR told me you quit." He got straight to it.

"Yeah."

"Good call." He said it fast, like he'd had it ready. "You never needed to work in the first place. Come back, settle down. Have a couple of kids in a few years. You won't have to worry about anything."

I almost laughed. "Shouldn't you be with Genevieve?"

A beat of silence.

"You're my wife." His voice dropped, steady with the kind of certainty that doesn't leave room for argument.

Then he caught himself. Because I wasn't his wife anymore.

"She's fragile," he started again, and I recognized the tone immediately — that particular patience he only ever used when explaining Genevieve. "Her condition can't handle that kind of stress. If word got out about us while I was still married, people would say she was chasing a taken man. She couldn't survive that kind of talk — it would set her back. You understand. I never meant to hurt you—"

I stood at the window. Outside, the streetlights carved the dark into uneven squares of yellow.

Genevieve's reputation mattered. Genevieve's health mattered. So we divorced. So he asked me to move out every time. So everyone in our circle believed I was the unhinged ex-wife who couldn't let go. He had shielded her completely, and in the same motion pressed my name into the dirt over and over — then turned around and told me to understand.

"Emmett." I cut him off. "I'm hanging up."

"Wait."

Something in his voice shifted — urgent, like he'd caught himself stumbling.

"Our anniversary is in five days. That French place you always loved. Just the two of us. What do you say?"

I opened my mouth. I was going to tell him I wouldn't be showing up to anything, that I was done waiting for a reconciliation that was never going to come—

Before I could say a word, another voice came through the line.

Genevieve. Soft, drowsy. "Emmett, baby — can you hand me my underwear? The white lace one, on the bed—"