The bell above the Elm Cafe door chimed. Ben stood there, looking like he had been pulled through a knothole. His usually perfect hair was disheveled, his eyes raw. He slid into the chair opposite Jax.
"You came," Ben said, his voice rough.
Jax nodded, sipping his coffee. He waited.
Ben looked down at his own hands. "I don't know where to start. Last night wasn't about....It was about realizing I'm living a life that isn't mine. I see it now. The job, the house, Clara… it's all just props for a show."
He finally looked up. "The only real thing I ever had was her. Ella. And I treated her like she was disposable. I was so focused on climbing ,that I became the guy who'd hurt her to get ahead. I told myself I was building a future. I was just burning down my past."
Jax listened, his expression unreadable. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you were there," Ben said, a painful honesty in his voice. "You saw me before. You saw us before. And you're the one who's there now. I need you to know I see it. I was a fool. And I'm sorry. To you, for being a shit friend. And to her, for everything."
Jax put his cup down. "Your apology to me isn't the one that matters. Your regret doesn't undo what you did. Ella's happy now. She's safe. That's my only concern. Your job is to live with your choice, not disrupt her peace trying to fix yours."
Jax was drawing a boundary. Ben nodded, a look of weary acceptance. He had been heard, and judged.
That evening, Jax picked me up. "Where are we going?" I asked, smiling. I believed Ben was off living his perfect, glossy life. The thought of him suffering never crossed my mind.
"You'll see."
He drove to the city's old botanical gardens, lit by strings of fairy lights for a private event. "We have it to ourselves," he said, leading me through a tunnel of hanging wisteria.
In the center of a secluded rose garden, he stopped. On a stone bench was a small velvet box. Inside was the carved wooden heart, now smooth and glowing on a delicate silver chain.
"I started this the night after I first found you," he said, his voice quiet. "I didn't know what I was making. I just knew I had to make something real." He fastened it around my neck. It lay warm and solid against my skin, a perfect weight.
"It's perfect," I whispered, touching it. He kissed me in the garden, under the fairy lights, and I felt completely, utterly his.
Across town, Clara Sterling let the silk robe fall from her shoulders. The penthouse was silent, a monument to her family's cold taste. Her skin still hummed from the afternoon. The California king bed was a vast, lonely island. She thought of the garden café, of the stolen hour that felt more like home than this entire floor of marble ever could.
Katie's hands had not been polite. They had been possessive, hungry. Fingers had traced the frantic pulse in Clara's wrist before sliding up to cup her jaw, tilting her face up. The kiss was wild;Like an hungry beast, trying to devour it's prey.
A desperate, silent argument against the brick wall of the alley in the bedroom, all heat and teeth and shared, shuddering breaths. A low moan escaped Clara's throat, swallowed immediately by Katie's mouth.
Katie's thigh pressed firmly between hers, the pressure through the layers of their clothes a maddening, perfect pleasure. Clara's back arched, her body betraying her fear with a surge of pure want. Her hips moved instinctively against the delicious friction.
"I can't keep doing this," Clara had gasped against Katie's mouth, the words breaking on a sharp inhale as Katie's hand slid from her jaw, down her throat, over the swell of her breast, to clutch at her waist.
"Damn! This is so good!"
Katie,said under her breaths".
She pulled back just enough to look into Clara's eyes, with her gaze dark, serious, and blazing. "Then stop going back," she said, her voice a raw, challenging vibration against Clara's lips. Her other hand found the hem of Clara's blouse, fingertips skimming the hot skin of her stomach, making Clara gasp. "Your 'duty' is a gilded coffin. This," she pressed closer, her body a solid line of heat, "this is life. Choose it."
As if to prove her point, Katie's seeking fingers dipped lower, past the waistband of Clara's slacks. Clara's head fell back against the bed wall with a soft thud, a keening sound caught in her chest. The world narrowed to the rough at her back and the sure, intimate touch playing inside her. It was crazy! and familiar, a language only they shared. Every stroke was pleasure, every twist of Katie's wrist a question that made Clara's body answer with a pulsing, aching need. She was so close, teetering on that exquisite edge right there in the room.
But the choice was an illusion. Her father's voice, cool and final as a bank vault door closing, slammed into the moment in her head. The merger is finalized, Clara. You will understand your duty.
She had clutched at Katie's shoulders, her orgasm crashing over her in a silent, breathless wave, even as her heart fractured. The pleasure was real. The despair that followed was realer.
Benjamin. Her fiancé. A handsome, ambitious shield.Swallowed whole by his own clueless ambitions". He had no idea the woman he was set to marry came apart in possession under her lover's touch.
She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window now, the city lights blurring below. Her body still thrummed with the pleasure of that release. Her reflection showed a beautiful, poised heiress. Inside, she was a live wire of secret want and devastating frustration.
Katie was her truth. Her partner, her anchor, the only person who saw the storm. Their relationship was the masterpiece they hid—intense, private, and everything her public life was not.
Clara's phone buzzed on the nightstand. A message from her father: Dinner with the Hargroves tomorrow. Benjamin will be there. Wear the emeralds.
Another performance. She closed her eyes, She saw Katie's defiant gaze, felt the maddening of that possessive touch. She was trapped between a lust that felt like her only truth and a desire for a freedom that seemed forever out of reach. She was living a beautiful, expensive lie, and the only person who made her feel truly, dangerously alive was the one she was forced to hide.