STEPHAN
She slammed the office door so hard the framed awards on the wall rattled.
The sound echoed in the empty room like a gunshot. My chest heaved. Fingers still tingling from where they had wrapped around her throat not to hurt, just to hold. To feel her pulse race under my thumb and know she was real and still the same woman who had gutted me years ago.
I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window, staring down at the city lights blurring into streaks. Thirty floors up and I still felt small. Pathetic.
I should be excited that she did, that the first time she walked out of the mansion was to apologize to me but I know clearly well it was all a lie.
This is the first time she is using several crazy ideas just to use me for the time being when Henry is nowhere around her.
How dare she walk into my building dressed like some college kid playing hooky, turn my executive lounge into a goddamn birthday party for apologies, drop to her knees in front of forty of my employees, and hold out a rose like it could erase three years of lies.
And the worst part? For one heartbeat, one stupid, traitorous heartbeat when those storm-cloud eyes looked up at me, wet and wide and pleading, I wanted to believe her.
I wanted to scoop her up, crush the rose between us, and kiss her until we both forgot the past.
Instead, I crushed the flower. Told everyone to clean up or lose their jobs. Carried her like she was mine again. Then pinned her to the wall and snarled in her face like the monster she turned me into.
Because that's safer, believing her would be suicide.
I dragged a hand through my hair, tugging hard enough to hurt. The confetti still clung to my suit sleeves like mocking glitter. I brushed it off in furious swipes, but a few stubborn pieces stuck to my cufflinks. Fitting. She always did leave pieces of herself behind, impossible to shake.
I was still in deep thought when my eyes met a box of food on my desk.
I recalled Rick had told me the reason she had come in the first place was to make me eat lunch.
I picked up the box staring at it for some seconds and I was tempted to open the box
But recalling how crazily she had planned things especially with my food I couldn't even force myself to open or eat it anymore.
I dropped it back and then my phone buzzed on the desk.
" Rick," I answered without looking. "Is she gone?"
"Yes, sir. I had the driver take her home. I paused for some second wondering how she must have been feeling seeing that I didn't accept her apology, but instead got mad at her.
"Did she get mad at you?" I asked and he sighed before responding.
"She… didn't argue. Just got in the car quietly."
Quietly, that word hit harder than it should have.
The Jasmine I knew would have screamed, cried, thrown something, or worse laughed in my face and called Henry right in front of me. The old Jasmine never left quietly but this one did.
I ended the call without another word.
The office felt too big. Some of my employees had brought in the cake since they couldn't just throw it away or even dare to eat it.
I walked to the desk, dropped into my chair, and stared at the spot where she had spun around earlier like a kid. The leather was still warm. Stupid detail to notice. Stupid heart to still care. Yeah, when she sat on my desk my phone had alerted me and I had watched this through my phone, a bit excited she was around when I saw her.
I almost stopped whatever meeting I was having but recalling she might be up to no good. I paused and controlled myself, stopping the video and proceeding with the meeting.
I hated that I noticed.
I hated that part of me, I hated the fact that I liked it. Liked the way she had charged into my world today, backward cap and all, refusing to be invisible. Liked the ridiculous poppers and the cheesy icing and the way she had groaned "RIP to my dignity" before dropping to her knees.
She used to be like that. Before.
Back in high school, before her father's money and her mother's ambition twisted her into someone who collected hearts like trophies.
She would drag me to rooftops with stolen snacks, laugh too loud, wear my hoodie when it rained, and look at me like I was the only thing worth seeing.
Then all of a sudden she changed or maybe she never changed. Maybe that girl was always a lie, and I was just too blind to see it.
I rubbed my face, exhausted.
I couldn't trust this new version. I couldn't let myself hope. Hope had nearly killed me once. I had sat by her hospital bed for a month, holding her hand, whispering promises I never thought I would have to keep again.
But everything shattered when the second she woke up, she asked for a divorce.
Then she carried me to breakfast. She even decided to remember my peanut allergy.
Handled Jaden without flinching when he spat venom at her and now this public humiliation disguised as remorse.
It had to be another game, because if it wasn't… if she was really sorry, really different…
Then everything I had built my walls, my anger, my distance was for nothing and I wasn't ready to face that.
I didn't know I had to think so deeply until my phone buzzed and it was my alarm telling me it's now late in the night.
"Damn! I promised myself I wouldn't let her control how I think but here I am already so lost, in thought no matter how Rick had walked in and about helping me reschedule my meeting I was just so lost in my thoughts all because of her.
I finally reached for the drawer where I kept the old photos. The ones I told myself I would burn a hundred times but never did.
My fingers brushed something cold instead, a small envelope. Plain white. No return address.
Rick must have left it earlier. Said something about "personal delivery, hand-carried."
I tore it open and then one photo slid out making my breath stop.
Jasmine, still in the same joggers she had on once, walked down to my office, with Henry's hands around her waist as he kissed her.
Not a peck, but a full, hungry kiss. The kind I hadn't felt from her in years. My hands trembled at the thought, here I was wasting my whole day on this king about her but she found Henry.
On the back, in neat handwriting I didn't recognize, "She never stopped."
My hand shook. The photo slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the desk.