Gabriel POV
Gabriel knew he was making a mistake the moment he opened the wine.
Not a small one. The kind that splits your life into before and after. The kind you spend years tracing back to the exact second you chose it.
He opened it anyway.
The bottle had been in the back of the rack for two years. A 2021 Bordeaux from the same month Iris walked into his office. He had bought it that evening on impulse and felt ridiculous about it immediately. He was not a man who marked moments. He was not a man who kept things for reasons he couldn't explain.
He had never once considered throwing it out.
Iris was on the far end of the couch still in the midnight blue dress, shoes off, legs tucked beside her. She had been quiet since the gala. Not her usual professional quiet. Something tighter. She held the wine glass he handed her with both hands.
He sat at the other end of the couch.
They stayed like that for a while, both looking out at the city. Gabriel kept waiting for her to say something polite about getting to bed before the lawyer appointment tomorrow. She didn't.
He took a long drink.
It tasted like the month they met. He hadn't known wine could do that.
"Do you remember our first meeting?" he said.
Iris looked at him sideways. "You stared at me and offered a contract."
"I was trying to decide if you were serious. Most people who answered that ad wanted the money without the conditions." He turned the glass slowly in his hands. "You were the only one who read all three pages before picking up the pen."
"I read it four times," she said.
"I know. I watched you."
She was quiet. Below them a siren crossed the city and faded.
"Why did you write the no children clause," she said. Direct. No softening around it.
He answered honestly because there was no point doing anything else.
"Because children are permanent. Contracts end. I didn't want anything permanent with someone I was supposed to let go."
He heard how that sounded as soon as it left his mouth.
Iris nodded once, slowly, like he had confirmed something she already knew. She looked back at the city.
"I signed it because my mother was dying," she said. Quiet and flat, not asking for sympathy. "Heart surgery. Four hundred thousand dollars. Insurance covered almost nothing. I had six weeks before the surgeon moved to the next patient." She took a drink. "I sat in my car for an hour before I replied to your ad. I told myself I was being practical."
"Was it practical."
She turned and looked at him for a long moment. "It was. For a while."
The air between them changed.
Gabriel set his glass down. He had spent two years managing the distance between them. Reminding himself daily that Iris was a contract, not something he was allowed to want. He had been very disciplined about it.
He was done being disciplined.
"I grew up in a house worth forty million dollars," he said. "My parents had dinner parties every weekend. Important people. My father wore cufflinks and my mother wore pearls and from the outside they looked like a family that had everything." He looked at his hands. "I used to wait at the top of the stairs on those evenings. I was maybe seven. I would wait for one of them to look up and call me down. Just acknowledge I was there."
Iris had gone completely still beside him.
"My father came to the stairs one night. I thought he was finally coming up for me." Gabriel kept his voice level. He had practiced that his whole life. "He was telling the housekeeper to lock the upstairs so the noise from the guests wouldn't carry." He paused. "He walked right past me."
"Gabriel." Her voice was soft.
"I learned from that," he said. "If you want something from someone, build a structure around it. Define the terms. That way when it ends you know exactly where you stand. No surprises. Nobody walks past you again."
Iris was looking at him with those green eyes that hid absolutely nothing. Every feeling right on the surface. She was looking at him like his pain was her pain. Like she was hurting for a seven-year-old boy she had never met.
Nobody had ever hurt for him before.
"Your mother," he said, pulling himself back. "How is she now."
Iris's whole face softened. "She's strong. She doesn't know the full story about us. The real version." A pause. "She doesn't know how long it took me to hear your car in the garage and feel nothing."
He went completely still.
She seemed to realize what she had just said. Her eyes dropped to her glass.
"Iris."
"Don't." Her voice was low. "Don't be kind tonight. I can't handle kind right now."
"I'm terrified," he said. Not kind. Just honest. "Of you leaving tomorrow. Of going back to that office and not having a single person in the world who talks to me like I'm a human being and not a number."
She looked up at him.
"You made me feel like a person worth being around," he said. "Just by existing in this apartment. Just by leaving coffee on the counter and never once asking for more than I could give." His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "I don't know how to go back to before you."
Her eyes were bright and full.
She moved across the couch. One small deliberate movement. She put her hand against his jaw.
He closed his eyes.
"I wished things were different," she whispered. "Every single day."
He kissed her. Not carefully. Not like a man following rules. Like a man who was finally allowed to want something and had been holding it back so long that the release of it was almost painful.
She kissed him back just as hard.
It was nothing like their public appearances. Nothing like two years of performance and professional distance. It was completely real. And Gabriel thought clearly, in the middle of it, that this was the first honest thing he had done in years.
He held her while she slept hours later. Her breathing slow and even against his chest.
He lay awake and stared at the ceiling and felt something he had no word for. Warm and terrifying and entirely his.
He reached for his phone to silence his morning alarm.
Henry's message sat at the top of his notifications. Sent forty minutes ago.
I saw you leave the balcony with her tonight. Before you do something you can't undo, you should know she found me earlier in the evening. Came to me privately. I didn't want to say anything but I think you deserve to know who you're dealing with.
Gabriel stared at the screen.
He looked at Iris sleeping. Her dark hair across the pillow. Her hand resting open near his arm.
He thought about what she had said. Every single day. The way she said it like it cost her something.
Then he thought about every person who had ever gotten close enough to matter and then revealed they wanted something else underneath it. His parents. Business partners. Everyone.
He was not a man who waited around to be walked past again.
He got out of bed quietly. Went to the desk. Picked up a pen.
He wrote three words on a sheet of paper and folded it once.
Then he stood at the bedroom doorway and looked back at her for a long moment.
She looked peaceful. Like someone who had no idea what was coming.
His hand tightened on the door frame.
He almost went back.
He didn't.