Accidental Vows:The Billionaire's Perfect Mistake

The rain hadn't let up since I had left the Whitman wedding venue, and somewhere between Brooklyn and the Upper East Side, the soggy paper bag in my passenger seat had started to leak teriyaki sauce onto Tristan's leather upholstery.

I didn't care.

I had been on my feet since five in the morning. The mother of the bride had cried twice, the father of the groom had tried to give an unscheduled toast, and a flower girl had thrown up on the cake table somewhere between the second course and the first dance.

And still, I had pulled it off.

I had smiled. I had fixed the cake. I had calmed the mother. I had gently steered the father away from the microphone with the practiced grace of a woman who had learned, somewhere along the way, that her job was to make miracles look like they'd been planned all along.

So when my boss told me at eleven p.m. that I could finally go home, I didn't even pretend to clean up. I grabbed my coat, kicked off my heels into my tote bag, and ordered the most expensive thing on Tristan's favorite Thai delivery menu.

Spicy basil chicken. Pad see ew. Mango sticky rice. A bottle of Riesling because, honestly, I had earned it.

I wanted to walk into our apartment, drop the food on the kitchen island, and watch Tristan's face do that thing it did when I surprised him — the slow blink, the slightly stupid smile, the "have I told you lately that you are the love of my life, Cass?"

I wanted, just for one night, to feel like someone had thought about me too.

---

The elevator dinged. I stepped out into the hallway. The carpet smelled faintly like mildew, the way it always did after rain.

Tristan's apartment.

Not mine. Never technically mine, even though I'd been sleeping there four nights a week for the past two years, even though half my dresses hung in his closet, even though I had memorized which floorboard creaked outside the bathroom.

He had never asked me to officially move in. Whenever I brought it up, he had kissed me on the forehead and said something about "waiting for the right moment, baby."

I knew how he was. I had convinced myself that was charming.

I shifted the takeout bag to my hip, fished out my keys, and slid the slightly, bent one, his key, into the lock.

The door swung open.

The apartment was dark.

Not empty dark. Lived-in dark. The kind of dark you get when someone has dimmed the lights on purpose. The only glow came from down the hall, the flickering gold of the candle on his nightstand. Vetiver and sandalwood. The expensive one I had given him for Christmas.

I froze in the doorway.

Music was playing. Low. Jazzy. Sultry. Something he never played when it was just the two of us, because he said jazz gave him "a headache."

A woman laughed.

Light, breathy, the kind of laugh you do when you're trying to be quiet and failing on purpose.

I didn't move.

The teriyaki sauce was still leaking. I could feel a drop of it sliding down the inside of the brown paper, and I remember, God, I remember thinking very clearly, that's going to stain my coat. I should set the bag down.

That was my first thought.

Not what is happening. Not who is in there. Not please, God, no.

Just: I should set the bag down.

So I did.

Carefully. Quietly. The way you had set down something fragile.

Then I walked toward the bedroom.

Looking back, I don't know why I went down that hallway. Some traitor part of my brain still wanted to believe there was a misunderstanding. That his sister had stopped by. That his cousin from Connecticut was visiting. That any second now Tristan would come around the corner in sweats and say, "Babe? You are home early."

Even then.

Even with the candlelight and the jazz and the laugh I was already starting to recognize.

I still wanted to believe.

The bedroom door was cracked open about three inches.

I pushed it open the rest of the way with two fingers.

There she was.

A woman. The woman. Sitting on his bed, legs tucked under her, wearing one of Tristan's white button-down shirts. The one I had ironed for him on Sunday because he had a meeting on Monday.

I knew her hair.

I had seen it bent over a laptop in his office. I'd seen it tossed back in laughter at the company gala when she'd been introduced to me as "Brittany, my new assistant. You will love her, Cass."

I had loved her, briefly. She had touched my arm when she laughed.

I had told Tristan on the way home that night, "She's so sweet."

He had said, "Yeah, she's great."

He had said it without looking at me.

Brittany's head turned slowly toward the door. Her eyes locked with mine.

She didn't scream.

She didn't even gasp.

The smile she had been wearing for someone else froze on her mouth like she had forgotten how to take it off.

Then I saw him.

Tristan was sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, holding two glasses of red wine. The wine sloshed when he turned. A drop landed on his thigh. He didn't notice.

His mouth stayed open.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

There was just the jazz, soft and stupid, and the rain against the window, and the faint smell of vetiver and sandalwood I would never, for the rest of my life, be able to inhale again without wanting to vomit.

Then Tristan said my name.

"Cass."

That was it. Just my name, the way he said it when he wanted something. Cass, can you grab the dry cleaning? Cass, can you cancel the dinner with my parents? Cass, baby —

I looked at him.

The man I had loved for five years. The man I had defended to my best friend. The man who had convinced me, slowly, carefully, in increments so small I never noticed the shape of them until tonight, that I was the lucky one.

A red lipstick mark bloomed across the white collar of the shirt she was wearing, his shirt, like a wound.

Cherry red. The kind of red I never wore because Tristan didn't like it. "It's a little aggressive on you, baby. Stick to the nudes."

That was the moment.

Not the bed. Not the wine. Not the woman.

The lipstick, a color he'd told me wasn't me. Of course it wasn't.

It was hers.

---

"Cassidy." Tristan stood up. The wine glass shook in his hand. "Cassidy, baby, this isn't what it looks like. Just let me —"

I held up a hand.

He stopped talking.

I have never in my life experienced silence the way I experienced that silence. It pressed down on me like deep water. I could hear my own pulse. I could hear the rain. I could hear Brittany breathing through her nose like she was trying very hard not to cry.

And inside me, inside the place where, ten minutes ago, there had been a woman planning to surprise her boyfriend with Thai food, there was suddenly nothing.

No tears. No screaming. Just a low, cold hum, like a refrigerator in an empty house.

I think part of me had been waiting for this for a very long time.

I turned around.

I walked back down the hallway.

Tristan called my name again, scrambling for his pants. "Cassidy! Wait — please — let me explain —"

I kept walking.

I picked up the takeout bag from the kitchen island. I don't know why. Maybe because some small, savage part of me refused to leave behind sixty dollars of Thai food for that woman to eat in my boyfriend's shirt.

I walked out the front door.

I didn't slam it.

I closed it gently. The way you'd close a door on someone sleeping.

---

I rode the elevator down in silence.

I walked past the doorman, who said, "Goodnight, Miss Lane," the way he always did, and I said, "Goodnight, Marcus," the way I always did, and my voice didn't shake at all.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

The rain had started up again, thick and warm and indifferent.

I dropped the takeout bag into the trash can on the corner. The whole thing. Sixty dollars. The Riesling. The mango sticky rice. Gone.

Then I stood there in the rain, in my work clothes, in my bare feet — I had never put my heels back on, I realized; I had left the apartment of my five-year relationship barefoot — and I pulled out my phone with hands that were finally, finally starting to shake.

I opened the airline app.

JFK to Las Vegas. One way. Departing at 6:14 a.m.

My finger hovered over the Confirm Purchase button.

I tapped it.

The phone chimed cheerfully. Booking successful!

The rain ran down my face. I didn't know if I was crying. I genuinely could not tell.

I tilted my head up to the black, dripping sky, and for the first time in five years, I laughed.

It wasn't a happy sound. It wasn't even a sane sound.

But it was mine.

And tomorrow morning, before the sun came up, I was going to be on a plane to Las Vegas with no plan, no luggage, and no idea what I was doing.