Chapter 2

Three days later, Julian showed up at my door with cream puffs from my favorite place.

He set the bag down on the coffee table and sat across from me.

"My mom made that call on the spot that day. I had no idea she was going to announce it in front of everyone."

"Except your mother told me it was you who couldn't bring yourself to say it, and she was just speaking for you. Was that on the spot too?"

He froze. "My mom talked to you?"

I nodded, holding his gaze. "She told me to go find someone decent and get married, not waste my life. So how much longer do you need me to wait?"

He went quiet for a moment. "Just give me a little more time."

"How much time? Would three years be enough?"

He looked up at me, a pleading look in his eyes. "Camille's family's business is tied up with ours in too many ways. I can't just cut ties overnight. I need you to hang on a little longer."

In the end, I didn't say anything at all.

The next day, as if nothing had happened, he asked me to come along to a dinner with an important client. It was work, after all.

I didn't bring up the day before. But when we got to the private room, Camille was already there, sitting right beside him.

He introduced me to the table. "This is Vera Hart, from my company. She handles copywriting and strategy."

All through dinner, Camille kept serving him food and refilling his glass. He peeled shrimp for her without a second thought, the motion so easy it looked like he'd done it hundreds of times.

Only then did he seem to remember I was there. He turned to me. "Vera, take notes on today's key points so I can send them to the departments when we're back."

I pulled out my phone and opened a notes app.

Camille murmured to him, "Ms. Hart is so dedicated — she doesn't even stop working to eat."

He smiled. "That's just how she is. She's very thorough."

Not once, the entire evening, did he call me his girlfriend.

When dinner ended, Camille stood up, and Julian helped her into her coat. Then he turned to me. "Vera, go get the car started. I'll walk Camille to the door."

I went and pulled the car around to the entrance. He and Camille stood talking on the steps, her hand tugging at his sleeve, her smile sweet as sugar.

Someone walking past remarked, "Mr. Whitmore and his wife make such a lovely couple," and he laughed along with it.

Only after Camille was gone did he get in the car. I sat gripping the wheel, engine off.

"Why didn't you introduce me as your girlfriend back there?"

"It wasn't the right setting. Camille was there."

"So I played your secretary again."

"That was just for tonight."

I turned to look at him. "Julian, I've been at your side for three years. I went from your girlfriend to a waitress, from a waitress to a secretary. What's next?"

He frowned and said nothing.

Neither of us spoke the rest of the way. When I dropped him off at his building, he caught my hand before getting out.

"Vera, you have to know — you're the only one in my heart. She's nothing more than a name on paper."

I told him to get out, then drove off. In the rearview mirror, he stood at the entrance to his building. He didn't come after me.

I suddenly remembered the winter we first got together — him running a fever, waiting for me outside my dorm with a cup of hot chocolate in his hands. The Julian from back then would never have made me wait forty minutes. Would never have sent me in through a side door. Would never have made me pretend to be just a coworker at a business dinner.

I couldn't even remember when exactly he'd started to change.

That weekend, I went to the mall by myself and spotted them at a restaurant on the fourth floor. A couples' set meal sat between them. Camille scooped up a spoonful of dessert and held it up to his mouth. He leaned in and took it, then laughed and dabbed at the corner of her lips with a napkin.

I stood behind the railing, remembering how he'd told me last week he had to work overtime that weekend.

So that was what "working overtime" meant.

I didn't go over. I turned and stepped onto the escalator, riding it down one step at a time, my heart sinking right along with it.

So he was perfectly capable of being tender with someone in public.

That someone just wasn't me.