Five Years Later, He Still Wants Me

Chapter 4: Too Close

I spent the morning convincing myself the gala had meant nothing.

Not the way he’d known I’d be there. Not the way his voice had dropped when he said I don’t believe you. Not the way I’d stood on that terrace afterward, smiling like an i***t, touching nothing, feeling everything.

It meant nothing.

I repeated it enough times that it almost started to sound true.

What I needed was distance. Real distance. The kind measured in miles, not excuses.

I decided I would get it.

The call came in before ten.

“Addie, I need you on this.” Marcus, predictably, was already three steps ahead of whatever objection I was about to raise. “The downtown revitalization dealt the one with the sports complex. They want press embedded in the planning meetings. Exclusive access.”

“Whose project is it?”

“Consortium of investors. Callahan’s one of them, but you already knew that.”

Of course, I did.

I almost said no. The word sat right there, ready, and for one full second I let myself consider what it would feel like to protect myself instead of my career.

Then I thought about the award. About five years of proving I belonged in every room I’d fought to get into.

I couldn’t afford to walk away from this. Not for him. Not for anyone.

“I can be professional,” I said, mostly to convince myself.

“Never doubted it,” Marcus said, already hanging up.

He was already there when I arrived.

Of course, he was.

Our eyes met across the conference room the second I walked in, and that same current ran straight through me, the one I hadn’t managed to explain away from the arena hallway.

I picked the seat farthest from him. It felt like the only power I had left in the room. The meeting dragged on for over an hour investor, architects, a city liaison talking about timelines and zoning in a voice that could put anyone to sleep. I took notes I barely remembered writing.

What I noticed instead were smaller things.

Someone brought in coffee halfway through, and Alex reached past two other cups to hand me one black, one sugar, exactly how I’d always taken it before I’d said a single word.

Later, when the room grew loud with overlapping arguments about permits, he quietly turned my chair a few inches, angling it away from the noisiest corner, without a word, without even looking at me for confirmation.

He remembered. All of it. Things people in my current life didn’t even know to ask about.

I told myself it meant nothing.

I didn’t believe that one either. Everyone filed out once the meeting ended. I stayed behind, slower than I needed to be, gathering papers I’d already gathered twice.

“You didn’t have to remember the coffee,” I said, not looking up.

“I didn’t have to.” His voice, closer than I expected. “I did anyway.”

I straightened, finally facing him. “Why are you being kind to me? After everything.”

“Loving you was never the hard part, Addie.” He said it simply, like it cost him nothing, the way he used to say things that cost him everything. “It never was.”

That honesty caught me completely off guard.

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t have an answer. Not one I trusted myself to say out loud.

He stepped closer.

I stepped back by instinct, pure and immediate.

He stopped instantly. Gave me the space without a word, without pushing, without the arrogance I’d braced myself for.

That surprised me more than anything he’d said all night. “There were nights I wondered what you were doing,” I admitted, quieter than I meant to. “Whether you were happy? Whether you thought about any of it.”

Something softened in his expression.

“I wondered about you every single day.” A small, almost helpless smile. “Every day, Addie. For five years.”

I hated how much that confession undid me.

He reached for my hand.

I hesitated. I didn’t pull away.

For a few seconds, neither of us spoke, his fingers warm around mine, the room quiet enough that I could hear my own heartbeat trying to give me away.

It wasn’t heated. It wasn’t aggressive. It was soft in a way that scared me more than anything cold ever could.

I pulled my hand back before the moment could go anywhere I wasn’t ready to follow.

He let me go without a fight.

“I’ll wait,” he said simply. “Until you’re ready.” I left the room with my heart going too fast to be professional about any of it.

Outside, alone in the hallway, I looked down at my own hand, still warm from his, and realized I was smiling despite every single thing I’d told myself that morning.

“I cannot fall for him again,” I whispered, to no one, to the empty corridor, to whatever part of me was already losing that argument.

Deep down, I already knew.

Something between us had started coming back.