My Ex Cheated, Then I Fell for the Wrong Man

Chapter 4: The Contract and the Secret

(Avery POV)

I hesitate outside 4C with my knuckle raised, not quite knocking.

I'd texted Brooke on the walk back—heading home, you good?—and gotten nothing. I picture Tyler still on the couch, too mortified

to move, and almost turn back around.

The door swings open before I can.

Brooke looks like herself again—hair combed, face bright, a glass of water in her hand. She steps aside with the unguarded ease of

someone who has already decided we're not going to discuss this.

"You're back!" She pulls me in. "Tyler bailed. I think he's going to need a few days before he can look you in the eye again."

I drop onto the loveseat—pointedly not the sectional, which I have mentally condemned and quarantined—and press my palms to my

face. "I'm going to need a few days too."

"So." Brooke folds herself into the armchair across from me, eyes sharp with the kind of interest that has nothing to do with Tyler.

"The Press House. You were gone for almost two hours. Talk."

I lower my hands.

"I met someone."

The silence lasts exactly one second before she launches forward. "A someone someone?"

"He's—" I stop, because how do you describe Eli without sounding like you've lost your mind? "He took the last caramel brownie

right in front of me."

"He what—"

"And then we sat together for almost an hour and it was—" I exhale. "It was really good, Brooke."

Her expression is doing something dangerous. "Please tell me you got his number."

I hold up my phone.

She points at me. "That's my girl."

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I don't let myself sit in it too long. I grab my laptop from my room, pull up my email, and start scrolling through application

responses with the focused energy of someone who needs to think about something practical before she spirals.

Third email down, I stop breathing.

Chicago First National Bank — Interview Invitation — Monday, 9:00 AM.

"Brooke." My voice comes out strange—too tight, too high.

She looks up from her phone.

"Chicago First National wants to see me Monday morning." I flip the laptop toward her. "Nine o'clock."

She's off the chair before I finish the sentence.

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Monday morning lands like a detonation.

I walk out of the interview at 10:47 AM with a contract in my handbag and a job offer I didn't have to wait to hear—they told me in

the room, shook my hand, asked me to review the paperwork and return it signed. The October air hits my face outside the building

and I just—stand there for a second, letting it be real.

Then I call my mom.

She picks up on the second ring. "My lucky Avery—"

"I got it." My voice cracks on the second word. "Mom, I got it. They offered me the position before I even left the building."

The sound she makes is something between a laugh and a sob, and I press my free hand flat against my sternum like I can hold the

feeling in.

"Your father is going to lose his mind. When do you start?"

"Wednesday if I get the contract back to them tomorrow." I'm already walking, cutting through the Loop toward The Press House,

because I need coffee and a brownie and I've earned both. "It was fast, Mom. The interview was so fast, rapid-fire questions one after

another, I barely had time to think—"

"And you handled it."

"I handled it."

"Because you know this," she says, with the quiet authority of a woman who has been saying that to me since I was fifteen and

convinced I was failing everything. "This is what you do, baby."

I bite my lip hard and keep walking.

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I'm halfway through a celebratory cappuccino at The Press House—yes, they restocked the caramel brownies, and yes, I took the last

one with zero guilt—when my phone rings.

Unknown number. Chicago area code.

"Hello?"

"Avery?" Low. A little raspy. Unmistakable.

Every professional thought in my head evaporates. I straighten up in my chair like he can see me, which is insane, which I am aware

of. "Eli. Hey."

"Hey." I can hear the smile in it. "I'm sorry it took me this long to call. Work got chaotic and my brothers—" a short exhale that

sounds like it contains an entire complicated history— "let's say managing them is a full-time job on top of the actual job."

"I understand." I did not understand, because I spent three days wondering if I'd been ghosted, but that is information he does not

need.

"I wanted to ask—are you free tonight?"

My pulse kicks. "I think so, yeah."

"Let me take you to dinner." Direct. No hedge, no maybe if you want. Just that quiet certainty that I already know is going to be a

problem for me. "We can celebrate the job hunt. How's it going, by the way?"

"About that." I let the pause stretch for exactly one beat. "I got an offer this morning. Chicago First National."

The sound he makes is warm and immediate. "Avery. That's incredible."

"Thank you." It lands differently from him than it did from anyone else today, and I'm not ready to examine why.

"Then we're definitely celebrating. Do you know Callao? Peruvian place on North Ave—it's my favorite restaurant in the city."

"I'll eat anything you recommend."

"Seven o'clock?"

"Seven."

"See you tonight."

I hang up and stare at my brownie. Then I take a very large bite, because I have earned every layer of it.

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Back at the apartment, Brooke reacts to the double announcement—job and date—with the energy of someone who has been waiting

her whole life for this exact moment. She grabs my shoulders. She offers prosecco. I talk her down from the prosecco.

"Pre-date drinking makes me—"

"I know what it makes you," she says. "You're right. No prosecco. But you're wearing the emerald wrap dress, non-negotiable."

I let her steer me toward my closet and don't argue, because she has better instincts than I do about these things.

It's only when she leaves the room that I sit on the edge of my bed and actually read the contract.

Page one. Terms, salary, start date. Fine.

Page two. Standard disclosures. Background check requirements—

I stop.

My eyes drag back up the paragraph and re-read it. Standard background screening, including criminal record disclosure.

The page goes blurry at the edges.

I read it again. Then again. The words don't change.

My hands are shaking when I pick up my phone and dial my parents' landline. Not my mom. Not this time.

"Hey, sweetheart! Your mom told me about the job—"

"Dad." I keep my voice flat and steady by force of will. "The contract has a background check clause. Standard criminal record

disclosure." A beat. "Will it come up?"

Silence.

Not long—three seconds, maybe four—but it feels like falling.

"Avery." His voice shifts into the register I remember from when I was eighteen and terrified and he was the only person standing

between me and something that would have changed everything. "Listen to me. A standard check won't show penalty notices. Okay?

It won't."

"What if they run an enhanced one?"

"They won't. You're applying for bank management, not a federal clearance. And even if they did—" I hear him breathe— "you've

got two years left and it still wouldn't appear. I promise you."

I close my eyes. Press my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. "Okay."

"It's in the past."

"I know."

"Leave it there."

I hang up and sit with my head in my hands for a long time, the contract spread open across my knees, the emerald dress hanging on

the closet door in front of me, the date and the job and the whole bright possible future of the last three days pressing in from every

angle.

Leave it there.

I've been trying to do that for four years. Most days, I manage.

But the past has a way of wanting to be found—and tonight, for the first time since Cedar Falls, I have something worth losing.