Divorced by the CEO, He Regrets it

Eight.

Austin's POV

I woke before the sun did, staring at the ceiling of the guest room, still seeing Tiffany standing on that balcony the night before.

The way she had looked out at the skyline like she was finally remembering how to breathe. I hadn't been able to shut my brain off since.

She deserved one peaceful morning. Just one, before the world started clawing at her again.

So I got up, padded into the kitchen in yesterday's shirt, and decided I was going to cook her breakfast.

In hindsight, that was a mistake. The bread went into the toaster fine. It was the eggs that betrayed me, and somewhere in the process of flipping them I managed to burn the toast too, because apparently I couldn't manage two things on fire at once, only one.

"Something's burning," Tiffany said from the doorway.

I didn't turn around fast enough to hide the smoke curling off the pan.

She stood there in an oversized sweater, hair piled up messy on top of her head, and for a second she just stared at me like she couldn't quite process what she was looking at.

Then she laughed. Really laughed, the kind that came from her stomach, the kind I hadn't heard from her since I found her in that motel room.

"It's not burnt," I said, deeply offended. "It's crispy with confidence."

"Austin." She pressed a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. "That toast is basically charcoal."

"You wound me."

"Do you remember," she said, walking over and peering into the pan like it was a crime scene, "sophomore year, when you tried to make me pasta and nearly burned down the entire apartment building?"

"That was one time."

"The fire alarm went off for twenty minutes. Our neighbor still brings it up."

"Okay, but the sauce was good."

"The sauce was fine. The kitchen was on fire, Austin."

"Some things never change," I admitted, scraping the eggs onto two plates anyway. "You're still going to eat this, though."

"Am I?"

"You are. I made it with love."

She sat down across from me at the small table by the window, and we argued the entire time we ate about who'd actually been the worst cook back then, me with my kitchen fires or her with the time she'd tried to bake a cake and forgotten the sugar entirely. It felt easy. It felt like college again, before David, before any of it.

Then she went quiet, fork resting against her plate, and looked at me in a way that made my chest tighten.

"Thank you," she said. "For staying. When everyone else just... disappeared."

"You don't have to thank me for that."

"I do, though."

"Tiff." I set my fork down. "That's just what people who actually care about you are supposed to do."

She smiled, but there was something sad underneath it. "Why are you always there? Every time my life falls apart, you're just... there."

I looked at her for a long moment, weighing how much to say. In the end I just told her the truth.

"Because I promised myself a long time ago that you'd never have to face your worst days alone."

She didn't say anything to that. Just held my gaze a beat longer than she needed to before looking back down at her plate.

My phone rang before either of us could sit in that silence too long.

A business call I couldn't ignore, so I excused myself to the study, and by the time I wrapped things up and came back out, I found her sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by boxes she'd hauled over from the motel.

"Look what I found," she said, holding up a battered notebook like it was buried treasure.

I dropped down onto the floor next to her. "Is that—"

"Library sessions, junior year." She flipped it open, grinning. "Look at this. We had a whole list of businesses we swore we'd build before we turned thirty."

"We were idiots."

"We were ambitious idiots." She kept flipping, laughing at old notes, terrible sketches of logos we'd never used, a running tally of some ridiculous bet we'd made about who'd get married first.

Then a folded piece of paper slid out from between the pages and landed in her lap.

She unfolded it, scanned the first few lines, and started laughing before I even registered what it was.

My stomach dropped the second I recognized the handwriting.

"Tiffany!"

"Oh my god." She cleared her throat theatrically, holding the page up like she was about to give a speech.

"Terms and conditions for a friendship pact, drafted and signed by Austin Reed and Tiffany Callahan, sophomore year…"

"You don't have to read the whole thing."

"several ridiculous entrepreneurial bets, a competition regarding who'd own a private jet first, and then—" Her voice slowed as she reached the bottom of the page. She went quiet.

"If anybody ever breaks Tiffany Callahan's heart," she read, softer now, "Austin Reed has full permission to make that person regret it."

She lowered the paper slowly and looked at me like she was seeing something for the first time.

"You kept this?"

I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly finding the carpet very interesting. "I mean. Yeah."

"For seven years?"

"Some promises just become part of who you are, Tiff. I didn't exactly frame it and hang it on my wall, but I never threw it out either."

She studied me for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind her eyes, and then, instead of laughing it off or tossing the page aside, she folded it carefully back along its original creases and tucked it into the notebook.

Neither of us said anything else about it. We didn't need to.

Mr. Reynolds arrived not long after, a leather folder tucked under his arm, and the moment he stepped through the door I watched Tiffany shift.

The softness from breakfast, the girl laughing over burnt toast, folded itself away, and the CEO stepped forward in her place.

She reviewed the contracts without hesitation, asking sharp questions about projections, flagging inconsistencies Reynolds hadn't even caught yet. I sat back and watched, and I couldn't help the smile pulling at my mouth. This was her.

This had always been her, underneath everything David convinced her to hide.

"Harrington Legacy is already feeling it," Reynolds said once the last file was closed. "David still believes it's market instability. Should we proceed to the next phase, or hold?"

Tiffany tapped her pen against the table, thinking it over, then slid the documents back across to him.

"Tell everyone to stay patient," she said, calm and certain, not a trace of doubt in her voice. "David hasn't even realized the game has started yet."