THE VOW WE NEVER MADE

CHAPTER 6: PLAYING HOUSE

POV : Adrian

Isla Sterling is ruining my life in the smallest, most unexpected ways.

It starts with the coffee.

I've had the same morning routine for five years: wake at 5:30 a.m., gym for an hour, shower, coffee—black, single-origin Ethiopian from a specific roaster in Brooklyn—while reading the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. By 7:30, I'm in the office or on my first call of the day.

It's efficient. Predictable. Perfect.

Except this morning, when I walk into my kitchen at 6:45, I find Isla already there, wearing an oversized sweater that slips off one shoulder and shorts that should be illegal, humming while she makes breakfast.

"Morning," she says cheerfully, like it's normal for her to be in my kitchen at dawn. "Want some?"

I stare at the scene before me. Eggs scrambling in a pan. Toast in the toaster. Fresh orange juice. The kitchen—my pristine, barely-used kitchen—is actually being used for its intended purpose.

"I have coffee," I say.

"I know. I made a pot. But I also made breakfast, and you look like someone who skips breakfast regularly, which is terrible for you, by the way. So sit."

"I don't—"

"Adrian. Sit."

There's something in her voice—not quite commanding, but close—that makes me obey. I sit at the kitchen island, in my own home, feeling oddly like a guest.

She plates eggs and toast, slides one across to me with a fork, then takes the seat beside me with her own plate.

"Eat," she instructs.

"You're very bossy in the morning."

"And you're very grumpy. Eat your eggs."

I eat the eggs. They're perfect—fluffy, seasoned well, exactly how I'd make them if I ever made eggs. Which I don't, because I don't have time for breakfast.

"Good?" she asks.

"Adequate."

"Adequate." She laughs. "That's the most Adrian Blackwell compliment I've ever heard."

"What would you prefer I say?"

"How about 'Thank you, Isla, for making me breakfast like a thoughtful roommate'?"

"We're not roommates. We're—" I pause, not sure how to finish that sentence.

"Fake fiancés living together in a legally binding charade?" she supplies helpfully.

"I was going to say 'business partners.'"

"That's much less fun."

She takes a bite of toast, and I find myself watching her—the way she chews, the small smile on her face, the way the morning light catches in her hair. She looks sleep-rumpled and comfortable, completely at ease in a space where I'm always on edge.

It's been three days since she moved in.

Three days of her presence disrupting every carefully constructed routine I have.

She leaves books on the coffee table. She opens curtains I keep closed. She plays music while she works—nothing too loud, but enough that I can hear it from my office, some indie playlist that she hums along to. She uses throw pillows. Actual throw pillows, on my minimalist couch, in colors that "add warmth" to the space.

Yesterday, I came home to find she'd bought fresh flowers for the kitchen.

"They were on sale," she said when she caught me staring. "And this place needs some life."

I should be annoyed.

I'm not annoyed.

I'm something else entirely, and I don't want to examine it too closely.

"What's your schedule today?" Isla asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

"Meetings until three. Conference call with Tokyo at four. Dinner with potential investors at seven."

"Sounds thrilling."

"It's necessary."

"Everything with you is necessary. Don't you ever do anything just because you want to?"

"I want to close the Tokyo deal."

She rolls her eyes. "That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

"I meant fun, Adrian. Hobbies. Things that make you happy that aren't work-related."

I consider this. "I read."

"For pleasure or for work?"

"Both."

"That doesn't count. What else?"

"I go to the gym."

"Also doesn't count. That's maintenance, not joy." She leans forward, studying me like I'm a puzzle to solve. "When was the last time you did something purely for fun? No business purpose, no optimization, no goal. Just... fun."

I genuinely can't remember.

"That's what I thought," she says, reading my expression. "You need hobbies, Blackwell."

"I have hobbies."

"Name three."

"I collect wine."

"Investing doesn't count as a hobby."

"I attend gallery openings."

"For networking purposes, I'm guessing."

"I—" I stop, realizing she's right. When did I become this person? Someone whose entire life revolves around work, who can't name a single activity done purely for enjoyment?

Sophie would be laughing at me right now.

"You're going to wake up one day and realize you've spent your whole life working and forgetting to actually live."

"It's okay," Isla says, more gently. "We can work on it. Consider me your fun consultant."

"I don't need a fun consultant."

"Everyone needs a fun consultant. Especially you."

She finishes her breakfast, rinses her plate—actually rinses it and puts it in the dishwasher instead of leaving it in the sink—and heads toward her room.

"Thank you for breakfast," I call after her.

She turns back, grinning. "See? Was that so hard?"

"Excruciating."

"Liar."

She's right. It wasn't hard at all.

The pattern continues throughout the week.

Tuesday, I come home to find her on the couch, laptop open, completely absorbed in a design project. She's talking to herself—something about color theory and negative space—and doesn't notice me at first. When she does, she looks up with this bright smile that does something uncomfortable to my chest.

"Hey! How was your day?"

No one has asked me that in years. Not since Sophie.

"Fine. Productive. Yours?"

"Good! I finished the Morrison brand proposal early, so I've been playing around with a personal project." She angles her laptop toward me. "What do you think?"

It's a logo design—elegant, modern, clever in its simplicity.

"It's exceptional," I say honestly.

"Really? You're not just saying that?"

"I don't 'just say' things."

"True. You're aggressively honest to the point of rudeness sometimes."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Surprisingly, yes."

She shows me more of her work, explaining her design philosophy, why she makes certain choices. I find myself genuinely interested, asking questions, offering feedback from a business perspective. She listens, considers, sometimes disagrees with excellent reasoning.

It's the most engaged I've been in a conversation that isn't about hotels or profit margins in months.

"You should charge more," I tell her.

"What?"

"For your work. You're significantly undervaluing your services."

"How would you know what I charge?"

"I looked at your website. Your rates are at least 30% below market value for someone with your skill level."

She stares at me. "You looked at my website?"

"Research. Due diligence. We're engaged—I should know about your career."

"Or you could have just asked me."

"This was more efficient."

"You're impossible."

But she's smiling when she says it.

Wednesday, I work late and come home to find dinner waiting. Nothing elaborate—pasta with marinara, a simple salad—but it's homemade and still warm.

There's a note: Figured you'd forget to eat. There's tiramisu in the fridge. Don't pretend you don't have a sweet tooth—Sophie told me. —I

I eat dinner alone at the kitchen island, and it's the first home-cooked meal I've had in this apartment since I bought it.

It shouldn't matter.

It matters more than it should.

Thursday, Isla convinces me to take an actual lunch break.

"You've been in your office since 6 a.m.," she says, appearing in my doorway at noon. "You need to eat something that isn't coffee."

"Coffee isn't food."

"Exactly my point. Come on, there's a food truck festival in Madison Square Park. My treat."

"I have calls—"

"Reschedule them."

"Isla—"

"Adrian." She crosses her arms, and I'm learning this means she's not backing down. "You hired me to be your fake fiancée. Part of that job is making sure you don't work yourself to death. So let's go. I'll even let you talk about boring hotel stuff while we eat."

I should say no.

I go.

The park is crowded with tourists and locals on lunch breaks, the food trucks creating a carnival atmosphere. Isla drags me from truck to truck, debating the merits of Korean tacos versus Thai fusion, finally settling on both because "we can share."

We find a bench in the sun, and she divides the food between us with serious concentration.

"This is ridiculous," I say. "We could have gone to a restaurant."

"This is better. More authentic. More fun."

"It's inefficient."

"It's lunch, not a business transaction." She takes a bite of her taco, makes an appreciative sound. "Oh my god, try this."

She holds out the taco, and I lean forward to take a bite. It's good—better than good, actually. The flavors are complex, well-balanced.

"See?" Isla says triumphantly. "Fun."

"It's adequate."

"There's that word again. You need to expand your emotional vocabulary."

"My emotional vocabulary is fine."

"Name three feeling words other than 'fine' and 'adequate.'"

I think about it. "Satisfactory."

"That doesn't count. That's basically the same word."

"Efficient?"

"That's not even an emotion! Adrian, this is concerning."

But she's laughing, and I find myself smiling despite myself. We eat our ridiculous food truck lunch in the spring sun, and Isla tells me about a design client who wants their logo to "really pop" but can't articulate what that means, and I tell her about a hotel manager in Seattle who keeps accidentally replying company-wide emails with personal messages.

It's easy. Comfortable.

Normal.

For an hour, I'm not Adrian Blackwell, CEO of Blackwell Hotels. I'm just someone eating lunch with someone else, talking about nothing important, enjoying the sun.

"Thank you," I say as we walk back.

"For what?"

"For dragging me out of the office. You were right. I needed a break."

"Was that so hard to admit?"

"Excruciating."

She bumps her shoulder against mine. "Liar."

Friday evening, I finish work early—something I never do—and find Isla in the living room, curled up on the couch with a book, Mozart playing softly from the speakers.

She's added more throw pillows. And a blanket. And there's a candle burning on the coffee table—something that smells like vanilla and cedar.

My sterile, museum-like apartment looks lived-in.

It looks like a home.

"Mozart?" I say, surprising her.

She looks up, marks her page. "You're home early."

"I finished what I needed to finish. Is that a problem?"

"No, I just—you never finish early."

"Maybe I'm expanding my emotional vocabulary."

She laughs. "By coming home at a reasonable hour? We'll make a normal human out of you yet." She gestures to the space beside her. "Want to watch something? I was thinking about starting a movie."

I should go to my office. I have emails to answer, reports to review.

"What movie?" I ask instead, sitting down beside her.

"Your choice. I'm flexible."

We end up watching The Third Man—a noir classic I mention liking, and she admits she's never seen. She curls into the corner of the couch, and I sit on the other end, maintaining appropriate distance.

Halfway through, she starts asking questions about the plot, and I pause it to explain. This leads to a discussion about post-war Vienna, about moral ambiguity in film, about whether Harry Lime is a villain or a tragic figure.

"Villain," Isla insists. "He's literally selling diluted penicillin that kills children."

"But he's charismatic. Charming. That's what makes him complex."

"Being charming doesn't excuse being evil."

"I didn't say it excused it. I said it complicated it."

"You would defend Harry Lime."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You like morally gray characters. Probably because you relate to them."

"I'm not morally gray."

"No, you're morally uptight. But you appreciate characters who aren't."

We argue about it good-naturedly for twenty minutes, the movie forgotten. At some point, the distance between us on the couch has decreased. At some point, her feet are tucked under my leg for warmth. At some point, this stopped being fake and started being real.

Or maybe it was always real, and I've been lying to myself.

"Adrian?" Isla says when the movie ends and the credits roll.

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For this week. For being... less impossible than usual."

"Less impossible. High praise."

"I'm serious. I know this arrangement is weird. We're basically strangers living together, pretending to be in love. But you've made it not terrible. You've made it kind of nice, actually."

Kind of nice.

I've closed billion-dollar deals, expanded my company internationally, been called a visionary in the hospitality industry.

And "kind of nice" might be the best compliment I've ever received.

"You've made it kind of nice too," I admit.

She smiles, and it's soft and genuine and directed at me, and I realize with sudden, terrifying clarity that Marcus was right.

I'm in trouble.

Because living with Isla isn't hard. It's easy. Easier than anything has been in years. She fits into my life like she was always meant to be here, filling spaces I didn't know were empty.

And in six months—less now—this ends.

She gets her inheritance. I get my positive PR. We divorce quietly, professionally, and go our separate ways.

The thought makes my chest tight in a way that has nothing to do with my fake engagement and everything to do with very real feelings I have no business having.

"I should go to bed," Isla says, standing and stretching. "Big day tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?"

"Brunch with Natalie. She wants to meet my fake fiancé properly." She grins. "Hope you're ready to be charming."

"I'm always charming."

"You're really not."

"Isla."

"Adrian."

We stand there, smiling at each other like idiots, and I should let her go to bed. Should maintain distance. Should remember this is temporary.

Instead, I hear myself say, "Do you want to cook breakfast together tomorrow? Before your brunch?"

"You want to cook? You?"

"I'm capable of cooking."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"Challenge accepted."

"Okay then. Seven a.m. Don't be late."

"I'm never late."

"We'll see."

She heads to her room, and I'm left standing in my living room—our living room now, with her books and her pillows and her candles—wondering when exactly I lost control of this situation.

When exactly "fake" became the least honest word to describe what I'm feeling.