Fake Dating With My Brother's Best Friend

Chapter 6 The Ex's Harassment

Gabrielle

The phone buzzed again in my palm, another message from Vance lighting up the screen.

"Answer me. What did you tell Sienna?"

My thumb trembled over the screen. I hadn't told Sienna anything. I didn't even know Sienna—only that she was the daughter of Crystal Peak Group's CEO, the woman Vance had chosen over our five-year relationship. The woman who had apparently now discarded him just as casually as he had discarded me.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I typed back, against every instinct that told me not to respond. "Leave me alone."

The reply came instantly.

"She broke up with me, and her father won't invest in my company anymore. What did you tell her? Just because I broke up with you, you have to get revenge like this? You're so vicious!"

I blocked the number without finishing the message. My appetite had vanished completely. I set the phone face‑down on the table, trying to steady my breathing. Across from me, Nathaniel's eyes hadn't left my face. "Everything alright?"

"Fine," I said, too quickly. "Just spam."

Caleb raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He knew me too well to push in front of company. The dinner continued, but the food tasted like ash in my mouth. I pushed my lamb shank around the plate, making small talk about nothing, while my mind raced through scenarios I didn't want to imagine.

The first week back at Oak Manor passed in a blur of uneasy nights and restless days. I told myself I was just adjusting to being home, to the quiet of the countryside after years in London's constant hum. But every time my phone buzzed, my heart stopped.

"You think you can just disappear?" the messages read. "We need to talk. I made a mistake. Sienna was a mistake. You were always the one."

I blocked each number as it came, but he always found another. Burner phones, I realized. He was buying burner phones just to reach me. Sometimes the messages were pleading, sometimes cruel, sometimes threatening. The last one made me laugh bitterly: "You can't just leave like that after everything I gave you." Everything he gave me—he'd given me nothing but exhaustion and the slow erosion of my self-worth. I didn't tell Caleb. He'd have Vance arrested within the hour, and part of me—the stupid, soft part that still remembered the boy who'd once held my hand under the stars—didn't want that. I just wanted Vance to disappear.

So I changed my phone number. Finally, the texts stopped coming.

But I knew I couldn't stay at home forever, hiding behind Oak Manor's gates and living off Caleb's kindness. I needed a job—a real job, not working for free for my ex‑boyfriend, not retreating into the comfortable shadows of my brother's empire. I needed something that was mine.

Caleb, as always, anticipated my needs before I could voice them. Over breakfast one morning, he slid a folder across the table. "I have something that might interest you."

I opened it to find photographs of a modest but elegant gallery space—white walls, high ceilings, soft track lighting that caught the colours of abstract paintings. "The owner's a friend of mine," Caleb explained. "She's been running it for fifteen years, but her health isn't what it used to be. She's looking for someone to take over management. I told her you might be interested."

I hesitated. "Caleb, I've never run a gallery before. I was a design director—I know aesthetics, I know clients, but management..."

"You ran Vance's entire creative department for five years," he cut in, his tone gentle but firm. "You negotiated vendors, handled budgets, managed a team. That's management. And you've got taste—better taste than half the curators I've met. This is perfect for you."

I looked at the photos again—the warm wooden floors, the corner windows that flooded the space with natural light, the cosy reception desk where I could sit and greet visitors. An hour's drive from Oak Manor. Small enough to ease back into working, far enough to pretend London and Vance and everything that had happened there was just a bad dream.

Two days later, I drove out to meet the owner, Margaret—a silver‑haired woman with kind eyes and a brisk, no‑nonsense manner. She showed me every corner of the gallery: the storage room stacked with wrapped canvases, the little office cluttered with invoices, the back garden where she grew lavender. "It's not glamorous," she warned. "But it's honest work. You'll have to handle artists who show up three hours late, clients who haggle over every penny, and the occasional broken frame." She paused, studying my face. "Caleb says you've been through something rough. This place won't fix that, but it might give you something else to think about."

I took the job on the spot.

My first week at the gallery was a whirlwind of learning. Margaret stayed on to train me, walking me through her filing system, introducing me to her regular artists, teaching me how to authenticate signatures and price works without undervaluing or overpricing. I learned to arrange exhibitions, write press releases, and calm down a painter who threatened to withdraw her entire collection because the lighting made her blues look "muddy." By the end of the second week, Margaret handed me the keys and wished me well.

"You'll be fine," she said. "Trust your instincts."

I threw myself into the work. I redesigned the gallery's website, refreshed the window displays, and reached out to local art schools to host student showcases. For the first time in months, I woke up with purpose. My mornings started with strong coffee and a drive through winding country roads, listening to music I hadn't touched since college. At the gallery, I lost myself in colour and form, in the quiet satisfaction of matching a painting to the right collector. I even started sketching again—small studies of the lavender garden, the oak trees outside my window, the way light fell across the floor at sunset.

The gallery became my sanctuary. I didn't think about Vance. I didn't replay the breakup. I just worked, and slowly, piece by piece, I remembered who I was before he had worn me down.

Then, on the third week of my new job—a crisp Tuesday morning with sunlight pouring through the front windows—the gallery door chimed.

I looked up from my desk, expecting a delivery or an early visitor.

Vance stood at the threshold, his face pale, his eyes wild. He wore the same tailored coat he'd always worn, but it hung loose on his frame, as if he'd lost weight in the weeks since I'd seen him.

"Gabrielle," he said, his voice cracking. "We need to talk."