The Merger Clause

Chapter Three: The Boy Who Left

She saw him before he saw her, which felt, later, like it should have meant something. A warning, maybe, that she still knew how to look for him in a crowd without meaning to.

Rhys Vane was standing at the counter of the coffee place on Ninth, exactly where Isla said he'd be, and Wren nearly turned around and walked back out the door before he glanced up and their eyes caught and there was no pretending she hadn't seen him.

"Wren Calloway." His voice hadn't changed at all. That was the thing that undid her first, before his face even fully registered, before she processed how much broader his shoulders were now or how the boy she remembered had settled into a man who looked entirely too comfortable in his own skin. "I heard you might still exist."

"I've been around." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Unlike some people."

Something flickered across his face, quick and unguarded. "That's fair."

"Ten years, Rhys."

"I know how long it's been."

"You could have called. Written. Sent literally anything."

"I know that too." He said it without defense, without excuse, which somehow made it worse. She'd built an entire argument in her head over the years for the moment she got to have this conversation, and he was disarming it just by refusing to fight back.

"Why are you back?"

"My father's dying." He said it plainly, the way you say something you've had time to get used to. "Or he thinks he is. The doctors are less certain, but he's decided, so here I am."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You know how he is." He studied her for a moment too long. "You look good, Wren."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"That. The easy charm thing. I'm not seventeen anymore, I don't fall for it."

"I wasn't trying to charm you. I was stating a fact." He stepped closer, close enough that she caught the same cedar and salt smell she remembered from summers she'd spent years trying not to think about. "I heard about the merger. About you and Sebastian."

Her stomach dropped. Of course he'd heard. Everyone had heard. "It's business."

"Is it."

"It has to be."

"That's not the same as it being true." His eyes held hers, steady, unhurried, the exact opposite of Sebastian's precision. "For what it's worth, when I heard, I didn't sleep that night."

"Rhys."

"I'm not trying to make this harder for you." He stepped back, giving her room, which she was grateful for and resented in equal measure. "I just needed you to know I'm back, and I'm not planning on disappearing again, and whatever this thing with my brother is, it doesn't erase ten years ago. Not for me."

He left before she could answer, which felt, infuriatingly, exactly like him.

Wren stood at the counter a long time after the door closed, coffee forgotten, heart doing something complicated and unwelcome in her chest, and thought: ninety days had just gotten a great deal more complicated than one wedding.