The Merger Clause

Chapter Seven: What We Don't Say

She found Rhys at the coffee place on Ninth again three days later, which she told herself was coincidence and which they both knew wasn't.

"Ask your mother," she repeated, sliding into the seat across from him without asking. "That's what Sebastian told me. He said she knows more than she's told me. Do you know what he's talking about?"

Rhys's face did something complicated, guilt and old loyalty warring visibly across it. "Wren."

"You know something."

"I know pieces. Not the whole thing. I was seventeen when it happened, nobody explained anything to me either." He turned his cup in slow circles on the table, not drinking from it. "I know our fathers had a falling out over a contract. Something to do with your mother."

"What kind of falling out?"

"I don't know the details. I know my father came home furious one night and told us the Calloways weren't to be trusted anymore, and two weeks later the lake house was sold and we were never allowed to see any of you again." He looked up at her, and there was something painfully honest in his face. "I chose the easier path. I left for London instead of fighting to keep what we had. That's the real reason I disappeared, Wren. Not some noble secret. I was seventeen and scared of my father and it was easier to run than to stay and watch everything I loved get systematically dismantled."

"You could have told me that. Any of it. A letter. A phone call."

"I know." He said it the way he'd said it before, plainly, without defending himself. "I've had ten years to regret it. I'm not going to pretend I have a good excuse, because I don't. I was a coward, and you deserved better than a coward, and I'm sorry."

The apology, so plain and unadorned, undid something in her she'd been holding tight for a decade. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because you're marrying my brother in a matter of weeks, and I can't let that happen without you knowing that I never stopped." His voice dropped, low, careful. "I never stopped thinking about you, Wren. Ten years, cities, other people who didn't matter the way you did. I never stopped."

"Rhys, don't."

"I'm not asking you to do anything with it. I'm not trying to sabotage the merger or complicate your life more than it already is." He reached across the table, not quite touching her hand, close enough that she felt the warmth of it anyway. "I just needed you to know, before the wedding, before it's too late to say it. I should have fought for you ten years ago. I didn't. I'm not going to make that mistake twice, even if fighting for you now means just telling you the truth and letting you choose."

She sat with that for a long moment, the coffee shop noise fading around them, her heart doing something complicated and unwanted in her chest. "I need to go."

"Wren."

"I need to go, Rhys." She stood, gathering her bag, hands not quite steady. "I have a wedding to plan. With your brother."

"I know." He didn't try to stop her. "That doesn't mean I'll stop meaning what I said."

She left before he could see what his words had done to her composure, and didn't look back, though every part of her wanted to.