Chapter Twelve
855 Words
Pickles yowled like I'd abandoned him to a cult.
I pulled him out of the carrier and held him against my chest. He was thinner than I remembered. His fur was matted. But he was alive, and he was purring, and I was crying again, which was becoming a problem.
"Where did you find him?" I asked.
Adrian stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching us. "Liam's apartment. Ms. Vane picked the lock."
"She picked a lock?"
"She has many talents."
I buried my face in Pickles's fur. He smelled like someone else's laundry detergent. Like Liam's apartment. Like a place I never wanted to think about again.
"There's something else," Adrian said.
I looked up.
He crossed the room and pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket. It was folded into a square. Cream-colored. Handwritten.
"Next time, it won't be the cat."
My blood went cold.
"He left this on Pickles's collar," Adrian said. "He wanted us to find it."
"This is a death threat."
"It's a warning."
"Same thing, different font."
Adrian knelt in front of me. His knees on the floor. Adrian Wolfe, billionaire, kneeling on the carpet because I was sitting on the bed crying over a cat.
"I'm going to fix this," he said.
"How?"
"I don't know yet. But I will."
Pickles stopped purring. He looked at Adrian with his one good eye—the other had been injured before I adopted him, some fight before he found his way to the shelter—and meowed.
Adrian reached out. Hesitated. Then scratched behind Pickles's ear.
The cat leaned into his hand.
"I think he likes you," I said.
"Animals generally don't."
"Maybe you're not as terrible as you pretend to be."
Adrian looked up at me. His eyes were red-rimmed, tired, and completely open.
"Maybe I'm tired of pretending."
---
We sat on the floor for an hour.
Pickles fell asleep on my lap. Adrian leaned against the bed frame, legs stretched out, shoulder almost touching mine.
"Tell me something true," he said.
"You said that last night."
"Tell me anyway."
I thought about it. The truth. Not the version I told strangers, or the version I told myself, but the real thing.
"I'm scared that my mother is going to die and I won't be there."
"She's getting the best care in the city."
"That's not what I mean." I stroked Pickles's fur. Slow, steady, grounding. "I mean that I've spent so much time trying to save her that I don't know who I am without her."
Adrian didn't say anything. He just waited.
"My whole life, it's been about survival. First my dad left, and I had to be strong for her. Then she got sick, and I had to be strong for her. I never got to be weak. I never got to fall apart. I never got to be twenty-six and stupid and make mistakes."
"You're making one now," he said quietly.
"What?"
"Loving me."
The room went quiet.
I turned to look at him. His face was pale, vulnerable, stripped of all the armor he wore like a second skin.
"I didn't say I loved you," I said.
"You didn't have to."
Pickles shifted in my lap. The city hummed outside the window. And somewhere in the building, a door closed—Ms. Vane leaving, or maybe Adrian's mother arriving, or maybe nothing at all.
"I don't know how to do this," I admitted.
"Do what?"
"Trust someone. Let them in. Believe that they won't leave."
Adrian reached over. His fingers brushed mine.
"I don't know how either," he said. "But I'm willing to learn."
---
Ms. Vane knocked at six.
She didn't wait for an answer. Just opened the door and stood there, tablet in hand, expression unreadable.
"Liam is holding a press conference tomorrow morning."
Adrian stood up. "What?"
"He's claiming you defrauded the company. He has documents—forged, probably, but convincing. And he's invited Isabel to speak."
"Isabel said yes?"
"She hasn't confirmed. But she hasn't said no."
Adrian ran a hand through his hair. The gesture was almost boyish, almost desperate.
"What do we do?" I asked.
Ms. Vane looked at me. Then at Adrian. Then back at me.
"You fight back. Together. Or you lose."
She left.
Pickles woke up, stretched, and meowed.
And I realized that running wasn't an option anymore.
---
"I have an idea," I said.
Adrian turned. "What kind of idea?"
"A terrible one. The kind that might work."
He crossed his arms. Waited.
"We don't hide from the press. We don't release a statement. We don't play defense."
"What do we do?"
"We go on the offensive. An interview. Both of us. Together. We tell the truth."
Adrian's face went still. "The whole truth?"
"The real truth. Not the contract. Not the deal. The part where we fell in love anyway."
"You're asking me to be vulnerable. Publicly."
"I'm asking you to trust me."
He stared at me for a long time. The city lights flickered outside. Pickles purred.
Then Adrian Wolfe, the coldest man in Manhattan, said:
"Okay."
- Writer
