Chapter 12
I had left the box behind.
“He didn’t touch me,” Sophie said.
I looked back at her.
“The next day he barely spoke. The day after that, he started calling you.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She flinched.
I immediately regretted the cruelty, but I didn’t apologize.
Sophie looked down.
“I loved who I thought he was with me.”
That sentence surprised me.
“What does that mean?”
“He was different at the restaurant. He wasn’t Julian Mercer there. Nobody bothered him. Sometimes he’d sit until closing and talk about when he had nothing.”
I understood.
“He talked about the old apartment?”
“Yes.”
“The Honda?”
“Yes.”
“How he used to make coffee in a saucepan because we didn’t own a coffee maker?”
Sophie stared at me.
“Yes.”
I smiled sadly.
“He wasn’t becoming himself with you.”
“What?”
“He was visiting his memories.”
The realization hurt.
Julian hadn’t fallen in love with Sophie simply because she was young.
He had fallen in love with the version of himself reflected in her eyes.
Before the money.
Before the responsibility.
Before every room changed when he entered it.
And because I had been there for all of it, I could never give him that illusion.
I knew too much.
I remembered the fear beneath the confidence.
The failures beneath the success.
The boy beneath the billionaire.
Sophie didn’t.
At least, not yet.
“I left Hawthorne because he kept talking about you,” she said.
My expression hardened.
“Don’t turn this into a romantic story.”
“I’m not.”
“Good. Because he still chose this.”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t get absolved because he regrets the consequences.”
“I know.”
She slid her phone across the table.
On the screen was the message she had sent me.
Your replacement just moved in.
“I sent it because I wanted you to react,” she admitted. “I wanted you to fight him.”
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“Why?”
“Because he kept checking his phone.”
I stared at her.
“He told me you agreed to the divorce immediately. He acted relieved. But every ten minutes, he checked whether you had called.”
I pushed the phone back.
“That was his problem.”
“Yes.”
Sophie stood.
“I’m leaving for Raleigh tomorrow. My sister lives there.”
I nodded.
At the door, she turned.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he stopped loving you.”
I looked at her.
“That’s worth less than you think.”
She left.
I remained at the table for another twenty minutes.