nce draining from his face. He finally turned to C

a little too tight. "Anya, stop this. Where are you going to go?" He spoke as if she were a child

s no longer your concern, Liam." The woman who would have once cried, who woul

s. "You're upset. I get it. I screwed up. But we can talk about this. Let's go back upstairs."

He saw the suitcases being loaded into the car.

is. For New Year's. I was going to surprise you." He thought a material object could patch a wound that went straight to

asked for just one thing: a weekend away with him, phones off, no work. He had agreed, then canceled at the last minute

t? I said I was sorry. I bought you a car. Stop making this a bigger deal than it i

ere sleeping with your protégé, Liam. The girl I mentored, the girl I v

The words were a deeper betrayal than the act itself. They dismissed eight years of her

made a choice. And now, I'm making mine." She felt a strange sense of peace, the calm that comes after the storm h

d away from the curb, leaving Liam standing on the sidewalk, a useless car key in his han

ane ticket to Rome wasn't an escape. It was a homecoming, a return to the woman she was before Liam O'Connell, the architect with dreams of her own. T