The golden boy’s Bluetooth speaker accidentally disconnected, broadcasting his phone’s audio across the architecture studio before anyone realized what had happened. A woman’s voice floated from Declan Vaughn’s phone, low and intimate. “Baby, I’m freezing.”
Chapter 2
That night, I drank more bourbon than I should have.
My phone died sometime after midnight, and in my apartment’s living room sat an old cream-colored answering machine Eden and I had bought years earlier at a flea market because she thought it looked “ridiculously sentimental.”
The landline connected to her parents’ old number, which she rarely used.
I called it anyway.
Her voicemail greeting still carried my younger voice.
“You’ve reached Eden Monroe. If she isn’t answering, she’s probably working. If you need to find her, try Jude. He always knows where she is.”
I nearly laughed.
Instead, something in me came apart.
“You want to know where I was Friday?” I said after the beep. “I was where you told me to be.”
The words came slowly.
“I stood in that alley for forty minutes.”
I looked at the pale scar along my forearm.
“Three guys came through. One pulled a knife. He wanted my wallet and the watch you gave me when we turned sixteen.”
My throat tightened.
“I fought him over that stupid watch because it came from you.”
I had run six blocks before finding a police cruiser. At urgent care, while a doctor stitched my arm, I kept checking my phone because I was certain Eden would call.
She never did.
I pressed the receiver harder against my ear.
“I kept thinking you’d show up. Remember when we fell off those swings in third grade? You sat with me until my mother came. I thought that girl still existed.”
I closed my eyes.
“But Declan calls because his ride scares him, and you drop everything.”
My voice cracked.
“I’m tired, Eden.”
A long silence.
Then the truth came.
“I never want to love you again.”
The next morning, Eden called my cell phone.
She sounded annoyed.
“I didn’t mean to abandon you. Declan’s driver took a weird route through an industrial neighborhood. He thought something was wrong.”
From somewhere behind her, Declan called, “Eden, where are the clean towels?”
My grip tightened around the phone.
She continued, “Jude, you have to understand there’s a difference between disappointment and danger. His safety came first.”
I could have told her about the stitches.
I could have screamed.
Instead, I hung up.
That afternoon I called my parents.
My father listened quietly while I told him I wanted to transfer to University College London to finish my architecture degree.
“London?” he said.
“I need distance.”
“From school?”
“No.”
My mother understood before he did.
She reached across the kitchen table and covered my hand.
“How soon?”
“As soon as they’ll take me.”
Within two weeks, paperwork was moving.
Eden barely noticed my absence from class.
When I returned to campus to finish withdrawing, she cornered me in the stairwell.
“You’ve changed.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You stopped texting.”
I smiled faintly. “You used to hate that I texted too much.”
“That isn’t the point.”
She reached into my coat pocket, pulled out my phone as casually as she had done since we were teenagers, and discovered her number blocked.
Her mouth tightened.
Then her expression softened.
“If I agree to make this official,” she said, “will you stop doing this?”
For years, I had imagined those words.
I thought they would feel like sunrise.
They felt like a bill arriving after the service had been canceled.
“Eden, dating is a distraction, remember?”
Her brows drew together.
“Don’t do that.”
“You have a company to build.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
The stairwell door flew open.
One of Declan’s teammates appeared, breathless.
“Eden, Declan collapsed at practice.”
She was gone before the sentence finished.
I watched her run down the stairs.
And something strange happened.
Nothing.
No jealousy.
No pain.
Only quiet.
A few days later Eden flew to California for meetings. Declan went with her.
Then she began sending me photographs.
Coffee. Sunsets. Restaurants. The Golden Gate Bridge.
Messages arrived every night.
Wish you were here.
You’d like this place.
I found something for you.
I saw Declan’s social media posts too.
Dinner for two.
Someone special knows how to take care of me.
Best trip ever.
Then Eden wrote:
I have a surprise for you when I get back.
I blocked both of them.
The morning before my flight, I returned to campus with farewell gifts for friends and one large shopping bag for Eden.
Inside were every present she had given me since childhood: the watch, graduation pen, cuff links, a leather portfolio, even the silver star bracelet she once fastened around my wrist and told me never to lose.
“What are you doing?” my friend Marcus asked.
“Returning things that belong to an old life.”
A hush fell over the studio.
Eden stood in the doorway.
She looked exhausted. Her coat was wrinkled from travel, her eyes red.
In one hand she held a small velvet jewelry box.
“What’s in the bag?” she asked.
“Your gifts.”
Her face tightened.
“They’re yours.”
“They belonged to a future I don’t want anymore.”
Declan appeared behind her.
“Jude, come on. She took an overnight flight just to get back early.”
I looked at him.
“Were you invited into this conversation?”
His smile vanished.
Eden stepped toward me and held out the box.
“Open it.”
I didn’t.
“I had it made in San Francisco,” she said. “You said dating was a waste of time, so fine. We don’t have to waste time.”
My heart hurt for the younger man I had been.
The one who would have fallen to his knees at such an offer.
“Eden, when I was eighteen, I wanted your heart. At nineteen, I wanted your time. Now you’re offering jewelry because you’re afraid I’ve stopped waiting.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Her eyes filled.
“I came back for you.”
“You came back because I stopped coming toward you.”
I stepped around her.
“Keep the ring.”
“Jude.”
I kept walking.
“Where are you going?”
I looked back once.
“London.”
Her face changed.
Not abroad for a semester.
Not a trip.
London.
Permanently.
By the time she understood, I was already crossing the quad toward the registrar’s office.
That evening, my taxi left for the airport.
An hour later, Eden arrived at my emptied apartment.
The building manager let her inside.
The books were gone. The photographs were gone. My suitcases were gone.
Only the old answering machine remained on a stool by the wall.
Its red light blinked.
Eden pressed play.
She listened to everything.
The alley.
The knife.
The stitches.
The watch.
The boy who had waited for her even while he bled.
And finally:
“I never want to love you again.”
When the message ended, Eden sat on the bare floor with the answering machine in her lap.
Outside the window, a jet climbed west over the city.
Mine was already over the Atlantic.
