Chapter 3
Tuesday passed in a blur of preparation. The BelleVie meeting loomed like a storm cloud, but Adele found herself oddly calm. Until 4:17 p.m., when her screen lit up with a calendar invite from Liam: “Private strategy review. 50th floor. 7:00 PM. Keep to your reputation of punctuality “.
Her stomach twisted.
At 6:55, she stood outside his glass office, watching the sunset bleed across Manhattan. The city buzzed far below, oblivious.
She knocked.
“Come in,” came the familiar voice.
He was at his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled. He looked up and gestured toward the seat across from him. “You’re early again,” he said, like he had expected it.
“You keep saying that like it’s a flaw.”
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s just…rare.”
She sat, trying not to fidget as he leaned back and studied her.
“You impress people too easily,” he said.
She blinked. “That sounds like a compliment.”
“It isn’t. People will either want to use that or tear you down for it.”
She tilted her head. “And what do you want to do?”
The question hung between them.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he stood and walked toward the window, arms crossed. His voice, when it came, was quieter.
“My father was like that. Cold. Brutal. Loved results, not people.”
Adele blinked, startled by the sudden change in the man she had come to accept as, “cold”.
“I grew up believing vulnerability was weakness,” he continued. “And I’m still not sure it isn’t.”
She stood slowly, approaching the window beside him. They stared out together.
“I think… vulnerability is just honesty and the ability to be you,” she said softly.
He looked at her then. Really looked. Like she was the first real thing he’d seen all day and the only thing that made sense.
Something in his expression cracked—just a flicker, gone as quickly as it came.
Their hands brushed on the windowsill. Neither moved.
“You make things complicated,” he murmured.
“You make things impossible,” she whispered back.
He stepped back suddenly, like the air between them had become too much.
“This can’t happen,” he said.
“I didn’t say it should.”
But neither of them moved to leave.
Adele stood there in the silence of his office, every nerve in her body aware of how close they’d just come to something irreversible. And yet, the distance between them felt as charged as any touch.
She stepped away from the window, slowly gathering the edge of her composure that seemed to be failing her.
“I should go,” she said, her voice quieter now.
“Yes, you should,” Liam agreed, but didn’t move.
She waited for him to turn back to his desk, to make this easier, but he didn’t. He just stood there watching her, arms crossed, jaw tight, like he was trying to restrain an instinct he didn’t want to name.
His eyes weren’t just storm-gray anymore—they were smoldering, conflicted, hot with something between restraint and regret.
“Are you always like this?” she asked angrily and sadly before she could stop herself. “Detached one second, intense the next?”
His lips twitched, but not into a smile. “Only with people who matter.”
Adele didn’t know what to do with that declaration.
She picked up her bag and turned toward the door. Her fingers touched the handle—cold metal, grounding.
“Do you still love him?” he asked suddenly.
She froze. Her hand dropped to her side.
“I don’t know,” she said after a long pause. “I loved the idea of what we could’ve been. Not who he really was.”
He nodded once, as if her answer confirmed something he’d already suspected. “Then you’ve already healed more than most.”
She opened the door and stepped into the hallway, heart pounding harder now than it had during her entire pitch.
As the door closed behind her, she could feel it—that strange, impossible thing between them still humming in the air like static.
Wednesday arrived like a hurricane.
The BelleVie team swept into the conference room at precisely 10:00 a.m.— Their CEO, Jacqueline Lane, was sharp-eyed and no-nonsense, her platinum hair twisted into a braid that looked like it had never met a loose strand. She looked flawless, high-heeled, dressed in soft whites and pastel cashmeres.
Adele sat across from her, flanked by Liam and two senior execs from the Lancaster marketing team. Her slides were ready. Her notes memorized.
She waited for Liam’s signal.
He didn’t look at her. He just spoke.
“We’re not pitching a brand,” he said to Jacqueline. “We’re pitching a woman.”
The BelleVie team shifted slightly in their seats. Jacqueline arched a brow.
Liam nodded once at Adele. “Show them.”
Adele stood, clicked the remote, and the first slide lit the screen.
The room faded as she spoke. Her voice didn’t shake this time. She talked about vulnerability as strength, about beauty that begins in moments of pain, about women rebuilding themselves from nothing and daring to be visible again.
She shared a version of herself she hadn’t even let her closest friends see. And they listened—every single one of them. Even Jacqueline.
When Adele sat back down, her palms were sweating, but no one noticed. Jacqueline leaned back in her chair, tapping a pen against her bottom lip.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “That felt real.”
“It was,” Liam said.
Jacqueline turned to Adele. “If I asked you to lead the narrative campaign, would you crack?”
Adele’s throat tightened. “No, ma’am.”
Jacqueline smiled. “Then you just won yourself a contract.”
The room exhaled. Smiles. Claps. Handshakes. But Adele could only focus on one thing—Liam, who didn’t smile, didn’t clap. He just gave her a single look of quiet pride and something else behind it that she couldn't figure.
Something warmer.
Something dangerous.
Later that evening, Adele sat on a park bench near Bryant Park, her coffee gone cold beside her, eyes fixed on the gold-lit windows of midtown Manhattan. She needed air, space, somewhere that didn’t smell like polished glass, money, and…Liam Lancaster.
Her phone buzzed. A message.
Liam Lancaster:
“Meet me on the roof. Now.”
She stared at it. Think of the devil and he texts, but wait; The roof?
The private elevator to the Lancaster Tower rooftop required a key card she wasn’t supposed to have. But someone had left one at the security desk with her name on it.
When the doors opened, the rooftop surprised her. It wasn’t a helipad or some cold overlook. It was warm with light—string bulbs overhead, tall glass panels shielding the wind, a garden space that smelled faintly of roses.
And Liam.
He stood by the edge, jacket draped over a chair, hands tucked into his pockets.
“You came,” he said without turning.
“You asked me to, didn't you?” she replied.
He turned then, his expression unreadable.
“I don’t do this,” he said.
She tilted her head. “Do what?”
“Let people in.”
She stepped forward, heart in her throat. “Then why me?”
He was silent for a moment. “Because when you talk, I don’t hear noise. I hear truth.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. It felt too raw, too close to the wound she’d spent years hiding.
He walked toward her slowly, the skyline behind him like a painting.
“I’ve hurt people before, Adele,” he said. “By shutting them out. By being too much like my father. I don’t know how to be soft. Or safe.”
She took a step toward him. “I’m not asking you to be safe. Just… honest.”
He was inches from her now.
“I’m not good for you,” he said, voice low.
“Maybe,” she whispered. “But I don’t need good right now. I need real.”
And then—stillness.
That breathless pause where the world waits.
He lifted a hand, brushed a curl from her cheek, then let his fingers trail down to her jaw.
Their foreheads almost touched.
And still—he didn’t kiss her.
He just stood there with her in the glow of the city, like she was the only thing tethering him to the earth.
“I want to see where this goes,” he murmured.
“So do I,” she breathed, wishing he could just kiss her and ease out the tension.
And in that moment, with nothing between them but air and tension, the walls they had both built began to crack.
