Too Late to Say You Love Me

"Your mother held on for an hour," the doctor said. "She let go ten minutes ago."

Ten minutes.

The exact ten minutes my fiancé made me wait at my desk.

I heard them laughing before I saw them. Damien Cross, strolling down the ER hallway with his best friend's little sister tucked under his arm. She'd had a cough. He'd left work early for her.

He never left early. Not for anyone. Not for me.

I stood there in the hallway, still in my work clothes, my phone still in my hand. He hadn't seen me yet. He was too busy smiling at her.

A month later, four hundred high-society guests sat in a lavish church on Chicago's Gold Coast, waiting for a bride.

He still thought that bride would be me.

I was eight hundred miles away.

And the wedding gift I'd left for him would play right on time.

Wren's POV

The nurse said "brain bleed" and "unresponsive," and I didn't hear anything after that. I was already halfway to the elevator.

"It's the middle of the workday." Damien's voice cut across the floor. "Where do you think you're going?"

My fiancé. My husband, in a month. My throat closed up. Mom had flown in from West Virginia for my dress fitting. "She's in the ER. They're working on her right now."

"And what are you going to do there, pace the hallway?" He didn't even look up. "You're about to be the CEO's wife. You want to be the one who teaches this floor it's fine to walk out?"

"It's an emergency. It's ten minutes, Damien. Ten minutes early—"

"Wren." He said my name like a verdict. "Sit down."

"It's rush hour. You'll never get a car. Give me ten minutes and I'll drive you myself."

Every Uber in the Loop would be surging, and the wait would be forever. And it was only ten minutes...

Last time I'd left without his sign-off, he'd pulled me off the biggest account I'd ever built and made me apologize at the all-hands.

I walked back to my desk like someone else was working my legs. He has a point, I told myself. He has a point.

Then why did the spreadsheet keep swimming in front of me?

Damien never cut himself any slack, and he cut the woman he was marrying even less.

The small stuff: no coasting, ever. I hadn't left the office before midnight in months.

The big stuff: every project needed a backup plan, and a backup for the backup, a hundred deep.

I'd made my peace with all of it. The person at the top sets the tone.

But my mother might be dying, and he couldn't spare me ten minutes...

My head was pure static. The second the clock hit five, I was at his door.

Marcus, his assistant, winced. "He already left."

"Chloe had a cough. He wanted to get it checked out, so he took her in."

The blood drained out of my face.

Damien Cross did not leave early. Ever. But his best friend's kid sister cleared her throat twice, and his precious rules went straight out the window.

Rules he'd never bent an inch for me.

Those ten minutes cost me. The rideshare wait tripled, and every street out of the Loop turned into a parking lot.

It was two hours before I pushed through the ER doors.

The doctor looked at me with pity, and something sharper under it. "Where have you been?"

"The bleed was massive. Nothing we could do. We did everything we could to keep her going. She held out an hour for you. She let go ten minutes ago."

The whole world went on mute.

My knees buckled, and I landed hard on a plastic bench. The only sound left was my own breathing, coming in ragged pieces.

Ten minutes. Of course it was ten minutes.

I never got to say goodbye.

Then a bright, bubbly voice broke the silence. "Damien, you're the best. Thanks for coming with me."

I turned my head like it had rusted in place.

Damien, who handed out smiles like they cost him money, was grinning. "Tyler pulled strings to get you this internship and told me to look out for you. I'm not about to let him down."

Chloe beamed. Then she asked him why he'd promised to drive me, and he told her. To humble me. Because I'd been milking the fiancée thing.

Then he glanced over and found me standing there, gray as the hospital walls.

I crossed the hallway one slow step at a time. Every word shook. "Milking what, Damien? What perks have I ever gotten?"

"Because I'm your fiancée, you took my assistant away. Every errand, every file, every coffee run, I did it myself. I ended up in urgent care four times last month from pure exhaustion."

"Because I'm your fiancée, I left one extra space in a deck, and you made me stand up in front of the whole company and say 'I was wrong, I'm sorry' a thousand times."

"So tell me, Damien! Besides using that word to keep me in line at work, when have you ever treated me like I'm actually going to be your wife? My mom was supposed to be your family too. How could you play games with her life?"

I was crying so hard I could barely see him. By the end I was almost screaming.

"Stop making a scene."

His mouth went flat, and his voice dropped below freezing.

"And let's be honest, Wren." Something mean and amused flickered behind his eyes. "You're the one who chased me. You're the one who wouldn't take no for an answer."

"You've been counting down the days till you're Mrs. Cross. So spare me the act."

"If you're so miserable, walk away. You've got a month. Let's see if you have the guts."

He tipped his chin up, dead sure I'd never do it, and walked out with Chloe at his side.

I stood there while the shame and the regret came in like a tide and pulled me under.

He wasn't wrong. I fell for him the first day of freshman year at Cornell, the second he dropped into the seat in front of me in Econ 101. I spent three years chasing him like a fool: coffee outside his door, notes in his mailbox, ninety-nine clumsy confessions. When he finally said yes, I was so stupidly happy that I quit my job at one of the best banks on Wall Street and followed him to Chicago to work myself into the ground at Cross.

It wasn't until later that I overheard the truth. He wasn't marrying me because he loved me. He needed somebody to run his house and carry half his workload.

I just happened to fit the job description. Housekeeper. Assistant. That was all.

Before they came to take her away, I held my mother's cold hand against my wet face and choked out, "I'm sorry, Mama. This is all my fault."

"I don't want to marry him anymore. You'd be okay with that, right?"