Gabriel POV
Gabriel's hands were too tight on the steering wheel.
He noticed it at the third red light and made himself loosen his grip. Then at the fourth light his hands tightened again without permission.
Thirty-six hours. That was what he had left.
After noon today Iris would sign the final papers and walk out of his penthouse and that would be the end of a very clean, very professional arrangement that had gone exactly according to plan.
He turned into the downtown traffic and told himself this was good. Clean endings were good. He had built his entire life on clean endings. No loose threads. No complications. No people staying past their usefulness.
His mother had called last night to confirm the divorce was proceeding. About time, Gabriel. You kept that girl around long enough. People were starting to talk.
He had hung up before she finished the sentence.
He pressed harder on the accelerator than he needed to.
The problem was that somewhere between year one and year two, Iris Mercer had stopped being a contract detail and started being the most real thing in his life. He hadn't meant for that to happen. He had been extremely careful to prevent it from happening. Separate rooms. Professional distance. Controlled interactions at events. He had maintained every single boundary he set.
And still.
He knew how she took her coffee. Two sugars, no milk, in the blue cup she had bought herself three weeks into the marriage because the ones he owned were too large and she said they made her hands cold. He knew she woke up anxious and got calmer through the morning. He knew she sketched buildings on the backs of event programs when dinner conversations bored her. He knew she called her mother every Sunday at noon and sometimes he could hear her laughing through the apartment wall and he would stop working just to listen.
He knew her the way he knew almost nothing else in his life. Completely. Without trying.
And in approximately four hours she was walking out of his apartment forever.
Gabriel pulled into the garage and sat in the car for a moment before getting out.
He had done something last night that he hadn't told anyone about. He had called his lawyer at eleven and asked for an amendment to be added to the divorce papers. An extension clause. Voluntary. One additional year. No financial pressure. Just an option for her to consider.
He had told himself it was practical. A transition period. A buffer for both parties.
He knew it wasn't that.
He rode the elevator up and stepped into the penthouse and walked toward the kitchen and stopped.
Iris was standing at the counter with a coffee cup in her hands wearing the charcoal suit he had never actually asked her to wear. She had just worn it because she paid attention to what he preferred, which was exactly the kind of thing that made it impossible to stop thinking about her.
She looked up.
Their eyes met.
Everything Gabriel had been carefully managing for two years cracked directly down the middle.
She looked pale. Something in her expression was different this morning. Tighter. Like she was holding something back behind her careful face.
He opened his mouth to say something. He didn't know what. Something real for once.
His phone rang.
Henry's name on the screen.
He held up one finger to Iris, hating himself for it, and turned away.
Henry's voice was brisk. Board emergency. Singapore acquisition. The other party was pulling out and they needed Gabriel on a call in twenty minutes or the deal collapsed.
Gabriel looked at Iris over his shoulder. She had set her coffee cup down. She was already turning toward the hallway.
"Twenty minutes," he said into the phone.
He ended the call and turned fully around.
The kitchen was empty.
He stood there in the silence for a moment. Then he walked to his study and opened his laptop and got on the board call and spent the next forty-five minutes rescuing a business deal that was worth eight hundred million dollars.
He did not think about how Iris's expression had changed when his phone rang.
He did not think about the way she had already started turning away before he even finished looking at her, like a woman who had learned not to expect anything better.
He thought about the acquisition figures and talked about market projections and answered every question put to him with the calm, focused precision that made people call him the best CEO in the country.
When the call ended, he closed his laptop.
The apartment was very quiet.
He walked back to the kitchen. Her coffee cup was in the sink, rinsed clean. Everything exactly as it should be. Like she had never been standing there at all.
He looked at the kitchen for a long time.
Then he picked up his phone and called his lawyer.
"The amendment," he said. "Add it to the papers before noon."
A pause from the lawyer. "Are you certain, Mr. Stone? It's an unusual addition."
"Just add it."
He put the phone down and looked out at the city through the glass wall.
Tonight they had the charity gala. Their last public appearance as husband and wife. After that the papers would be waiting.
He had until tonight to figure out how to tell a woman he had spent two years carefully ignoring that he didn't want her to leave.
He had absolutely no idea how to do that.
He wasn't even sure he deserved the chance.