Iris’s POV
I left before he could say anything else, pulling his shirt closed around my chest.
It smelled just like him, clean and expensive.
The pharmacy was quiet at that hour, just a bored cashier who didn’t look twice at me as I bought the emergency contraceptive pill and swallowed it dry in the parking lot before I could think too hard about it.
By the time I pulled up outside my mother’s house, I wrapped a silk scarf loosely around my neck, like it was just an accessory.
I’d dropped off his shirt at the dry cleaner’s earlier.
Rita, our house keeper, greeted me at the door with her usual warm hug, and in the middle of it, her hand caught the edge of the scarf and tugged it loose without meaning to.
“Oh, let me just—” She stopped mid-sentence.
Her eyes went to my neck and she blinked heavily.
I felt the cool air hit my neck and knew, immediately, exactly what she was looking at.
“Iris.” My mother’s voice came from the sitting room, sharp with surprise.
She’d already crossed the room by the time I managed to grab the scarf back, her eyes fixed on the marks along my collarbone, though she quickly kept her cool.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She reached out and touched my cheek before I could utter any word, and her eyes had gone warm.
“Thank goodness things between you and Damian have gotten better. I was worried you two were still being stubborn.”
She had her hunches that something was going on between Damian and I.
I just nodded, “good thing she thought the hickeys were from him.”
Rita was smiling too now, nodding along like she’d just watched some great romantic reconciliation unfold in our doorway.
“Yeah,” I said softly, tugging the scarf back into place with hands that weren’t quite steady.
“Things have been… different lately.”
It wasn’t a lie.
Not technically.
Dinner was already laid out by the time we sat down, and it was mid-conversation, somewhere between the soup and the main course, that my mother mentioned it so casually I almost missed it.
“Ryder sent the most wonderful supplements last week,” she said, spooning some apple grilled cheese onto her plate.
“Rita’s been mixing them into my tea every morning.”
I paused.
“Ryder?”
“Always very polite on the phone. He called personally to ask about my blood pressure, if you can believe that. Even offered to arrange an appointment with some specialist in the city. Of course he would know someone who could see me without the usual long months of waiting.”
I set my spoon down slowly.
“He didn’t mention any of that to me.”
”Why would he need to?” My mother smiled, entirely too pleased with herself.
“It wasn’t a favor for you, dear. He asked after me directly. Very sweet, really.”
For the rest of dinner, I only half listened to whatever my mother and Rita were discussing, my mind circling back to Ryder — to the phone call he never mentioned, the supplements, the specialist, all of it done quietly, without expecting credit for it.
It didn’t fit with the version of him I’d built in my head.
The thought settled somewhere uncomfortable in my chest, and I found myself almost entertaining it.
What it might look like if this were simple, if I were just a woman and he were just a man, and none of the rest of it existed.
Ryder and I were just from different worlds…I thought to myself.
Nothing can change that.
“What’s the point of thinking too hard about this anyway?” I shook my head, enough to clear all these pointless thoughts, and reached for my water instead.
It didn’t matter what he felt, or what I thought I might be starting to feel back.
It’s a little too late for all of that.
It was over between us now.
“Do you still have contact information for any of Dad’s old business partners?” I asked, keeping my tone light, like it was a passing thought and not something I’d been turning over in my head for days.
My mother set her tea down, thinking.
“There was Liam, I believe. He and your father were close, back before everything happened. I might still have his number somewhere.”
She found it eventually, scrawled in an old address book she kept in a drawer full of things she couldn’t bring herself to throw away.
I thanked her, kissed her cheek, and left before she could ask too many questions about why I suddenly cared about my father’s old associates.
I called the number the moment I got in the car.
The number you have dialed is no longer in service.
“Huh?” I tried it again, just in case, and got the same automated voice.
“Hmm, he’s changed his number?”
That should have been the end of it. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Instead, it only made me more determined.
The address my mother had written beside his name led me to a quiet street on the edge of the city, a modest two-story house with a neatly trimmed hedge and a car in the driveway.
A woman answered the door, maybe in her forties, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.
“Hi ma’am, I’m Iris. Uh, I’m looking for a man… Liam Todd?” I said.
“I was told he lives here.”
She frowned slightly.
“We bought this house almost eight months ago.
The man who sold it to us…
yes, Liam…
I remember he was in a hurry to close the sale.
Practically begged us to move quickly on it.”
”Liam sold the house?” I blinked, my brows furrowing.
“Sorry, but…Do you know where he went? Where he’s living now?”
The woman shook her head.
“Nope. I have no idea. I got the impression he needed the money fast.” She shrugged, apologetic.
“He didn’t exactly stick around to chat.
Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
”Oh, that’s fine.” I thanked her and walked back to my car, but I didn’t start the engine right away.
I just sat there, staring at the house that used to belong to a man my father had trusted, a man who’d apparently vanished the moment he had cash in hand.
People didn’t sell their homes in a rush like that, disconnect their numbers, disappear without a trace, for no reason at all.
Something had scared Liam badly enough to make him run.
“Where’d you run off to, Liam?”