Chapter 2: Hate to Love Him
The hotel room was silent except for the low, steady hum of the climate control. Beth stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, a glass of mineral water beading cold in her hand, and stared down at the midnight geometry of Milan. The city glittered, indifferent. She took a slow sip, the water doing nothing to dilute the acid feeling in her chest.
He thought he had her. The scarf was still draped over the back of a chair, a dark smudge against the cream linen. A flag he’d planted.
“Not a chance,” she said aloud, her voice flat in the empty room.
She turned her back on the view. The room was a monument to her own success—pristine, expensive, cold. Everything in its place. The unlit candle on the vanity was a joke she played on herself. A sentimental prop she’d never allow to be lit. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her turmoil. Not even the privacy of it.
Her phone buzzed on the marble nightstand. A preview lit up the screen.
Unknown Number: The forecast says sun tomorrow. A good day for coffee.
She didn’t answer. She deleted the message, blocked the number, and placed the phone face down with a precise click. Her hands were steady. Good.
She spent the next hour doing what she did best: exerting control. She called her assistant in New York, her voice crisp and clear despite the late hour in Italy. “Move up the Paris meetings. I want to be on the first flight out tomorrow.”
“The first flight is at 6:15 AM, Bethany. The car would need to pick you up at 4:30.”
“Perfect. Book it. And re-route my luggage from the gallery. I’m not going back to Chicago next week. Schedule a site review for the Barcelona project instead. I’ll go straight there from Paris.”
“Understood.” There was a pause, the tap of keys. “Is everything alright?”
“Everything is scheduled,” Beth replied, and ended the call.
That was it. She wasn’t running. She was strategically repositioning assets. He’d be sitting at some café table at noon like a fool, and she’d be sipping champagne at thirty thousand feet, putting France between them. The logic was flawless.
She packed her suitcase with mechanical efficiency, folding each garment into a sharp, neat parcel. When she picked up the velvet scarf, her fingers tightened. The material was lush, betraying. She almost left it there, a discarded trophy for the maid. But that felt like leaving a piece of herself behind for him to find. She stuffed it into the inside zipper pocket, out of sight.
Sleep was a fractious, thin blanket. She dreamed of smoke and green eyes and the sound of her own heels on cobblestones, running but getting nowhere. She woke at 3:45 AM without an alarm, her body thrumming with a fatigued electricity.
By 4:20, she was in the back of the black sedan, gliding through Milan’s sleeping streets. The darkness was a balm. The predawn air was cool through the vent. She’d won. She’d outmaneuvered him. The thought should have tasted sweet. It tasted like the mineral water—clean and empty.
Malpensa Airport was a cathedral of muted light and soft echoes. She checked in, her passport offered without a smile. Through security, her carry-on bag sliding onto the belt without a hiccup. Every step was a step away. A victory.
She bought an espresso at a barren kiosk near her gate, drinking it standing up. The bitterness grounded her. Gate B42 was mostly empty, just a few bleary-eyed business travelers and a family with hushed, squabbling children. She took a seat by the window, overlooking the tarmac, and opened her tablet. She stared at spreadsheets until the numbers blurred.
“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”
The voice came from behind her right shoulder. Warm. Amused.
Beth froze. The spreadsheet pixelated before her eyes. She knew that voice in her bones, in the hollow place behind her ribs. It was impossible. A auditory hallucination born of sleep deprivation.
Slowly, she turned.
Damien leaned against a structural column, ten feet away. He was dressed in dark jeans and a simple black pullover, a leather duffel at his feet. He looked freshly showered, alert. He held a boarding pass between two fingers.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, pushing off the column and walking toward her. He didn’t sit. He just stood there, blocking her view of the gate. “Although, I suppose I am a ghost of sorts. A very persistent one.”
“What are you doing here?” The words came out shredded, barely audible.
“Following you to Paris.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The 6:15 to Charles de Gaulle. Seat 4A. I’m in 4C. Aisle. I know you prefer the window.”
The world tilted. The sterile airport air grew thick, difficult to pull into her lungs. “You can’t.”
“I just did. You changed your plans last night. So did I.” He tilted his head, studying her face. The mock sympathy was exquisite cruelty. “You didn’t think a blocked number would stop me, did you? Beth. After everything. You should know better.”
Rage, hot and purifying, flooded her veins. It melted the shock. She stood up, facing him. They were nearly the same height in her flats. “Get away from me.”
“Or what? You’ll call security?” He smiled, a gentle, pitying curve of his lips. “And tell them what? That your ex-husband, who shares your last known address on three continents, who has a legitimate ticket and no criminal record in Italy, is bothering you? We’ll miss our flight. And I’ll just book the next one. And the one after that.”
“Why are you doing this?” Her control was slipping. She could hear the desperate fracture in her own voice.
The humor vanished from his face, replaced by something stark and unbearable. “Because you left. Because you’re still leaving. You’re always walking away. And I’m done letting you.” He took a half-step closer. The air between them crackled. “You can board that plane and ignore me for the entire flight. You can shut me out in Paris. You can hop to Barcelona, to Tokyo, to the fucking moon. I’ll be there. You built an empire to keep me out. I’ll spend every cent I have to buy a seat next to you on every goddamn flight until you talk to me.”
The final boarding call for their flight echoed through the terminal, a tinny, relentless sound.
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for her. “You can hate me. You should hate me. But you will see me. That’s the only non-negotiable term left.”
He picked up his duffel, nodded toward the jet bridge where the attendant was waiting, and turned. He walked toward the gate, not looking back.
Beth stood rooted, her tablet forgotten in her seat. Her heart was a trapped, frantic thing. Every logical exit was sealed. Every escape route mapped and blocked before she’d even taken a step.
The gate agent looked at her, questioning.
With a breath that felt like shards of glass, Beth picked up her bag, walked to the jet bridge, and handed over her boarding pass. The machine beeped its acceptance.
She walked onto the plane, the narrow tube suddenly a tunnel. And there he was, already seated in 4C, his long legs stretched slightly into the aisle. He glanced up as she passed, his expression unreadable.
She slid into 4A, the window seat. She stared out at the workers loading bags into the belly of the plane. The scarf in her hidden pocket felt like it was burning a hole through the lining.
The plane door hissed shut. The seals tightened with a final, definitive thud.
They were locked in. Thirty thousand feet. For an hour and a half.
He’d called her bluff, burned her bridges, and bought the seat next to her. The game had changed. The board was gone. It was just them now, in this pressurized metal box, hurtling into the sky.
And for the first time in ten years, Beth had absolutely no idea what her next move was.