Chapter 16: The Unexpected Visitor
The elevator ride up to Mark's penthouse was still humming with the quiet electricity of the night. Alexandra leaned against his side, her fingers laced through his, the distant taste of his mother's German chocolate cake still lingering on her tongue. The doors slid open to a hallway of soft lighting and hush, and Mark fumbled with his keys, still grinning like a man who'd gotten away with something.
"I can't believe we did that," she murmured.
"Which part? The car part or the part where my mom tried to adopt you?"
"Both. All of it." She looked at him as he pushed the door open. "I haven't felt this light in years."
He pulled her inside and kicked the door shut behind them. The penthouse opened up before them—sweeping views of the Austin skyline through floor-to-ceiling windows, the string lights he'd hung on the balcony swaying gently in the evening breeze. It smelled like him. Like sandalwood and the faint, clean scent of expensive cologne.
"Make yourself comfortable," he said, shrugging off his jacket. "I'm gonna grab us some water. We probably need it after all that cake."
"You mean after all that—"
"Yes. That too." He kissed her forehead and disappeared toward the kitchen, his footsteps echoing off the polished concrete floors.
Alexandra wandered to the balcony doors, pushing one open to let the night air wash over her. The city sprawled below, a scatter of glittering lights that seemed to pulse with their own heartbeat. She hugged her arms and breathed in the jasmine-scented air, the sweetness of it mingling with a sense of peace she hadn't felt in years.
She heard Mark's footsteps return, felt him come up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, his chin settling against her neck.
"Ten million followers and I still can't believe I get to have this," he said quietly. "You standing in my apartment, looking like you belong here."
"Maybe I do belong here."
He turned her around, his eyes searching hers in the dim light. "I want you to belong here. For real. All your stuff, all your plants, all your weird Chopper figurines."
"My Chopper figurines are not weird. He's adorable. He's a reindeer with a little hat."
"He's a reindeer with a human face and a weird nose."
"You take that back."
"Make me."
She was about to kiss him when a knock cut through the moment. Three sharp thuds, urgent and insistent. They both froze.
"You expecting someone?" she asked.
"No." His brow furrowed. "Give me a sec."
He walked to the door, peering through the peephole. His entire body stiffened. The color drained from his face, leaving him looking almost gray under the entryway lights.
"Who is it?" she asked, moving toward him.
He didn't answer. He just stood there, hand frozen on the deadbolt, his jaw working like he was chewing on glass.
"Mark. Who is it?"
"It's—" He swallowed hard. "It's Sabrina."
The name hit her like a bucket of cold water. Sabrina. His ex-fiancée. The one he'd been with before Alexandra came back to Austin. The one who'd been conspicuously absent from every conversation, every story, every mention of his past. His mother hadn't said her name all night. Leeland had only hinted at her with a tight, wary expression.
"What is she doing here?" Alexandra hated how small her voice sounded.
"I don't know." He finally turned, his eyes wide with something that looked terrifyingly close to fear. "Look, I need you to wait in the bedroom for a minute, okay?"
"Why?"
"Because I need to see what she wants and—"
"And what? You don't want me to hear something?" The knot in her stomach tightened.
"That's not what I meant. I just don't want you caught in the middle of—" He gestured vaguely, frustration knotting his brow. "I don't know what this is yet. Let me handle it."
"Mark, I'm going to say this once." Her voice came out calm, steady. She didn't feel steady. "I'm not going to hide in your bedroom like some secret. If she's here, then she can see me. She can see that you're with me. That's non-negotiable."
He stared at her for a long moment, something complicated passing over his face. Then he nodded slowly and unlocked the door.
Sabrina stood in the doorway, braced against the frame like she'd been running for miles. Her makeup was smudged, raccoon streaks carving tracks through foundation that was a shade too dark for her skin. Her hair, usually a sleek curtain of caramel waves, was tangled and damp at the temples. She wore designer loungewear that looked like it had been slept in, the fabric wrinkled and clinging to her in ways that suggested she'd dressed in a hurry.
She was beautiful even like this, in that Instagram-glossy way that made Alexandra feel instantly plain. But her eyes—those wide, doe-like brown eyes that had graced magazine covers and brand campaigns—were rimmed in red, wild with something that looked a lot like desperation.
"Mark." Her voice cracked on his name. "Thank God. I didn't know where else to go. I tried calling, but you blocked my number, and I know I shouldn't have just shown up, but I didn't—" She broke off, inhaling a shuddering breath. "I didn't have anyone else."
"Sabrina." Mark's voice was low, cautious. "What's going on?"
She looked past him for the first time, noticing Alexandra standing in the middle of the living room. Her expression flickered—surprise, then something sharper that vanished almost before it landed. She wiped at her eyes, sniffing hard.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had company." She laughed, a hollow, broken sound. "Of course you have company. It's been three months. Why wouldn't you have company?"
"Sabrina, what happened?"
"I messed up." Her voice was hard and raw. "I messed up so bad, Mark. I was at this party tonight, this stupid celebrity thing I only went to because my agent said I needed to network. And I got drunk, and I started talking. I talked too much. I said things about us."
Mark went very still. "What kind of things?"
"About why we broke up. About the engagement. About how you just cut me off out of nowhere and left me with nothing." Her face crumpled, fresh tears spilling over. "And there was this reporter there. A journalist from some gossip site. She overheard everything. She's gonna run a story tomorrow morning unless I give her an exclusive first."
Alexandra watched the blood drain from Mark's face. He stepped back from the door, running a hand over his head.
"What exactly did you tell her?"
"I told her the truth." Sabrina's jaw set. "That you called it off two weeks before the wedding. That you gave me no explanation. That you moved to Austin and never looked back. That I had to cancel everything, that my parents had spent thirty grand on a venue we'll never use, that my reputation in this industry is in the toilet because everyone thinks I did something wrong, but I didn't do anything. You did. You left me."
The silence that followed was so thick, Alexandra could taste it. Metallic. Sour. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe.
"Can I come in?" Sabrina's voice was small now. "Please. I just want to talk, Mark. Just the two of us. I'm not trying to hurt you. I just don't know what to do."
Mark glanced at Alexandra, and she saw it—the conflict warring behind his eyes. She could feel her own heart splitting down the middle, each rupture sending a crack through the fragile trust they'd spent weeks rebuilding.
"I'll wait in the bedroom," she said quietly.
She didn't look at him as she walked past. She didn't want to see the relief on his face, or worse, the guilt.
The bedroom door clicked shut behind her, but the walls were thin. She could hear their voices through them—low and urgent, like radio broadcasts bleeding through a bad signal. She sank onto the edge of his bed, hands gripping the silk duvet, and tried to steady her breathing.
She heard Sabrina's voice rise, breaking into a sob. "I loved you, Mark. I gave up everything to be with you. My career, my hometown, all my friends. I was supposed to be your wife, and you just threw me away."
"You weren't supposed to be my wife." Mark's voice was stark. Raw. "You were never supposed to be my wife. That was a mistake, Sabrina. We both knew it."
"Don't you dare say that. Don't you stand there and act like I was some insignificant little chapter you could just skip over."
"You're right. You weren't insignificant. You were a big, glaring, red-flag chapter that I ignored because I was too scared to be alone."
"I don't need a therapy session, Mark. I need you to fix this. I need you to help me calm the story down before it ruins everything."
"Ruins what, Sabrina? What exactly is there left to ruin?"
"My reputation. My credibility. I'm not like you. I don't have millions of followers who'll forgive me anything. I have people who are just waiting for me to fail, and if this story paints me as the bitter ex who got dumped, I'm done."
Alexandra pressed her hands over her ears, trying to block out the rest. But the words seeped through anyway, burrowing into her chest like parasites.
She thought about everything Mark had told her. About his past, about the engagement, about why it ended. He'd said they'd grown apart. That Sabrina was more in love with the idea of being a power couple than she was with him. That he'd ended it when he realized it was all about clout.
But he'd never told her about this. About the wedding venue. About his parents losing money. About Sabrina being left with nothing.
And now she didn't know what to think. She didn't know what was real.
The voices in the living room grew quieter. She heard the front door open and close. Then footsteps approaching the bedroom, a soft knock on the door.
"Alex?"
She stood, schooling her face into an expression of careful neutrality before opening the door to meet his eyes. He stood in the hallway, looking haggard, like someone had pulled the bones from his body and left him to hold himself up with string.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry. That was—"
"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to her." She crossed her arms. "She clearly thinks you ruined her life."
"She's lying about some of it. Exaggerating. She's not some innocent victim in all this."
"Is she lying about the venue? About the money your parents lost?"
He flinched, and she knew she'd hit her mark. "The venue money was paid back. My dad covered it. But I didn't know she was going to make this about her career."
"Mark." Her voice was dangerously quiet. "Did you end things with her. Did you gave her a chance to grow, and when she didn't, did you leave her. Yes or no?"
"Yes." He ran his hand over his head. "But you don't understand the full—"
"You're right. I don't. Because you never told me the full story." She felt the heat rising in her chest, the frustration that had been building all along. "You told me you were in a relationship that didn't work out. You didn't tell me you were this close to marriage. You didn't tell me about the wedding. You made it sound like a casual thing, a normal breakup."
"It wasn't casual. It wasn't normal. But I didn't want to dump all that baggage on you. We were just getting started again, and I didn't want to scare you off."
"You don't get to decide what scares me, Mark. I'm a grown woman. I've seen death, I've seen loss, I've seen things that would break most people. Do you really think some story about your ex-fiancée is going to scare me?"
"Then why are you so upset?"
"Because you lied to me." Her voice cracked. "Maybe not directly. But you omitted. You edited your past to make yourself look better, and that's a lie too. How am I supposed to trust you if you can't even trust me with the truth?"
"I trust you." He took a step toward her, hands outstretched. "I trust you more than anyone. That's why you're here. That's why I brought you to meet my family. That's why I told you I love you."
"But you didn't tell me about her."
The silence between them was unbearable. He looked at her, his eyes searching hers, and she saw the exact moment something in him gave way.
"You're right," he said. "You're right. I should've told you everything. All of it. From the beginning."
"Then tell me now." She uncrossed her arms, letting the anger bleed out of her posture. "Tell me everything. Don't leave anything out. I need to know what I'm walking into."
Mark took a shaky breath. He moved to the bed and sat down heavily, elbows on his knees, head hanging. When he spoke, his voice was low and distant, like he was reading from someone else's diary.
"We met two years ago at an event in LA. She was represented by the same agency that was trying to court me for a branding deal. She was beautiful. Funny. She knew how to work a room. I was lonely. I'd been on the road for months, living out of hotel rooms, surrounded by people but never feeling like any of it was real." He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. "She made me feel grounded. She was always asking about my day, about my family, about the little stuff that nobody else seemed to care about."
"But that wasn't real."
"It was real. At first. We were together for a year before I proposed. And somewhere in that year, something shifted. She started focusing more on my platform than on me. When we went out, she'd steer us toward events where cameras were already rolling. She'd post pictures of us together at strategic moments. She started building a whole persona around being my fiancée—doing interviews, brand deals, all of it. And when I tried to talk to her about it, she said I was being paranoid. She said she was just trying to build a life with me."
"Mark, if you knew that's what was happening, why did you still propose?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Because I thought maybe it was just in my head. That I was being paranoid. Because she told me that every couple has struggles and that running away at the first sign of trouble was what my dad did with his first marriage, and I didn't want to repeat that pattern."
She winced at that, remembering the whispered stories about Mark's biological father, the one who'd left when Mark was a toddler. Gerald had raised him as his own, but the scar remained.
"So I proposed. I thought the engagement would bring us closer. But it just made things worse. She started talking about the wedding like it was a press event. She wanted to live-stream the ceremony for sponsors. She wanted guest lists that included influencers who'd pay for the privilege. She wanted a whole content calendar mapped out for the honeymoon."
"That sounds insane."
"Insane is a good word for it. I tried to pull back, tried to slow things down, but she just pushed harder. And one night, we were at a dinner with some of her industry friends, and she told this story about how I'd proposed. She embellished it. Made it into this elaborate thing about how I'd flown her to Paris and had a private violinist. None of it happened. I proposed at a restaurant in Malibu. There was no violinist. There was no Paris."
"What did you do?"
"I called it off the next morning. I packed my bags and left while she was still asleep. I left a letter explaining that I couldn't go through with something that felt like a business arrangement. I told her I was sorry, that the money for the venue would be handled, and that I hoped she understood." He laughed, bitter and hollow. "She didn't understand. She called me over and over. She showed up at my hotel. She posted cryptic quotes on Instagram about men who couldn't commit. I blocked her after that. I thought that would be the end of it."
"But it wasn't."
"No." He looked up, meeting her eyes. "It wasn't. She's been the reason behind some of those negative articles you saw about me. The 'Why Mark Phillips Can't Keep a Relationship' pieces? The rumors about me being difficult to work with? I didn't want to believe it was her, but Leeland did some digging a few months back and found out she'd been leaking information to tabloids ever since the breakup."
The knot in her stomach tightened. "And you didn't tell me any of this because...?"
"Because I was ashamed." His voice cracked. "Because I thought if you knew I'd been engaged before, you'd think less of me. Because you're the first person who's ever made me feel like I could just be myself, no performance, no brand, no follower count. And I didn't want to drag my past into that. I didn't want to give you a reason to look at me differently."
"Mark." She moved closer, sitting beside him. "I don't think less of you. I never could. But I'm scared."
"Scared of what?"
"Scared that this is only the beginning. That there's more you're not telling me. That every time I think I know you, another version of your past is going to show up at our door and spit in my face."
"I promise you, that was everything. That was the whole story. I've told you everything." He took her hands, gripping them tight. "Please, Alex. I'm asking you to trust me."
"I want to trust you. I do. But trust isn't just about believing what someone says. It's about feeling like they've given you the whole picture. And right now, I'm realizing I've been building our relationship on a version of you that was half a character." She pulled her hands free, slowly. She didn't want to let go, but needed to anyway. "I need time. I need to process this."
"What does that mean? Are you going to leave?"
"I don't know." She stood, grabbing her purse from the side table. "I don't know what it means. I know I love you. That hasn't changed. But I need to think. I can't just roll over and pretend everything's okay when I've just found out my boyfriend's ex is threatening to sabotage him because he broke her heart."
"She's trying to ruin my image. And hers is the least of my concerns."
"Maybe that should tell you something, Mark." She stopped at the door, turning to look at him one last time. "If the way you ended things was even half as harsh as she described, she's hurt. She's grieving. And people in pain do irrational things."
His jaw tightened. "You're defending her?"
"I'm not defending anyone. I'm trying to understand the whole situation before I make any choices about my own life." She swallowed hard. "You asked me to trust you. But you're going to have to earn that trust back, Mark. Not by words. By action."
She walked out before he could respond. The hallway was empty, the door of the penthouse still ajar where he'd left it. The night skyline mocked her with its glitter and glow, silent and indifferent to the storm in her chest.
She pressed the elevator button and tried to steady her breathing. The tears didn't come until the doors slid shut, enveloping her in silence. The first one slipped down her cheek, warm and unwelcome, and she wiped it away with a trembling hand.
She didn't know what was next. But for the first time in weeks, she wondered if she and Mark were really built for anything lasting. Maybe some pasts were too heavy to outrun. Maybe some ghosts were too relentless to escape.