Chapter 7 - Alliance or Attraction?
I moved to a small town in northern Wisconsin, far away from Chicago, far away from Ethan, far away from everything that reminded me of the life I’d left behind.
I rented a tiny cabin on the edge of a lake, surrounded by pine trees and nothing but silence. It was cheap—five hundred dollars a month, including utilities—and the landlady was a retired schoolteacher named Mabel who didn’t ask questions, didn’t care about my past, and left fresh-baked cookies on my porch every Sunday.
I got a job at the local diner, waiting tables and flipping pancakes. The pay was minimum wage, the hours were long, and my feet ached at the end of every shift, but it was honest work. The customers were loggers and fishermen and retirees, people who didn’t know who Ethan Caldwell was, who didn’t care about galas or stock prices or billionaires’ girlfriends. To them, I was just Ivy—the new girl who made a mean stack of pancakes and always remembered their order.
For the first time in months, I breathed.
I spent my days working, my evenings reading by the fireplace or walking along the lake shore, watching the sun set over the water. I didn’t watch the news. I didn’t read the papers. I didn’t look up Ethan’s name on the internet. I tried to pretend he didn’t exist. Tried to pretend the last six months of my life had just been a beautiful, painful dream.
But I couldn’t.
Every night, I dreamed of him. His smile. His laugh. The way he’d held me when I was scared. The way he’d kissed me like I was the only woman in the world. I’d wake up crying, reaching for him in the empty bed, only to remember he was hundreds of miles away, living the life I’d forced him to go back to.
Three months passed.
The leaves turned from green to gold to red, then fell, covering the ground in a thick carpet of orange and brown. The air grew crisp, cold, smelling of wood smoke and frost. I bought a warm coat and a pair of boots, and I settled into my new life. I was okay. I was surviving.
Then he found me.
It was a Tuesday. I was working the lunch shift at the diner, wiping down the counter, when the bell above the door jingled. I didn’t look up. I was used to strangers passing through town on their way to the national park up north.
“One coffee, please,” a familiar voice said.
My heart stopped.
I looked up.
Ethan was standing on the other side of the counter, looking like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His hair was longer than I’d ever seen it, messy, like he’d been running his hands through it constantly. There were dark circles under his eyes, deep lines around his mouth, and he’d lost weight—his suit, which had always fit him perfectly, hung loose on his frame. But when his eyes landed on mine, they lit up with a fire I’d never seen before. Relief. Joy. Love.
“Hi,” he said softly.
I dropped the rag I was holding. It fell to the floor with a soft thud.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. I looked around the diner, suddenly panicked. Half the town was there—old Tom who came in every day for meatloaf, the sheriff who always asked me out on dates I always turned down, Mabel sitting in her usual booth by the window. They were all staring. “Ethan, you can’t be here. You have to leave. Before someone sees you, before the press finds out—”
“I’m not leaving,” he said, cutting me off. He leaned across the counter, his voice low, intense, so only I could hear. “Not without you. I’ve spent the last three months searching every town, every city, every hovel in this entire country looking for you. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who doesn’t want to be found? I hired three private investigators. I tracked your old cell phone records. I talked to everyone you ever knew. And when I finally found you… I drove twelve hours straight to get here. I’m not leaving. Not now. Not ever.”
“Ethan, I told you in the letter—”
“Your letter was bullshit.”
The words were harsh, but his voice was gentle. He reached across the counter and covered my hand with his. His skin was cold from the autumn air, but his touch was still warm, familiar. Home.
“You thought you were protecting me,” he said. “I get it. I understand why you left. I saw the way the world was treating us. The way they were attacking you. Blaming you for something that wasn’t your fault. I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t stop it. But running away wasn’t the answer, Ivy. Running away from me? That hurt worse than any headline. Any drop in stock price. Any board member yelling at me. Losing you… that almost killed me.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket—my letter, worn and creased, like he’d read it a thousand times.
“I read this every night,” he said. “Over and over. And every time, I get angrier. Not at you. Never at you. At myself. For making you feel like you had to leave. Like you weren’t enough. Like you were a burden. Because you’re not, baby. You’re the opposite of a burden. You’re the reason I wake up in the morning. The reason I work as hard as I do. The reason any of this matters.”
He squeezed my hand.
“I sold the company,” he said quietly.
I blinked. “What?”
“I sold Caldwell Global,” he repeated. “Two weeks ago. To Victoria’s father, actually. Paid me a fair price. Took everything off my hands. The factories. The offices. The legacy. All of it.”
I stared at him, mouth open. “You sold your family’s company? The one your grandfather built? Ethan, that’s… that’s everything. Why would you do that?”
“Because it wasn’t worth it,” he said simply. “Not if it meant losing you. I spent ten years of my life building that company, thinking it was what mattered. Thinking I owed it to my parents and my grandfather to keep it going. But you know what I realized while I was looking for you? That my grandfather built that company to give his family a better life. Not to trap them. Not to make them miserable. Not to force them to choose between love and duty. He’d want me to be happy. Even if that meant walking away from everything he built.”
He smiled, a small, sad smile.
“Besides,” he added. “I still have the production company in LA. And the real estate holdings. And a few other investments. I’m not exactly poor. I’ll never have to work another day in my life if I don’t want to. And neither will you.”
The diner was silent. Everyone was watching us now—even the cook had come out of the kitchen to see what was going on. I could feel their eyes on us, curious, judgmental, wondering who this handsome stranger was and why he was making the new girl cry.
“Ethan,” I said, my voice shaking. “You can’t just sell a billion-dollar company and move to a cabin in the woods. That’s not how life works. You’re a city boy. You need board meetings and galas and private jets. You’ll hate it here. You’ll get bored. You’ll resent me for making you give up everything—”
“Shut up.”
He walked around the counter, and before I could stop him, he was on his knees in front of me, right there in the middle of the diner, in front of God and everybody. He pulled a small velvet box out of his pocket and flipped it open.
Inside was a ring. Not the huge, gaudy diamond I’d expected a billionaire to give someone. A simple, elegant solitaire set in white gold, the stone sparkling in the fluorescent light of the diner. It was perfect.
“Ivy Carter,” he said, his voice loud and clear for everyone to hear. “I love you. More than my company. More than my reputation. More than all the money in the world. I don’t need galas or private jets or board meetings to be happy. I just need you. Wherever you are. Whatever you’re doing. A cabin in Wisconsin, a penthouse in New York, a cardboard box under a bridge—I don’t care. As long as I’m with you, I’m home.”
He took a deep breath.
“Will you marry me?”
The diner erupted in cheers. Old Tom was whistling. The sheriff was clapping. Mabel was dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. The cook yelled, “Say yes, girl!”
I looked down at Ethan, still on his knees in his expensive suit, looking up at me like I was the answer to every prayer he’d ever said. I thought about the night he’d found me in the kitchen, bleeding and scared. I thought about the way he’d stood up to Ryan for me. I thought about the almost-kiss in New York, the real kiss in the Tribeca penthouse, the way he’d held me in the safe room while the world fell apart around us. I thought about the letter I’d written, thinking I was doing the right thing, only to realize that the right thing was never about what the world wanted. It was about what we wanted.
Tears streamed down my face. Happy tears. The best kind.
“Yes,” I said, laughing through the sobs. “A thousand times yes.”
The cheers got louder. Ethan stood up, slipped the ring onto my finger, and kissed me right there in the middle of the diner, spinning me around until my feet left the floor. The whole town was watching, but I didn’t care. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care what anyone thought. I had Ethan. I had us. That was all that mattered.
When he finally put me down, Mabel came over, beaming, and patted both our cheeks.
“Took you long enough, young man,” she said to Ethan. “She’s been moping around here for three months, looking like her best friend died. I was this close to driving down to Chicago myself and knocking some sense into you.”
Ethan laughed. “Thank you, Mabel. For taking care of her when I couldn’t.”
“Anytime,” she said. “Now, you two lovebirds get out of here. I’ll cover Ivy’s shift. Go. Talk. Make up for lost time.”
Ethan didn’t need to be told twice. He laced his fingers through mine—the engagement ring cold and perfect on my hand—and led me out of the diner into the crisp autumn air. The sun was shining, the leaves were falling, and for the first time in a very long time, the future looked bright.
But as we walked toward the black SUV he’d parked out front, I saw something that made my blood run cold.
Parked across the street, partially hidden behind a big pine tree, was a familiar silver sedan.
Ryan’s car.
May you like
And sitting behind the wheel, watching us with a smile that made my skin crawl, was a man I’d thought was dead.
Victoria Sterling.
