He Gave My Show to His Fiancée

"Sloane. I'm getting married." "This is the last time." He said it with the sweat still on him and his hand still on my waist. Three months ago I was the one who ended it.

Tonight he flew two thousand miles. Just to have me one more time before the announcement went out. Month three of being done with my sugar daddy.

I ran the card he'd put my name on and bought a box of ultrathins at the drugstore. Ten minutes later the charge alert landed on his phone. Then the text came. "Him or me.

Who's better." I didn't answer. That night I got back to my hotel after a late shift. My threemonth assignment in Hong Kong had just wrapped.

The lease on my new place still had weeks to go, so I was living out of a hotel two blocks from the newsroom. I keyed the door open and a tall shape was standing in the way.

The man who was supposed to be two thousand miles from me. Standing there with the airport still on him. In bed he took his time being cruel about it.

When I couldn't hold together anymore he caught my earlobe in his teeth and asked, on purpose, "Can he get you here?" I bit down on my lip and said nothing.

And somewhere under it I was glad he sounded jealous. Then it was done, and the heat drained out of his eyes. "Sloane.

I'm getting married." "This is the last time." Chapter 1 I froze. Like somebody had emptied a bucket of cold water over my head. It went down through me. All the way to my feet.

Kieran rolled off the bed. A minute later the shower came on in the bathroom. I lay there in the wrecked sheets. The ceiling light burned at my eyes until they stung.

I can't tell you anymore how that fight three months ago even started. Only that it was a bad one. I threw the word breakup at him to make a point. He didn't talk me down.

He didn't ask why. He said one thing. "You sure?" I nodded. Then I took the Hong Kong assignment without telling anyone and was gone three months.

Distance was supposed to get me out from under it. It didn't. For three months I stacked my calendar until there was nothing left in it. Anything to stay busy.

The second I sat still, he filled my whole head. So today I ran his card on purpose and bought a box of ultrathins at the drugstore. I wanted to see what he'd do.

What he did was come. He got on a plane that night and came to the hotel I was living in. I thought we were getting back together.

Instead, when it was over, he told me he was getting married. Kieran came out of the bathroom with a towel around his hips.

Under the low light you could follow every line of his shoulders and back.

He stopped at the edge of the bed, looked at me still collapsed where he'd left me, and frowned. "Go clean up." I got myself upright like a machine.

My legs almost went out from under me. A second later he crossed the room, lifted me off the bed, and carried me into the bathroom. The way he had a hundred times before.

He pumped body wash into his palm and worked it into a lather. Then he washed me, inch by inch. His hands were careful. Careful the way you are with something that breaks.

My chest hurt so much I couldn't pull in a breath. He rinsed the soap off me, shut the water, pulled a towel around me. Not one word the entire time.

I stood there wrapped in the towel and watched him walk to the door. "Congratulations." My own voice came out wrong. Sanded down to nothing. Kieran stopped.

He turned his head partway. His brows moved. Barely. Like he needed me to say it again.

His throat worked. "What did you say?" "Congratulations on getting married." I pulled my mouth into something near a smile. It took work. Kieran watched me for a few seconds.

Whatever was behind his eyes, I couldn't read it. "Get some sleep." "I'll take a room next door." By then I was used to it. That was what he'd always told me. He slept light.

He didn't like anyone beside him at night. For five years, every time we finished, no matter how wrecked I was, I got up and went to the guest room myself. He never had to ask.

The next morning the light was already full behind the curtains. I checked my phone. Nine thirty. And at nine sharp, the network was announcing it in front of everybody.

Capital After Dark. Mine to run, starting today. Chapter 2 Three unread.

All from people at the newsroom. "Sloane, where are you?" "The whole floor is in the conference room waiting." "They're announcing your EP job today!" I slammed the phone face down on the bed and got up to wash my face.

Kieran had kept me up until three in the morning. After that I lay awake another two hours. Everything hurt like I'd been hit by a truck.

By the time I got myself together and came down, the black Maybach was already sitting at the hotel entrance. The window came down. Kieran was in the driver's seat.

Charcoal shirt today, cuffs shoved up to his forearms. Every line of muscle right there. He looked over. "Get in. I'll take you." Everything in me wanted to say no.

He already had the passenger door open. Two seconds of stalling, and I got in anyway.

While I buckled the belt I made a point of not looking at him. "Just drop me at the network." He didn't answer. He put the car in gear. Nobody talked the whole way.

The only sound in there was the air vents. I turned to the window and let the street run backward. The network tower kept getting bigger.

Two lights out, I spoke up. "Pull over up here." Kieran glanced at the road and didn't slow down. "We're not there yet." "You don't need to take me to the door." My teeth caught my lip. "They're promoting me today.

I don't want people talking." He was quiet for a beat. Then he brought the car to the curb. I pushed the door open and thanked him. "Thank you, Mr.

Vance." Kieran's brows pulled in. "I still like it better when you use my name." "Using your name is a girlfriend's right." I shut the door. "I'm not.

And you're getting married." He didn't say anything else. One look at the mirror, and he pulled away hard. I wasn't late, at least.

People came at me with congratulations the second I walked in. "Congrats, Sloane." "Once you're EP you're buying us all coffee." I laughed. "I'll buy you all dinner." The whole floor was loud with it.

Then somebody came over and said the station director wanted me in his office. The entire walk down, my heart wouldn't sit still. Five years grinding in New York.

I was finally about to have both feet on the ground in New York. And then I knocked on his door, and all of it stopped. "Sloane. The network has made a decision.

As of today, Capital After Dark belongs to Adeline. She runs it outright." "You'll support her through the handover." I froze.

When my voice came, it shook. "I've run that show since the beginning.

Why hand it to somebody who just walked in the door?" That show used to be the lowestrated slot on the schedule. I brought it back myself. Built it into the network's flagship.

The director looked at me with something close to regret. "It came from upstairs." I still wouldn't let it go, so he laid it out. "Adeline brought in a twentymilliondollar sponsorship." "That covers ten years of adsales targets." He spread his hands. "You're sitting in my chair.

Who do you pick?" I put my back against the wall. My head filled up with noise. The office door opened. A woman in a suit stood there. Put together. Easy to look at.

She put out her hand. "Hi. I'm Adeline." I knew exactly who she was. Chapter 3 The girl he grew up with, just back in the country. And the woman he was going to marry.

Little pieces started lining up in my head. Who was standing behind Adeline's twenty million. It didn't need saying. I laughed. It got out of me before I could stop it.

Two years ago I wore my mouth out chasing sponsors for that show, and what I finally pulled out of Kieran was a twomilliondollar naming deal.

Two million, and I was grateful for it. Now, for Adeline, he writes twenty in one go. Two million and twenty million. In his head I'm worth a tenth of her. No.

Probably less than a tenth. I went to his office. The receptionist knew my face and walked me straight back.

Kieran sat behind that enormous desk with a document open in front of him. He didn't even lift his head. "You need something?" My throat closed up.

I held the tears where they were and got the words out anyway. "There are a hundred seats at that network. Why did she have to take mine?" That brought his eyes up.

He looked at me, perfectly calm. "Because she wanted it." I stood there. Because she wanted it. So he drops twenty million to lay the road down for her. Because she wanted it.

So five years of my nights at that network stop counting. It wasn't that he didn't know. He knew exactly what that show cost me in sleep.

The worst of it, I went down from exhaustion and woke up in the ICU. The tears came and I couldn't stop them.

My voice climbed and shook. "Kieran, this isn't fair—" "Sloane." He cut me off. Same flat tone.

He set his pen down and leaned back in the chair. "If I remember right, three people auditioned for that onair job the year you did." "The other two were Jschool grads, out of the top programs here and abroad." "You want to know how a stateschool grad nobody's heard of, who wasn't even a journalism major, got picked?" I hadn't found anything to say when he answered it himself. "Because I put two million into that network.

On the condition that they hire you." Kieran held my eyes the way you look at an object. "Sloane.

There's no such thing as fair in this world." "Come talk to me about fair when you're sitting where I'm sitting." I didn't move. Everything in me had been drained out.

So that was it. The day my offer letter came, I cried the whole night in my rented studio. I thought I'd earned my way in. Five years. Bought and paid for from day one.

I don't remember how I got out of his office. What he'd said pressed on me from every direction at once. There was nowhere to put it. And nowhere to go.

Back when I first met Kieran. I was a new grad, an intern at the network. There was a client dinner. A few rounds in, the air in the room had gone bad.

The senior manager beside me got brave with the liquor, and his hand went under the table toward my thigh. Every muscle in me locked up. I kept moving away from it.

And I didn't dare make a scene. Swallowing it, I looked across the table at my old team lead. The man who brought me in. He froze for half a second. Then he turned his head away.

That was when Kieran, who had barely said ten words all night, stood up and walked over to me. Chapter 4 He reached down and pulled me up out of my chair.

He looked at my red eyes and said, "Kid. Crying in front of these people does nothing." Then he took the bottle off the table and put it in my hand.

His hand closed over the back of mine and held it steady. Something went hard between his brows, and he brought my hand down on the man who'd been touching me.

The bottle broke with a dull sound. The man went down. The room went quiet all at once. Kieran didn't take his eyes off me.

His voice stayed level and every word landed. "This is the only thing that works." "Understand?" Not one of the dozenodd people in that room called the police.

I found out later that every dollar at that table was his. I looked up and went straight into eyes I couldn't see the bottom of. The noise around us dropped away.

All that was left was my own pulse.

So the next time we ran into each other, when Kieran asked me the question in the elevator. "You're Sloane, right?" "Could you do this with no strings?

Just sex." The elevator doors closed. He didn't leave me time to think about it. Twentysome years of my life up to then. Not one bright thing in any of it.

Nothing like him had ever walked into it. So I nodded. It was almost a reflex. After that, every time we finished, he moved money to me.

More designer bags and jewelry than I could count. I never sent a single piece back. Not long after, I started at the network.

I had no idea then that I'd passed that audition on the strength of what we were, off the books. I won't pretend otherwise. Those years next to Kieran were the fastest I ever grew.

And I had his cover. None of the advertisers with wandering hands would come near me at a dinner, so I got to put everything into my own show. The longer it went, the better we fit.

Our bodies, our habits, all of it. Sometimes he'd show up to drive me home from work. We walked. We shopped. Like two people who were crazy about each other.

And slowly I started wanting things I had no right to want. That night the wind came off Victoria Harbour and the water was full of broken light.

I finally worked up the nerve. "Kieran, can we stop doing this?" "Can we try being together.

For real." Kieran stood where he was and looked at me for a long time. "Sloane," he said. "You broke the rules of the game." Shame and fury came up in me at once.

The next day I told him we were done. Three months of silence after that. I was in pieces. He went on like nothing had changed. In the end I was the one who folded first.

The moment that woodsy cologne of his closed around me again. I told myself: Honestly, this isn't that different from a real relationship.

There'd never been another woman around him all those years anyway. It took until now for it to land. It was always different.

Because a woman with no claim to the word girlfriend, hearing he's getting married. Doesn't even have the standing to ask him about it.

The show had a big event that day, a roundtable with a few of the biggest names in finance. The network was set to go live, and then the whole thing came apart.

The panelists we booked never showed. Ten minutes to air. The station director stood there looking at an empty studio