He Granted Her Wish. I Walked Away

After we were together that night, my fiancé asked me about making wishes on dandelions. Then he turned around and granted his first love's wish.

A few days later, a new post from his first love came across my feed. [Wow, dandelion wishes really do work.] The photo with it showed a gift from France with no name on it.

My best friend read it and hesitated. "But isn't Roman your fiancé?" I smiled. "He was. After today, he isn't." Chapter 1 My best friend stared at me for a few seconds.

When it registered that I meant to call off the engagement our two families had brokered, her face went blank for an instant. "Are you going to tell Roman, at least?" I thought about it and shrugged. "There's not really anything to say." She checked over and over that I wasn't sad, that none of it had hurt, and finally she let it go and left.

After she was gone, I sat alone on the couch and went through the social media account of Roman's first love for a long time. Vanessa.

A few days back she'd posted a photo of a dandelion blown bare. The caption read: [Dandelion, my wish is to get this necklace before my birthday.] And here was the coincidence.

The day she posted it was the exact day Roman asked me about dandelion wishes. I scrolled back up to her most recent post.

In the photo she was as bright and lovely as ever, and in her hand was the necklace.

I'd heard they only made ten of them in the world, and every one had been spoken for a long time ago. I had no idea how Roman had managed to make that wish of hers come true.

My phone buzzed twice. A message from Roman. [I fly home tomorrow. Anything you want?] I considered it.

Then, slowly, I typed out the name of the brand that made that necklace. [This brand seems to be everywhere lately.] Roman replied within seconds. A thumbsup.

Come to think of it, his story with Vanessa read like something straight out of a romance novel. They met at eighteen. They fell in love at twenty.

One of them was a bird that wanted open sky. The other was a hawk chained where he stood.

They loved each other spectacularly for two years, and it ended when Vanessa left the country to go chase a life of her own.

The day she left, Roman pulled every string he had to get himself to the gate before her flight left, just to buy himself one chance to make her stay. She went anyway.

Roman couldn't understand how two people who loved each other could still end up apart. For a while there, he fell into doubting himself.

Then word reached him that Vanessa had a new boyfriend overseas. After that he couldn't sit still.

He spent a month flying back and forth across the world, just to beg her to take him back. A month of that sincerity got through to her, and they got back together.

I suppose no broken mirror is ever really made whole again. And with an ocean between them, they were apart far more than they were together.

Fights kept surfacing, every few days another one. Over three years they broke up and got back together dozens of times. In the end it was Roman's grandfather who'd had enough.

He forced them to finish it for good, and that was when Roman cut contact with her.

After that, Roman came out the far side of it like a man who'd walked through a fire and left every soft thing burning in it. He threw himself into building the Ashford company.

The year he turned twentyseven, Grandpa Ashford went looking for a fiancée for him. Roman said he didn't need one. Flat, cold, that was all.

But you don't win against the people holding the strings. So I was put in front of Roman anyway. I still remember the way he reacted the first time he saw me. Calm.

You could even call it puzzled. Chapter 2 It made sense. When a man is used to looking at someone that beautiful, a face like mine is bound to seem washed out.

But I only looked back at Roman and smiled, and then I negotiated with him, sweetly. "If it isn't me, there'll be a next one. Instead of dragging this back and forth, pick me.

At least I do as I'm told." Roman raised an eyebrow. Something flickered through those calm eyes of his. Interest. And that was that.

I stayed at his side as Roman Ashford's fiancée. Just as I'd said I would, I played the part, obedient and easy and well behaved.

And I buried seven years of loving him in secret as deep in me as it would go, somewhere it would never see daylight. Early the next morning I drove out to the family estate.

I had breakfast with Grandpa Ashford, and when we were finished I picked my words carefully. "Grandpa.

I don't think Roman and I are a good match after all." His hand stopped in the middle of watering the plants.

It started again almost at once, and he asked it offhand, like it was nothing. "Have a fight?" I shook my head. "No.

It just isn't a good match anymore." Back when Grandpa Ashford first came to me, I'd been genuinely surprised.

Roman had probably run off so many marriage candidates by then that his grandfather had come around to taking whatever he could get.

What nobody expected was that Roman actually gave in.

The Ashfords and my own family, the Winslows, had never been evenly matched to begin with, and under Roman the gap had only opened wider.

To the Ashfords, a fiancée like me was worth nothing. I was sure Grandpa Ashford had stopped wanting me in the position a long time ago.

Why else would the wedding keep getting pushed?

Thinking about it, I smiled at him, old as he'd gotten. "Roman needs a wife who can actually help him." I'd taken it as far as it could go now.

I was sure he'd made up his mind long before I ever walked in. He just needed to save face. He couldn't be the one to play the villain. It had to come from me.

I had to be the one to hand him the ladder, and then bow and scrape while he climbed down it. Sure enough.

He was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I'll talk to Roman about it.

But not now." I was thrown. "Why not?" Grandpa Ashford gave me a long look. "Roman is in the middle of a major deal overseas. This is the critical stretch.

I don't want him distracted." It struck me as funny, suddenly.

Outside of bed, where his control did come apart, Roman was a cold machine that did nothing but work the rest of the time. And a thing this small was going to distract him?

He could see I didn't quite believe it. The old man added, "I know him. Roman does care about you." I froze. It was almost noon by the time I left the estate.

Going by what Grandpa Ashford wanted, I'd be Roman's fiancée for another month and change. That last sentence of his had left everything in me tangled up. I pulled out my phone.

Roman had sent a string of messages half an hour ago. [Are you up yet, Adeline?] [I got you a few presents. Guess what they are.] [About to board.

Coming to get me?] Underneath was his flight information. I thought about it and answered the last one. [Something came up. Can't.] Grandpa Ashford said Roman cared about me.

I didn't believe it. When word of our engagement first got out, everyone was floored. Nobody understood why Roman would pick me.

His friends even came up with a comparison that wasn't really appropriate.

They said I was the plain bicycle a man settles for after he's had the supercar, after all that heat and speed. It was an ugly thing to say. It was also true.

What Vanessa and Roman had was carved in too deep for anything else. Chapter 3 None of his friends believed Roman actually loved me. As it turned out, he didn't.

For the first six months after the engagement we lived under the same roof and were barely more than strangers.

When he came home, I'd have something waiting to help him sober up, and I'd look after the drunk that client dinners had made of him.

When he didn't come home, I got on quietly with my own things. There were functions to attend now and then, and I'd put on a face nobody could find fault with.

Time changes a lot of things. Roman did warm up to me. But only the way you warm up to the person your family picked out for you, all courtesy and good manners.

I knew he still couldn't let Vanessa go. I'd caught him a few times staring at nothing over his phone, and I recognized the face on the screen. It was her.

After all, I was seventeen when I fell for Roman. You could say I stood off to the side and watched the whole tangle of him and Vanessa, the love and the wreckage both.

But I only pretended not to see it.

Because if I asked, Roman would go back through the entire history of his first love again, and then he'd measure it, without meaning to, against me. The thing he'd settled for.

That comparison was too brutal. Later he almost stopped looking at her at all. He made himself busier. But he still remembered to come home for dinner every day.

That was around when I noticed Roman seemed to have changed. He started defending me in front of other people. The crease between his brows slowly stopped being permanent.

It turned out Roman could laugh, caught off guard, when I burned a batch of cookies. He could look worried when I got sick.

On holidays and birthdays he'd even bring me presents I actually wanted. I nearly fooled myself into thinking we were in a relationship.

My best friend teased me about it. "Married first, love after, right off the page and into your living room.

Guess that crush of yours is finally paying off." I was secretly delighted, quietly measuring how much Roman felt for me.

I even made plans for how I'd tell him someday that I'd loved him for seven years. I was like someone out working a field.

Day after day I watched and watered and tended Roman, this seed that had finally put out a shoot, and I wanted it to grow faster. Faster.

I didn't dare hope he'd love me the way I loved him. I only wanted our hearts to sit a little closer together. Just a little.

On the first anniversary of our engagement, I put real work into dinner and waited to eat with him.

Roman came in holding a present and hugged me, a little surprised. "You made all this?" I went stiff in his arms.

Then I couldn't make myself give up the warmth of him, and I hugged him back. He didn't push me off. He looked down and watched me, quiet.

I could see my own eyes in his, bright and shining, and the soft way I was smiling. I couldn't keep the lift out of my voice. "I did. Impressive?" Roman's eyes went darker.

He said it back in the same tone I'd just used, his voice gone rough. "Mm. So impressive." In the end I don't know which of us started it. We kissed.

All through dinner I couldn't make myself look at him, which is how I missed how much he was drinking. By the time I caught up, he was drunk.

I got him back to the bedroom, practiced at it by now. Roman lay on the bed. His eyes were hazy, fixed on me beside him, and his lips moved. I leaned in without thinking.

I heard him murmur it. "Loving me all these years like that. You must be so tired." My pupils shrank. Every part of me locked up. A second later Roman closed his eyes.

I don't know whether he was saying it to himself by then. His voice had gone to nothing but breath. "It must be. It has to be tiring." Right up until that moment.

Chapter 4 And then every sweet illusion I'd built came apart. So the signs that someone had been at my desk hadn't been my imagination after all. Roman had read my journal.

He knew I'd been in love with him for seven years. And the reason he'd been good to me was nothing more than the instinct people have to pity someone who is just like themselves.

Roman was pitying me. He was pitying himself too. I'd loved him quietly for all that time and never gotten him, the same way he was still holding on to Vanessa.

Roman and I were both the same kind of pitiful, both wanting the thing we couldn't have. Which only made me more certain he didn't love me.

From that day on I didn't want to play at pure romance with Roman anymore. That's a thing for people who are dating. What we were was engaged.

So for the first time, I was the one who knocked on his bedroom door. I leaned against the frame with nothing on my face and threw a box of condoms at him. "Conjugal duties.

Care to perform yours?" Roman's eyes came off the computer. Then they settled on me, heavy, on the slip nightgown that was all I had on. A few minutes went by with no answer.

I started to get annoyed. "If you can't manage it, I'll sort myself out." The next second Roman had me by the wrist. "Sort yourself out how?" His voice had gone rough.

I said it without changing expression. "Three options. Someone, something, or myself.

Which one do you want to hear?" The question seemed to make him laugh out of pure anger. "You'd go find someone else?" I shrugged. "I'm twentyfive.

Having needs is fairly normal, isn't it?" The next second Roman got an arm around my waist and lifted me off the floor.

The man's voice came down from above me with a barb in it. "You've got a legitimate option right here and you'd go looking for an illegitimate one?" That night, Roman was rough.

And from about then, whatever was between us seemed to shift again. Sometimes all it took was one look and we'd end up tangled together for no reason either of us ever named.

The more it happened, the clearer my head got.

Once, on some impulse I couldn't account for, I asked him, "At the rate you want this, do you have someone on the side?" Roman gave me an unfocused sideways look and tossed the phone from the nightstand over to me.

He kept it short. "Check. If you can't find anything, we go again." I pulled the blanket tighter and didn't move.

The next second I was hauled in against his chest and made to go through every message he had.

Going through it, I found out Roman's personal number was barely distinguishable from his work one.

But I did notice, being unusually thorough about it, that Roman seemed to have deleted Vanessa. I opened the photos on the sly. It wasn't what I expected.

Past the documents and the landscape shots, most of it was pictures of me. Eating. Feeding the cat. Looking like an alien.

The most recent one was me asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Before I could come back from the shock, Roman had already flipped the phone face down onehanded.

He pressed his mouth against the back of my neck and said it low. "Inspection's over. Time I collected." Roman got home at midnight. I was sleeping soundly.

A patch of cold on the back of my neck woke me with a start. "You're up?" He'd done it on purpose. He was angry I hadn't come to the airport. I turned over slowly to look at him.

He lay propped on one hand, looking down, holding my eyes. "This is the something that came up?" I nodded. "Sleep is obviously the number one priority." Roman was quiet for a few seconds.

Then he stood up suddenly and turned to get something, and it wasn't long before he came back with a gift box. "Open it?" Chapter 5 Even knowing it probably wasn't the limitededition one, I opened it anyway, holding on to the small chance.

Same brand as Vanessa's. Just a regular piece from the same line. I let out a very small sigh. So I'd been reading too much into it after all.

Roman took in the flatness on my face and frowned a little. "You don't like it?" I shook my head and closed the box up again. "I like it." Roman said nothing and watched me without blinking.

All right. I probably should have acted happier than that.

But I'd just been dreaming again about being a rat in a gutter, watching Roman and Vanessa through those years when they loved each other hard enough to burn.

Honestly, my chest was tight and it ached. There was no way I could force myself into looking delighted. Lucky for me, Roman didn't hold it against me.

He put it down to me being cranky about getting woken up. Then, like a magic trick, he produced a handful of dandelions, the white seed heads still whole.

I stared at the little things in his hand, thrown. "What are those for?" Roman said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Making wishes.

Remember to be specific." My hand closed into a fist. My heart kept clenching and letting go. Roman never watched anything. No films, no shows.

I'd brought up movies to him plenty of times and he was never willing to sit through one with me. A man like that. How would he know about dandelion wishes?

Obviously Roman had seen something somewhere, and that was why he'd asked. And then I thought about Vanessa's post again. I said it, and I sounded tired. "Stop it, Roman.

Go to sleep." But I'd forgotten what Roman is like when he won't let a thing go. We held out against each other for a few minutes.

In the end I was the one who broke, and I picked up the dandelions myself.

Putting it together with what he'd said about buying me presents, I started in with nothing in my voice. "Skincare." "Sure." "A watch." "Didn't buy that.

Wish again." And on it went. When it came to the last one, I raised it to my lips, and Roman suddenly caught my wrist. He looked into my eyes.

And then, out of nowhere, he said it very seriously. "Think it over properly before you wish." I didn't follow what he was getting at. I named some perfectly ordinary present.

Roman was silent for a long, long time. In the end he said nothing at all and went into the bathroom. I sat up and looked at the suit jacket he'd just taken off.

The pocket that should have lain flat was pushed out of shape. It was a small box, square on every side. I stared for a second, then lay back down and closed my eyes.

After a while Roman came out and lay down beside me. Like he was afraid of waking me, he laid his arm across my waist very carefully.

I heard the man say it, low and muffled. "Adeline… why wouldn't you wish for us to get married this year…" I shut my eyes tight at once.

I made myself into someone already deep asleep. Someone who hadn't heard a thing. Just as sleep was coming up over me, Roman's phone rang.

He was up and off the bed almost instantly, and he took it out to the balcony. The moment the balcony door shut, I opened my eyes.

I didn't have to think about it to know it was Vanessa calling. It was about three months ago, I think, that Roman and Vanessa got back in contact.

He started making a point of not using his phone in front of me. Which is why I was all but certain the gift with no name on it had come from Roman.

I pulled at the corner of my mouth and gave a small laugh at my own expense. Then I closed my eyes on my own.

Live long enough inside suspicion and you turn into a bird that has already been shot at once. The faintest rustle and I'd come apart over it. This kind of life was too tiring.

Chapter 6 I woke in the morning and shifted without thinking about it. Roman woke behind me and leaned in toward me.

The second my head cleared I turned my face aside and dodged the goodmorning kiss. Then I backed out of his arms without a word. His arm stiffened.

But he went along with it and let me go. "What are you doing today?" Short and to the point. "Going home for a bit." Calling off the engagement was a matter between two families, after all.

The Ashford side was handled. I still had to go back and tell my parents. Roman followed me into the closet.

By the time I was dressed he was standing there holding a tie, waiting for me. What he meant by it was obvious.

I glanced at it and walked past him without a flicker. "I'm in a bit of a rush. I'll do it next time." Then I went downstairs without looking back.

I didn't see the way Roman's eyes darkened behind me. Yes. I was pushing Roman away on purpose.

There was no way I could carry on around him like nothing had happened, not after knowing all of it.

Never mind that we'd be dissolving this engagement of ours soon anyway, the one that had never been more than a matching set of faces. It took me over an hour to tell my parents.

They didn't react much. Fair enough. They had been unanimous against the Ashford business at the time.

Going through with the arrangement had been me, going my own way over their heads. The way things stood now, they were probably glad to see it. Still, appearances had to be kept up.

My mother packed up the extra food from lunch and told me to take it over to Roman. I agreed. With Roman you have to know when to push and when to ease off.

I couldn't stay locked up against him forever. At the company I took the elevator up, a trip I had made plenty of times by now. Except the door to his office was shut.

His assistant was posted outside it, and the second he saw me, panic went across his face.

Before he could get a word out, I'd already pushed the door open, my face giving nothing away. The first thing to hit my eyes was a slender figure seen from behind.

I knew her far too well. It was Vanessa. I stalled for a couple of seconds. That was all