His Six-Year Wait

"So you're the one who dumped Theo Ashford?" The man who said it was marrying my best friend in the morning. Ten minutes back, I'd been the one talking.

I put my last finger down and dropped the kill shot on her rehearsal dinner. "I dated a New York prince." Someone scoffed into his glass. "Every guy in this city with a decent last name calls himself a prince.

Which one?" "Greenwich," I said. "The Ashfords." The rooftop went dead quiet. That was when the groom spoke. Six years ago, I mailed that man a breakup letter.

Six years later, he was waiting for me in a hotel parking garage. The plate on his car was my birthday. Chapter 1 My vision was already doubling.

I dragged my eyelids up and looked at Miles across the table. "How do you... know his name?

You two... know each other?" He came back to himself and went on scrolling through his phone, face perfectly flat. "We don't.

But there's only one family named Ashford in Greenwich." "Right.

That one." Sunny leaned in, hungry for it. "If people call him a prince, his family's loaded?" "Mm." I drew the shape in the air with two fingers. "There's a whole lake behind his house.

You can take a boat out on it. They have their own dock." "A private lake. In Greenwich." She sat back. "That's not rich, that's another species.

Okay, was he good to you?" "He was good to me. Very good. He's the reason I finished college." "And was he hot?" A face surfaced in my head.

Fine and exact, like a Renaissance portrait. I nodded. "He'd make a movie star look ordinary." That's why you shouldn't meet someone that beautiful when you're young.

Everyone after him is a compromise. Sunny groaned. "Rich, hot, and he treated you like gold.

So why the hell did you dump him?" I sat with that a few seconds. "It wasn't... really dumping him. You know how those families are.

They don't take kindly to a girl who doesn't come from the right people." Miles perked up. He tossed his phone onto the table and tipped his chin at the rest of the terrace.

Screen up. Still lit. Sunny and I had flown in from San Francisco. The rest of them were Miles's people, and they read him in one look.

By the time the terrace door swung shut, there were three of us, and a glass of wine in my hand. "Go on. Did his mother come after you?" I shook my head. "Nothing like that.

A woman like her doesn't need to come after anybody." I pushed the glass back. "She invited me to lunch." "I didn't touch a bite." It was the spring I was graduating.

Theo wanted to take me somewhere, and asked me where I wanted to go. I'd seen a clip on TikTok, volcanoes and glaciers in Iceland, all that black and white.

I carried my phone out to show him, and stopped. He was on a call. His voice was low, holding something down. "I'm busy. I don't have time to come home." "She's busy too.

She has an internship and a thesis to finish." "If that's all you're going to say, don't call me again." He hung up and turned around, straight into my eyes.

He dropped his gaze fast.

It didn't cover anything. "Was that your family?" I said. "Mm." "Maybe you should go see them." "No need." He caught sight of the video on my screen and changed the subject. "So.

Have you decided where?" We'd just picked our dates for Iceland. And then, on my walk home from work, a car pulled up alongside me. The window slid down. A beautiful, composed face.

I glanced at the plate. Not the kind of plate an ordinary family gets to have. "Hello, Miss Halloway. I'm Theo's mother." Chapter 2 Mrs. Ashford smiled. "Don't look so frightened.

I only wanted to take you to lunch. I did mention it to Theo.

He told me Miss Halloway was far too busy for that sort of thing, so here I am, asking in person." I stayed where I was.

I looked down and called Theo. "Theo is entertaining clients right now. A small thing like this, better not to bother him." She lifted her eyes.

Two men were out of the car before I could move. One took the phone out of my hand. The other opened the door and invited me in. There was nothing to do about it. I got in.

The Ashford house was in Greenwich. Through the leaded glass I could see the lake behind it, flat and silver in the afternoon.

His family was further out of my reach than I had ever let myself imagine. There was another woman sitting in the front room. Mrs.

Ashford introduced her, still smiling. "That's Miss Voss. Theo's fiancée." The woman had the same finish to her that Theo did, the same quiet.

Like they'd been made in the same workshop. I couldn't move. When. How had I not seen it. Mrs. Ashford watched the color leave my face, and her smile deepened. "He never told you?

It's been settled for years." "Well.

I suppose there's no reason to explain family business to an outsider." She left me standing there and crossed the room. "So that's the one he keeps out of sight." Miss Voss barely looked up. "She's pretty enough." "She's a hard worker." Mrs.

Ashford said it like a compliment. "Valedictorian, I'm told. Otherwise she'd never have caught his eye at all." Miss Voss glanced at me once.

Nothing in her face. "Her people are from eastern Kentucky? How on earth did they meet? Does she have an angle?" "You needn't worry. Theo doesn't play games.

There's a history there. It's why I let it run as long as I did." "His father was on a painting trip in the mountains, years ago. Went down a slope and shattered his leg.

That girl ran all the way to the valley for help." "We left her a number. Told her to call if she ever needed anything. She never used it.

Then she turned eighteen, and her family tricked her home from school and locked her up. They were going to marry her off to a creditor's son to clear what they owed.

She called that number because there was nothing else left. Theo picked up. Lucky girl." "After that he started paying her way.

All the way through school here, until they finally met face to face. And here we are." Miss Voss's mouth twitched. "Tied to him that deeply.

It makes me sound like the stranger." Mrs. Ashford laughed under her breath. "She came out of the backwoods. Small in the ways that show. Poise like yours can't be taught.

Theo knows it too. Why else would he keep her hidden away, never once bring her out where anyone could see her?" "What came before is none of my business.

But if we're settling the wedding, what does Theo intend to do about her?" Mrs. Ashford didn't move an inch. "Theo has paid for that girl for years.

If she has any gratitude in her, she knows what she's supposed to do. And if she doesn't, there's still me. A small thing like this, I can decide myself.

There's no need to trouble Theo with it." Something dropped in my chest. The air wouldn't come. Behind me the two of them filled the doorway like a wall. My hand closed on nothing.

They'd taken the phone out of it an hour ago. I couldn't even run. So that was it. That was the thing in his voice on the phone.

He was about to marry someone else, and he didn't know how to tell me. Then, across all that quiet, Mrs. Ashford turned and looked at me. "Miss Halloway.

What do you think?" Chapter 3 Miss Voss let a little warmth into her face. "If you're handling it, I won't worry. I picked up some very good Pingus in Spain last month.

I'll have it sent over." Which meant it was settled. Mrs. Ashford laughed and told the housekeeper to start serving. "Sturgeon tonight. First of the season.

I had a chef flown in for it." I held on to what dignity I had left and said I was leaving. Mrs.

Ashford looked over, mild as anything. "If Miss Halloway won't stay, I won't insist." This time no one blocked the door. I went home and started packing.

Doing math about the rest of my life while I did it. The apartment was from the summer I started my internship. Theo bought it so my commute would be short.

Broken up, I had no reason to be in it. Housing wasn't the hard part. Two months to graduation. I could ask the company for a room in their building early. We'd skip Iceland.

I talked myself through it while I folded. It's freezing there anyway. Nothing to see. Every dollar Theo had ever spent on me was written down in a ledger. I'd go through it.

Pay back what I could now. The rest I'd save up and send him in pieces. We'd had years together. He wasn't small enough to ask for it the day we broke up. What else.

I made a list, item by item, of everything that had to be pulled apart. The list kept getting longer. Then my eyes went to the ring on my hand, and I came apart.

He'd put it there and said we'd get married when I graduated. He'd said it out loud. I sat down on the floor and cried until I couldn't get a breath in.

My hands shook so badly the ring wouldn't come off. It wouldn't come off. The keypad lock beeped. The door came open hard. Theo's chest was heaving.

His knuckles were white on the handle. He saw me still sitting there. He took a long breath and shut the door behind him, quietly.

Then he walked over, lifted the clothes out of my suitcase, and hung them back in the closet. I took them down. He put them back. I stopped counting how many times. Then I broke.

I shoved everything into the case in one armful. "Theo. We're done." He was quiet a long moment. His phone went off against the counter. Two words on the screen. Mom.

He looked right at me, picked up, and put it on speaker. "I'll say it one more time." "I am not marrying Odette Voss." "You went to see her today." "Go near her again and that road you paved for me, I won't take a single step down it." The line stayed open a long time.

Nobody said anything. He ended the call and laid the phone face down on the table. "I've never wanted Odette Voss. I was never engaged to her." "That was their decision.

It was never mine." I didn't answer. I kept packing. He came up behind me and put his hand over mine. "Wrennie. I love you." I turned and his eyes were red.

That was when I saw the rest of it. Wine down the whole front of his shirt. His face flushed, and under the flush, the faint print of a hand.

Right then it hurt worse to look at him than to think about myself. I put my palm on his cheek and made myself smile. "Theo, I'm fine. Whatever these years cost, I came out ahead.

You should just... do what they want. Marry Miss Voss." He pulled me in and locked both arms around my waist. "I won't. Nobody forces me into anything." His throat worked.

Once, twice. "Wren. We are not breaking up. I can handle this. Trust me." Being held gives you strength. That's not nothing. I held on to him and stopped hearing the rest of it.

It hadn't gone that far yet. Mrs. Ashford couldn't move her son. That was the whole reason she'd come for me instead. I thought it through, and nodded. "Okay." "We keep the plan.

Iceland, in a few weeks." "Okay." But something arrived before Iceland did. His transfer orders. Chapter 4 By the time I got his message and ran home, Theo had already packed.

Two men I recognized were standing behind him. I blinked twice and lost it. "Why would they move you out of New York? It's me.

Isn't it me?" He set the bag down and held me. "Don't cry. It's a normal internal rotation. Two years. Two years and I'm back." I couldn't get the words out clean. "Where?

Where are they sending you?" He looked at the floor. He was quiet for a while. Then he said the name of a place. I'd never heard of it. I pulled out my phone and searched it.

A small town, remote, halfemptied. On the far side of the country. Mountains on every side. From the county seat you change buses three times to get in. Thirteen hundred miles.

It landed on me all at once. This was his mother, warning him. I got my hands on his chest and shoved him back, crying so hard I couldn't see. "Go to Greenwich. Right now.

Go tell her you'll take the arrangement.

It's a merger marriage, that's all it is, you can just ..." "Wren." He cut me off, and his voice came down like a door. "I don't care about any of it.

And you want me to give you up over it?" Two years together. He had never once spoken to me like that. He meant it. When he first told me how he felt, I hesitated too.

People like us weren't supposed to be friends at all. Every year I owed him more. Equal was something we'd left behind a long time ago. Feelings had no business getting into that.

But he was stubborn. He was the man who came for me when there was no one else. How could I not. He never once asked if I was grateful. He only ever asked if I wanted him.

He let out a breath. "I want you, you want me. There is no better reason than that to be together." And slowly I came to believe it.

That if two people love each other, nothing else counts. Until I sat in that room with Odette Voss. The ease of her. The kind money and four generations buy. I will never have it.

Not in this life.

I said I was sorry, over and over. "I just don't want to be the thing that drags you down." He breathed in and made his voice gentle again. "You're not dragging me anywhere.

I have been trying to get out from under my mother for years. This is the best shot I'll ever get. I have to go.

Will you wait for me?" I didn't say anything. "Will you wait for me?" He tipped my chin up and made me look at him. He wasn't going to let me off it. "...Yes." His eyes were red.

He pulled me against him and kissed my forehead. "Cell service out there is bad. If you miss me, write to me." "Okay." "Stay right here and wait.

It's only two years." That was the last time I ever saw him. A month after Theo left, his letter came. He said he was doing well out there.

Remote, but the people were decent and the country was beautiful. Sometimes he went to the neighbors' houses and taught their kids to read. Wrennie.

Work hard, eat well, don't think about anything else. In two years I'm coming home to marry you. Mrs. Ashford came to find me again.

Whatever was on her face, it wasn't anger. "Don't imagine you've won." "Today he'll throw away his future for you. Look again in three years.

In five." "When men with half his talent and none of his name are climbing past him, he will blame you.

He will ask himself why you didn't have the decency to leave while he still had a chance." "You think love clears every obstacle. It doesn't.

In the end the two of you will simply hate the sight of each other." Chapter 5 I couldn't think of a single thing to say back to her. It was almost summer.

The cold started at the base of my spine anyway and went everywhere. I made it home on nothing but nerve. Someone was waiting outside my door.

Odette Voss handed me a few photographs. "Do you want to see Theo? I'll take you." Thirteen hundred miles. Hours in the air.

When we landed, her people were waiting with an SUV to drive us up into the mountains. We drove a long time before the car pulled onto the shoulder.

She pointed down the slope, at a knot of people near the shallows. "There. That's him." I thought about the first time I ever saw Theo Ashford.

Broad shoulders, narrow waist, a suit with a crease so sharp it could cut, standing outside the gates of my school. A man built like that stayed lit up in any crowd.

I never learned how to look away from him. Now I had my face against the window, and I had to search twice before I found him. He'd gone brown from the sun.

He was helping four other men catch a pig. He didn't know how. The pig went through him, twice. Mud up his pant legs. Shirt ruined. Filthy, exactly like the photographs in my lap.

I had never once in my life thought of him as pitiful. My nose burned. The tears came before I could stop them. How could he let himself look like that. Odette watched him too.

Her fingers stopped on the window switch. "Of all the oldmoney heirs in this city, Theo carries it best.

My father says he might go further than his mother did." "A woman doesn't get where Vivienne Ashford is by being soft. Watching her son suffer will not move her one inch.

So let me be plain with you.

If he keeps this up, she is going to cut him loose." She put the window down and lit a cigarette. "Honestly, Wren, I don't want to stand in the middle of the two of you.

But I've taken everything my family has ever handed me. I don't get to flip the table the year they finally need something back." "Theo doesn't understand that. He flipped it.

And look what it bought him." "He owned this city. Half of it lined up just to do him a favor." "And now?" "Today he catches somebody's pig.

Tomorrow he goes looking for somebody's lost dog." "Wren. Is this what you wanted for him?" "I don't love him, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.

Is love really worth more than a man's whole future? If you think it is, go on. Get out and walk down there.

Once Aunt Vivienne is done with him, my family has no reason to marry into anything." I braced myself on the window frame. My fingers wouldn't hold still.

Down below, they finally got the pig. The men trussed it and carried it off. Theo stayed behind, bent over, hands on his knees. Like a birch bent under snow.

He waited until his breath came back before he straightened up to follow them. My hand was flat against the window before I knew it was moving. Half an inch of glass.

A few steps, and he stopped. He lifted his head and looked straight up the slope, right at us. Chapter 6 There were too many trees on that hill. He never saw the car.

He turned and kept walking. The sun went down. I sat back and made my voice even. "Miss Voss. Take me home." "You're sure?" "...Thank you for this." She didn't say anything else.

She told the driver to go. She'd gotten what she came for. In the mirror Theo got smaller and smaller. The wind off the mountain came in cold. The road turned.

The whole valley went out of sight. I closed my eyes. The air had gotten into my hair, and it was damp against my temples.

Back in New York, it took me two days to pack up everything I had. Before I left I cleaned the apartment until it shone. Like nobody had ever lived there.

Somewhere over the middle of the country, I did the math. The letter would reach him any day now. That summer, everything with Theo Ashford stopped mid sentence.

For six years after, not one word about him reached me. Not one. I worked. I started a company. I stayed alive.

The first year I worked for somebody else and learned how to take a product from nothing to launch. The second year I went out on my own. I built a community app for women.

I called it Glimmer. Three months after launch the download count still hadn't cracked three digits. I had nowhere to fall back to, so I didn't stop. There wasn't much free time.

Sometimes I dreamed about him. I'd wake up and sit on the edge of the bed and not move. Longing is a long rainy season.

I lived inside that wet gray air, and the part of me that was Theo never once dried out. For years the same regret. If we could have said goodbye properly. Just that.

The terrace had gone quiet. I wiped my face and started apologizing. "God, I'm sorry. The night before your wedding and I'm doing this to you." Miles studied me for a moment.

Then he picked up the bottle and filled my glass again. "Confession night. Drink whatever you want, Wren. I'm buying." Sunny glared at him. "The wedding is tomorrow.

She gets drunk and where exactly do I find a maid of honor? You want me to run a casting call at midnight?" "Relax, babe. I've got it handled." He turned back. "Wren. Seriously.

Do you still love him?

Would you still want him?" I tipped my head and thought about it honestly, and nodded. "Yes." Then I shook my head. "But we can't." He'd probably been married for years. Kids, even.

And if he wasn't, every reason it fell apart then is still standing now. Six years doesn't make me stupid enough to forget that. Night air pushed in through the terrace door.

Warm and damp, that particular New York softness in the spring. It went over your skin like a hand. Wine and warm wind. It gets to you. The room started tilting.

Somewhere in the haze, somebody was on the phone. The voice came and went, and it was way too excited. "I'm giving you one chance.

Get your ass back from Denver." "I swear to God it's her." "If I'm lying, you own me." The alarm went off and my head still hurt.

I got up, stood under the water until it ran cold, and put on whatever was on top of the bag. Sunny called. "Sweetheart, come down as soon as you're ready.

Miles sent a friend to get you. We'll do hair and makeup at the salon and go to the hotel together." "Don't bother, just text me the address.

I'll take a car." "You flew across the country to stand up for me and you want to take an Uber?" I got my shoes on and caught the elevator. "It just feels like an imposition." "It's fine.

Miles says the guy's his ride or die, and he's finally back in the city, so we may as well get some use out of ..." The elevator hit P2 and the doors chimed open.

Her voice went thin and hollow in all that concrete. "... okay, Miles just texted. His friend's waiting in Section C. Colorado plate, BM 0628.

Gray Range Rover." My feet stopped. 0628. My birthday. "This friend of his. Is he from New York?" "Yeah, but he works in Denver.

He wasn't going to make it, then last night he suddenly changed his mind and said he's coming ..." Chapter 7