Aubrey's POV
"I'm going to need you to step aside," I say. My voice is level and apparently I've made my voice do extraordinary things under pressure.
"And I'm going to need you to come back to my office." He isn't moving and says it like he has decided the outcome. "Five minutes. That's all I'm asking, please."
"I don't have five minutes, I need to go home now."
"You're not going anywhere until we talk."
"Talk about what, exactly?"
"You know what." His gaze drops briefly to my neck, then back. "I am not having this conversation in the middle of the floor where anyone can—"
"Fine." I say it to stop him saying please again in that voice. "Five minutes."
His office receives us in amber and shadow. Finn closes the door and stays near the door. I keep my bag in my hands. It gives them something to do.
"Talk to me." His voice is low, nothing professional left in it. "The bruises. The flinching…" His eyes don't leave my face. "I've been watching you for two weeks. Don't tell me again that you bruise easily."
I open my mouth, but he continues.
"Look, I have lawyers." He says it first, before anything else. "Two of them on retainer who handle situations exactly like this. I can end him and his future before the end of the week."
"Stop." The word comes out sharp enough to interrupt him. "Please stop."
He takes one step forward and I have to hold my ground with genuine effort. My body pulling toward him on some frequency below conscious thought while my mind catalogues every reason to step back.
"I can destroy every relationship he has." Another step. "Make sure he doesn't rebuild one in this city or any other."
"You're not listening to me…"
He is so close now that I can see the exact configuration of his expression. The rage, the grief, the seven years of something unresolved in the construction of it.
"I can give you money." Another step, and I feel the warmth of him before he arrives, before he's close enough to touch, which is… not helpful. "An apartment, a legal team, whatever the process requires. You say the word, Aubrey. That's it. That's all."
"Finn, please…"
"I can give you a real life, not… this." His gaze drops to my neck, then to my mouth for a fraction of a second before returning to my face. "You just have to let me."
The desperation builds behind my sternum with nowhere to go.
Stop talking. Stop offering things like they're simple. Stop looking at me like that and talking about letting you, when you are the last person I should be letting anywhere near any of this.
The last step closes whatever remained of the distance.
I tip my chin up to keep his gaze and the movement costs me—the admission of how close he is, how close I let him get, how long I have been standing here not moving away. "You think you understand what I need but you don't."
"Then explain it to me."
"You can't just offer to burn someone's life down and expect gratitude for it." My throat locks and I feel the pressure building behind my eyes. "This is my life. And I have been managing it."
"Managing it." He says it flatly. "Your husband is hurting you. That is not a situation you manage. That is a situation you get the hell out of."
"And go where exactly?" The volume tears out of me before I intend it. "Where, Finn? To you? So I can be your charity case?" The sob finally forces its way through my chest. "So you can tell yourself you did something good before you go back to your fiancée and your life that has absolutely no room for—"
"You can't stay with him," he snaps.
"You don't know what I can and can't do."
"Aubrey." He reaches out and his hand finds its way to the side of my neck—not where the bruises are, but just beside them. He knows exactly where not to touch. "Look at me."
"I am looking at you." I really am. That's the problem. "And I am telling you that I can deal with my own problems. That you cannot fix this. There are things you don't… There are reasons."
"Then tell me the reasons." His thumb moves — one small arc beneath my ear, barely contact at all. "Say them out loud. I'm right here."
"Please, let go of me."
He doesn't. Finn steps closer instead, and the warmth of him is everywhere — his chest almost touching mine, his face close enough that I can see dark flecks in his hazel eyes that I’ve missed so much.
"You are allowed to need help," he says, barely above a whisper. "You are allowed to let someone…"
"There are things you don't know." I pull back and I feel the sudden absence of his hand in places I refuse to name. "Things that make everything you're offering impossible."
"Tell me." He reaches up again and this time his palm settles against my jaw. Tilts my face toward his. "Please, Aubrey."
"For God’s sake, Finn!" The fight goes out of me all at once and I snap feeling tears gathering in my eyes. "I'm pregnant!"
The words detonate and come out as a last resort.
A grenade I pulled the pin from because I was out of every other option. Because he was standing too close and his hands knew exactly where not to hurt me and I could feel myself about to do something catastrophic like actually believe him.
Finn goes absolutely still. The silence that follows has a specific texture. Not empty — dense. The kind of silence that has mass.
I keep talking because stopping means breathing, and breathing means falling apart, and I cannot fall apart in this room.
"Eleven weeks." My voice has dropped to something barely held together. "So you can take your lawyers and your apartment and your absolute certainty that you can fix anything and understand that there is nothing here to fix."
I hold his gaze even as everything behind it reshapes itself into an expression I don't have the architecture to withstand.
He doesn't know Daniel the way I do. What he did to me is not the only thing who he is. He wasn't always like this. He's still my husband, and he's going to be a father.
He might not always have been a good husband, but he can be a good father.
And I can’t take it away from my child.
I know how that sounds, I know exactly how it sounds. But Finn is asking me to believe that the better version of my future is one where I leave everything I know and trust that he’ll be there. That he’ll stay. That he might even take care of another man’s child.
That he’ll look at me and not eventually recognize it for what it is and won’t regret it.
"Fairy tales don't happen to women like me." My voice holds, I need it to hold. "Leaving is a fairytale. You are a fairytale, Finn. This, right now, you in this office — it is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me and still it isn't real. It isn't a life. It's a moment. And I have a child to think about now."
"Aubrey…"
"You're engaged." The word lands between us and stays there. "To a woman who belongs in your world in ways I never did and never will. You have a merger, a board, two families, and a ring that is currently sitting on her finger."
My throat is tightening and I am fighting it, keeping my chin level, keeping my voice somewhere in the vicinity of controlled.
"And I am supposed to believe that Finn Howell, CEO of a successful company, my boss, a billionaire heir, has decided he wants to rescue me, because… what?"
Finn closes the remaining distance between us in one step and I forget to breathe.
His other hand comes up slowly, open, giving me every moment to stop it, and his palm settles at cheek, thumb resting against my cheekbone. We are close enough that I can’t look anywhere except directly into his eyes.
I brace for anger. For the pressure of a man whose offer has been refused. What arrives is not anger.
"Because I've loved you for ten years, Aubrey. When you weren't mine and when you disappeared, and I built half this city in the space you left."
His thumb doesn't move. His voice is low and unhurried and entirely without defense.
My heart is doing something I absolutely refuse to acknowledge.
"I'm not going anywhere. Not because of Daniel. Not because of the pregnancy. Not because of anything you've said in this room."