I felt a gnawing anxiety at the uncertainty of it. A panic at the possibility that this was all over.

I heard her chain rake across the lock, and I braced myself for our first encounter since last night. But when the door opened, it wasn’t Vanessa who answered it. It was…some guy?

He stood in the doorway holding Grace. He was shorter than me but muscular. Shaggy blond hair, tan skin. He was wearing a clunky faux fur jacket that came to his knees. It was open and he had no shirt on. A shark-tooth necklace hung around his neck.

“Hey,” he said. “You must be the babysitter. Come in.” He spoke over his shoulder. “Hey, butterfly, your sitter’s here.”

I was frozen where I stood. Rendered completely mute.

“She just had a bottle,” he said, handing me the baby. “I changed her diaper. She should be good for a bit.”

I let him put Grace in my arms right there, still standing in the doorway.

She was swaddled. It wasn’t Vanessa’s handiwork. The blanket was twisted into some weird intricate knot. He saw me looking at it and he nodded at her. “It’s an old Aboriginal wrapping method. A medicine woman taught me.”

An Aboriginal wrapping—

Who the fuck was this? What the hell was going on?

And then Vanessa came up behind him and the whole thing went from bad to worse.

She took the breath right out of my lungs. Her makeup was done and she wore a fitted burgundy dress and heels. Her hair was down and curled. She was stunning.

She was going-on-a-date stunning.

“Hey, come on in,” she said distractedly, fiddling with an earring she was putting in—or trying to. Her fingers were fumbling. She nodded at the guy. “This is Drake. Drake, Adrian.” She dropped the diamond stud and made an impatient huffing noise as she knelt to pick it up.

“Here, let me help you,” Drake said, putting his hand out.

She handed the earring to him and stood still while he got closer to put it in, tipping her head to the side.

“You look nice, butterfly,” he said, his voice low.

She gave him a flirty sideways smile. “Thanks. So do you.”

Hot, thick jealousy ripped through me. There was something familiar about the way he touched her. Like he’d done it before.

As soon as he was done with her earring, she pivoted to grab a small purse.

“Hey, I know we’re supposed to talk, but can we do it after?” she said to me, putting on her coat. “Drake and I need to get going. We’ll be at Vermilion.”

I wrinkled my forehead. “Vermilion? They’re not open on Mondays—”

“He bought out the restaurant.”

He bought out the—

???

“Hey, thanks for watching Grace,” she said. “She’ll probably sleep for a bit. I’ll be home by eight.”

Then she edged past me out the door with Drake trailing behind her and was gone.

He never put on a shirt.

What. The. FUCK.

Who the fuck was Drake? And why was he taking her to Vermilion? I wanted to take her to Vermilion!

I looked around her apartment, holding the baby, feeling whiplashed.

The room still smelled like Vanessa’s perfume. There were dresses on her bed. Lots of them. And shoes all over the floor. It looked like she’d tried on her whole damn closet. It was a studio. Did she try them on with him sitting there watching? What the hell?

I pulled out my phone and called Becky. She answered on the first ring. “’Sup, boss?” She popped a bubble in my ear.

“Do you know somebody named Drake? Does Vanessa ever talk about him?”

The line went silent, and I thought I lost the call. “Why?” she said ominously.

“Vanessa’s out with him—”

“You let her go out with Drake? Oh my God. Oh. My. God.” She let out a shaky breath. “Okay, this is going to be okay. Adrian, this is very important. When you saw him was he wearing a shirt?”

“What?”

“A shirt! Did he have a shirt on?!”

“No. Just some fake fur jacket, open in the front—”

“Noooooo! Oh God!” she wailed. “It’s worse than I thought. He’s pulling out all the stops! She’s totally helpless around his pec muscles. He might as well have brought a hypnotist with him! Did you know his chest is insured for over two million dollars? Did you? Almost as much as his biceps. Not as much as his glutes.”

She gasped for air. “I should have known. I should. Have. Known. Mercury’s in retrograde. Your horoscope today said you were getting an unexpected visitor. This is so fucked up. I wanted you guys to get married and have a million babies, and now she’s probably halfway to Bali on a catamaran!”

“Becky, who the fuck is he?”

I could hear her breathing heavily on the other end and for the first time, her dramatics were pissing me off.

“He’s an extreme sport vlogger. He’s got a channel even bigger than hers. Quiksilver sponsored his last surfing competition, the one where he got bitten by a shark and just kept going?

“If you’re Jesus’s Abs, Drake Lawless is Lucifer’s Penis. He’s like the final boss boyfriend that you have to fight in a video game once you’ve defeated all the lesser exes. He looks like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, only with blond hair and tribal tattoos. And sorry, but he’s, like, way cooler than you. I mean, I hate to say it, but it’s true. You won’t even get on a plane, and Drake carried her down a mountain in Venezuela wrapped in a parachute. Oh my God, they’re probably getting married by a shaman, right now. How could you let this happen?!”

I paced Vanessa’s tiny living room. “Is he her ex or—”

“Yes, he’s her ex! How can you not know this? The Drake-and-Vanessa saga was, like, the biggest YouTube romance of all time. There were T-shirts and everything! They were all crazy about each other and had tantric sex on, like, every beach in Barbados. And then she broke up with him because he had that coal-walking accident in Tibet and she told him he had to quit doing dangerous stunts, and he was all, ‘I can’t! I do it for the children!’ Because he donates all his money to pediatric cancer research? So she left him and he was so devastated he spent two months in a tiki hut on his private island making sculptures of her out of driftwood.” She paused. “He brought her up like three times during his TED Talk. We were all really worried about him.”