Something was definitely off. “You didn’t even finish your ice cream.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She stood and walked her bowl into the kitchen.

I followed, speaking quietly so Charlie wouldn’t hear. “Is something else bothering you? Why do I feel like we just did something to upset you?”

Stella smiled, but it was clearly forced. “You didn’t. I just…need to lie down, I think.”

I looked back and forth between her eyes, then nodded. “Alright. Well, let me call you an Uber.”

“I can take the train.”

“No, I’ll call you an Uber. You’re not feeling well.” I pulled the phone from my pocket and opened the app. Punching in Stella’s address, the screen flashed that the driver would be arriving pretty damn fast. I turned the screen and showed it to her. “Four minutes.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Stella spent a minute collecting her things and said goodnight to Charlie, who gave her a big hug.

“I’ll be back in one second,” I said to my daughter. “You finish up your ice cream while I walk Stella out.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

At the front door, I stepped outside with Stella and pulled it partially closed behind me. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m positive.” She looked down. “Sometimes a headache can make me nauseous, so I just think it’s better if I get home.”

Again, I wasn’t buying it, but I nodded anyway. “Okay.”

A car that matched the description of the Uber pulled up at the curb, so I cupped Stella’s face and kissed her lips softly. “Check the license plate before you get in. It should end in six-F-E. And text me when you get home.”

She nodded. “Goodnight.”

I watched as Stella walked around the car and read the back plate, then climbed into the backseat. She spoke to the driver, and I waited for her to look back and wave goodbye one last time. But she never did. The car simply pulled away from the curb.

Something was definitely off, and my gut told me it had nothing to do with a headache.

CHAPTER 27

Hudson

Stella wasn’t at work when I arrived on Monday morning. I walked by her office three times before my nine o’clock meeting. When she still hadn’t shown up, I shot off a quick text.

Hudson: Everything okay?

The lack of my phone buzzing caused more of a distraction than if it had rung loudly during the presentation I was supposed to be watching. I couldn’t seem to focus. The other night after Stella left, I’d managed to talk myself into thinking I’d overanalyzed shit—that it was just a headache, and everything would be back to normal by Sunday morning. But obviously that hadn’t happened.

By the time my meeting ended, it was almost eleven, and I still hadn’t heard from Stella. Her office door was locked, and the receptionist said she hadn’t seen her today, so I headed down to talk to my sister.

“Hey. Have you talked to Stella today? She’s not in yet.”

My sister stopped writing and looked up. “Hi, Hudson. It’s nice to see you this lovely morning, too. I’m doing well, thanks for asking.”

“I’m not in the mood…”

She frowned. “What crawled up your butt?”

“Can you just tell me if you’ve spoken to Stella today?”

Olivia sighed. “Yeah, I spoke to her twice. She’s working from home. Didn’t she mention it to you?”

I shook my head. “Is she feeling okay?”

A look of concern registered on my sister’s face. “She said she’d had a headache that kept her up the last two nights, but she was feeling better. Everything okay with you two?”

I raked my hand through my hair. “Yeah. I think so.”

My sister gave me the once-over, and her lips formed a grim line. “You think so? But you’re not sure. What did you do?”

“Me? Why do you think I did something?”

“Usually when a man isn’t sure if he did something wrong, he did.”

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

When I got back to my office, my phone finally buzzed after more than two hours of waiting.

Stella: Everything is fine. Going to work from home today.

I felt a modicum of relief that she wasn’t completely ignoring me, but not enough to make the uneasiness in the pit of my stomach go away. So I wrote back.

Hudson: Headache gone?

It seemed like a simple-enough question, yet I watched as the little dots started to move around, then stopped, then started again before completely stopping. Ten minutes later, a response finally came.

Stella: Yes, headache is gone. Thanks for checking in.

Thanks for checking in felt a hell of a lot like Now leave me alone.

Whatever. I had work to do. So rather than waste more hours than I already had overanalyzing shit, I tossed my phone on my desk. Maybe I just didn’t understand women.

***

The next day, I was happy as shit to see light streaming from Stella’s office when I arrived at seven o’clock.

“Hey. You’re in…”

Stella had her nose buried in her laptop. She looked up and smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah. Sorry about not coming in yesterday.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. You don’t work for me. The space here is yours to use as you need. I was just worried maybe something more was going on than a headache…”

Stella shuffled some papers around on her desk and avoided eye contact. “No, nothing going on. Just a headache. I get them sometimes.”

A few days ago, I would have walked into her office, shut the door behind me, and taken her mouth in a kiss that left me with a raging hard-on. Yet at the moment, the vibe I felt kept me at her door. In other words, it wasn’t just a headache. But she was working, and I had a meeting I needed to prep for, so I wasn’t going to push it right now.

Nodding toward my office, I said, “I have an early meeting that’ll take up most of my morning. You want to get together this afternoon and go through the deliveries that haven’t come in yet? We can talk about whatever else is a priority that you might want me to jump in on.”

“I actually went through the deliveries yesterday. We’re on track as of now. I think I have a handle on things. I’m going to sit with Olivia and go through the final marketing stuff in a little while.”

“Oh…okay.” I shrugged. “Maybe lunch later, then?”

“I’m going to work through lunch with Olivia. And I have a meeting later this afternoon uptown at Fisher’s office.”

“Fisher’s office?”

“It’s nothing to do with Signature Scent.”

Clearly she was giving me the brush off, but I was thick…

“Dinner later?”

She frowned. “I’ll probably just get a bite to eat with Fisher afterward.”

I couldn’t get my lips to turn upward to pretend everything was fine, no matter how hard I tried. The best I could muster was a nod to feign understanding. “Let me know if there’s anything you need from me.”

“Thanks, Hudson.”

CHAPTER 28

Stella

Three nights ago

It had to be a coincidence.

I knew that wasn’t true, but I kept telling myself it was as the Uber pulled away from the curb. If I didn’t, I was pretty sure I was going to vomit all over the poor guy’s backseat. I was completely freaked out.

The minute we pulled up to my apartment, I flew out of the car and raced for the elevator. When it didn’t come in two seconds, I decided I’d rather keep busy running up eight flights of stairs than stand waiting while the inside of my chest felt like a ticking time bomb.

In my apartment, I ran straight for my bedroom and dropped to the floor to pull out the plastic bins I kept stowed under my bed. In my panic, I couldn’t remember what the outside of the diary I was searching for looked like, or even which storage bin had the most recent books. So I grabbed the first container and started to yank them out one by one.

The first bin had at least thirty different diaries packed into it that I’d collected over the years, but none that were recent. I didn’t bother to put anything back before ripping the top off the next plastic container. Just a few books into that one, I lifted a red, leather-bound volume that sent a jolt of electricity through my body. Ten seconds ago, I couldn’t have identified it in a lineup, but the minute I held it in my hand, I knew. I just knew it was the one.

Unlike every other book I picked up, I didn’t immediately flip it open and rush to read. Instead, I took a deep breath and steadied myself as the seriousness of the situation hit me all over again. If what I suspected was right… Oh God, I know I’m right.

A wave of nausea rolled through me, and my hands shook as I cracked open the book and began to read.

Dear Diary,