Adrien didn’t say a word as we left the sidewalk.
His hand stayed firm at the small of my back— steady and grounding—but the silence between us was anything but calm. It throbbed with tension, like a scream waiting to burst.
The car door clicked open with a soft chime. I climbed into the passenger seat. he skin of the leather was cool against mine, the air was fresh and smelled of clean linen but also of something else—something sharp and masculine. His cologne.
I fumbled with the seatbelt. My hands wouldn’t stay still. Max’s voice still echoed in my head—Isa, I loved you.
I bit down a bitter laugh.Love? From Max? That word felt poisoned now.
God, what a joke.
Adrien slid in next to me, filled with the quiet confidence that always made me want to hit something, or yell at something. Ugh.
Click.
His seatbelt slid into place. The engine hummed to life but the tension didn’t ease. Neither of us spoke.
Not until we turned the corner.
Then he said it.
"Pookie Bear."
I snapped my head toward him so fast I almost whipped my own neck.
He didn’t even look at me. He sat there with his expression unreadable, lips twitching with a barely contained sense of self-pleasure.
"Don’t tell me you forgot," he said casually. "That’s what she called him, right?"
I just stared at him, showing no reaction.
He cleared his throat dramatically, and then pitched his voice an octave higher in a terrible imitation of Madison. "Pookie Bear! I found the purse in the trunk! It was hiding behind your spine!"
He even wiggled his fingers like jazz hands.
I glared at him.
He kept going, relentless.
"Oh Isa," he purred mock-sweetly, fluttering his nonexistent eyelashes. "What a surprise to see you here."
"Are you done?" I asked quietly, voice flat.
He put on that annoying smirk again and replied, "I didn’t say I was starting."
I turned to face him entirely, my knee brushing the console between us. "Why did you do that?" I asked. My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "Back there. With Max."
His smirk faltered, just a little.
"Do what?"
"Don’t play dumb. You turned a simple situation into a full-blown messy spectacle!" I said as I snapped my fingers.
He didn’t reply.
The engine purred softly. The city lights blurred past outside, but it felt like we were moving in slow motion.
"So that’s it?" I scoffed. "Now you’re deaf too?"
That did it.
He slammed the brakes a little too hard at a red light. The sudden stop jolted me forward and I slammed against the seatbelt.
"No," he bit out, turning toward me at last. His eyes were hard, cold, focused. "I was giving you space to decide if you were going to keep pretending you weren’t furious. I guess we are done with that now."
I caught my breath.
"You think this is funny?" I whispered with my hands balled into fists in my lap. "You—mocking me. Turning that entire scene into a joke while I was standing there trying not to fall apart."
His voice dropped, low and controlled. Dangerous. "I wasn’t mocking you." He turned back to the road, jaw tight. "I was mocking him. That pathetic excuse of a man and the Barbie clone he cheated with."
My chest was rising and falling quickly, and shallow.
God, I didn’t know if I wanted to scream or cry or crawl into a hole.
"You don’t get to do that," I whispered. "You don’t get to play hero. You’re not my boyfriend , you’re not even my friend. This isn’t your business."
"You’re right," he said stiffly. "It’s not my business."
Slowly, he turned his head. His eyes locked on mine—fire and ice, restrained but furious.
"But you cried over that bastard," The words hit like a blade, every syllable slow and cruel. "You poured your heart out to me—that night, in my car—whining and sobbing like he broke something precious. And now I finally see the piece of shit who did it and I’m supposed to just—what? Smile and nod?"
I froze.
My mind went blank.
My heart slammed once against my ribs, then dropped.
"Wait..." I breathed, my voice cracking. My eyes searched his face, desperate, disbelieving. "You... that was you? That night?"
He didn’t answer me but his silence was louder than a confession.
He clenched his jaw, and the muscle moved between the clench and twitch like he hated himself for letting it slip in the first place. Like this was a kept secret six feet under and he just accidentally dug it up with his hands.
I leaned back slowly. My heart was pounding in my ears.
Oh my God.
My brain raced back to that memory, the night after Aria left to go to the bathroom, the stranger’s car I climbed into, thinking he was a chauffeur, and I remember he looked like a god of beauty and I broke down in front of him, in the car.
The one who didn’t comfort me, the one I kissed impulsively without permission, was my, now, boss. The man I kissed like a drowning girl reaching for anything, even a mistake.
And he let me.
"But... but I thought you were a driver," I stammered, my mind reeling back to that dark night. The expensive car, the quiet competence, the way he just... let me fall apart. "Aria’s driver." I said mostly to myself
Oh. My. God
I kissed him.
I kissed Adrien walton.
I kissed this man—this cocky, irritating, insufferable asshole—when I was at my lowest, when I was sobbing over Max, snot and all, and he just... let me?
I stared at him, my mouth dry, my pulse racing with the pounding in my ears.
No.
No, it can’t be.
But now that I knew... I couldn’t unsee any of it.
The way his jaw clenched. The exact curve of his lips.
The fire in his eyes — that same unspoken storm I had seen a glimpse of in the rearview mirror that night.
Warm sunlight spilled through the windows, casting long shadows across the leather seats. Heat flushed my cheeks, and my stomach twisted tight and sick with a knot I couldn’t shake loose. My hand flew up to cover my mouth, trying to stifle the scream that was building in my throat.
Wait.
Adrien is my boss
I kissed my boss.
I threw myself at my boss.
And he—he kissed me back like he wanted to devour me.
I felt like the ground beneath me had disappeared.
"You..." My voice cracked again. "You knew it was me all this time? And you... you hired me anyway?"
His eyes flicked to mine, steady and unreadable, fire and ice wrapped together.
I swallowed hard. My chest tightened.
"Why?"
Adrien’s expression didn’t change, but that only made it worse.
"Jesus," I muttered, dragging a hand through my hair.