Corrine flinched with hurt but he didn’t stop.
“It was mediocre, Corrine. At best. I don’t say that to be cruel, but you clearly need the clarity. It meant nothing to me. Because I was in pieces and you just happened to be there. Like a lost fucking puppy whose pawing at the wrong door.”
Corrine’s eyes burned. “You think I didn’t know that? You think I didn’t see what kind of state you were in?”
“Then why the fuck are you here?” he snapped. “What are you hoping for? Another drunk mistake? Another pity fuck? What exactly do you think this is?”
“I thought…maybe you needed someone.”
“Ihadsomeone. I lost her. Because of me. That’s the part you’re not getting. I don’t want to be saved, and I sure as hell don’t want you.”
Corrine swallowed hard, blinking fast.
“You’re not the reason I got divorced,” he added, softer now. He wouldn’t ever blame anyone for his wife leaving him buthim.It didn’t matter what another woman threw at him, it should have never been enough to make him even look their way. “I should’ve never let your little remarks fly. Never given my wife a reason to even think you was on some shit, when Iknewyou were, but I was too fuckin’ self-absorbed to check that shit. That was all me. Every moment I didn’t show up for her the way I should have but you were part of the aftermath and I hate that part of myself. So no, I don’t want to revisit it. I’m done making peace with my worst decisions.”
The silence that followed was long. Corrine finally nodded; eyes glassy but defiant.
“Fuck you, Adair,” she whispered.
He nodded once. “Already did. Shit was weak.”
Adair leaned back again, staring at the ceiling now. The moment was over. The confession. The confrontation. All of it. There was no peace in being right. Just emptiness.
Adair sat alone in the silence Corrine left behind. The door clicked shut, but her perfume lingered, expensive and floral. He hated that he knew it so well. Hated that it used to mean distraction. Now it just smelled like a version of himself he wanted dead and buried. He ran both hands down his face, bracing his elbows on the desk, head hanging low between them.
What the hell was he even doing anymore?
Chasing caseloads. Showing up early. Staying late. Chasing partnerships he used to think would feel like purpose but the office was just noise now. A shelter from the wreckage he’d caused. A cage with glass walls and no bars.
And none of it—none of it—brought her back.
NothisSabine. Not the version of himself he liked in her eyes.
Adair shifted in his chair, gaze catching the sleek gold logo etched on the glass wall just beyond his door—his new firm. Notthe one where it all started. Not the one where he met Corrine. He’d left that place not long after Sabine left him.
New title. New office. New reputation to protect.
But the ghosts followed him anyway.
And somehow…so did Corrine. She wasn’t part of the initial transition. He hadn’t recommended her. Hell, he didn’t even tell her he was leaving. But two months in, she showed up. Said she’d been headhunted. Said she didn’t even know he worked here until onboarding. He didn’t believe her then, and he didn’t believe her now.
Still, he couldn’t prove otherwise. Couldn’t claim she was stalking him without sounding like a narcissistic asshole and truth be told, he wasn’t running from her when he left. He was running from who he became while he knew her.
The man who kissed another woman the night his wife needed him most. The man who drank too much and came home too little. The man who, for one long second, didn’t feel like being a husband or a father.
Corrine didn’t break his marriage but she sure as hell stepped on the cracks making them bigger and he’d let her.
So even now, when Sabine’s voice echoed in his memory from one of their many arguments—“It never ended, Adair. It never fucking ended”—he understood why she said it. Why she meant it because how could she believe it was over when the same woman showed up everywhere, all over again? He hated the optics. Hated that his shame had a name and a desk just a few doors from his own but the guilt?
That stayed right here with him.
That part, he never tried to run from.
Because it was his.
All his.
Outside, the sun started to dip behind a skyscraper. The city didn’t care that a man sat in his office—successful, respected,alone. It didn’t care that he’d given up everything to be everything and ended up with nothing. He closed his eyes and whispered it out loud. Just once. Just to himself.