We Will Love Again – Episode 16
Alaina did not breathe freely until the elevator doors closed. Even then, Noah’s demand followed her downward through the hotel: Tell me the truth about that day. The engagement ring lay hidden in her bag once more, but its discovery had destroyed the safety of silence.
She pressed the chain through the fabric and remembered Peter retrieving the ring from the street after Noah walked away. He had asked whether she wanted him to explain everything. Alaina had refused, believing a clean wound would heal faster than a complicated truth.
Five years later, nothing about the wound was clean. Noah had built an empire around it, while she had carried the evidence of her love against her heart. One careless moment had now given him reason to question every word she said.
Upstairs, Noah stood where she had left him. The physical contracts remained unopened, their supposed urgency exposed as the excuse it had always been. All he could see was the ring resting in his palm and the pain Alaina failed to hide.
He had wanted regret from her. Instead, he had found grief. Regret belonged to someone disappointed by the outcome of a selfish choice; grief belonged to someone who had lost something she never wanted to surrender.
Noah called Aaron before good judgment could intervene. His assistant answered on the third ring, voice heavy with sleep. “Boss, unless the company is burning down, this had better wait until morning.”
“Find Peter.” Noah walked toward the windows, his reflection hard against the glass. “The man Alaina left with five years ago. I want to know where he is, what he does, and what his relationship with her was.”
Aaron became alert at once. “Do you have a last name?”
Noah’s silence supplied the humiliating answer. He had hated a faceless man for half a decade without knowing enough to identify him. “Start with Alaina’s records from our hometown. Discreetly.”
“This doesn’t sound like acquisition research.” Aaron’s caution was gentle but deliberate. Triple AI possessed resources that could make personal curiosity dangerously intrusive.
Noah looked at the untouched contracts. “Then call it due diligence.” He ended the conversation before Aaron could challenge him again.
Alaina returned to her apartment near dawn. Sophie was asleep on the couch after waiting for her, one lamp still burning beside an untouched mug of tea. The sight of uncomplicated loyalty nearly broke Alaina’s remaining composure.
Sophie woke when the door clicked shut. “Where have you been?” She took in Alaina’s rumpled clothes and bloodless face. “What did Noah do?”
“He found the ring.” The confession left Alaina in a whisper. “It fell out of my bag, and he recognized it.”
Sophie stared at the chain Alaina drew from her purse. “Maybe that’s good. Maybe he’ll finally realize you never stopped loving him.”
“It will only make him ask why.” Alaina sank onto the couch. “If he learns his mother forced the choice, he’ll hate her. She raised him alone. I won’t be the reason he loses her too.”
“You’re still protecting everyone except yourself.” Sophie sat beside her. “Nora made the decision to interfere. Whatever happens when Noah learns that belongs to her, not you.”
Alaina shook her head. She remembered Noah in the interview saying he could depend only on himself. If the truth shattered his faith in his mother as well, it might leave him with no one.
Her phone vibrated with a message from an unfamiliar number. For one hopeful, foolish instant, she thought Noah had written. Then she read the name beneath the words and felt the past tighten around her again.
Peter’s message was brief: Noah Preston’s people are asking questions about me. Alaina looked toward the first gray light of morning and knew the lie she had protected for five years was beginning to collapse.
