JAMES POV
James had memorized every article about Sophie Bennett.
Not in the beginning. In the beginning, right after she quit, he'd convinced himself he didn't care. That she was just another employee who'd gotten emotional and made a rash decision. That she'd be back in a month asking for her old job.
By month three, he'd started reading about her.
By month six, he was checking her company's website every morning before he checked his own emails. By month twelve, he'd set up Google alerts for "Momentum," "Sophie Bennett," and "startup success Boston." By month eighteen, he'd watched her become something impossible to ignore.
She'd built an empire from nothing.
Fifty million dollars in Series A. Five hundred million in Series B. Investors calling her a genius. Publications writing about her like she was the biggest success story of the decade. TED talks. Speaking engagements. Awards for innovative leadership.
Meanwhile, Proton Solutions was falling apart.
His board was questioning his decisions. Contracts were disappearing. The vision that had once felt revolutionary was starting to look small compared to what Sophie was doing in a startup that had been born from a resignation letter.
James knew exactly when he'd decided to try to buy her company.
It was at 2 AM on a Tuesday six months ago when he was scrolling through her latest interview. She was talking about building workplaces where people mattered. Where profit wasn't the only measure of success. Where loyalty was something you earned, not something you demanded.
She was talking about everything he'd failed to understand.
And James realized that he didn't want to buy her company. He wanted to buy her. He wanted to own what she'd built because he couldn't own what she'd become. He wanted to bring her back into his world because his world was collapsing and she was the only thing that made sense anymore.
That was wrong. That was so wrong it made him sick to think about.
But he couldn't stop thinking about it.
His therapist, who he'd started seeing four months ago because Leah had basically forced him to, kept asking him what he actually wanted. Was it Sophie or was it Momentum. Was it reconciliation or was it control.
James couldn't answer those questions.
He just knew that the day Sophie was at the tech conference was the day he was going to fix everything. Or at least try. Or at least show up and see if there was any possibility that he hadn't completely destroyed the one thing that had ever actually mattered.
He bought a ticket to the conference the same day he heard she was presenting.
He told himself he was coming to listen to the pitch. To see if Momentum was worth the two billion dollars he'd authorize the board to offer. To assess her business model and determine if the acquisition made financial sense.
He was lying to himself.
He was there because he couldn't not be there.
The conference hall was packed. James stood in the back and watched Sophie take the stage. And in that moment, watching her under those lights looking completely confident and completely powerful, something in his chest broke open that he'd been holding closed for eighteen months.
She was magnificent.
Not just her presentation. All of her. The way she commanded the room. The way she made people believe in her vision. The way she spoke like someone who'd discovered something true and was brave enough to say it out loud.
She was the woman he'd lost. But she was also someone completely new.
He watched her finish the presentation and saw the investors stand. Saw the respect in the room. Saw something he'd never managed to create as CEO of Proton Solutions. He'd created profit. She'd created belief.
After the presentation, he knew he was supposed to leave her alone. He knew he was supposed to walk out of that conference and go back to Boston and start the acquisition process the right way. With lawyers and contracts and official channels.
But he was eighteen months past being rational.
He intercepted her backstage before she could disappear. She looked shocked to see him. Then something in her face closed off. That was the hardest part. Not that she was angry or sad. But that she was immediately, completely closed off to him. Like he was a problem she'd already solved and moved past.
"I need to talk to you," he said, and he heard how desperate he sounded. He didn't care anymore. There was no dignity in this. There was only the truth.
He brought her to a private meeting room. He closed the door. And he made the offer because that's the language he spoke. Money. Investment. Numbers that could add up to solutions.
Two billion dollars.
He'd spent weeks crafting the pitch for it. About how Momentum would benefit from Proton Solutions' resources. About how they could scale faster with his company's infrastructure. About how this acquisition would be the smartest business move either of them would ever make.
He was speaking the language of business when what he should have been speaking was the language of apology.
But he watched Sophie's face as he talked and he understood what she was really hearing. He was hearing the voice of a man who thought money could fix what he'd broken. He was hearing a man who didn't understand that the problem wasn't business. The problem was him.
She looked at him like he'd disappointed her all over again.
And then she did the thing that destroyed him completely. She said no without even considering it.
Just like that. No hesitation. No "let me think about it." No "that's generous but." Just a simple, final no that made it clear she'd never wanted to hear from him again in her entire life.
"I'm not selling my company," she said. "Not for two billion dollars. Not for any amount."
And James understood then that he'd been wrong about everything.
He wasn't there to fix a business problem. He was there because he'd lost the only person who'd ever made him want to be better. And he'd spent eighteen months thinking that if he could just see her again, if he could just explain himself, if he could just show her how much he understood what she'd accomplished, that maybe she'd understand that he'd changed.
She wasn't interested in any of that.
She was interested in being left alone.
But then he did something that surprised them both. He asked her for one week. Not to convince her to sell the company. But to show her that he wasn't the man who'd broken her trust. That he was capable of actually changing. That whatever they'd been to each other before, there was still something worth exploring.
And she said yes.
James couldn't believe she'd said yes.
He walked out of that meeting room feeling like he'd been handed a second chance that he didn't deserve. One week. That was all the time he had to prove that he wasn't just running toward his obsession with her. That he actually understood what he'd done. That he actually understood who she'd become.
One week wasn't much time.
But it was more than he'd had in eighteen months.
He left the conference that day and went back to his hotel room and did something he hadn't done in a long time. He cried. Not the angry tears of someone who wasn't getting what they wanted. But the broken tears of someone who finally understood the cost of his own blindness.
He'd had Sophie and he'd thrown her away for Victoria. He'd had the best person in his life and he'd chosen the safest option instead of the realest one. He'd had her trust and her love and her loyalty and he'd treated it like it was worthless compared to the comfort of someone who was from his world.
What a catastrophic, devastating, completely deserved mistake that had been.
The next morning, James woke up and made a decision.
He wasn't going to spend this week trying to convince Sophie that they should be together. That's what she'd accused him of. That's what his previous offer had been about. He was going to spend this week showing her that he understood what he'd done. That he understood the weight of his betrayal. That he understood that second chances had to be earned, not asked for.
He called Leah.
He asked her to help him. Not with the acquisition. Not with business strategy. But with becoming the kind of person who deserved to even have a conversation with Sophie Bennett again.
Leah listened to him for a very long time. Then she said five words that changed everything.
"James, you have to actually change."
Not try to change. Not pretend to change. Actually change. From the inside out. In ways that went beyond business presentations and grand gestures and offers of money.
James hung up that phone and understood what he had to do.
But first, he had to decide if he was actually brave enough to do it.
Sophie had spent eighteen months being brave. She'd walked away from everything comfortable and safe. She'd built something impossible. She'd become someone she could actually be proud of.
Now it was his turn.
Now it was his turn to walk away from everything comfortable and safe and see if there was any possibility of becoming someone worth forgiving.
The question was whether he was strong enough to actually do it.
Because if he failed in this one week, if he messed this up again, if he proved that he was still the same James Peterson who chose safe over real, then he would lose Sophie Bennett forever.
And that was a loss he couldn't survive.