I'd never been more grateful that I was a frequent visitor at Winters House. Security checked me through quickly and waved me off to the residential elevator bank. I couldn't handle another second with Noah.

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that he really had missed me. That he regretted the way things had ended. I just couldn't. He'd cut me out of his life and moved on. He said he wasn't back just because Vance and Maggie were here, but how could I know if that was true? The reality was that Noah hadn’t bothered to come back until it was for his company.

He could sit at his desk in California thinking fond thoughts of me, but he hadn't actually done anything about it until money was on the line.

I'd been shattered when he'd dumped me the first time. Out of school, my life in limbo, everything felt too fragile to risk another broken heart.

I rode the elevator up to the floor where Holden and Tate lived. They each had an apartment that spanned half the building—a perk of being a Winters—though based on what they'd said about Holden's older brother Jacob, who owned the building, I had no doubt they'd paid full price before Jacob let them move in.

Tate's door swung open as I stepped out of the elevator. Jo leaned out, her long, streaky, blonde hair swinging into the hall.

"Hey, where have you been? We were starting to get worried."

"Sorry. I'll tell you in a minute, but first, I need a drink."

"Sure, we've got a bottle of wine open—"

I walked into the apartment and said, “No, not a glass of wine. I need a drink. Like tequila. Or vodka."

"Okay, now I am worried. What happened? Did Oliver give you bad news?"

"Yes, but that's not it. I wasn't expecting him to be able to get me back in anyway. It just sucked to hear it."

"So what happened?"

I followed Jo into the kitchen to see Emily leaning against the counter, pressed into Tate's side, his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder. I'd gotten used to seeing the two of them like that. When they were within arm’s reach, Tate always had her tucked in close, as if he’d protect her from anything. I'm pretty sure that was his life's plan. Keep Emily safe and happy.

I didn't know anyone who deserved it more. Her gray eyes lit with concern as Jo's words registered and she asked, “Did something happen? You look terrible."

"Em," Tate said in a chiding voice that was half laugh. Looking at me, he shook his head and said, “You don't look terrible. You look gorgeous, as always. But you do look shell-shocked. What's going on?"

"Alcohol first," I said, jumping up to sit on the counter across from the island. Holden, Jo's boyfriend and Tate's cousin, was at the stove stirring some kind of sauce. A steaming pot of water bubbled on a back burner. I caught sight of a baking sheet covered with Emily's signature bruschetta. Sweet. I had a feeling pasta would be just the thing to soak up the tequila shots I had in mind.

Anything to numb my reaction to seeing Noah.

"So what's going on?" Jo asked.

"I know what’s going on," Holden said, his dark eyes warm with concern. To me, he said, “Let me guess—the Noah Endicott who's been talking to Vance and Maggie about investing is the same Noah you broke up with a few months before you met Jo and Em.”

I pointed a finger at Holden and said, “Bingo."

"What?" Jo asked from the living room where she was raiding the makeshift liquor cabinet to get me a drink. She came back carrying two bottles, one a lemon-flavored vodka and the other a cinnamon schnapps with gold flakes swirling lazily in the clear liquid. I knew from experience that I'd hate myself tomorrow if I drank the cinnamon schnapps, but there was no way I was touching lemon-flavored anything.

After kissing Noah and remembering the way he always tasted of lemon and mint, lemons were out.

“You have a terrible liquor selection,” she complained to Tate. He laughed and gave a shrug.

“We own a nightclub. If we want to drink liquor, we go to Mana. I didn’t even know I had that stuff.”

I pointed at the bottle of schnapps and said, “That one."

"Have you seen him? Did you talk to him?" Jo asked, finding a juice glass and pouring a healthy measure of the cinnamon schnapps inside. She handed it to me, watching with concern as I threw it back. The sweet fire burned my throat. I coughed twice and swallowed hard before I answered.

"I interrupted their meeting yesterday," I said. "I had no idea he was coming, and I've never said anything about him to Vance or Maggie, so they had no reason to think they should mention it to me. I just walked in, and there he was."

"What did he do when he saw you?" Emily asked. She extracted herself from Tate's hold to slide the bruschetta in the oven.

In answer, I held out my juice glass. Jo refilled it for me, but not without giving me the side–eye. "I'm not going to stop you, but watch out. You don't drink that much, and you haven’t eaten yet. You’ll make yourself sick."

I emptied the glass, sputtering a little. Already, warmth had spread through my chest, dulling the ache from seeing Noah. I wasn't going to drink much more. Emily was right. I’d regret it later.

"So? What did he say when he saw you?" Holden asked.

"How did you know he was here?" Jo broke in.

"Vance asked me a few weeks ago if I knew anything about Endicott Tech, aside from the obvious. It’s harder to do research when that lawsuit dominates their press. It’s not really our area, but I remembered the name, and I made a few calls. I had no idea he had an appointment with Vance yesterday, or I would have said something.”

I set the juice glass on the counter beside me. "It's okay. He knew I would be there. At least he knew I worked for them. He says he didn't just come here for business. He says he came back for me."

"What do you think?" Tate asked.

"I don't know. I don't know what I think. I thought I hated him. I thought I was over him. And then he kissed me and—"

“What?" Emily shouted, interrupting me. "When did he kiss you? Tell me he didn't kiss you in the middle of the meeting."

I shook my head. "No. I ran out like the great big baby I am, and he followed me into the kitchen while I was trying to find my keys. We started fighting, and then he kissed me."

"Was it good?" Jo asked in a low voice.

I nodded.

"Really good?" She asked.

I nodded again.

Thinking about it, I said, “You know how sometimes you and Holden start kissing and then the next thing you know, the rest of us have to leave the room because we think you two are about to start going at it right in front of us?"

Emily and Tate busted out laughing. They knew what I was talking about. Anyone who'd been in the same room with Holden and Jo for longer than twenty minutes knew what I was talking about. Those two weren’t capable of keeping their hands off each other, and once they got going . . .

Shooting a heated look at Jo, Holden said, “That good, huh?"

"Hey, I've been doing just fine on my own," I protested. "I really thought I was completely over him. Then one kiss, and I would've let him strip me naked in the middle of the kitchen. My bosses’ kitchen! I have to stay away from him."

"What if you don't?" Emily asked quietly. We all stared at her as if she'd suddenly grown horns on her forehead. "I'm just saying. You haven't dated anyone seriously since you broke up with Noah. Have you even slept with anyone?"

"Emily!" This was embarrassing, especially in the company of two happy couples who I was sure had sex multiple times a day. Emily's eyes narrowed on mine. Emily was one of the most thoughtful, sweet, and considerate people I knew. She was also very conscious of respecting other people's comfort zones. Considering she'd been dealing with a severe anxiety disorder for most of her life, she was usually the last person to push anyone where they didn't want to go. If she was pushing me, she must think she had a good reason.

"Hey," she said, "the four of us are your best friends. If you can't talk about sex with us . . . so be honest. Have you even hooked up with anyone since Noah?"

"I went out with that guy from school a while ago. He kissed me at my door when he dropped me off," I offered.

Jo let out a snort of laughter. "Ella, that was more than six months ago, and you said it was a terrible kiss. Doesn't count."

"So there hasn't been anyone since this Noah guy?" Tate asked, reaching out to snag Emily's hand and pull her back into his side. He dropped an almost absent kiss on the top of her head before tightening his arm around her waist.

I was going to need another drink if this was where the conversation was going. Trying to ignore the heat in my cheeks, I admitted, “Basically, no. There hasn't been anyone since Noah. And there wasn't anyone before Noah. There's just been Noah."

"And we all know what Noah's been up to since you broke up," Jo said under her breath.

"Exactly," I said. "He dumped me, and a week later, he was all over the Internet at some Tech conference with a sleazy model on his arm."

"And she was just the first," Jo said. "If rumors are true, he’s slept his way through half of California in the last two years.”

“When he wasn’t being sued for stealing the code he used to found his company,” Tate cut in. “I don’t like this guy hanging around you, Ella.”

“I don’t know much about the lawsuit,” Jo said, “but I do know he’s a manwhore. Anyone with access to the internet knows that.”

Holden elbowed her in the side, and she glared at him. "What? It's true. He's like the poster boy for tech-billionaire player."

Holden cleared his throat and said, “Because the media always tells the truth, right?”

Jo sent me an apologetic look and turned to finish up the pasta. She and I were the only people in this room who didn't have good reason to hate and distrust the media. The entire Winters family had grown up with their lives under a microscope. Tate's parents had died in a grisly murder-suicide when he'd been a child. Combined with their wealth and power, the scandal had been enough to draw unrelenting attention from the press.

When Holden's parents had been murdered years later in an almost identical crime, the media had been a nightmare. And Emily had almost broken up with Tate over the media’s obsession with the Winters family. Her anxiety disorder started when she was a child and survived a mass-shooting. The press had hounded her so savagely she'd been afraid to leave the house and had ended up severely agoraphobic.

She and Tate were still navigating their relationship, learning how to balance her condition with a family that was in the limelight more often than not. For Holden, Tate, and Emily, the gut reaction would always be to distrust what they saw splashed on the papers and online.

I got where they were coming from. I did. But I'd seen the pictures. I'd seen Noah walking down the red carpet with a tall, skinny model on his arm. I'd seen pictures taken at SXSW—Noah kissing a hot up-and-coming actress, a drink in his hand. And there'd been more. After the first six months, I tried not to look. Once the lawsuit hit, the quality of the girls had fallen, but they were still there, hanging all over Noah. He never looked like he was trying to fight them off.

For the last year, between leaving school and focusing on work, I'd done a decent job of ignoring Noah's existence, but that didn't erase the memories of seeing his active social life thoroughly documented after we’d broken up.

"Ella, I'm not making excuses for him," Holden went on. "I'm your friend, not his. I don't even know the guy, and if he's making you this miserable, I don't want to. But I feel like I have to point out that men deal with breakups differently than women do."

"He's got a point," Tate said. "I know it must have sucked seeing him out there with other women while you were at home feeling like shit. But that doesn't mean he just moved on. It doesn't mean he didn't care. If you're still hung up on him after two years, maybe you should give him a chance."

"No way," Emily said, defending me. "He doesn't deserve a second chance. He bailed on her, didn't even come home for her college graduation, walked away from her for his company, and after two years, he decides he wants her back? No way."

"Thank you," I said. I hopped down off the counter, intending to fill my juice glass with another shot or two of the cinnamon schnapps. Emily was the closest, and she stepped in front of me, cutting me off.

"Nope, food. It's time for dinner. If you still want to drink more after you eat, I’ll pour. But if you keep drinking now, you'll end up not eating at all, and then you'll really be sick tomorrow."

I let Emily herd me out of the kitchen and into the dining room, the others coming behind with serving plates laden with food. I was hungry. I hadn't been able to eat anything at the coffee shop with Noah, and lunch was a distant memory. I already had a vague headache forming behind my eyes, a side-effect of drinking the overly sweet alcohol on an empty stomach. The subject of Noah was dropped when we took our seats and portioned out plates of food.

The pasta was freshly made and covered in a light cream sauce with veggies and shrimp. I suddenly realized I was starving. I was chewing my first bite, rolling my eyes in pleasure, when Holden said quietly from across the table, “We don't have to talk about this anymore, but I just want to say that starting a company can be really distracting. I can't imagine trying to sustain a relationship during the first few years Tate and I were building WGC. Do you remember that?" he asked Tate.

Tate shook his head and wound pasta around his fork. "Shit, yeah. I slept on my couch in the office more nights than I made it home, and our office is only a few floors away. We worked pretty much around the clock. The stress was a killer."

Holden cut in, "God, it was. I only slept when I was completely exhausted. If I tried to close my eyes any other time, all I’d think about were numbers and deadlines and what would happen if the game didn't ship and what we would do if it didn't sell. Running the company is fun now, but those first few years it was a love-hate thing. More obsession than anything else."

"Are you going to see him again?" Emily asked.

"I don't think he's going to let me avoid him," I admitted. "I told him we had nothing to talk about, but he tracked me down at the loft this afternoon, and I had coffee with him. That's why I was late."

"If you can't get rid of him, I’ll talk to Vance," Tate said. "If he's trying to convince Vance and Maggie to invest in Endicott Tech, he's not going to want to piss Vance off."

"Thanks, but Vance already talked to him," I said.

"So Vance and Maggie know about you and Noah?" Jo asked. I took a sip of wine and looked at the ceiling for a second before I answered.

“Well,” I started, not sure how to explain, "after he kissed me, I kind of punched him. When I ran out, his nose was bleeding. Between that and the way I freaked when I saw him, Vance and Maggie knew something was up and I guess they dragged it out of him."

Both Holden and Tate gave a shout of laughter. Jo asked incredulously, “You punched him? You’re, like, the least violent person I know.”

“Yeah, well, the kiss got kind of . . . out of control. I was mad that he was back, and kind of embarrassed that I’d let it get that far, and he looked so smug I just . . ."

Tate had himself under control, but Holden was still laughing. "So he had to go back into a meeting with his investors with a bloody nose?" he asked.

I was starting to feel kind of bad about it. At the time, punching him had felt like vindication. After all the pain he'd put me through, he deserved a punch to the nose. Now that I knew what was on the line for his company, I was a lot less comfortable being in the middle of Noah's potential deal with Vance and Maggie.

"I need to apologize," I said mostly to myself. "Hitting him wasn't cool."

"He deserved it," Jo said loyally.

Maybe he did, but that didn't mean hitting him was okay. Dammit. I really was going to have to apologize.

"So Vance already talked to him? What did he say?" Tate asked.

"He didn't tell me, exactly," I said. "He just cornered me this morning when I came into work and told me to let him know if I was having any trouble with Noah and that he'd take care of it. He said he'd already told Noah that if I complained about him, the deal was off."

"Damn, Vance the hard ass. I would've expected that from Aidan or Jacob. Definitely from Gage. But Vance is usually chill," Tate said.

Holden sat back in his chair and picked up his wine, raising one eyebrow as he said, “True, but Genghis Khan would look laid-back next to Aidan, Jacob, or Gage. And since he got his shit together, Vance doesn't fuck around."

I only vaguely knew what Holden was talking about. I'd been working for Vance and Maggie since a few weeks after they got engaged, not long after Vance's surprise daughter, Rosalie, was dropped on his doorstep. I'd missed the drama of their courtship, though I'd heard bits and pieces from Jo and Emily. I'd also heard that before Rosie and Maggie, when Vance had still been with Rosie's mother, he'd had a drinking problem and was a functioning disaster.

I could barely imagine it. The Vance I knew definitely had his shit together.

"So how did coffee go?" Emily asked.

"We argued," I said. "He was pissed I didn't tell him about school. He actually expected me to call him and ask for tuition money when I had to drop out. Can you believe that?" I was getting mad all over again.

Half under his breath, Tate said, “Bet that went well."

He and Holden had offered to lend me the money I needed to go back to school. I'd accepted the freelance work they sent my way but turned down the loan. If I was bothered by how long it was taking me to pay back an anonymous bank for a semester's worth of tuition, I couldn't begin to imagine the humiliation of owing a friend.

"Someday, you have to learn that it's okay to accept help from the people who care about you," Holden said gently.

"Yes, I know," I said tartly. "And the next time I need a ride home from the doctor’s, I’ll call one of you. And by the way, don't think I'm fooled by Vance letting me use his loft rent-free or you guys sending me work. He could rent that place out in a second for a ton of money. And there are a lot of other people more qualified to do the work you're giving me. So I do know how to accept help, and I appreciate it."

"Hey, if you weren't doing the job well, we wouldn't give you the work," Tate said.

"I know that. If I didn't think I could do it, I wouldn't accept it. And I appreciate it. I really, really do. I'm just saying there's a big difference between accepting a place to stay or some freelance work and accepting a check for a huge amount of money. I have at least another year left of school, and I need tuition and living expenses. That's a ton of cash. You guys are my friends, and it means a lot that you want to help. It does. Can we not talk about this anymore?"

"Yeah, fine, but what I want to know is, did you punch him again? While you were getting coffee? Because if you did, we might be able to get the video off the security cameras," Jo asked.

"No, I didn't punch him. I ran away again."

"What are you going to do the next time he tracks you down?" Emily asked.

"I have no idea," I said.

There had to be a compromise somewhere in the middle of punching him, kissing him, and running away.

I just hadn't found it yet.