EMILY’S POV

The café smelled like burnt coffee and desperation.

I sat across from Ryan, my fingers tightening around the warm mug in front of me.

I hadn’t taken a sip. My stomach couldn’t handle it, not with what he had just said still hanging in the air between us.

“You want me to do what?” I asked, even though I’d heard him clearly.

Ryan didn’t blink. He just leaned back in his chair like we were talking about dinner plans. “Hear me out, Emily.”

“Lauren Blackwood isn’t like normal guys. He doesn’t do relationships. It’s just business with him, arrangements.”

My throat felt tight. I couldn’t even tell if I was angry or shocked anymore. “You want me to sleep with your boss,” I repeated. “For your promotion?”

“It’s not like that,” he said quickly.

“He’s interested in you. If you go to him, if he’s impressed. Just once, Emily, he could make me VP. He has that kind of power.”

I stared at him, blinking against the sting in my eyes. I knew Ryan wanted the promotion. We’d talked about it every day for months. But this?

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.” His tone was too calm, too matter-of-fact. “This could be huge, think about it.”

“He takes what he wants and moves on. You’d be in control the entire time.”

Control. That was a funny word for something that felt like surrender.

I pushed my chair back a little. “So, you’re asking me to sleep with someone so you can get a raise?”

“It’s not a raise, it’s the future,” he snapped. “We’d be set. I could finally propose, get us a real place. This would change everything.”

“All I’m saying is, if you really loved me… you’d consider it.”

I stared down at my untouched coffee. I couldn’t recognize the man across from me anymore. Or maybe I was finally seeing him clearly.

“You said you’d do anything for us,” he added softly. “Isn’t this… just one night?”

The words hit like a slap. My stomach churned.

“And if I don’t?” I asked. My voice was steady, but just barely.

Ryan sighed like I was being unreasonable. “Then nothing changes. I'm stuck, you stay stuck too.”

“Look, you wouldn’t even have to go through with anything unless you wanted to. Lauren doesn’t do emotions, it’s just business with him.”

I swallowed the bitter taste rising in my throat. “So now I’m your business deal?”

He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Don’t twist it. I’m doing this for us. You said you believed in me.”

I stared at him.

This man, this boy, really was asking me to give myself to someone else so he could climb the ladder.

And what scared me most? A part of me had actually been considering it.

I stood up abruptly, my chair scraping against the tile floor. “I need to think.”

He didn’t stop me. Just shrugged. “Just don’t take too long. Lauren’s flying out on Monday.”

I didn’t go straight home.

I walked through the city for hours, letting the cold evening wind sting my cheeks.

The streets blurred around me. Couples passed by, holding hands and laughing.

A woman walked her golden retriever across the street. Two teenage boys skateboarded past, their joy loud and free.

All of it felt impossibly distant, like I’d slipped into a version of the world that didn’t quite belong to me anymore.

Ryan wanted me to sell myself for his future.

Worse, he didn’t even see it as wrong.

Was I so easy to discard? So convenient to offer up?

A part of me hated how I didn’t walk out immediately.

Another part, the part still buried in love and years of shared history clung to the hope that I’d misread something. Maybe I was overreacting, or maybe he’d wake up and realize what he’d said.

But that part was shrinking by the second.

By the time I reached Racheal’s apartment, my fingers were frozen, and my chest felt heavy.

Racheal opened her apartment door in sweats, her curly hair piled on top of her head and a face mask halfway peeled off. She wore a pineapple-print hoodie and fuzzy socks.

“Jesus Emi, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I might have,” I said, forcing a weak smile. “Is it a bad time now?”

“For you? Never.” She stepped aside. “Come in. Tea or tequila?”

“Something stronger than both.”

Five minutes later, we were curled up on her couch, a blanket over our knees, two glasses of red wine between us.

The fairy lights on her ceiling twinkled softly, and the faint sound of indie folk music drifted from her phone speaker. It felt like home. Safe.

I let the words fall out. Everything.

From the moment Ryan brought up the idea, to the sick twist in my stomach as he calmly explained how his billionaire boss might be interested in me.

Racheal didn’t interrupt. She just listened, arms crossed, a storm brewing in her eyes.

When I finally finished, she leaned back, her expression unreadable. “So let me get this straight. The man you’ve loved for four years just asked you to sleep with his boss because he thinks you can help him climb the ladder?”

I nodded, my throat dry. “He said it was just one night. That I’d be in control. That it was for us.”

Racheal scoffed, setting her glass down with a loud clink. “That is the most manipulative, selfish, garbage I’ve ever heard. What the hell, Emily?”

“I know,” I whispered. “I know it’s messed up. But a part of me still wanted to understand him. To think maybe he was just desperate. Maybe he didn’t mean it that way.”

When I finished, I waited for her to say something wise.

Instead, she stood up, walked to her kitchen, and returned with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a frying pan in the other.

“I’m going to hit him with this.”

“Rach”

“No, listen to me.” Her voice cracked. “I’ve watched you love him through every high and low. And he repays you by pimping you out like a bargaining chip? No, you’re not doing it. I won’t let you.”

Tears burned my eyes. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple. You deserve better, Emily. So much better.”

I nodded.

She softened, set the pan down, and pulled me into a hug. “Please don’t do it. Not for him. Not for anyone.”

“You don’t make those kinds of suggestions to someone you love. You support them, fight with them. You cry with them. But you don’t offer them up like a goddamn gift.”

Tears spilled over, hot and silent.

She pulled me into her arms. “I swear, if he were here right now, I’d punch him in the throat.”

I let out a broken laugh into her shoulder. “You always say that.”

“Because men are idiots and you keep falling for the dumb ones.” She stroked my hair gently.

I pulled back, wiping my eyes. “What do I do, Rach?”

“You don’t do it. You go to Ryan, you tell him he’s lost his damn mind, and then you walk away. You never look back.”

I stared down at my lap, heart pounding. “I don’t think I’m ready to walk away. Not yet.”

She sighed, frustrated but gentle. “Then at least go talk to him. Give him a chance to take it back. But if he doesn’t”

“I’ll know,” I whispered. “I’ll know it’s over.”

She nodded. “You don’t need to set yourself on fire just to keep someone else warm, Emily. Not anymore.”

That night, I lay awake in her room, staring at the ceiling wondering when exactly Ryan stopped seeing me as his partner and started seeing me as a shortcut.

My memories were littered with small betrayals I’d ignored: the way he brushed off my job interviews, the way he rolled his eyes when I brought up my own dreams, the way he treated my love as something guaranteed, never earned.

But even still, a part of me hoped.

I wanted to believe he could be better.

That he hadn’t already let go of “us.”

The next evening, I stood outside Ryan’s apartment, heart racing.

The sky was overcast, casting everything in a gray light that made the world feel quiet and uncertain. I clutched my coat tighter around me.

I hadn’t told Ryan I was coming. I didn’t know what I was going to say, only that I needed closure.

I needed to know who Ryan really was now, and whether the man I once loved was still in there somewhere.

I checked the time. 8:17 p.m.

I inhaled deeply and walked in.