Chapter 169

Kelly POV

The sight of Anderson in my office felt like an old wound being pulled open all over again, raw and immediate in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I had barely made it through the morning meetings, barely managed to keep my focus steady through reports and decisions that required a version of me that felt increasingly harder to access, when my new assistant, Mara, stepped in hesitantly.

Her expression alone told me something was already wrong.

“Kelly, I know you don’t take unannounced visitors, but… he’s here.”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. She didn’t need to say his name for me to know exactly who was standing outside that door, waiting like he had every right to be there.

Anderson Grant.

My chest tightened instantly.

I had been avoiding him for weeks now, ignoring the endless calls, deleting the messages without reading them properly, changing my routines, my timing, even the places I went just to make sure I didn’t a