My CEO Husband Gave My Honeymoon Ticket to His Assistant

The resignation letter sat on Eric's desk for exactly nine minutes before it came back approved.

I know because I watched the clock.

I'd spent three weeks drafting it in my head—three weeks of talking myself into it, talking myself out of it, lying awake at 2 a.m. staring at the ceiling of the apartment I'd picked out because it was twelve minutes from his office. Three weeks, and it took him nine minutes to sign off on it without even a phone call.

Classic Eric.

I was still at my desk, pulling the last of my things into a cardboard box, when I heard them. My colleagues. Mia from accounting and that guy from legal whose name I could never remember, standing just close enough that I was clearly meant to hear.

"She's finally doing it," Mia murmured, not bothering to lower her voice. "Honestly? Probably for the best. You can't compete with Vivien."

I set my stapler in the box. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Vivien's been in his office every other day," the guy from legal added. "It was only a matter of time."

I turned around.

Both of them had the decency to look slightly caught, but not enough to actually stop.

"For what it's worth," Mia said, her smile too sympathetic to be sincere, "you gave it a good run."

I looked at her for a moment. Then I smiled—the kind of smile that doesn't reach your eyes because it isn't trying to.

"I'm not quitting out of heartbreak," I said. "I'm leveling up. Double the pay, killer benefits." I picked up the box. "But thanks for the concern."

I walked out before either of them could respond.

The elevator ride down was quiet. Twenty-two floors, and I stood in the back corner with my cardboard box and the faint smell of someone's leftover lunch, and I told myself I felt fine. I told myself I felt light. Free, even.

I almost believed it.

The afternoon air hit me when I stepped outside—cool, carrying the smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet. The street was loud in the way downtown streets always are, taxis and construction and someone's music bleeding out of a passing car. I shifted the box to my hip and started walking.

That's when my phone rang.

Eric's name on the screen.

I stopped walking. My thumb hovered over the answer button for one second, two, and then muscle memory took over—three years of picking up on the first ring, of dropping everything, of making myself available—and I answered.

"Hayley." His voice was clipped, already somewhere else in his head. "I sent you a file. Finish it and send it back within an hour."

No hello. No how are you. Just the task, the deadline, the expectation that I would comply.

I switched the phone to my other ear and kept walking. "What file?"

"Check your email. It's the Meridian account." A pause, and I could hear the faint sound of his office in the