And he didn't.

"No one cares about your last name." The blonde woman heaved a sigh as if I were unbearable to stand, but in reality, she wasn't even enough to elicit pain from me when the god of my agony was right next to her. He didn't even flinch at my name being mentioned; he must have forgotten everything about me, while I was left with a scar of his brief existence in my life that will last a lifetime. "Get me a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal Brut," the blonde flipped her hair dismissively.

I was absentmindedly staring at her, so again, I didn't catch what she asked of me.

My guts were right; I really wasn't in the right mind for this job.

"Louis Roederer. Roed..." God, she's going to hate me.

"We will all have Dom Pérignon." That old familiar voice with matured changes opposed the girl holding him. He adjusted, freeing himself from the girl's hand around him, and for the first time, he turned to me. "Are you able to get the name?" He asked me.

Those squinted hazel eyes, emptied of acquaintance, let alone the familiarity I remembered all the details of to this day. He looked just the same, but even better. He stared with only anticipation of my answer, while I stared with the hope of his recognition of me.

Little stupid me. He was a complete waste of time. I felt acid trickling inside me, wrenching like death.

"Yes!" I croaked. It wasn't the plan, but who am I to fight with naturalistic emotions?

"I want a Louis Roederer Cristal," his girlfriend whined.

"Rudy, you can get someone to write all your needs and send them in for tomorrow; we don't have time for your picky game," he retorted, adjusting back to concentrating on the game.

The blonde looked at me, expecting me to react any other way so she could air out her anger on me. Little did she know, I don't have that luxury, no matter how much hatred I have for spoiled brats like her. I am doing this for Bubble.

"Whatever. I am going to the restroom," she stomped off and tossed her definitely worth more than everything I own purse to the couch.

I focused on sending the order to the kitchen for Dom Perignon as the boys' chat penetrated through my head. But I was unaffected by it; my chest didn't constrict as I thought it would, because I never for once thought I was worthy of being with Aaron Wallace. I only once needed one thing from him — one thing, and then he proved the significant difference between us, so now I know better.

"Hey? What's with you about Ruby? She talked to me last night," Dane Wallace said after taking his shot that landed where he wasn't very pleased with, and he turned, perfectly leaning on his golf driver. "I didn't want to meddle, so I brushed her off. You tired or something?"

"Like every single damn time," Kyle Wallace chimed in without lifting his head from the screen of his laptop.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Aaron's question sounded pissed, but his tone was in control.

"Aaron, I just stated the obvious; you barely acknowledge her. Though you might as well deserve a trophy this time. It lasted like what? Twelve months," Kyle Wallace snorted, briefly glancing at Aaron Wallace this time.

"Don't forget to add 'without a label,'" Mason ironically added, taunting Aaron as he took his shot and paused in the position in the expectation that he did better.

"Maybe it's for the best," someone said as a new text came into my messages. It's my order arriving at the door. I pivoted and went to get it, hearing as I walk away another voice agreeing, "Damn well, it is."

It was Maya's boy who came with a food cart; over it were bottles in a crystal bucket of ice and a tray carrying sliced fruits for garnishing and flute-shaped glasses.

"Got you two bottles, and I had it open so it doesn't give you a hard time in case it's pressuring in there," he smiled tightly.

That's kind. It is definitely his way of apologizing for how they treated me earlier.

"Thank you," I smiled at him, and he nodded, letting me continue from there.

As I returned to the private room with the Wallace cousins engaged in conversation, all now seated around the sitting sets, I diligently prepare their cups while Kyle Wallace was talking among the boys. "The girl annoys me; you could have left her behind in the city. We know you weren't ready for a family, so if it's girls, it's summer in town; just get Keenan to fetch them to the lake house. They're not so hard to get. There are all horny around here."

With the tray carrying five cups, one for the blonde that's not here, I dragged my legs to the front, praying not to trip, for varieties of expensive fragrances were getting thicker in the surrounding air, and their deep voices more reverberating within the room at each step I take, it was intimidating. I knew he wasn't watching me. I knew he didn't give a damn about the girl who cried her eyes out for him. But my hyperawareness was lying to me. Now, it was hard to breathe, and my hands were shaking. I quickly set down the tray on the coffee table in the middle of the boys while they conversed, with Aarron barely involved. I began taking the glass cups off the tray and placing them in front of each of them. My head was down, so there was no way they will see that I was blue, and my flowing hair that Sadie recommended came in handy, creating curtains from the lies in my head that made me believe Aaron Wallace's eyes were closing in on me.

"Water!" I heard the order knock on my skull as I was distracted. I stumbled with the decorations on the table as I was startled. Normally, I wasn't this sensitive. I wished I could switch back to my normal self. This shouldn't be happening. I should be strong.

Awkwardly, I placed the decorations back in their positions and straightened up. I didn't even notice who asked for water from me. I just nodded to myself. "Yes," and rushed away from the boys to the back where the food carts were, and grabbed a glass of water. Luckily, the one who ordered it was Mason Wallace, sitting on the same couch as Kyle Wallace. I knew that because he reached over to get it from me, making it easier.

"Do you agree?" Kyle Wallace asked as I was handing a white napkin to Mason. No one answered him, so he scoffed. "I am talking to you," he said a bit impatiently, and my eyes made contact with his. They were hazel too, and studying me.

He was talking to me?

"Me?" I was taken aback. I swallowed. "Uhm... I—I don't know," I stammered. I didn't like what he was saying, but I was not going to argue with the bosses.

"I see," he breathed thoughtfully and nodded to himself, taking a sip of the champagne I served them. "What's your name?" he asked, not dismissing me. I would like it if he did because the seat next to me, while I stand, is Aaron Wallace with his head facing forward, watching what's playing on the TV, living his perfect life without a single remembrance of the time of my existence in his life. But it is difficult for me to survive when I am full of memories of his hues, his cruelty, and the one time I know of his gentleness.

"Lively," I answered Kyle Wallace, while Dane Wallace softly laughed along with Aaron Wallace at what was showing on the TV.

That sound—the sound that once drew me to him—now grates my chest. It stood out from all the laughter in the room. It was the most gorgeous sound I've ever heard, yet it was my personal poison. No, I don't want this job. After today, it doesn't matter the rise of the tips. I would tell Carol to swap my jobs. I will take the kitchen over this torture.

"Lively, you're not so lively?" Kyle Wallace teased. It was more a question than it was a statement.

"I am sorry, sir," my voice cracked. "Do you want anything else?"

"Kyle?" Aaron Wallace sternly cautioned his cousin, who was off track of their conversation.

"For starters, not a pale face," Kyle Wallace ignored Aaron, keeping his eyes steady on me while he rudely said that.

"What's happening here?" A female sulky voice came in. I didn't have to look to know who it was. She had returned from her bathroom break.

No one answered her, so she just took her former place and I guess her glass of champagne.

"Smile and be pretty when you serve," Kyle Wallace told me. "We are on vacation after the hell of work we had for a year. You make sure we have the best time of our lives here or else..." He threatened, hesitating to click his tongue in his mouth. His eyes darken, giving me chills of fear.

"Kyle, I said enough," Aaron grumbled, infuriated now. My heart was beating fast.

What's happening?

"He's probably drunk from the wine in his pocket," Mason laughed. I didn't know he had gotten up and was taking a shot until he spoke. In suspense, he observed where the ball would land.

I was being harassed, and they thought it was funny. Among them, it was only Aaron who cared to scold his cousin.

"He's quite right, though. Girl features can dispirit a living thing with that face," the girl next to Aaron drew in a breath, pushing her hair to one side in one go. She was pretty, rich, and able to have Aaron Wallace.

"I will go and restocked," I mumbled, wanting to remove myself from this space.

"You are not dismissed," Kyle Wallace drawled, and a hole was punched in my gut. Before I could think of anything to say, his hand snaked around my waist, and my entire body tensed up like I was struck with a lethal cable.

All in my vision was that rainy night Aaron Wallace shut the door in my face. That was the last time I saw him. I was fifteen.

"Please stop it," I begged, but my voice was strained. Kyle wasn't hearing me or didn't want to.

He pulled me over his lap; my panic attack was reciprocated by my emotions. I crashed the cups, and over three things fell, coming with sounds of shattering glasses taking over, ringing as the burial of my employment. That's not what I feared. I just wanted to leave, anyway.

For a split second, I was in the air, and then I was on my feet again, although they were numb. I could feel myself falling, so I grabbed onto the nearest support my hands could reach, a sinewy and fabric-like surface my hands couldn't fully encircle.

My hearing recovered, and so did my sight.

"Do. Not. Fucking. Dare," Aaron Wallace gritted in a wild, gruff voice at Kyle, who was lying on his back on the couch now, staring in confusion at Aaron.

Aaron!

Then it all came together. I was being placed behind him, clutching his arm with both hands as though loudly begging him to be my savior, and that's what he was doing.

He protected me from his drunk cousin.

No! No. I don't need this. This isn't what I need to remember about Aaron Wallace. He has never been a place I could ever feel safe in. He won't be today.

I quickly released his arm and retreated like he was lava, and I could self-detonate near him.

Aaron Wallace turned over, facing me. The two things I noticed were the couple of days' stubble he grew and his robust neck with a prominent Adam's apple. He was attractively towering, not like I knew him before. His shoulders, even more sculpted and broad in his outfit, he wore the elegant dress pants and button-down shirt so meritoriously, like what you expect when you hear his family name. His face, if it's even possible to say because he had always been gorgeous, had a glow-up; edged jawline and striking cheekbones and his pointed nose and vibrant pinky-red bee-stung lips. He had always had rich, chocolate-brown hair, every hand itch to run through. You'd say he needed a haircut, yet you wouldn't want him missing a single strand. It was messily wavy and parted to the sides, with flowing locks dangling to his exquisite brows, much by his right brow, and a few on the other side. He gaped at me with inherently dark squinted hazel eyes under full lashes and lines on his forehead.

Look away, now. At the order in my brain, my eyes wander around from Aaron's Wallace stare to the rest of the people in the room.

"What's wrong with you, man?" Kyle Wallace shook his head in utter disbelief at his cousin, whose eyes were steady on me. Kyle Wallace has champagne all over his dress shirt and pants.

Shit!

"I—" I don't know what to say or how to apologize. The look on the faces of the boys, the girl who had hated me from the starting point, was just too much to keep going. I just wanted to die here. There are shattered things, none I can pay for, all ruined because of me.

It's done!

Fuck, Lively.

I wipe the tears in my eyes at the anxiety of trouble I am in.

"Are you blind?" The girl yelled. I flinched, looking up to see her on the phone and pressing the distress button. "I want the manager here," she kept screaming.

"Ruby, control yourself," Aaron lets out, not tearing his eyes from me. I made sure not to look at him again. It is over; I will get out of here and never have to meet him or his family again. It was the plan, anyway.

"Ma'am," Maya came to the rescue with a tone that says innocent but deep down whispers a different story.

"Where is our regular server? What happened to this place?" Kyle Wallace angrily demands.

"I apologize, Mister Kyle Wallace, for all of this," Maya says on my behalf as my head is down, and it is impossible to stop my body from trembling. "Jacqueline left two weeks ago. We had some new intakes. Lively is among them."

"Look what your new intake did. I am not okay," Kyle Wallace grumbled impatiently. I glanced up a little and was greeted by Aaron's stare. He wouldn't stop. His jaw was dangerously defined, and his eyes were round. He is mad at me too. I look away.

"I am sorry, again. I will have the team prepare the bathrooms and changes for you. And I will report this behavior to Carol immediately," Maya spats next to me.

"You better. I do not want to see her face here again. Call Carol, call whoever is in charge, I want her fired," Ruby, I guess her name is, says, and there is deafening quiet.

"Come on. Let's go." Maya violently pulled me by my arm.

"Of all the people you can provoke, you choose Wallace's section?" she spitefully says in my ear, squeezing my arm harshly as she pulls me towards the door.

As we stood outside, she let go, shoving me against the wall. "Before they settle on Jacqueline, you do not want to know how many servers had to lose their jobs because they weren't ENOUGH," she emphasized.

Struck by shock, fear, anger, and mostly exhaustion from by tightened chest. I knew if I let out a single word, I wouldn't be able to stop the sob that would follow, so I stayed quiet.

"Whoa, girl crashed her career even before it even started," Maya laughed, walking away.

The hall was quiet, with me alone in it. The breath I didn't know I was holding flowed out. I wasn't in the right frame of mind to leave here, but I didn't want anyone walking out of the door and seeing me like this, so I rushed to find my things in the locker room and leave this place.