Purposefully Accidental

BONUS CHAPTER - Jonah's POV #3

Jonah has to be honest and admit that it really fucking hurts to look at Hannah's face right now, knowing what he already knows.

He's spent a long time looking it up on the internet—all the information he could find about the billionaire's wedding. There's not much; he knows that they got married in three years ago, and that it was very private. There's an article about it, a whole spread on a lifestyle magazine owned by Archer Media called Epicentra, and it's got pictures—but the face of Fred Archer's wife is purposefully, carefully obscured in every single picture.

He spent days studying those pictures religiously, but the photographer was good. The only definitive detail he's 100% sure of is that that's the exact shade of Hannah's natural blond hair. He's also, give or take, 75% sure that those are Hannah's hands, delicately wrapped around Freddie's in a couple of the pictures, with a massive glittering diamond ring sitting on her ring finger. And, well, it looks fucking expensive. Obscenely expensive.

It feels like someone's slashed his heart right open and poured salt all over the gaping wound. To imagine that someone else has put that ring on her finger and loved her when he wasn't able to—it almost made him rethink about seeing her.

But the text was sent to Hannah, and damn Freddie Archer wouldn't stop bugging him about it, as subtle as the man could in their e-mail exchange. The situation is a little fucked up, he knows that, but here he is now sitting right across the table in front of his first love, praying to all the gods that she doesn't notice his bleeding heart every time she directs that beautiful smile up at him.

It starts a little awkward. The accusative words are sitting at the tip of his tongue ("Sooo... are you really married to a billionaire whose family owns one of the biggest media companies in America, or have I still got a chance?") but he somehow manages to not blurt it out. She'll tell him in time—it's going to come up in the conversation, he's sure. Still, he glances at her hand, holding up the clear glass as she takes a sip from her drink, and doesn't find the diamond ring from the wedding pictures.

And then she drops the first bomb: she was here, in New York City, at the beginning of the pandemic. What's worse than that, she basically lived next door and he had no idea. She looks as surprised as he is, having assumed that he was in LA during that time. And in turn, she surprised him by telling him that she actually watched the cooking competition that he won—that she was even rooting for him.

He didn't think she'd even cared about him.

And when she asked him why he never told her about the competition, it almost looked like she was heartbroken.

He doesn't know how to explain it to her that he didn't have any other reason other than the fact that he was a coward. Signing up for the competition was just a joke between him and Clara, but his sister then started encouraging him to take it seriously once it seemed like he had a chance. He initially didn't think it was going anywhere, so he didn't bother telling Hannah about it when they were reunited for a short time.

For a short time... before he fucked it up again.

That was the first mistake. A small misstep that might as well have become the first piece of domino that fell, the start of the chain of events that brought them here.

If he had been braver, been honest when it mattered, would Hannah have taken his ring instead of Fred Archer's?

A spark of courage started to ignite in his stomach, and he gears himself up to come clean to her about his past relationship with Renata—about the kiss in front of the cameras that took him by surprise, that he was sure was what truly broke the camel's back and destroyed whatever chance he had with Hannah.