Chapter 4
One day, Victoria contacted David.
“Hello, David.”
His expression hardened.
“No.”
“I came to apologize.”
“Congratulations. You’re about 3 years late.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Several.”
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
Victoria tried again.
“David, that man isn’t here anymore.”
He dismissed it.
“Ridiculous.”
Afterward, he tried to convince himself it had meant nothing.
“It’s just a message.”
But it clearly had not been.
Maya noticed.
“How’s your mother?” David asked her later.
She looked at the time.
“That took 20 minutes.”
“You timed me?”
“For science.”
“She’s better.”
David relaxed.
Maya added,
“She also keeps asking about you.”
He looked startled.
“I blame you.”
“Her mother is asking about me?”
“Yes.”
David looked genuinely confused.
“What does that mean?”
Marcus, overhearing, gave him a look.
“It means she’s asking about you, David.”
Maya’s mother was about to leave the hospital.
“She’s being discharged tomorrow.”
David nodded.
Then Maya asked,
“Would you like to meet her?”
David stared at her.
“Her mother wants to meet me.”
Marcus corrected him.
“Maya invited you.”
David looked even more concerned.
“That’s worse.”
Marcus laughed.
“You’re afraid of a 60-year-old woman.”
“Don’t be disrespectful.”
Before he met Maya’s mother, Victoria contacted him again.
“We need to talk.”
“No. You need to talk.”
“I heard about someone.”
“Of course you did.”
“She’s not right for you.”
David looked at her.
“And you are?”
“David, please.”
He no longer felt the need to reopen the past.
“You know what’s strange?”
Victoria waited.
“I used to need you to explain yourself.”
He looked at her calmly.
“But I don’t anymore.”
He left.
Then he kept his promise to Maya.
“I’ll be there.”
Before meeting her mother, David arrived early.
Maya noticed.
“You look nervous.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why have you checked your phone 6 times?”
“I am not nervous.”
She smiled.
“I’m just early.”
“That’s worse.”
When he finally entered, Maya made the introduction.
“Mom, this is David.”
Her mother looked him over carefully.
“So this is David.”
“Hello, Mrs. Carter.”
She smiled.
“My daughter talks about you.”
Maya immediately objected.
“Mom.”
David looked at her mother.
“Does she?”
“More than she thinks.”
Then Mrs. Carter became serious.
“Maya told me what you did.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
David paused.
“I need to know something.”
“Okay.”
“Did you help my daughter because she’s beautiful?”
David answered immediately.
“No.”
Mrs. Carter watched him.
“Why, then?”
“I helped her because she was terrified and pretending she wasn’t.”
He paused.
“I know something about that.”
Later, David spent more time in Maya’s world.
At one point, she caught him studying the building around them.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Your elevator looks angry.”
“You can stop looking around.”
“I’m not.”
“You were calculating renovation costs.”
David gave a small shrug.
“Occupational hazard.”
Maya looked at him.
“You can go.”
He turned toward her.
“Do you want me to?”
She answered honestly.
“No.”
“Then just stay.”
David did.
Soon, he found himself doing things that would have seemed absurd to him only weeks earlier.
“What exactly am I doing?”
“Helping.”
“I own 3 companies.”
Maya handed him something.
“And today you’re carrying tomatoes.”
Another problem appeared.
“I was going to get someone to fix that.”
Maya looked at it.
“It’s a screw.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled.
“A dangerous little criminal.”
David laughed.
Maya looked at him.
“Just stay.”
Back at home, Marcus checked David’s schedule.
“You have nothing scheduled tonight.”
“Good.”
“Should I arrange—”
“No.”
Marcus stopped.
“Well, that’s new.”
He thought for a moment.
“How many days has it been?”
David looked at him.
“What?”
“Since you’ve asked me to bring someone.”
“Are you keeping records?”
“You made me keep records.”
David looked away.
“I don’t want anyone else.”
Marcus waited.
David frowned.
“Maya. Don’t make me say her name.”
For the first time, the old arrangement had ended without David announcing that it had ended.
Maya had become the reason.
But that frightened her as much as it affected him.
“People don’t just stop being who they are, do they?” she asked one night.
David noticed her distance.
“You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That usually ends badly for me.”
Maya looked at him.
“You stopped because of me.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what scares me.”
David waited.
“What happens if I disappoint you?”
She asked the question she had been avoiding.
“Do you go back to the old David?”
David had no easy answer.
“Trust isn’t a light switch.”
He thought carefully.
“I don’t know.”
Maya watched him.
“I know who I don’t want to be anymore.”
Then he added,
“The rest I’ll have to prove.”
Maya needed distance.
“I need time to process this.”
David nodded.
“Okay.”
She seemed surprised.
“Okay?”
“You need time.”
He looked at her.
“I won’t turn that into another thing you owe me.”
Maya left with the space she had asked for.
Someone close to her noticed how often she looked toward her phone.
“You’re waiting for him to call.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then your phone is having a very important evening.”
Maya refused to admit what she wanted.
David, meanwhile, was resisting the impulse to call.
“Don’t call,” he told himself.
“She asked for time.”
Then he reminded himself what he had promised.
“So be better.”
Maya’s hesitation was not simply about David.
It was about trust.
“You don’t trust him,” someone told her.
Maya considered that.
“I’m afraid to.”
She paused.
“That’s different.”
David had spent years refusing to let anyone become important enough to hurt him.
After Victoria’s betrayal, he had created a system in which every encounter ended before attachment could begin.
Different woman.
Dinner.
No promises.
Morning exit.
Maya had entered that system because she needed $80,000 for her mother’s surgery.
She had not arrived looking for love.
David had not invited her looking for it.
But she had stayed through the night.
They had talked until morning.
She had challenged him.
She had laughed at him.
She had refused to flatter him because he was rich.
She had initially refused his money even though she desperately needed it.
When she finally accepted it, she insisted that she would pay him back.
When he asked to see her again, she returned only after establishing her own rules.
No touching.
No strange expectations.
No more payments.
She refused to become comfortable depending on him.
David, for his part, gradually stopped treating her like the women who had come before.
He laughed again.
He waited for her.
He asked her to stay longer.
He learned about the life she had postponed when her mother became ill.
When the hospital payment failed, his first instinct was to fix the problem.
He paid for the surgery directly without telling Maya.
That decision angered her because she feared exactly what money could do to a relationship.
She did not want help to become leverage.
David’s first attempt to explain himself failed because he told her he had only been helping her mother.
His second attempt was different.
He admitted that he had handled it badly.
He told her he had paid because she was afraid and because he had the ability to help.
He expected nothing in return.
He did not want the money to complicate her.
At dinner, he told her the truth he had been avoiding.
He had kept asking for her because she stayed.
She could have taken the money and disappeared.
Instead, she sat in his house for hours and argued with him.
At some point, David stopped wanting a woman there.
He wanted Maya.
He promised that she would never have to earn his kindness and that helping her mother created no debt between them.
Then Victoria reappeared.
David listened long enough to realize that the man who had once needed answers from her no longer needed them.
He did not ask for another explanation.
He did not return to the relationship that had created his distrust.
Instead, he went deeper into Maya’s life.
He met her mother.
Mrs. Carter did not thank him for paying the medical bill.
She wanted to understand his reason.
When she asked whether he had helped Maya because she was beautiful, David said no.
He had helped because Maya had been terrified and pretending she was not.
He understood that kind of fear.
He began spending time in places that had nothing to do with his companies or his mansion.
He carried tomatoes.
He considered fixing small things himself.
He remained when Maya simply asked him to stay.
At the same time, Marcus noticed that David had stopped asking for anyone else.
David eventually said it plainly.
“I don’t want anyone else.”
For Maya, that was not automatically reassuring.
It raised a harder question.
If David had changed because of her, what would happen if she failed to meet whatever expectation had created that change?
David did not promise perfection.
He admitted that he did not know exactly who he would become.
But he knew who he no longer wanted to be.
And when Maya asked for time, he gave it without turning patience into another form of obligation.
Eventually, Maya returned.
David looked at her.
“Maya.”
She spoke first.
“I was thinking.”
David gave a dry smile.
“That has never been good news for me.”
Maya did not laugh it away.
“The first time I came here, I was terrified.”
David remembered.
“I know.”
“I’m not anymore.”
He watched her carefully.
Maya continued.
“I don’t know if trusting you will always be easy.”
She paused.
“But I want to try.”
David did not offer promises he could not keep.
“I’m not going to promise I’ll never make mistakes.”
Maya listened.
“But I promise I won’t make you pay for them.”
Then he gave her the other promise that mattered.
“And I won’t run.”
There was a quiet pause.
David finally asked,
“So…”
Maya looked at him.
“So?”
“Are you staying?”
She made him wait.
“I haven’t decided.”
David accepted the answer.
Then Maya let the silence stretch a little longer before she smiled.
“So, I decided.”
David looked at her.
May you like
“I’m staying.”
Disclaimer: This story is fictional and created for entertainment purposes only. Any names, characters, places, or events are fictitious or used fictitiously. No real person or organization is intended to be portrayed.
Related Stories
