After five years in a secret relationship, I finally could not stop myself from testing Bennett Lancaster.

“My mom keeps trying to set me up with someone. I told her I already had a boyfriend, but she still…”

He leaned against the headboard and smiled lazily.

“Stella, the thing I’ve always liked most about you is that you’re obedient.”

“I told you before. If you want out, we can end this anytime.”

After he said that, he carefully buttoned the cuff of my blouse and wiped away my tears.

He knew that as long as he brought up ending the relationship, I would give in the way I always had, backing down and saying nothing more.

I did not tell him that this time was different.

I had made a bet with someone over whether he would be willing to marry me.

And if I lost, the price was leaving him for good.

On the third day of my business trip in Paris, my mom called me all the way from Boston.

I did not remind her how much the international roaming charges would cost. She rambled for a long time before her tone finally shifted.

“I’m not trying to meddle. You keep telling me how wonderful that boyfriend of yours is, but you’ll be thirty in a couple of years. If he really loves you that much, how can he not have even thought about marriage?”

I had always thought Paris was a romantic place, made for wine, flirting, and saying I love you.

It was the last place meant for walking away from someone.

Bennett came out of the bathroom with damp hair. His robe hung loose on his body, revealing several red marks on his chest from the sex we had just had.

He sat down beside me, and the couch dipped slightly under his weight.

Seeing me staring blankly ahead, he brushed the back of his fingers over my cheek and asked, “What did your mom call about? Is something going on that you need help with?”

I turned to look at him. Bennett’s mother, Isabel Lancaster, was known as one of New York society’s great beauties, with Portuguese ancestry on one side of her family. I had seen his father in the papers before too, and he was strikingly handsome in his own right.

Between them, Bennett had inherited the kind of face people noticed instantly, all sharp, clean lines softened by a refined elegance that made it hard to look away.

I pulled his fingers away from my cheek and held them in my palm, trying to sound casual.

“My mom wants me to start meeting people. She says she knows a really great guy.”

“She doesn’t believe I actually have a boyfriend. She keeps saying I’m making it up. I told her it was my fault because I’ve been too busy with work to bring you home to meet her.”

I wanted to come up with more excuses for him, but after thinking for a moment, all I said was, “After the holidays, come home to Boston with me, and we…”

“Stella.” Bennett interrupted me with a smile, cutting straight to the point. “Don’t test me. Since when have you ever seen that work on me?”

He crossed his long legs and looked at me in the dim light, his tone careless. “I told you before. If you want out, we can end this anytime.”

I looked at him for a long time, and to my surprise, my heart was calm.

The first time I heard those words, I had still felt hurt and resentful. I had still fought with him until everything between us blew up.

Back then, I refused to let him get away with it, so I argued.

“Our relationship? What relationship? Bennett, did you forget? You pursued me, I said yes, and I became your girlfriend fair and square.”

“Don’t say that to me like you’re doing me a favor!”

At first, he apologized quickly. He would coax me and say he was sorry.

No matter how angry I was, I would always end up crying as I told him not to say something like that again.

But now, hearing those same words, I felt neither fear nor anger.

Bennett suddenly leaned closer and tenderly wiped away my tears.

“Look at you. You clearly can’t bear to leave, but you still insist on testing me. Now you’ve cried yourself into this state, and it hurts me to see it.”

I touched the tears I had not even realized had fallen. So all I had left now was sadness.

“But you said before that we would get married.”

My tears gathered in his palm, and he sighed again and again.

I could not tell whether those tears were meant to work on him or whether they had simply come because the moment called for them.

He was blunt, and he was cruel. “Isn’t what we have now good? We have freedom, boundaries, and love without having to trade one for another. Haven’t you been happy all these years?”

“If you’ve been happy, why care so much about the rest? I’ve never given the place beside me to anyone else.”

By that point, he thought he had said enough. He could not imagine I had any reason to make a scene again.

So after I slowly calmed down, he slipped back into his usual lazy ease.

“Are you hungry? You haven’t seemed that interested in French food these past few days. Paris has great comfort food, like ramen, Korean barbecue, and Thai noodles. What do you want?”

“Nothing sounds good? I’ll make you a bowl of pasta. Sit here.”

He stood up with a cigar between his teeth and ruffled the top of my hair.

I did not know when Bennett had learned this particular way of handling me.

He would stay calm and unbothered, brushing everything aside as if it were nothing, ignoring all my pain and every quiet plea behind it.

Because he knew that as long as he said the words “we can end this,” I would panic, I would be unable to let go, and in the end I would swallow every hurt and force it back down.

This was not the first time I had tested Bennett like this.

But every result had been similar, yet not exactly the same.