Chapter Ten

Mine

The Ashford lunch was a quarterly meeting between Lancaster Group and one of its oldest development partners. Lucas had mentioned it in passing — I hadn't been invited, hadn't been expected, had no reason to be there.

But my studio was in the same building. I'd come up to borrow a conference room, per my arrangement with Clara. I walked in as the dessert course was being served.

Lucas saw me from across the room.

I started to turn — I'd come back later — when I heard it.

Gerald Ashford, senior partner, gesturing toward me with the casual authority of a man who'd never been corrected in company: "Ah, and is that the wife? Nice hobby she has, the little studio. I suppose it keeps her busy while you run the actual business."

Three people laughed.

I went still.

Lucas did not laugh.

What Lucas did was go very quiet in a particular way — a quality of silence I'd begun to recognize over the past months. The kind that preceded something irrevocable.

"Lancaster Group is acquiring a forty percent stake in Bennett Studio," he said, "effective next week."

No one had a response to that. Including me.

"The valuation reflects market rate for an emerging luxury brand with a thirty percent year-over-year growth trajectory." He set down his fork. "Bennett Studio is not a hobby. It's an asset." He looked at Ashford with the kind of steadiness that required no volume. "And if I hear my wife's work described that way again, this partnership ends today."

The room was very still.

Ashford cleared his throat. Reached for his water.

"Of course," he said. "My apologies."

The meeting concluded twenty minutes later. I waited in the hallway. When Lucas came out, alone, I fell into step beside him.

"You didn't ask me," I said.

"You would have said no."

"That's not your decision."

He stopped walking. Turned to face me. For once, something in his expression was uncertain — or as close to uncertain as I had ever seen him.

"You're right," he said. "Read the offer before you decide. If you want to decline, I'll withdraw it."

That was not what I'd expected him to say.

I read the offer that night. Alone at the dining table, surrounded by my own sketches, a glass of wine going warm beside me.

The valuation was fair. Beyond fair.

By midnight, the clip of Lucas's statement had already been lifted from someone's phone recording and cut to thirty seconds. By two AM it had three million views.

The headline read: Lucas Lancaster is obsessed with his wife.

I read it three times.

Then I looked across the apartment at the light still burning under his study door.

I felt something shift — tectonic, deep, the kind of movement you can't unfeel once it's happened.

I closed my laptop.

I was in trouble.

Chapter Eleven

Jealous

Ethan began his campaign the following week.

Flowers on Monday — two dozen white peonies, my favorite, which he'd remembered. I told reception not to accept them. They were there when I arrived Tuesday.

A car waiting outside the studio on Wednesday. I took the subway.

Thursday, a table at Lutèce — our restaurant, the first place we'd had a real date — reserved under my name. I cancelled it by phone and didn't go.

Friday, he appeared in the audience at a fashion preview I was presenting. When the lights came up, he stood.

"Sophia Bennett is the most talented designer I've ever known," he said, in a room of two hundred people. "And I let her go because I was an idiot." He looked directly at me. "I'll wait as long as it takes."

The room went very quiet.

Someone filmed it. By that evening it had been cut together with the Lucas clip — obsessed husband versus repentant ex — and the internet had chosen sides with great enthusiasm.

I came home to a dark apartment.

Lucas was in the kitchen. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled. A glass in his hand. He didn't turn when I walked in.

"You should call him back," he said.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Excuse me?"

"Carter." He still didn't turn. "If that's what you want."

I crossed the kitchen slowly and stood where I could see his face. He was looking at the glass. His jaw was set.

"Is that what you want?" I asked.

A long silence.

He didn't answer.

"Lucas."

"Go to bed, Sophia."

"You brought it up."

"I shouldn't have."

The silence between us filled with everything neither of us was saying. The kitchen felt very small. He was close enough that I could see the slight tension in his hands around the glass.

"He's not what I want," I said. Quiet. Certain.

He finally looked at me.

For one unguarded second, something moved across his face that I had never seen there before. Something that looked almost like relief — and was quickly, deliberately, replaced by composure.

"Good night," he said.

I went to bed.

I lay awake for an hour and listened to him not sleeping in the kitchen.

I counted nothing. There was nothing to count.

I just listened to the sound of Lucas Lancaster being awake at midnight for the first time in his very controlled life.

Chapter Twelve

Waiting

Fashion Week preparation is a particular kind of beautiful madness.

For three weeks in October, my studio became a war room. Fourteen-hour days. Cold coffee. The particular intimacy of working alongside people who are pouring themselves into something they care about.

I left the penthouse early. I came back late.

Sometimes past midnight. Sometimes past two.

The first night I came home at one AM, the apartment was dark. I moved quietly, not wanting to wake anyone.

The second night, there was a light in the living room.

Lucas was on the couch. Laptop open. A document on the screen I recognized as a Lancaster Fashion division report — the relaunch materials. He didn't look up when I walked in.

"You don't have to wait up," I said.

"I'm working."

I set down my bag, took off my shoes, and sat at the other end of the couch. Pulled out my own laptop. My sketchbook.

We worked in silence for an hour.

At some point, without discussion, he picked up his phone and ordered food. I heard him on the call — brief, efficient. He didn't ask me. He ordered noodles. Medium spice. No cilantro.

My order. Exactly.

I looked at him. He was already back to his screen.

"How do you know how I take my noodles?" I asked.

A pause so brief I almost missed it. "Mrs. Chen mentioned your preferences."

Mrs. Chen had not mentioned my preferences. Mrs. Chen took direction; she didn't volunteer information.

I let it go.

The food arrived. We ate on the couch with our laptops between us and the city spread below, forty-seven floors of quiet and glass.

The third night, he was there again. Different document. Same couch.

The fourth. The fifth.

He never said he was waiting. He always said he was working. And he was working — Lucas Lancaster didn't pretend; he was constitutionally opposed to pretense.

But he was also there. Every night I came home late, he was there.

On the fifth night I looked at him over the edge of my noodle box — he was reading something on his tablet, brow fractionally furrowed in the way that meant he disagreed with whatever he was reading — and I thought:

He's been noticing things. He noticed the cilantro. He noticed my swatch in the window light. He noticed when I was cold before I said I was cold.

He's been noticing things for a long time.

I looked back at my sketch before he could see my face.

My hand was not entirely steady on the pencil.