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.

Chapter Thirteen

The Contract

I found it in the drawer where I'd seen him put the extra house keys.

I wasn't looking for it. I was looking for a pen — my studio pens were all at the studio, and I needed to mark a fabric sample, and it was a Sunday morning and the apartment was quiet and Lucas was out running.

The contract.

My copy. The one I'd been given on signing day, which I'd folded and not looked at since.

I stood at the drawer and looked at it for a moment. Then I sat down at the dining table and opened it.

It read the same as it always had. Of course it did. Documents don't change.

But I read differently now.

This arrangement will terminate after thirty-six months from the date of signing.

Thirty-six months. I'd been here eight.

Neither party shall develop romantic attachment or act in any manner inconsistent with the business nature of this arrangement.

I read that clause three times.

Then I set the contract down on the table and looked at it.

Neither party shall develop romantic attachment.

I thought about a hand at my waist at a fashion preview. About noodles with no cilantro. About a man asleep in a chair after a fever night, still dressed, having canceled something he'd described as unimportant.

I thought about last night on the couch, working in silence, and the way he'd handed me my tea without being asked, already the right temperature.

I called Lily.

She answered on the second ring. "You never call before noon on Sundays. What's wrong?"

"Nothing." I stared at the contract. "I think I'm falling for my husband."

A long pause.

"Sophia—"

"Don't say it."

"He doesn't—"

"I said don't."

She was quiet for a moment. "How bad?"

I looked at Clause 14. "The contract says this arrangement is a business decision."

"And?"

"And I can't remember the last time it felt like one."

Lily said nothing for a beat. Then: "What are you going to do?"

I folded the contract. Carefully. Put it back in the drawer.

"Nothing," I said. "There's nothing to do. I signed the same paper he did."

I got off the phone. Made coffee. Sat in the kitchen and drank it.

When I heard the elevator — Lucas back from his run, keys in the bowl, the sounds of him moving through the apartment — I didn't look up from my mug.

I went to the bathroom. Ran the tap.

Cried quietly for about four minutes.

Then washed my face and went back to the dining table and worked on my sketches until my hands remembered what they were doing.