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.

Chapter Fourteen

Misunderstood

The photographs appeared at eleven on a Thursday morning, which I know because Clara texted me at exactly that time.

Have you seen the Daily Post? Don't panic. Call me.

I opened the link.

The headline: Lancaster Wife and Ex-Boyfriend: The Truth Behind the Marriage?

The photographs: three of them, taken outside my studio three days earlier. Ethan and me. His hand on my arm. My face tilted up toward his, eyes bright — I'd been furious, telling him for the fourth time to leave me alone, and apparently fury and devastation photograph the same way.

I'd been crying. Not about Ethan. About the contract. About a piece of paper that said I wasn't allowed to feel the things I was feeling.

The photos didn't show any of that.

I sat with the phone in my hand and thought about calling Lucas. Then I thought about what he would see when he looked at those photos — and my chest went cold.

He came home at seven.

I knew immediately. The energy in the apartment was different. He set down his keys with the particular care of a man keeping himself very controlled.

"Lucas—"

"I saw them."

"He came to the studio. I told him to go. I've told him four times."

He looked at me. His face was composed. That careful, absolute composure that I now knew cost him something.

"The photos suggest otherwise," he said.

"Then the photos are wrong."

The silence stretched.

I watched him and waited for something — an argument, a confrontation, the version of Lucas who'd terminated a business partnership over the word hobby — and instead I got stillness.

A withdrawal.

"I'm not interested in Carter," I said. Steady. Clear. "I have never been interested in going back to Carter."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he crossed to his study. Put his hand on the door.

"Get some rest," he said. And closed it.

I stood in the living room alone.

He believed me. I thought he believed me. But something had closed in him like a shutter and I didn't know how to open it and that was the worst part — not the accusation, but the distance.

I didn't knock.

I should have.

I went to my room instead and lay on top of the covers and thought about how much could go unsaid between two people who'd contracted themselves to say nothing important.