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.

Chapter Fifteen

Divorce Rumors

The gossip columns moved quickly.

By Friday: Source close to the Lancaster family says the marriage is "struggling."

By Saturday: a photograph of Lucas and Vanessa at lunch — a working lunch his assistant had confirmed, arranged through channels Vanessa had carefully cultivated — ran on four different entertainment sites with four different captions, all of which said the same thing.

By Sunday, Vanessa called me.

I don't know how she got the number. I answered because the name wasn't in my contacts and I thought it might be a supplier.

"Sophia." Her voice was warm in the way that expensive knives are warm when they catch light. "I thought we should talk. Woman to woman."

"I don't think we should," I said.

"You're very brave," she said, as if I hadn't spoken. "Taking all of this on. But you have to understand — Lucas doesn't do feelings. He never has. This was always going to be temporary." A pause. "Let him go with some dignity, darling. For your sake."

I hung up.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time.

The thing was — she wasn't entirely wrong about the facts. He didn't do feelings. He'd said so himself. He'd written it into a contract. I'd agreed to the terms.

And I was sitting here eight months later, counting the seconds he'd held my hand in a lobby, remembering what it felt like when he checked my temperature in the dark.

I got up. Went to my closet. Pulled out the overnight bag I'd used for industry trips.

Started folding things into it.

Not all of it. Not dramatically. Just — a few things. Enough to go somewhere for a while. Enough to put some distance between myself and the man sleeping forty feet away who made me feel things that a contract said I wasn't allowed to feel.

I was a self-respecting woman. I wasn't going to stay somewhere I wasn't chosen.

I zipped the bag.

I put it by the door of my room.

Then I sat back on the bed and looked at it.

And didn't move it.

Not yet.