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.

Chapter Sixteen

Too Late

I waited until Sunday breakfast, which felt like the right time to end things. Civilized. No drama. Two adults at a table with coffee and daylight, agreeing that something had reached its natural conclusion.

I'd had Clara send me a template. I'd filled it in myself. Clean language. Fair terms. All my additions in accordance with the original agreement.

Lucas was already at the table. Reading. Coffee. The particular composed morning version of himself that I'd memorized without meaning to.

I sat down. Slid the papers across.

He looked at them.

"We're six months from the agreed date," I said. "There's no reason to extend what isn't — what isn't working." I kept my voice even. "Let's end it cleanly. Now, while there's still something clean to preserve."

He was very still.

He looked at the papers the way he'd looked at my fabric swatch in the window light — with real attention, as if they contained information that mattered.

He picked them up.

My heart did something I told it not to.

He set them back down.

"Sophia."

"Lucas, please—"

"I'm not signing these."

The words landed in the kitchen like something physical.

I stared at him.

He was looking back at me — not composed, not calculating, not the boardroom version of himself that I'd been trying to hold at arm's length for eight months. He looked, for the first time, like a man who was afraid.

Lucas Lancaster. Afraid.

"This is what we agreed to," I said. My voice was less steady than I wanted.

"I know."

"You said yourself — no feelings. No entanglement. A contract—"

"I know what I said."

"Then sign the papers."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"No," he said.

I stood. I didn't trust myself to sit still any longer. I crossed to the window. The city below was Sunday-slow and indifferent.

"This isn't fair," I said quietly. To the glass. To myself.

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

I heard him behind me. Not moving. Just — there.

I didn't turn around.

I already knew that if I turned around, everything I'd been carefully not saying was going to have nowhere left to hide.