I drop my hands into my lap, letting the quiet settle around me. But it isn’t calm; it’s crowded. With the gala looming like a spotlight, I’m not ready to stand in it. Not when I know exactly what happens when the wrong eyes decide a woman in this job is “too close” to someone she works with. I’ve lived through that kind of suspicion once and barely survived the fallout.
My mother’s voice in my ear, hopeful in a way that makes my ribs ache. And Kyle—God, Kyle—catching my eye in the hallway earlier, warm and searching, like I was something he wasn’t supposed to want but couldn’t look away from. All of it presses just beneath my skin, simmering too close to the surface, impossible to shove back into the neat boxes I need it to stay in.
I reach for my phone and open our message thread, seeing the question I avoided answering.
Kyle
Are you okay?
I never actually answered him, at least not truthfully. I turned it into something logistical and safe, like I always do. But I haven’t stopped thinking about the question. Now, with my thumb hovering over the keyboard, I could answer with something harmless, anything to make the ache go quiet for a moment. But I don’t type anything. Instead, I lock the phone and place it face down on the coffee table, like I’m shutting a door I’m not strong enough to lookthrough.
I curl my knees to my chest, arms wrapped tight, and drop my forehead into the space created by my own arms. I don’t cry, but the pressure behind my ribs feels like if I breathe too deeply, everything I’ve held together will spill out. The gala is two days away. My mother thinks I’m walking in with a boyfriend. The team thinks I’m unshakable. And Kyle thinks… I don’t know what he thinks, but I know whatever it is, I’m afraid of it.
I’m perched on the sharpest edge I’ve ever put myself on. If I lean one way, I get the life I’ve built, but if I lean the other… I get him. Maybe. And that kind of heartbreak doesn’t heal cleanly.
In the dark behind my closed eyelids, I see him laughing on the ice, alive in a way that makes something in me unfurl, no matter how tightly I hold it.
I hear my mother’s voice:I just want you to be happy.
I hear myself lying:Everything is perfect.
And then I hear him, devastatingly unguarded:You’d look better in blue.
“I can’t afford to want this,” I whisper into the stillness, and my apartment doesn’t argue.
But somewhere under the fear and the rules and the exhaustion, a stubborn part of me whispers back:You already do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kyle
Cooper’s office smells like old coffee and cedar polish, his unofficial “I’m spiraling” cologne. He’ll swear it’s just “maintaining a professional environment,” but I’ve seen his garage. That man only deep-cleans when his stress hits DEFCON levels.
Alycia is already seated across from him, legs crossed, notebook open, and her posture immaculate. To anyone else, she looks focused and unshakeable, but her knee bounces once—just a small, frantic tremor—and my brain zeros in on it like it’s the only movement in the room.
She glances at me when the door clicks shut behind me, and the bounce stops instantly. It hits low under my ribs, the way it always does when I realize I’m somehow the thing that grounds her.
“Sit,” Cooper orders, pointing at the chair like I’m ten and just broke something important. “We’re finalizing the gala logistics.”
I drop into the chair and stretch my legs out because the office is small, and I enjoy taking up space.Alycia flips a page in her notebook, her fingers tense against the paper’s edge.
“I drafted the media talking points,” she says evenly, “but I want to make sure we’re aligned before I finalize.”
I can hear the thin fracture beneath her professional voice. The one no one else would notice. The one I’ve learned by heart.
Cooper leans forward. “Tomorrow is going to be a circus. And because the two of you decided to?—”
“Handle an unexpected PR crisis professionally?” Alycia offers, but I immediately follow with the last thing any of us should say right now.
“Panic-kiss in public?” I say, deadpan, because sarcasm is my favorite coping mechanism.
Alycia shoots me a sharp look, and Cooper closes his eyes like he’s praying for strength.
“Whatever it was,” he says through his teeth, “you’re showing up tomorrow as a united front.”
“We have been. Pretty sure we fooled the entire world already.”
Alycia stiffens, and I know immediately I shouldn’t have said that. The last time I made a joke like that, her mom overheard it. And we’re still recovering from the fallout.
