“Freya, are you sure you’re okay with getting together with my parents? I know it’s another layer of complexity.”
“I’m fine with it. Really. It’ll be good practice for the wedding.”
“Okay. They want to take us to dinner Friday night. Somewhere nice, they said. They can be a lot. Very focused on appearances and social standing.”
“I remember. I can handle it.”
“I know you can. You’ve been incredible through all of this.” He reaches across the table and covers my hand with his, the gesture probably meant to be reassuring. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
His hand is warm against mine, and for a moment I let myself imagine that the touch means something beyond gratitude for services rendered. But then I remember that we’re in public, that this is probably part of our new strategy to be more convincing.
I pull my hand back gently. “What are friends for?”
But as I say it, the word “friends” tastes bitter in my mouth. Because we stopped being just friends the moment we signed those contracts, and I’m not sure we can ever find our way back to what we used to be.
“I ordered us both omelets,” he says, and just like that, the serious conversation is over.
After breakfast, he offers to walk me home, and I almost say no but then remember this is how it’s supposed to be. We’re putting on a show, acting like we’re in love.
Acting “inseparable.” Whether I want to or not.
And so we walk through the Sunday morning quiet, me trying not to think about the fact that I just committed to lying to his parents’ faces about loving their son.
The irony is that it won’t really be lying. I do love Ben. I’ve loved him for fifteen years. I’m just not allowed to mean it when I say it.
CHAPTER 14
BEN
“Want to come up for a minute?” Freya asks as we reach her building after the walk from Grounds Up. “I have some new pieces I’ve been working on, if you want to see them.”
I check my phone reflexively—a habit that’s become so automatic I barely notice I’m doing it. Sunday morning means emails from international clients, reports from my overseas teams, and market updates that can’t wait for Monday.
But Freya is looking at me with an expression that’s half invitation, half challenge, like she’s testing whether I can put the phone away for five minutes.
“I’d love to see them,” I say, sliding the phone back into my pocket.
I follow her up the familiar stairs to the fourth floor, the same route I’ve taken dozens of times over the past few years—picking her up for dinner, dropping off documents, retrieving her when her car was in the shop. But it’s been months since I’ve actually spent time here, and longer still since I’ve seen her studio.
“Sorry about the mess,” she says as she unlocks her door, though her apartment is actually quite tidy. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
The space is mostly as I last saw it—the same eclectic furniture, thriving plants, and books stacked on every surface that I remember. Her own art still covers most of the walls, though I notice a few new pieces mixed in with the familiar ones.
“The studio’s still in the back,” she says, leading me past the kitchen and living area. “Though I’ve rearranged things quite a bit since you were last in there.”
It’s been at least eight months since I’ve seen her studio properly—not since that evening when I stopped by to drop off her laptop after she’d left it in my car. Even then, I’d only glanced in briefly while she gathered her things.
The studio still has the same floor-to-ceiling windows facing west toward downtown, but everything else has changed dramatically. Where I remember a somewhat cramped space with a few canvases propped against the walls, there’s now a well-organized artist’s workspace. Canvases lean against the walls in various stages of completion, and there’s a large easel in the center of the room with something covered by a paint-stained sheet.
But it’s the finished pieces that stop me in my tracks.
The last time I really looked at Freya’s work—not just glanced at pieces hanging in her living room—I remembered it as good, competent, the kind of abstract paintings you might see in a coffee shop or small gallery.
This is something completely different.
The paintings surrounding me are bold and emotional and completely arresting. The evolution in her work is staggering. There’s a confidence and sophistication here that wasn’t present before, a maturity that speaks to hours of dedicated practice and artistic growth.
One of the paintings has mostly deep blues and blacks with sharp streaks of white cutting through like lightning. Another is all warm colors—reds and oranges and golds—swirling together in a way that somehow suggests both violence and tenderness.
