But I could tell you the exact shade of Lucy’s lipstick under the ballroom lights. The faint scar under her jaw I’d noticed when she tilted her head. The way her fingers curled slightly when she was nervous.
That wasn’t desire.
That was attention.
I took another sip of Scotch and let it burn.
Control had always been my advantage. Distance. Strategy. The ability to want without needing. Lucy was undoing that in quiet, insidious ways.
When she’d stepped away at the gala, just briefly, to speak with someone, I’d noticed immediately. The absence felt like a pulled thread, subtle but destabilizing. I’d found her across the room without thinking, relief settling only when she was back within reach.
That had never happened.
I wasn’t supposed to noticetheabsence.
I finished my drink and stood there longer than necessary, until the tension in my shoulders finally eased and exhaustion crept in.
When I returned to the bedroom, Lucy hadn’t moved.
I slid back into bed carefully, lying on my back again, hands folded loosely over my stomach like I was afraid to touch anything.
She turned toward me in her sleep, and her knee brushed my thigh, her hair shifted, and a soft whisper against my arm.
I didn’t move.
I stared at the ceiling and let the weight of the day settle.
This wasn’t part of the contract.
This wasn’t leverage, optics, or a mutually beneficial arrangement behaving as expected.
This was something else.
Something I didn’t know how to do.
But as sleep finally dragged me under, one thought stayed with me, quiet, insistent, impossible to ignore.
I liked who I was with her.
Chapter 36 - Lucy
Sunday mornings have always felt fragile to me. Like if you move too quickly, they shatter into obligation and noise and reality before you’ve had a chance to decide who you’re going to be that day. This one feels especially delicate.
I wake slowly, warm and heavy with sleep, tangled in sheets that still smell faintly like Julian. For a moment, I forget where I am. Who I am.
Then I remember where I am and why. The past few days come to me in full colour.
I roll onto my side and find him awake, propped slightly on one elbow, watching me with an expression so gentle it almost startles me.
“Good morning,” he says quietly.
His voice is lower like this, stripped of boardrooms and press lines. Just Julian. A man in a grey t-shirt with rumpled hair and sleep-soft eyes.
“Morning,” I murmur.
We lie there for a beat, neither of us moving, like if we stay still enough, we can preserve whatever this is before it gets complicated.
Then he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, careful, like he’s asking permission even though he doesn’t say it.
