I stood there with the dress in my hands, feeling heat rise behind my ribs, feeling the strange, low pulse that had been living in me since the letter.
My phone buzzed again.
This time I picked it up immediately.
Not that.
I froze.
The air went thin.
I stared down at the phone like it might blink back.
Another message followed.
You’ll wear it later. But not on the plane.
My fingers went numb.
I looked at the dress in my hands like it had betrayed me.
Then I looked at the ceiling like I might find a camera.
The rational part of me tried to scramble for explanations—data breaches, stalkers, Harper’s rooftop bar, someone who’d watched me in the lobby of my building—but none of it fit. None of it explained the precision.
The familiarity.
The way he spoke like he wasn’t guessing.
Like he already knew the inside of my life.
I set the silk dress carefully on the bed, like it was fragile.
Then I slid it into the suitcase anyway.
Because he’d told me I would wear it later.
And a part of me—a part I didn’t want to acknowledge—had already started to believe him.
I didn’t tell Harper.
It should’ve been the first thing I did. Harper was the kind of friend who would drive across town at midnight with a bottle of champagne and a fake smile and sit on my couch until I confessed whatever I was hiding. She’d known me since our early twenties—since before Lia Quinn became a name people whispered into donor ears, since before I learned how to stand in front of a room and make men feel guilty without ever raising my voice.
Harper knew my tells.
She knew when I was withholding.
She knew when my calm was a performance.
And she’d already called it.
Horny. Twitchy. Waiting.
If I told her about Alpha Mail—about the texts, the summit, the way I’d been moved like a chess piece—she would do exactly what a good friend should do.
She would try to stop me.
Or worse—she would look at me like I’d lost my mind.
