Something flashes across her face—approval? Amusement? “You’re flirting.”
“I am.”
She smiles slowly. “Bold.”
I reach into my jacket pocket, retrieve my phone, and slide it across the table toward her. “In case brunch becomes intolerable again, you can text me.”
She enters her number, and Jason reenters the room just as she hands my phone back to me. His timing, as always, is a bitch. He returns to the table with forced cheer, the kind that never quite reaches his eyes. “Everything good?” he asks, glancing between us.
“Perfect.” I give him a tight smile. It’s the only one I have for a son who’s going to fuck up his engagement.
Perry’s expression is neutral. She’s composed in a way that suggests she enjoys the tension more than she’s bothered by it.
Jason sits, but he doesn’t relax. He keeps looking at us, even as Faith enters the room, followed by my mother. Even as everyone spreads out into their own conversations.
The rest of brunch unfolds predictably—wedding updates, financial projections masquerading as guest lists, my mother offering unsolicited advice with surgical precision.
Perry participates lightly, gracefully, as though she’s been rehearsing this social dance her entire life. No sign of strain. No sign of shared history with me beyond polite familiarity. She is either very disciplined or very practiced. Either way, it’s impressive.
I excuse myself halfway through dessert under the pretense of taking a call. In truth, I need air. There’s only so much family melodrama I can stomach, and the moment Faith said she wanted carnations, I thought my mother would have a conniption.
The patio doors open onto the terrace, sunlight cutting clean lines across the lawn. A moment later, they open again. Perry watches across the lawn, like she’s trying to see into the forest beyond. “Escaping?” she asks me.
“Strategically repositioning.”
She leans against the stone balustrade, arms folded loosely. In daylight, there’s nothing mysterious about her. She is simply striking. Younger than me by enough years that it should give me pause.
It doesn’t.
“You’re aware this is inappropriate,” she says calmly.
“In what sense?”
“You were my doctor.”
“Briefly.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
I shrug. “You’re no longer under my care.”
She watches me closely. “That’s how you justify it?”
“I don’t need to justify it.”
Her lips curve slightly. “Confident.”
“Do I have a reason not to be?”
A breeze shifts her hair, and she tucks it behind her ear with an absent gesture that feels more intimate than it should. There’s tension here. “You always this direct?”
“Usually.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“I find ambiguity more dangerous.”
“Hmm.” She turns to face me, knocking me out with a single span of eye contact. I don’t know what it is about this woman, but I want to learn. Her voice is low, bordering on husky. “You don’t seem concerned about Jason.”
