I am sitting at the head of my own conference table, in my own building, being talked at about my own life, and I am doing the thing Rosalie trained me to do which is keep my face neutral and my hands still and wait for the moment I can end this.
"The board's position has been clear since the last incident," Frank says, in the voice of a man who has been practicing law since before I was born and knows exactly how to make a sentence sound like a verdict. "Frankly, it's been clear since well before it."
Do I need a board of directors?I should look into that. Can I dissolve a board? I'll ask Rosalie.
I look at Rosalie. She gives me the microscopic head shake that meansDo not say whatever you're about to say.
I look back at Frank.
"I understand the board's position," I say. Even. Measured. The voice I built specifically for rooms like this one. "I understood it when Jackson sent the memo, and I understood it when my attorney walked me through it at brunch." I let that land for exactly a second. "What I don't understand is why we're having this conversation again in my own conference room when the solution is already on her way up."
Silence.
Frank opens his mouth, but the conference room door opens, and my world comes crashing down.
Bennet Sullivan ceases to exist. I'm Michael Bennett again. Eighteen years old, crying on the side of the road in the rain, soaked through, running from the only thing that ever mattered.
Blaire Alexander just walked into my conference room.
My brain does something I can’t even put into words. A kind of full-system halt, every process suspending at once. She is in a black sleeveless turtleneck and a white pencil skirt and heels thatmake her already tall frame taller, and her hair is pinned back, and her makeup is impeccable, and across her right eyebrow and down her cheek runs the scar that I kissed the last time I saw her. Ten years ago. When I was still Michael and she was still...
Ten. Fucking. Years.
Ten years and she still walks into a room like she owns the air in it. Like she decided before she touched the door handle that this was her space now and everyone in it simply hasn't caught up yet.
I watch her take in the room. Every face turning toward her with varying degrees of relief and assessment. I watch her register all of it in approximately two seconds and file it. She straightens fractionally and produces a smile that is warm and professional and gives away absolutely nothing.
She looks at Frank first, because Frank is clearly the loudest energy in the room and she has correctly identified the center of gravity.
Then her eyes move to Rosalie.
Then around the table.
They land on me.
Blaire Alexander looks at Bennet Sullivan and sees a client.
I look at her and see the girl who ran her fingers through Michael Bennett's hair in a dark room while he shook apart, and I feel a coldness move through my chest that I haven’t felt in a long time.
I stand.
"Bennet Sullivan." My voice comes out exactly as I need it to — controlled, neutral, the particular register of a man receiving a consultant he didn't ask for and is tolerating professionally. I extend my hand across the table.
She crosses the room and takes it.
Her hand is warm. Her grip is firm. Her eyes are exactly the color I remember, and she is looking at me with focused and professional attention. Like someone meeting a stranger.
She has no idea who I am.
"Blaire Monroe." She holds my gaze a beat, reading me the way I imagine she reads every room — efficiently, thoroughly, storing what she finds. "I appreciate you making time. I know I'm walking into the middle of something."
Monroe. Not Alexander. Of course, she married him.
"You're not interrupting," I say pushing back the bile forming in my throat. "We were just finishing."
I look at Frank when I say it.
Frank looks at me. Then at Blaire. Then back at me.
