Beautiful, even.
And behind me—barely visible in the background, out of focus but unmistakable?—
Gideon.
Watching.
Not posing for the camera. Not aware of the photographer. Just… watching me. His expression unreadable even blurred. But the intensity bled through the grain, sharp enough to cut.
My stomach dropped.
This wasn't a random shot from a public event.
Someone had taken this. Printed it. Kept it.
He'd kept it.
For a year.
My hands trembled as I leaned closer, searching for details I didn't want to find. The angle suggested a professional photographer, maybe hired for the gala. But the composition felt wrong—too intimate, too focused on a moment that shouldn't have mattered to anyone but me.
Unless I'd mattered to him even then.
Before I'd rejected him.
Before the contract.
Before everything.
I reached for the next shelf, fingers brushing aside a stack of old programs, and froze.
A frame.
Tucked behind the clutter like someone had shoved it there deliberately. Hidden, but not quite discarded.
I pulled it free.
The glass was dusty, smudged at the edges where fingers had gripped too hard. The photo inside looked decades old—colors washed pale, edges yellowed with time.
A boy stared back at me.
Maybe seven. Maybe eight.
Small in a way that felt wrong for the space he occupied. Too thin. Shoulders hunched like he'd learned early to make himself smaller. His clothes hung loose—collared shirt buttoned to the throat, slacks that pooled at his ankles.
Gideon.
I recognized him in the set of his jaw. The blue eyes. The careful blankness already forming, even that young.
He stood between two adults who didn't touch him except for necessity.
The man—his father, presumably—broad and looming with eyes that cut even through faded film. His hand rested on Gideon's shoulder, fingers splayed wide. Not affection. Ownership. The kind of grip that said don't move, don't speak, don't breathe wrong.
The woman beside them looked like she'd learned that lesson first.
Pale. Tense. Thin in a way that spoke of more than genetics. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. Her posture screamed apology—for existing, for being photographed, for whatever had happened five minutes before the shutter clicked.
She looked at the camera like she expected punishment for blinking at the wrong moment.
