“This is not a real thing,” Lizanne said. “Not in the way that counts. When your actual person comes along you can do all of this again properly, in whatever dress you want. Tonight is just—” She paused. “A beautiful, expensive performance that ends with you solvent and free and standing on your own ground.” She held Rose’s hands steady. “So let’s find you a dress that’s worth the performance. Nothing less than that.”
Rose looked at her. Whatever was moving behind her eyes, she didn’t put it into words.
Then she squeezed Lizanne’s hands.
Lizanne hadn’t expected it. She held on a beat longer than was strictly necessary and found, standing in the warm light of a closed bridal salon with the cameras nowhere near them, that she didn’t mind it at all.
Before she had a chance to examine whatever it was that filled this moment, the attendant returned with the garment bag containing her dress. And suddenly, it was Lizanne’s turn to not be able to breathe quite properly. Because the last time she’d seen this dress, she’d had a future planned out in front of her that hadn’t looked like anything she could recognize now.
Chapter 16
Rose
Rose had expected something architectural. Lizanne wore clothes the way other people used punctuation—deliberately, for effect—and Rose had spent the last few weeks building a mental blueprint of the dress. Statement shoulders. A neckline that took risks. Something that preceded her into a room and forced the air to rearrange itself. Rose had spent all day bracing for a dress that would demand an audience.
What actually came out of the garment bag stopped her cold.
It was ivory silk, yes, and undeniably beautiful, but it had a restraint Rose hadn’t seen coming. The lines were Regency—high-waisted, the skirt falling in soft, clean waves, with short puffed sleeves that sat neat at the shoulder. The lace traced the neckline and the hem in a pattern that looked considered rather than decorative, as if every single inch had been a decision rather than an afterthought. It was actually stunning.
She realized she was staring.
“It’s not what I expected,” she said.
“People rarely expect what I actually want,” Lizanne said. No edge, just a statement of fact.
The attendant watched Rose’s face with the practiced, terrifying patience of someone who’d spent a career reading clients before they’d even finished processing a feeling.
“Something similar?” she asked.
“Similar, yes. But longer sleeves. To the wrist.” Rose kept her voice in her professional register—the one she reserved for discussing floral budgets and lighting rigs. “The puffed sleeve is lovely, but I want more coverage.”
The attendant vanished. Lizanne sank into one of the low cream chairs, her coat draped over her arm. She didn’t say a word, which Rose appreciated more than any platitude she could have offered.
Three dresses came back. Rose worked through them with a sense of duty. The first was too stiff in the bodice; the second had sleeves that bunched at the elbow. But when she held the third one against herself in the mirror, the decision was made before she could even think to argue with it. And she wasn’t the only one.
“That one,” Lizanne said from the chair.
“I haven’t even tried it on.”
“Try it on anyway.”
The changing room was cramped, and the dress had sixteen tiny buttons up the spine. Rose was halfway through a struggle when she realized she was trapped. The attendant stepped in, and between them, they worked the silk closed. Rose turned to face the glass.
She looked like a bride.
The lace hit her wrists exactly where it should. The waist sat right. The skirt fell in those same soft waves as Lizanne’s, and the whole thing was so far from theI don’t carenarrative she’d been telling herself that she had to look at the wall for a second just to get her face under control.
She stepped out.
The attendant made a noise that was mostly just a handful of exaggerated vowels.
Lizanne stood up. “Well,” she said. A grin spread on her lips.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You had a face.”
