But then Nerissa smiles.
And Seraphina feels something horrible stir inside her.
Because that smile isn’t the same one she usually gives her in bed, amid rumpled sheets and promises Seraphina never quite manages to keep.
“Thanks,” Nerissa murmurs.
The laughter around the table makes the scene seem completely normal.
And that’s what hurts Seraphina the most: the normality of it.
No one looks at Daphne strangely. No one questions that closeness. No one treats it as something shameful.
While she has spent years hiding like a criminal.
Rage rises in her throat, mixed with jealousy so intense it almost embarrasses her.
She has no right, she knows that.
Even so, she feels an irrational urge to pull Daphne’s hand away from Nerissa’s arm, to wipe that damn smile off her face, to claim something she has never wanted to claim in public.
“How unfair you are.”
Then she clears her throat sharply and speaks.
“Dr. Ashcombe. Ms. Mercer.”
The conversations gradually die down, and Nerissa looks up at her.
“If you’ve finished reviewing your eating habits,” Seraphina continues, “I’d like to return to the numbers on page four. This clinic pays the consulting firm to optimize its resources, not to reminisce about old times.”
Lunch officially comes to a halt.
Daphne blinks in surprise, and several executives immediately lower their eyes to their documents.
And Nerissa...
Nerissa smiles.
It’s a smile full of defiance.
Something dark flickers in her eyes as she holds Seraphina’s gaze from across the table, as if she’s just realized exactly how much it hurts her to see her with another woman.
Chapter 11
The rain begins to fall even before they leave Manchester. It beats against the windshield with that monotonous insistence that turns the highway into a blur. Elliot drives with his left hand firmly on the steering wheel and his right resting intermittently on the gearshift, as if he needs something tangible to hold on to.
Seraphina, in the passenger seat, keeps her gaze fixed on her phone screen. The bluish glow illuminates her tense features as she checks, for the third time, the same financial email without managing to make sense of a single line.
“He hasn’t sent me a single message,” Seraphina thinks, clearly recalling the smile Nerissa gave her when she showed her jealousy toward Daphne.
“Put that down, Phina. Please,” Elliot says, not harshly, but with an exhaustion she recognizes immediately.
Seraphina locks the screen and lets the phone fall into her lap.
“I have to finish the audit report by Monday,” she replies.
“You’ve been saying the same thing for over an hour,” he says, without taking his eyes off the road. “Do you really think I don’t notice?”
