"The cantilever competition," I said. "Junior year. That sketch was mine. You took it to your first client meeting and presented it as yours. I let you. I let you because we were a team, because I thought it didn't matter whose name was on the drawing."
"That was a decade ago."
"It's the foundation of everything we've built."
"It's a sketch from college. You're reaching."
I looked at him. At his hazel eyes and his careful, gentle expression and the way he was standing there like a man reviewing plans he had already signed off on. And I realized, with a sudden, unnerving calm, that he wasn't panicking. He wasn't scrambling. He was executing a strategy he had clearly prepared for, because somewhere in the back of his mind he had always known this conversation was coming.
"You don't believe I'm useless," I said.
"Of course I don't."
"You know exactly how useful I am. You know the company wouldn't function without me. You know the clients stay because of me. The designs are mine. You just think you can keep using me while Laura replaces me in public."
He went very still. It was the first real crack in the facade. "That's not what's happening."
"That's exactly what's happening. You want me quiet and productive and invisible. You want Laura on your arm at the gala. You want both. And you think I'll let you have both because you've spent seven years convincing me that this arrangement is normal."
"Holland."
"You've been gaslighting me for months, maybe longer. Every time I brought up Laura, I was insecure. Every time I asked about your schedule, I was paranoid. Every time I pointed out that my work was being erased, I was being dramatic. You made it about my sanity so it wouldn't have to be about your lies."
He reached for my hand. I pulled it back.
"I'm not doing this with you at two in the morning," he said. "You're upset. You're not thinking clearly. We'll talk about this tomorrow, when you've had some rest."
“You don't get to walk away from this.”
"There's nothing to talk about. You've decided what you believe. Nothing I say is going to change that." He picked up his coat from the hook. "I'm going to sleep in the guest room. In the morning, when you're calmer, we can revisit this like adults."
He walked out of the kitchen. I listened to his footsteps on the hardwood, then the click of the guest room door.
I stayed at the island, the cold marble beneath my forearms. I looked from the note to the photographs. His panic hadn't been guilt. I replayed the moment he saw the evidence: the brief flicker of accounting, of calculating a loss. He wasn't afraid of losing me; he was afraid of losing my work. And when I didn't dissolve into tears, he had no script to follow. So he retreated, expecting the storm to pass by morning.
I wouldn't be.
I stood up. I took the note and the receipt and put them in the drawer of my desk in the study, next to the old cantilever sketchI'd left out four days ago. Then I opened my phone and scrolled to Finn's contact.
I looked at his name. A memory surfaced, unbidden: junior year review, my cantilever drawings pinned to the board. Callum was at my shoulder, already telling people the concept was "theirs." My stomach had hollowed out. But then, across the room, Finn caught my eye. He gave a slow, deliberate nod. It wasn't praise. It was a statement of fact, a quiet acknowledgment of authorship. He saw the work, and he saw who made it. Ten years, and he had never tried to stand in my light.I closed the phone. I didn't send a message. Not yet. But I left the contact open, a small square of light in the darkness of the room. It was still lit when I lay down, staring at the ceiling until the lake started to go gray outside the windows.
Tomorrow, I would call him. Tomorrow, I would ask him to look at the work and tell me the truth. Tonight I just needed to know that there was someone in the world who had never asked me to disappear.
Chapter Seven
LAURA
Laura didn’t waitfor an invitation anymore. She walked into Callum’s office at ten-fifteen on a Tuesday morning like she already owned the keycard, set her tablet down on the corner of his desk, and closed the door behind her with the heel of her hand. She didn’t check that it had caught.
“We need to talk about the gala.”
Callum looked up from his screen. He’d been reviewing the Alden timeline or pretending to. “The gala’s six weeks out. We’ve got the caterer, the venue, the renderings for the lakefront project. What’s left?”
“The announcement.” Laura sat down in the chair across from him, the one Holland used to take during their morning check-ins. She crossed her legs and let the silence stretch just long enough to make him uncomfortable. “You know what I’m talking about.”
Callum leaned back. His chair creaked. “Laura.”
“Don’t ‘Laura’ me like I’m being unreasonable. We’ve been building toward this for months. The gala is the perfect platform. Everyone who matters will be in that room – clients, investors, the Thompson people, the Morrisons, the press. You stand up there with the lakefront portfolio and you announce the future of Crestline. And that future is me.”
