We drove the rest of the way in silence. When we got home, Callum kissed my temple like nothing had happened and went upstairs to shower. I stood in the kitchen, my coat still on, and stared at the marble countertops. I’d picked them out three years ago, back when this house was just a project on paper. I had made every decision about its light, its space, its feeling.
I’d designed this kitchen. I’d designed this house. I’d designed the firm that paid for both of them.
And somewhere along the way, I’d let myself become invisible in my own life.
I thought about Laura’s hand on Callum’s sleeve. The way she’d said we. The nod he’d given her across the room. The way she’d accepted a compliment meant for me without even glancing in my direction.
She wasn’t just positioning herself beside him. She was positioning herself in my place. And Callum wasn’t stopping her. He was nodding. He was approving. He was making room for her in full view of everyone, and when I noticed, he told me I was imagining things.
I pulled off my coat and hung it on the back of a chair. The house was quiet. Upstairs, the shower was running. I stood there in my kitchen. My husband was making room for another woman. The only real question left was whether I’d been the last person in the room to see it.
Chapter Two
HOLLAND
The morning suncut through downtown Chicago in long, pale streaks, and I told myself I was just making a routine stop. A structural consult. Nothing more.
Finn Morrow's studio occupied the top floor of a converted warehouse on Wabash, and I'd been there exactly twice in the years since he'd opened it. Both times for work. Both times I'd left with a low-grade unease, like I'd walked out of a store without paying and hadn't noticed until I was already down the block.
I pressed the buzzer and waited, my portfolio bag heavy on my shoulder.
"Holland." His voice came through the intercom, and I heard the surprise in it. "Give me a second."
The door clicked open. I climbed the stairs instead of waiting for the freight elevator, because I needed the movement. Needed my legs to do something while my brain kept circling back to the dinner, to Laura's hand on Callum's arm, to the way he'd looked at me in the car like I was a problem he was tired of solving.
Finn met me at the top of the landing. He was built like a detail you'd almost miss—narrow, precise, everything close to the vertical. Black hair, glasses, and behind them green eyes that had always taken in more than they gave back.
"You're in early," he said.
"You're in earlier."
He didn't smile exactly, but something shifted at the corner of his mouth. "Coffee's on. You want some?"
"I want your opinion on a cantilever that's about to become a lawsuit."
He stepped back and let me through. "That's a better offer than coffee."
His studio had the quality of a good argument: nothing in it that didn't need to be there. Exposed brick, north-facing windows, drafting tables in even light. Low shelves with models at various stages of completion. A corkboard pinned with material samples in careful rows. Paper, wood, fresh ink— the smell of a place that had never been asked to look like anything other than what it was.
I stood in the doorway for a moment longer than I needed to.
"You've been busy," I said, nodding toward the models.
"We've been busy. You know how it is." He pulled a second mug from a low cabinet and poured coffee without asking if I wanted cream. He remembered. "What's the project?"
I unrolled the drawings across his worktable. "Lakefront estate. The clients brought us in after the original architect lost their confidence. That was about a year ago."
"Us being Crestline?"
"Yes."
He didn't react to the name. Just took the drawings and spread them flat, his fingers moving across the lines with the kind of attention that couldn't be faked. I watched him read the structure the way I'd watched him read a hundred other drawings back in college, back when we'd been rivals in every sense that mattered and friends in every sense that didn't.
"The cantilever's overextended," he said after a moment. "You've got a forty-foot span with no visible support, which is great for the view but terrible for the load. What's your soil report look like?"
"Sandy loam. Some clay at depth."
"So you're asking the footings to do more work than they're designed for." He traced the line with his index finger. "You already know this."
