I looked at the sketch for a long moment. Then I closed the folder, put the portfolio sleeve back in the drawer, and left the sketch on top of the desk instead of inside it.
A simple thing. A piece of paper on a wooden surface. But it was the first time in seven years I'd left evidence of my own work somewhere Callum could see it and have to decide whether to acknowledge it or look away.
I turned off the desk lamp and walked out of the study, leaving the sketch exposed.
Chapter Five
HOLLAND
I toldmyself I was only going back for the Morrison files.
The Morrisons were a legacy client—our first—from back when Crestline was just my sketches and Callum's handshakes. They wanted an expansion. I'd promised to pull the original specs before the weekend. A quiet task, perfect for a night when the office should have been empty.
The office at nine-thirty on a Thursday night was a different building entirely. The reception desk sat empty, the glass walls gone dark, the usual hum of phones and printers replaced by the low drone of the HVAC system cycling through its evening schedule. My heels sounded too loud on the polished concrete floor, each step a sharp announcement in the silence.
I rounded the corner toward the executive wing and stopped.
Light bled from beneath Callum's door. Not the ambient glow of a forgotten desk lamp. The full, warm spill of someone who'd meant to be here and hadn't bothered to hide it.
Then I heard Laura's voice.
It came through the gap in the door, low and unhurried—the cadence of a woman who already believed she owned the room.
"I'm tired of watching you go home to her."
I heard the words twice—once as sound, once as meaning—and both times I stood there with one hand still on the strap of my bag, letting the silence that followed stretch long enough to confirm what I already knew.
Callum didn't answer. He didn't need to. The absence of his voice was the answer.
I stepped closer, keeping my body out of the sightline, and looked through the narrow opening between the door and the frame.
Laura stood with her back half-turned to me, but I could see her hand resting flat against Callum's chest, her fingers spread across the fabric of his shirt with an easy, proprietary calm. On her wrist, catching the light from his desk lamp, was the delicate silver bracelet I'd noticed three weeks ago. The one Callum had waved off as a professional thank-you. A small token, he'd said, for her dedication to the Alden proposal.
She was wearing it now, in his office, at nine-thirty at night, with her hand on his chest and her voice curling around words that didn't leave room for interpretation.
"You keep saying you need her for the company," Laura said. "But you don't need her for anything else. You haven't for months."
Callum's back was to the window. I couldn't see his face, but I could see his posture. He wasn't leaning away. He wasn't creating distance. His hand hung at his side, and he let hers stay where it was.
"Holland doesn't see what's happening right in front of her," Laura continued, and there was something almost fond in her tone now, the way a person talks about a problem they've already solved. "She never has. She's too busy keeping the lights on to notice who's actually standing next to you."
I pressed my palm flat against the wall beside me. The concrete was cold, and I found myself cataloguing it the way I would a material spec—density, finish, aggregate size—as if I could draft my way out of what I'd just heard.
Callum said something I couldn't hear. His voice was too low, too private, and Laura tilted her head in response, a small, intimate gesture that made my stomach turn.
Then she laughed. Soft and knowing.
"I'm not asking you to leave her tonight," she said. "I'm just telling you I'm done pretending I'm okay with being the woman you see after hours while she gets your name and your house and your company's reputation. I built half of what you've got, Callum. You know that. I'm done being the secret."
I waited for him to correct her. To say that I had built the company. That the design language, the client relationships, the original funding, the seven years of quiet, invisible labor that kept Crestline solvent, those were mine.
He didn't.
He let her claim my work and my place in the same breath, and he didn't say a word to stop her.
A few minutes later, Laura stepped back. I heard the rustle of fabric, the soft click of her heels as she moved toward the door. I pulled back into the shadow of the hallway alcove, and she passed me without looking. Her perfume trailed behind her, something floral and expensive, and the silver bracelet glinted one last time before she turned the corner and disappeared.
I waited until the elevator chimed at the end of the hall. Then I waited another thirty seconds, counting my breaths, until the building settled back into silence.
