By seven forty-nine, I’m sweating in my olive-green cashmere sport coat. The carefully chosen cologne is now a sickly-sweet reminder of how hard I’ve tried to make tonight perfect. Jenny hovers nearby until her presence is unsettling instead of comforting. She keeps glancing at the entrance, fingers twisting the scarf at her neck.
“He said seven fifty-five,” I whisper to her, my voice tight and raspy. “It’s… it’s actually going well. People are mingling. They’re looking at his art.”
“Ash,” she whispers.
“It’s going to be fine,” I repeat, the words more mantra than belief.
“Ash.”Jenny’s face has gone pale, and her eyes refuse to meet mine. “I need to tell you something.”
“Can it wait?” A knot tightens in my stomach.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Kael.” She takes a breath. In that breath I notice the way she stares at the floor, toe tapping a nervous rhythm against the tile. “He didn’t break it off with Alistair.”
The room tilts. “What?”
I missed something, an explanation she’d provided but I hadn’t heard. But I heard everything, maybe even expected it somewhere deep inside. When you take a risk, there’s always some part of you that knows what could happen, and here it is now—betrayal.
“He’s still… involved,” Jenny says carefully. “He told me it got complicated.”
The weeks of planning, the spreadsheets, the dent in my savings, the balloon arch, the calls, the favors… it’s all tainted by the idea that underneath it all, Kael has been lying the whole time.
“But he said—” My brain scrambles for the version of the story I’ve been holding onto.
Jenny’s gaze darts around the room again. She bites her lip, knuckles white around her purse strap. “He made me promise not to tell you,” she whispers, “but… Alistair knows everything, Ash. He knows you’re dating Kael. He knows you work at Query.”
I sway, only realizing I’ve stepped back when my shoulder hits the wall. My hands won’t stop shaking. It all snaps into sickening clarity: his mood, his reluctance to celebrate, the oddly specific arrival time.
“He’s with him now, isn’t he?” I ask, the words grinding out.
Jenny nods slowly, her eyes full of regret. One hand rises to cover her mouth. “Alistair asked him to come over. Tonight.”
A chill that has nothing to do with the gallery’s air-conditioning runs through me. I don’t know what Alistair wants from him. I only know Alistair doesn’t give anything away for free.
And Kael went anyway.
Without telling me.
Without me.
I can’t escape the irony any longer. Kael went behind my back, and I’d done my own version of the same thing. I told myself this night was for him, but I planned every detail around the moment I wanted him to have without trusting him enough to share it first.
The party hums on around us, clinking glasses and low laughter, but it all drops behind the clock crawling toward seven fifty-five and the blood thudding in my ears.
What the hell has he walked into, and why am I the last to know?
CHAPTER 29
KAEL
As the carcrests the hill into the Glen Park cul-de-sac, dread coils in my gut. My seventh visit to Alistair’s mansion is my first time alone. He’s planned it this way with his usual precision. He wants to win. That’s been clear from the start.
What will he do when I walk in without Ash?
How will he react when I tell him I’m done?
