Chapter 16
Saylor
The lobby of Celeste’s building has a waterfall. Strange, I didn’t notice this the first time I came by. I was too focused on slipping past security.
It’s not a decorative trickle or a tabletop fountain.
A floor-to-ceiling sheet of water cascading down a slab of black marble behind the reception desk, the kind of architectural statement that exists solely to remind you that some people live in buildings where the lobby has its own water feature and you are not one of those people.
There are orchids on the desk. Fresh ones.
A concierge in a suit nicer than anything I own.
And a security guard whose posture suggests he was either military or a ballet dancer, possibly both.
This time, I stop to give my name at the desk.
“Saylor Evans. I’m here to see Celeste Brinley.”
The concierge checks his screen. Types something. And then, without hesitation, without the skeptical once-over I’ve come to expect in buildings like this: “Of course, Mr. Evans. You’re on the permanent guest list. Elevator bank is to your right. Ms. Brinley’s floor is forty-seven.”
Permanent guest list. Not visitor. Not one-time access.
Permanent. Celeste put my name on a list that lives in this building’s system, which means somewhere in a database behind that waterfall there is a record that says Saylor Evans belongs here, and the concierge treats this information as unremarkable, as routine, as if men in paint-stained boots walk through this lobby every day to visit the CEO on the forty-seventh floor.
I nod like this is normal for me. Take my visitor badge. Walk toward the elevator bank with the manufactured calm of a man who is not quietly losing his mind over the fact that Celeste Brinley told a building he was permanent.
The lift is mirrored on three sides. I press forty-seven and watch the numbers climb, my reflection staring back at me from three different angles. Boots. Jeans. Flannel rolled to the elbows. The paint that never fully leaves my cuticles no matter how hard I scrub.
The lift stops on fourteen. The doors open and a man steps in.
He looks mid-forties. Tall, sharp-jawed, wearing a suit that fits him so well no doubt it was tailored.
Silver watch, little diamonds around the crest. Pocket square folded with geometric precision.
The kind of tan that comes from a UV-lit bed, not from actual time in the sun.
He carries a tablet in one hand and a coffee in the other, and when he sees me, his eyes perform a full inventory in under two seconds: boots, jeans, flannel, cuticles.
The assessment is instantaneous. The verdict, immediate.
I know who he is before he opens his mouth.
I’ve only seen prom photos, but the jaw is the same, the posture is the same, and the smile he’s arranging on his face has the same overcompensating wattage I clocked in that picture on Celeste’s shelf.
The question is…does he know who I am to Celeste? Hell, do I know who I am to Celeste?
“Morning,” he says, extending his hand. “Greg Prescott. I don’t think we’ve met.”
I shake it. His grip is deliberately too firm, the handshake equivalent of a dog marking its territory. I match the pressure without exceeding it because I’m not interested in whatever contest he thinks this is.
“Saylor Evans.”
“Saylor.” He tastes my name and finds it undercooked. “You’re here to see Celeste, I assume?”
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“I do.” He sips his coffee. Casual. Practiced. The choreography of a man who rehearses even his spontaneous moments. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you. Margot’s an enthusiastic narrator.”
I say nothing. The lift hums between floors. The mirrored walls show me three versions of this moment from three different angles, and in each one Greg is taking up more space than a man holding a coffee needs to.
“I’d prefer if we could be amicable,” I say. “For Celeste’s sake.”
Greg nods. A slow nod to indicate he agrees with the words, while his eyes are constructing something else entirely. The floors tick upward. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. The silence between us has a texture, like fabric with too much starch. Stiff and deliberate.
The lift reaches forty-six. The doors open. Greg steps out first, then stops. Turns back to me with a smug smile like he’s been waiting to say something he’s been polishing in his head since the fourteenth floor.
“Word of advice?” He adjusts his pocket square with idle precision.
“She’s going to get bored of you, Cinderella.
I’ve seen this before. Celeste latches onto projects.
Buildings, brands, broken things she thinks she can fix.
You got pulled from the streets and put in the palace, but that’s temporary.
Enjoy the view while it lasts.” His eyes drop to my boots.
“You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with her. ”
The doors begin to close. I catch them with my hand.
“Have a good morning, Greg.”
I let the doors shut between us and ascend the final floor toward Celeste’s office with Greg’s words settling into my chest like coins dropped into a deep well.
The problem with cruel people is not that they lie.
It’s that they aim their cruelty at the exact spot where your own doubt already lives, and then all they have to do is agree with it.
You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with her.
I’ve been telling myself some version of that for weeks. Hearing it from the man who spent twenty years diminishing the woman I’m falling for doesn’t make it true, but it makes it louder. It gives the doubt a voice that isn’t mine, and other people’s voices are always harder to argue with.
Margot’s desk is empty. Either she’s on a coffee run or she’s been reassigned or she’s in the restroom; all three equally likely given what I know about Margot’s professional priorities. I knock on the glass door and Celeste’s voice comes through, clipped and distracted.
“Margot, where the hell have you—”
“It’s me.”
A pause. The sound of a chair rolling back.
The door opens and Celeste is standing there in a black pencil skirt and a white silk blouse, sexy glasses on, hair twisted up with a pencil holding it in place, and even stressed and sleep-deprived and clearly mid-crisis, she looks like the kind of woman men write novels about.
Which, given her industry, might actually be the point.
“Saylor.” She says my name differently than Greg did. Like it belongs here. Like the syllables have weight she wants to hold. “What are you doing? I didn’t know you were coming by today. Everything okay?”
“Surprise visit. Wanted to see you.” I step inside.
The office is immaculate. Clean lines, white walls, the mannequin she calls Patrice standing by the window wearing a half-finished copper gown that’s either brilliant or a work in progress depending on the hour.
Fabric swatches pinned to the corkboard in clusters that probably mean something to her but look like a mess on a wall to me. “How’s the line coming?”
She drops into her chair as if she has been fighting a losing battle against herself.
“The line is winning. I had a burst of something last week that felt like a breakthrough, and then it vanished. I keep chasing it and it keeps dissolving, and I’m starting to think the fall collection is going to be eleven inspired pieces and eleven fillers, and Bergdorf will notice the difference even if nobody else does. ”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Will I? Because right now I’m staring at twenty-two dress forms and feeling absolutely nothing. Do you know how terrifying that is? I might actually have to use the uninspired designs Greg’s girlfriend is trying to stuff down my throat.”
“Well, why do you think you’re so blocked? Are you stressed about the custody case?”
“It’s not that, I’m worried this is the beginning of the end.
Feeling nothing about the thing that defines you?
It’s like waking up and forgetting your native language.
The words are supposed to be there and they’re just…
not.” She pulls the pencil from her hair and the whole thing tumbles around her shoulders.
She doesn’t notice. “But maybe this is natural selection. I shouldn’t be sitting at the head of the table if I can’t run this company and design these lines.
It’s the perfect time to disappear from it all with a baby. ”
“You don’t strike me as a person who runs away from hard things,” I tell her.
She scoffs. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Saylor.”
“You’re just stressed.”
“I’m past stressed. I’ve lapped stressed, I’ve overtaken panicked, and I’m now entering a state of creative paralysis that doesn’t have a clinical name yet. There should be a German word for it. They have words for everything.”
“Torschlusspanik,” I say.
She blinks at me. “What?”
“It’s German. Means the fear that time is running out and doors are closing. Literally translates to ‘gate-closing panic.’”
“How do you know that?”
I won’t dare tell her a client actually taught me that on a date. Because now that feels like a different life. Before Celeste. Well before I knew what I wanted and decided to go for it.
“Just someone from a past life.”
She doesn’t question it. She almost smiles. “It’s accurate, I’ll give you that. Gate-closing panic. That’s exactly what this is.” She rubs her temples in circles like she can massage her worries away.
“You need to relax.”
“I’ll relax when I’m dead, Saylor.”
“Or,” I say, stepping farther into the office, “you could relax right now. For ten minutes. Just long enough to get out of your own head.”
“I don’t have ten minutes.”
“You have all the minutes you decide you have. You own this company. Nobody’s checking your timesheet.”
“That’s not how creative deadlines—”