7. Chapter 6 #3
She arrived at three, letting herself in with the key Petra had cut for her weeks ago. I heard the door, heard the familiar sequence of sounds: bag on the hook, shoes on the mat, a few quiet words to Missy from the hallway.
I was in my study. I had been in my study since eight that morning, doing a convincing impression of a man reviewing quarterly projections, and I had read the same column of figures four times without retaining a single one.
I gave them twenty minutes.
Missy was at the table with her drawing things. Liv was at the counter, cutting an apple into the precise eighths Missy preferred, her back to the door.
“Liv.” I kept my voice even. “Can I speak with you for a moment. In the study.”
A pause. She set the knife down. “Missy—”
“Will be fine for five minutes.”
She turned then, and I saw her read my expression the way she read everything. Quickly, completely, giving nothing back. She dried her hands on the dish towel. “All right.”
I had rehearsed this in the way I rehearsed difficult conversations: outcome first, then the minimum language required to reach it.
The study felt like neutral ground. There was a desk between us, which I did not sit behind, and a window, which I stood beside.
She stood near the door, arms crossed, and waited.
“There is a gala,” I said. “The National Cybersecurity Summit. It matters to a government contract review my company is currently navigating, and my COO has advised that I attend with a companion.”
She was very still. “A companion.”
“There is a stability clause in the contract. Certain members of the review committee have raised questions about my personal circumstances. One evening in the right room, presenting as—” I paused.
There was no clean word for it. “As someone in a functioning relationship. It would close the question.”
The silence that followed was a specific kind. The silence of someone making sure they had heard correctly.
“You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend,” she said, “at a black-tie gala, so that a government committee doesn’t think you’re too sad and single to hold a security contract.”
“That’s a reductive summary of a complex contractual situation, but yes.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Something moved through her expression that I could not categorize. “Why me?”
I had prepared for most of her likely questions. Not that one. I took a moment. “Because you don’t perform. Every person Marcus would put in that room performs. You don’t, and the committee members who matter are very good at seeing through performance.”
“So you want me specifically because I’m a bad liar.”
“I want you because you’re the only person I’ve spent time with in years who doesn’t want something from me.”
The words landed before I could assess them. I had not planned to say that. It was true, which was precisely why I should not have said it, and she knew it was true, which was worse.
Liv uncrossed her arms. She looked past me for a moment, at nothing in particular, and I watched her think in the way she thought when she was deciding whether to argue or to accept. Then she looked back. “What exactly would it involve?”
“One evening. The gala itself, approximately four hours. You would need appropriate attire, which I would provide. You would meet several people and answer questions about how we met. The conduct agreement would be amended to reflect the temporary scope of the arrangement. You would be compensated separately from your current role, and the terms would be in writing before you agreed to anything.”
“How we met.” She repeated it slowly, as if testing the shape of it. “We’d have to have a story.”
“We have a story. You were tending bar. I sat down. You told me the stool was reserved.”
Something flickered across her face. Not quite a smile. “You sat there anyway.”
“I did.”
The room was quiet enough that I could hear Missy humming something to herself from the kitchen. Liv’s eyes stayed on mine, steady and searching, and I held them because looking away would be the first admission of something I was not prepared to admit.
“I’m not saying yes,” she said finally.
“I know.”
“I’m not saying no either.”
Something in my chest loosened a fraction. “I know that too.”
She held my gaze for another moment, then nodded once, a small decisive motion, and moved toward the door. “I’ll think about it.”
She went back to the kitchen. I heard her speak to Missy, the easy warmth of it, like she had not just been asked to walk into a room full of people and perform a version of something that was not entirely false. I heard Missy laugh at whatever she said.
I stood alone in the study for a moment longer than necessary. Then I went back to my projections and read the same column of figures for the fifth time.
I blocked out two hours in my afternoon calendar. The notation read: Household review.
What it meant was: I need to be home when she arrives.
What it actually meant was something I could not put into words, something that sat in my chest like a splinter I had forgotten about until it moved.