19. Erika
— ? —
Erika
The publishing gala is the event of the season, and I’m terrified.
It’s a ballroom packed to the walls at the Langham, champagne flowing like water, everyone dressed to kill and desperate to be seen, and I’ve been to dozens of events like this as Kai’s plus-one, standing in his shadow while he worked the room, smiling on cue, counting the minutes until we could leave so I could take off my heels and breathe again.
Tonight is different. Tonight my name is on the guest list, not as someone’s wife or someone’s assistant, just me, E.C.
Hart, breakout author, the woman whose book is still climbing the bestseller list, whose film deal is whispered about in corners, whose acceptance speech keeps getting shared by people who’ve never picked up a romance novel in their lives.
I get out of a car I paid for, alone, and stand on the curb for a second with no arm to take.
There’s a strange lightness to it, like a purse I’ve carried so long I stopped feeling the weight until I set it down.
Nobody’s waiting for me to catch up. Nobody’s going to introduce me as his.
A photographer by the door raises his camera and then lowers it, unsure if I’m anyone, and I find I don’t mind, because in about an hour he’ll know.
I climb the steps by myself, and the navy dress does the job it was made for as I walk through the entrance.
It’s the one from the fitting, the one he bought for Dora’s party, the one that made Kai’s phone slip from his fingers, and I decided the party could share it, and wearing it tonight feels like a statement I’m not sure I’m ready to make.
Tessa intercepts me before I can second-guess myself.
“There you are.” She air-kisses both my cheeks, her perfume expensive and her smile genuine. “You look incredible. That color was made for you.”
“Thanks. I’m about two seconds from throwing up.”
“Good. Terror keeps you sharp.” She presses a champagne flute into my hand. “Now come on. There are people dying to meet you, and we’re going to make them wait just long enough to seem important.”
She drags me through the crowd, and I brace myself for an hour of small talk and forced smiles.
The first introduction is an editor at one of the big houses whose name I’ve seen on acknowledgment pages for years, tiny and silver-haired, and she looks at me with sharp eyes that miss nothing.
“So you’re the one causing all the fuss,” she says, shaking my hand with a grip that could crush walnuts. “I read your book on a flight to New York. Couldn’t put it down. Missed my connecting flight because I had to finish it in the terminal.”
“That’s… I’m sorry about your flight.”
“Don’t be. It was worth it.” She takes a sip of her champagne. “The scene where she finally tells him she’s been invisible. I had to put the book down and walk around the airport for ten minutes before I could keep reading.”
“That scene was hard to write.”
“I imagine it was.” Her eyes are knowing in a way that makes me wonder how much she’s guessed about my marriage. “The best ones always are. The ones that cost you something.”
“I’ve read every book you’ve edited for the last fifteen years. The Blackwell trilogy, the…”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Those were the writers’ achievements, not mine. I just helped them find the shape of what they already had.” She studies me over the rim of her glass. “You found your shape on your own. That’s rarer than you think.”
Before I can respond, Tessa is pulling me away to meet someone else, but the words stay with me as I shake hands and smile and say the things I’m supposed to say. The scene that cost me something. She has no idea.
I’m reaching for a canape, trying to ground myself in the mundane, when I finally let myself scan the room for the face I’ve been avoiding.
And there he is.
Kai is standing near the bar, deep in conversation with someone I don’t recognize, wearing a charcoal suit that fits him like sin, or did, because it sits a fraction loose across the shoulders now, and even from across the room I can see the sharp line of his jaw and the way he stands, and I look away and look back, and I know exactly what my face is doing.
He looks up, almost like he can feel me staring, and our eyes meet across fifty feet of crowded ballroom, and the noise and the people fade, and for a single, stupid second it’s just him and me and four years of history crackling between us. I look away first, my heart slamming against my ribs.
“You okay?” Tessa appears at my elbow, frowning. “You look flushed.”
“Fine. It’s just warm in here.”
“Pace yourself on the champagne. These things go late.”
I’m reaching for another canape when Isabella’s voice cuts through the ambient noise.
“Everyone knows her husband bankrolled it.”
She’s holding court near the champagne fountain, surrounded by a cluster of women who hang on her every word, red hair piled artfully on top of her head, green dress cut low enough to leave nothing to the imagination, and her voice carries with the precision of someone who wants to be overheard.
“The sales, the award, all of it. She’s got no talent.” Isabella takes a delicate sip of champagne, her smile razor-sharp. “Romance is trash for lonely housewives, and she’s just another desperate wannabe riding her husband’s coattails.”
The women around her titter obligingly.
My champagne glass freezes halfway to my lips. She’s talking about me, in public, at my event, loud enough for half the room to hear.
I set down my glass and start toward her, my heels clicking against the marble floor, and I know exactly what I’m going to say.
I’ve had weeks to write it. I’m going to ask her, in front of her little audience, whether her father knows how many of the dinners he paid for were about keeping a married man at a table, and I’m going to watch that land, and I’m going to enjoy it. I’m three steps in.
Then Kai’s voice slices through the room.
“That’s interesting, Isabella.”
He materializes beside her, drink in hand, smile sharp enough to draw blood, and the crowd parts for him instinctively, the way crowds always part for men who carry themselves like they own every room they enter.
“Because I don’t remember bankrolling anything.”
Isabella’s face goes pale beneath her carefully applied blush. “Kai. I wasn’t, I didn’t mean…”
“You said her husband bought her success.” He turns to face the room, and his voice carries to every corner. “Let me correct that.”
The ballroom has gone silent. Even the jazz trio in the corner has stopped playing.
“My wife wrote her book before dawn, every day for three years, while working full-time.” My wife.
He says it to a room full of strangers like it’s a fact and not a thing I put in a lawyer’s hands, and it goes through me before I can stop it.
His eyes sweep the crowd, and there’s a fierceness in them, protective in a way I’ve never seen directed at me before.
“She entered the competition under a pen name so no one could accuse her of riding my coattails. She won without my help. She got her agent without my help. Hollywood is fighting over her adaptation without my help.”
He pauses, letting the words land.
“The only fraud in this room is a woman whose greatest accomplishment is inheriting her father’s last name.”
Isabella’s mouth opens and closes, and her face cycles through shock, humiliation, and finally the ugly, raw thing underneath that she can’t quite hide.
“But please.” Kai’s smile doesn’t move. “Keep talking. I’m sure everyone’s fascinated by your insights into the publishing industry.”
Nobody moves. Then Isabella’s face crumples, and she turns and flees, shoving through the crowd with none of her usual grace, her green dress disappearing through the ballroom doors.
The champagne fountain bubbles in the silence that follows.
Then someone starts clapping, slow at first, hesitant, and it spreads through the room until the whole ballroom is applauding, and I find myself standing next to Kai without remembering how I got there.
My hands don’t know what to do. I’m holding nothing, standing beside the man who just eviscerated someone on my behalf in front of a ballroom full of witnesses, and I can’t figure out if I should thank him or slap him or run away, and my fingers twist together, then apart, then together again.
Across the room Tessa is looking at me with her eyebrows somewhere near her hairline, and I can’t read whether that’s alarm or delight, and I suspect it’s both.
He’s close enough that I can smell his cologne, that familiar scent that used to mean safety and now means complicated, and it makes my chest ache in a way I refuse to name.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say quietly, and it comes out smaller than I mean it to.
“Yes, I did.” His eyes meet mine, dark and intense. “Four years too late. But yes.”
I don’t know what to say or what to do with the fact that he just defended me in front of everyone, that he called me his wife like it still means something, that he’s looking at me now like I’m the only person in this room full of people.
My hand twitches at my side, and for one terrible second I almost reach for him.
A hand touches my elbow.
“Dance with me?”
Dean appears at my side, easy smile in place, in a perfectly tailored tuxedo, and his timing is impeccable. I glance at Kai, and his jaw has gone tight, and his hands have curled into fists at his sides.
“I’d love to,” I tell Dean, and place my hand in his.
He leads me onto the dance floor, one hand settling at my waist, the other holding mine, and we move together easily, two people who know how to perform for an audience.
“That was quite a scene,” Dean says, spinning me gently.
“I didn’t ask him to do that.”
“I know. That’s what made it interesting.” His hand shifts at my waist, guiding me through a turn. “So. Casting. I have some thoughts about the lead.”
We dance, and we talk, and Dean is charming and attentive, and I should be enjoying every second of this, and halfway through the song my eyes drift over Dean’s shoulder without my permission.
Kai is still watching. He’s standing at the edge of the dance floor, drink untouched in his hand, and his gaze hasn’t left me since I stepped into Dean’s arms, and even from here I can see the tension in his shoulders and the rigid set of his jaw.
I look back at him. I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it, and he can still pull my attention across a crowded room without saying a word.
The song ends, and I step out of Dean’s arms and walk toward the bar, toward anywhere that isn’t next to my almost-ex-husband or my almost-anything-else, and I can feel Kai watching me the entire way.
Tessa is already there with two glasses, because of course she is, because Tessa has never in her life been more than four feet from the most interesting thing in any room. She hands me one and doesn’t say anything for a full ten seconds, which for Tessa is a geological age.
“That man,” she says finally, “just made you the most talked-about author in this room, and he wasn’t even trying.”
“He was trying,” I say, and drink, and don’t turn around, and I know exactly where he’s standing anyway, the way you know where the fire is in a room without looking at it.