Chapter Twenty Five — Adrian
Sunlight wakes me before my alarm does, which hasn't happened in longer than I can remember.
I've barely slept. Every time I close my eyes I was back on that terrace, replaying the exact second she said okay. Some part of me decided that was worth losing sleep over.
The other side of the bed is empty. Sienna went home last night. Her choice, not mine. I didn't argue with it.
Some things shouldn't happen on the same night as an apology this size.
She kissed me at the door instead, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world to decide whether she meant it.
Then she left in a cab. She wanted to wake up in her own bed and see if the decision still held in the morning.
I check my phone before I'm fully upright.
One message. Sent at 5:58 AM.
Still okay.
Two words. I read them four times before I let myself get out of bed.
Four times is either restraint or something closer to compulsion. I've stopped being able to tell the difference where she's concerned. For the first time in my life, I've decided not to mind not knowing.
Sterling is already in my office by the time I get downstairs. Either he never went home, or he came in earlier than any lawyer should willingly arrive anywhere.
"The press ran it soft," he says, not looking up from his laptop.
"They'd already noticed her missing the last two Kensington Global events without explanation.
Enough for the tabloids to run their own theories for a week.
Now it's just: 'Kensington and the designer, reconciled.
' Society page, not business section. No mention of Vane.
No mention of the bankruptcy. Somebody worked hard to keep it that way. "
"Who?"
"Izzy called four editors personally at midnight. I have never been more afraid of your sister than I was listening to that side of the conversation." He finally looks up. "You look terrible, by the way. In the good way. I didn't think that expression existed on your face until last night."
"Thank you, Sterling."
"I'm serious. Legal counsel doesn't usually get to watch a merger this successful." He closes the laptop. "The board wants a call at ten. They want assurance the personal situation won't affect Q3 projections."
"Tell them the personal situation is the best decision I've made in fifteen years, and Q3 will have to compete with that for my attention."
Sterling almost smiles. "I'm not saying that to the board."
"Then say it your way. I don't care how it gets translated. I care that it's true."
He studies me for a second too long. I can he's deciding whether to say something outside the scope of his job.
"For what it's worth," he says, "I liked her before any of this happened. I like her more now, watching what she did to you." He picks his laptop back up. "Don't waste it."
He leaves before I can find an answer big enough for that.
The board call happens at ten, exactly as promised and exactly as dreaded.
Whitfield asks the question first, the way he always does when nobody else wants to be the one who asks it. "Should we be concerned about your," a pause, "personal situation affecting your judgment going forward?"
"You should be concerned about Q3," I say. "My judgment produced a fifty-two-document case against Julian Vane and eleven million dollars in prevented losses. My personal life isn't on this agenda."
Silence on the line, the kind that means nobody wants to push further.
"Understood," Whitfield says.
It's the shortest board call of my career. I hang up and feel nothing about it at all. No triumph, no relief. Just impatience to get back to a room that isn't this one.
I go to the Sanctuary at noon. I told myself I'd give her the morning. I've run out of patience for keeping that promise past lunch.
The elevator ride down gives me just enough time to ask myself a question. Does showing up unannounced respect the boundary she asked for last night? Or is it just the same old instinct wearing a better excuse?
I decide I don't care which. I'm going anyway.
She's at the worktable when I let myself in. Hair pulled back, sleeves pushed up. The wedding gown, finally off the form, draped across her lap. She's working the last inches of a hem I recognize from her sketchbook.
She doesn't look up right away. I've learned to let her finish a line of stitching before I ask for her attention. It's one of maybe six things about her I've actually learned correctly.
"You're staring," she says, without looking up.
"I'm allowed."
"You're allowed to say hello first."
"Hello." I cross the room and lean against the worktable close enough that our shoulders almost touch. "How does it look?"
She holds the dress up at arm's length the way she does when she's checking a line she's spent hours getting exactly right.
"Better than I expected," she says. "Considering how the last person who wore something like this walked straight into a bankruptcy filing."
"That's not going to happen again."
"I know." She sets the dress down, careful, the way she handles everything that matters to her. "I read the coverage this morning. 'Reconciled.' Very tasteful. Very boring, for a story that involves eighteen months of corporate espionage."
"Izzy's doing."
"She texted me a screenshot of one editor's original headline before she got to him. It was significantly less boring."
"I don't want to know."
"You really don't."
I watch her fold the dress over the form. Careful hands, the same precision she uses for everything. Something in my chest loosens again. It's been doing that since last night, one degree at a time.
"I have a question," I say. "And I want you to actually think about it before you answer, not just say whatever gets me to stop asking."
She looks at me properly for the first time since I walked in. "That's an ominous way to start a sentence."
"The dress." I nod at it. "On the terrace, I asked you to let it be ours. I want to know if that still stands, after everything."
Something crosses her face. Not quite surprise, more like she's been waiting for me to ask and hadn't decided how she'd answer.
"I started it two years before I met you," she says. "For nobody. For me, eventually, if I ever got somewhere worth wearing it." A pause. "Then you happened, and I let myself think it might be for something else instead."
"And now?"
"Now I don't know." She looks at the dress instead of at me. "I finished the hem this morning without deciding anything. My hands just wanted it done."
"I'm not going to ask you to decide today."
"Good. Because I don't have an answer today."
"But you're not throwing it out."
"No." A small, private smile, the kind she doesn't usually let me see this early in a conversation. "I'm not throwing it out."
I take that as more than she probably meant to give me. I don't push for anything past it.
We eat lunch on the floor of the Sanctuary because neither of us can be bothered to find a table.
Takeout containers balanced on pattern paper.
She tells me about Renata's latest order.
I tell her about the board call I'm dreading.
For forty minutes, nothing about either of our lives requires strategy.
It is, without exaggeration, the best forty minutes I've had in longer than I can accurately measure.
"Sterling likes you," I say, somewhere around the second container.
"Sterling tolerates me. There's a difference."
"He told me not to waste this. This morning. In those words."
She considers that for a second, chopsticks paused halfway to her mouth. "That's the nicest thing I've ever heard a corporate lawyer say without being paid to say it."
"He wasn't wrong."
"No," she says. "He wasn't."
She sets her chopsticks down first, watching me with the same weighing, deciding look she had on the terrace right before she said okay.
"What," I say.
"Nothing." She doesn't look away. "I keep waiting for you to do something that proves last night was temporary. You haven't yet."
"I'm not going to."
"Old habits." A small, unguarded laugh, the kind I've only started hearing from her in the last twenty-four hours. "Give me time."
I reach for her hand where it's resting on the pattern paper between us. She lets me take it.
"Then let me give you something else to wait for instead."
She comes up onto her knees before I finish the sentence, careful of the takeout containers, and kisses me like she's already decided the rest of the afternoon.
It isn't careful, the way the terrace was careful, both of us testing the ground before we trusted it. This is certain.
I pull her into my lap without breaking it. She comes easily, knees braced on either side of me, hands finding the back of my neck like she's done it a hundred times.
She has. It's been four weeks since the last one. My body treats that gap like a debt that wants paying immediately.
"Door locks?" she says against my mouth. Not really a question.
"It locks."
"Good."
She pulls back just far enough to work the buttons of my shirt. Unhurried, while everything in me wants to skip straight past unhurried.
My hands aren't as steady. Working the zipper at the back of her dress, and she notices. She notices everything. She lets me fumble for exactly one second before covering my hand with hers, showing me where the actual clasp is hiding.
"Overengineered," she says. "On purpose. Keeps out anyone who isn't paying attention."
"I'm paying attention."
"You'd better be."
The dress comes away in one motion once I find it. She shrugs the rest of it off without any self-consciousness at all. Like modesty was a line item she had stopped budgeting for months ago.
Underneath, plain cotton. Nothing performative about it. That undoes me faster than silk would have.
"Not what I expected," I say.
"Nobody dresses for an audience of one who's already seen everything." She pulls my shirt the rest of the way off my shoulders. "I figured you'd show up today. I did not expect to still be finishing a hem when you did."
"I'm glad the hem won."
"The hem always wins. You're a bonus."