6. Lily
— ? —
Lily
Two days later, and Edward’s announcing his engagement to Elena at the Harrington Club.
The most exclusive venue in the city. Crystal chandeliers the size of small cars.
Vaulted ceilings painted with Renaissance-style murals.
A guest list that reads like the social register - old money, new money, anyone who matters mingling over champagne that costs more per bottle than I used to make in a week.
Everyone who matters will be there.
Everyone who watched me shrink for three years. Everyone who saw Victoria tear me apart at garden parties and said nothing. Everyone who believed I was the problem - too unsophisticated, too needy, too much for a man like Edward Burton.
Lucas tries to talk me out of going.
We’re in my new apartment - a penthouse in the Maxwell building, paid for with my grandmother’s money and decorated with my own choices for the first time in my adult life. Bright colors everywhere. Soft textures. A red velvet couch that Victoria would have had a stroke over.
“You don’t have to do this.” Lucas paces in front of my floor-to-ceiling windows, his reflection ghosting across the city lights like a worried phantom. “Edward wants a reaction. You showing up gives him exactly what he wants.”
“Edward is about to celebrate replacing me in front of everyone who dismissed me.” I smooth down the fabric of my dress - red, scandal red, arterial red. The color of war. The color of the woman I’m becoming.
Lucas stops pacing.
I feel his gaze land on me before I turn around - a physical weight, a heat that prickles across my bare shoulders and down my spine. When I finally face him, he’s standing motionless by the window, silhouetted against the city lights, and the expression on his face makes my breath catch.
His eyes track down my body, and I feel it everywhere, a flush of heat that has no business showing up while I’m about to face down my husband’s pregnant mistress.
I think about his hands on my waist last night.
The way he said my name. The way I want him to say it again, right now, in front of everyone.
Not the time, Lily.
I smooth my dress and pretend my thighs aren’t pressing together.
He’s not looking at me like Edward ever did. Not like I’m an accessory. Not like I’m a problem to manage.
He’s looking at me like I’m a lit match and he’s deciding whether to burn.
“I’m going to show them exactly who they dismissed.”
“Lily-”
“I need to do this.” I turn to face him fully, and something shifts in the air between us. “For three years, I believed I was the problem. That I wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, enough enough. I need to stand in that room and prove to myself that it was never about me. It was about him.”
Lucas goes quiet.
In the lamplight, his jaw is tight, his hands flexing like he wants to hit something.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit that fits him like it was made for him, probably was, and I try not to notice the way it emphasizes the breadth of his shoulders.
The way his white shirt is open at the collar, revealing the hollow of his throat.
I shouldn’t notice these things. He’s my fake husband’s brother.
But I can’t stop noticing.
“Then I’m coming with you,” he says.
“You don’t have to-”
“Yes. I do.” He crosses to me, close enough that I can smell his cologne, something woodsy and warm that makes me think of forests and safety and things I shouldn’t want. “I spent three years watching you suffer in silence. I’m done watching.”
The silence draws taut between us.
I’m suddenly aware of how close we’re standing. Of the way his eyes trace my face like he’s memorizing it. Of the heat radiating off his body, so different from Edward’s perpetual coldness.
“Victoria will never forgive you,” I say softly.
“I know.”
“This will destroy your relationship with your brother.”
“What relationship?” His laugh is bitter, sharp-edged. “Edward has been holding something over me for years. I was never free. At least this way, I’m choosing my cage.”
I want to ask what he means. What Edward has on him. But there’s no time - the car is waiting downstairs, and my destiny won’t pause for inconvenient questions.
I settle for touching his arm. Brief. Warm. Feeling the muscle tense beneath my fingertips.
“Thank you.”
He catches my hand before I can pull away.
The touch sends electricity crackling up my arm. His palm is warm and rough against my fingers, and he holds on just a beat too long, his thumb brushing across my knuckles in a way that feels deliberate.
“You have nothing to thank me for.” His voice is rougher than before. “I should have done this years ago.”
“Lucas-”
“The necklace.” He clears his throat, releases my hand. “The clasp is twisted.”
I reach up automatically, fumbling at the back of my neck. My grandmother’s rubies - I’d been so focused on the dress that I hadn’t checked-
“Here.” He steps behind me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his chest. “Let me.”
His fingers brush the nape of my neck, and I shiver.
I can’t help it. The touch is feather-light, purely functional, but my body doesn’t know that.
My body only knows that no one has touched me gently in three years.
That Edward flinched when I reached for him.
That I’d forgotten what it felt like to be handled like something worth being careful with.
“Cold?” His voice is low, close to my ear.
“No.”
The clasp clicks into place. His hands don’t move.
We’re standing in front of the window, the city glittering below us, and I can see our reflection in the dark glass. Him behind me, tall and solid in his charcoal suit. Me in my war-red dress, my chest rising and falling too fast.
His eyes meet mine in the reflection.
Step away, I think. One of us needs to step away.
Neither of us moves.
“Lily.” My name sounds different in his mouth. Rougher. Like it costs him something to say it.
“We should go.” I don’t move.
“We should.” He doesn’t either.
His hands are still hovering near my shoulders. Close enough that I can feel the heat of them without contact. If he lowered them two inches, he’d be touching my bare skin. If I leaned back three inches, I’d be pressed against his chest.
I want to lean back. God help me, I want to.
This is Edward’s brother, I remind myself. This is complicated and messy and the worst possible timing.
But Edward was never my husband. The marriage was a lie. And this man - this man who paces my apartment worried about my safety, who positioned himself between me and danger without being asked, who looks at me like I’m worth protecting-
“The car’s waiting,” Lucas says abruptly, stepping back.
Cold air rushes into the space where his warmth was. I take a breath, then another, willing my heartbeat to steady.
“Right.” I smooth down my dress again, not looking at him. “The car.”
He retrieves my coat from the chair and holds it open for me. Formal. Proper. Like nothing just happened between us.
But when I slip my arms into the sleeves, his fingers graze my shoulders, and we both freeze for half a second.
Neither of us acknowledges it.
He offers his arm at the door, and I take it. His muscle is rigid beneath my palm, tension coiled through every line of his body. We step into the elevator in silence, standing closer than necessary, the mirrored walls reflecting us from every angle.
A matched pair. Red and charcoal. War and armor.
I catch him watching me in the reflection. He looks away immediately, jaw tight, but not before I see the hunger in his expression.
It matches what I’m feeling exactly.
This is going to be a problem, I think.
But standing next to him, about to walk into battle, I find I don’t care.
We arrive at the gala arm in arm, and the whispers start immediately. The Harrington Club goes silent when I walk in on Lucas Burton’s arm.
Heads turn all across the room. Champagne glasses freeze halfway to lips. Conversations die mid-sentence, replaced by a collective intake of breath that sounds like wind through autumn leaves.
I feel their eyes like heat - shock, curiosity, a delicious whisper of scandal rippling through the room in waves.
My dress clings to curves I forgot I had, red silk pooling around my feet like spilled wine. Maxwell family jewelry glitters at my throat - diamonds and rubies pulled from vault storage for the first time in decades, worth more than the Burton family estate.
I am not the woman they remember.
Edward stands at the center of a floral arrangement that probably cost more than my first apartment.
White roses, white lilies, white orchids, a shrine to purity for a relationship built on lies.
Elena clutches his arm, radiant in an ivory dress that’s almost a wedding gown, her smile frozen in something approaching horror.
And Victoria - Victoria looks like she might stroke out right there amid the roses and candelabras.
I don’t stop walking until I’m directly in front of them.
“Congratulations.” I keep my voice light, pleasant. Just a former acquaintance wishing them well. “On the engagement. I’m sure the third time’s the charm.”
A woman nearby frowns. “Third time?”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” I widen my eyes innocently, playing to the crowd now, letting my voice carry.
“Edward has such trouble with commitment. First me - though that marriage was never real, as it turns out. Then Elena here, who he kept hidden for years while pretending to be my devoted husband. And now...”
I gesture at the elaborate decorations.
“We’ll see how this one goes.”
Elena’s composure cracks, her face twisting with fury. “You bitch-”
“Language.” I pull out my phone, holding it up so the screen faces the crowd. The fake marriage certificate fills the display. “The witness signatures are forged. The registration number doesn’t exist. Your fiancé committed fraud to trap me in a relationship that was never legal.”
Murmurs spread like wildfire through the room. Phones appear from clutches and pockets. Someone is definitely recording, probably multiple someones.
Good. Let them. Let the whole world see.
Edward’s face is a mask of barely controlled fury, his jaw tight enough to shatter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I spent three years married to a ghost. A man who touched me like I was an obligation and loved another woman the whole time.
” I turn to face the crowd, letting them see the truth in my eyes.
“I was supposed to be furniture. Convenient. Forgettable. But here’s the thing about furniture-”
I smile, and I watch several people step back.
“Sometimes it catches fire.”
Victoria pushes through the crowd, her usual composure shattered like dropped china. “Enough. Lily, if you have any decency left-”
“Decency?” I laugh. “Let me tell you about decency, Victoria-”
“Your grandmother called me today.” Victoria’s smile turns vicious, her eyes glittering with triumph. “The Maxwell connection. Very clever. But did she tell you the whole story?”
The room goes quiet.
“Did she tell you about the fire? The one that killed your grandfather’s rivals? The one your mother was blamed for?”
My blood runs cold.
Victoria steps closer, her voice pitched to carry to every corner of the room.
“You come from monsters, Lily. And soon, everyone will know it.”