Chapter 7 Abbie
ABBIE
Ten days. For ten days I’ve told myself thirty hours together will be enough.
The VTG pre-awards cocktail is packed with the kind of people who evaluate your worth by the cut of your dress and the firmness of your handshake.
I'm good at this. I've been good at this since I was twelve and my mother started bringing me to functions "for exposure.
" What I wasn't expecting was to actually enjoy it.
"The canapés look like someone sneezed gold leaf onto a cracker," Gray mutters against my ear, and I have to turn my laugh into a cough because Marjorie Lindqvist from Development is three feet away and she definitely heard.
"They're truffle-infused."
"They're an abomination."
He has held my hand for twenty minutes.
"Grayson Valentine." A junior agent materializes out of nowhere with the kind of aggressive enthusiasm that makes my teeth hurt. "I just have to say, the Munich acquisition was—"
"Appreciated," Gray says flatly. "Have you met my wife?"
The agent's face does something complicated. He clearly hasn't prepared small talk for the wife. "Oh, uh, yes, Ms. Montgomery-Valentine, the Elliot campaign was—"
"Also appreciated." I squeeze Gray's hand. "We were just heading to the bar."
We weren't, but Gray steers us that direction anyway, his palm warm at the small of my back.
"I hate these things," he says.
"You love these things. You just hate the canapés."
"I love watching you work these things." He pulls me slightly closer as we navigate around a cluster of senior agents. "There's a difference."
"Gray—"
"Don't." He looks down at me, and his light blue eyes are soft in a way I haven't seen in months.
"Whatever you were about to say, don't. Just let me have this.
I'm flying out at dawn and I won't—" He stops.
Swallows. "I'm missing next Friday, and I'm sorry, and I know sorry doesn't mean anything anymore, but I wanted to be here tonight because you're up for Creative Campaign and you deserve—"
"You're missing the awards?" My voice comes out flatter than I intended. "The Milan thing can't be moved?"
"I tried. The timing with the German investors—"
"It's fine." It's not fine. It's my award, the first major industry recognition I've earned in my own right, and he won't be there to see it.
But I have him tonight. I have thirty hours minus the time he needs to sleep minus the time I'll spend working the room.
I can be grateful. I can take what I can get.
"It's not fine." His jaw tightens. "I know it's not fine. I'm trying to... after Europe stabilizes, I'll be home more. I promise."
"The canapés really are terrible," I say.
He laughs, low and surprised, and pulls me closer, and for twenty minutes I let myself believe we might make it. Then Delaney screams.
Not a real scream. I know the difference.
I grew up with Delaney Montgomery's screams, the tantrum ones, the attention ones, the "I need something and I need it now" ones.
This is theatrical, designed to carry across the room without being loud enough to seem gauche.
A gasp, a swoon, a hand clutching at her wrist like she's been shot.
She's here as a Montgomery guest, despite being on leave from VTG. Apparently losing access to his calendar hasn’t discouraged her from claiming his attention.
Gray's hand drops from mine.
"Is that—" He's already moving, cutting through the crowd toward her crumpled form. "Del? Delaney?"
I stand there. Just stand there, in my carefully chosen emerald dress that brings out my eyes, with my hand still curved around the shape of his, watching my husband run to my sister. He catches her. Her blonde hair fans across his arm as she looks up at him.
"I'm so sorry," she breathes, loud enough for the nearest circle of partners to hear. "I just got so dizzy, I haven't been eating, the stress—"
"Don't apologize." Gray's voice is gentle, the way it used to be with me. "Here, can you stand? Let me get you some water."
I watch him choose. I watch him support my sister by the elbow and guide her toward a chair, and I watch the crescent of gossips around me watch me watching. I don't cry. I was raised by people who punish that.
I fold my shaking hands at my waist and cross to Wren.
"Did she seriously just pull a Victorian faint at a cocktail party?" Wren hisses when I reach her. "In this century?"
"Stress," I say calmly. "She hasn't been eating."
"She had two crab puffs and a spring roll. I watched her."
"Wren."
"I'm just saying." She links her arm through mine. "You want to get out of here? We can go get tacos. Real tacos, not these bullshit deconstructed—"
"I can't. Gray's only here for tonight."
The pity in her eyes almost breaks me. Almost. But I've been doing this too long, performing this role too well, to crack now.
"I need the bathroom," I say. "Cover for me?"
"Always."
The powder room is empty. I grip the rose-marble sink and stare at my reflection. The door opens behind me.
"There you are." Delaney’s reflection appears over my shoulder. Her color is perfect, no trace of the near-collapse from three minutes ago. "I was hoping we’d get a minute."
"Feeling better? That was quite a recovery."
"I've always been resilient. Unlike some people."
"What do you want, Delaney?"
"I want to help you, actually. I know things have been hard with Grayson traveling so much. I just thought you should know. He tells me everything, Abs. We talk almost every day."
"Fascinating. I'll be sure to thank him for being such a supportive brother-in-law."
"He told me about the elevator."
"The elevator. What exactly did he tell you?"
"Everything. The panic attack. How you talked him through it, five things he could see, five things he could hear.
How you counted his tattoos to keep him breathing.
Forty minutes before the doors opened. He said it was the moment he knew.
How would I know that if he didn't tell me? Privately. Recently."
Delaney was there. Standing by the bar with a champagne flute, close enough to hear.
"You were at the engagement party."
Her expression flickers. Just for a second.
"He told me more than he told that room, Abbie. He told me what happened after the doors opened. How you looked at him. What you said. He told me you were shaking."
I wasn't shaking. He was shaking. I was steady. I was the one holding him together.
"You're lying." My voice wavers.
"Am I? Ask him. See what he says. See if he even remembers what he's told me."
"Is that supposed to scare me? That my husband talks to his assistant?"
"You can call it whatever makes you feel better. But we both know what it means when a man starts confiding in someone else. When he shares the stories that used to be yours."
"Those stories are still mine. I was there. You weren't."
"But I know them now. All of them. He tells me things he doesn't tell you anymore, Abbie. Things he probably doesn't even realize he's sharing."
Delaney examines her reflection in the mirror, touches up her lipstick like we’re discussing the weather.
"You’re pathetic."
"I'm patient. You were a phase, Abs. A nice one.
He needed someone steady while he was building the company, someone who wouldn't compete with him.
But you don't really think he married you for you, do you?
You were the Montgomery name. The connections.
The legitimacy. And now that he doesn't need that anymore... "
"Get out."
"He's outgrown you. He just doesn't know how to say it yet. But he will. Men like Gray always find a way to let go of the thing that's holding them back."
"The only thing holding anyone back is you. Standing in doorways, making scenes, pretending to faint so he'll catch you. Do you think I don't see it? Do you think anyone doesn't see it?"
"I think you see exactly what you're afraid of. And I think that fear is going to eat you alive. Enjoy your little trophy next Friday. It's the last thing in that building with your name on it."
She leaves. The door swings shut behind her with a soft click. My mascara hasn’t run, but my chin trembles. She gave a voice to everything I always feared.
She was wrong about who was shaking. I know that. I don't know what else he's told her, and that's where the doubt gets in. I fix my lipstick and return to the party. Gray still sits beside Delaney, his head bent to her whispered words.
"Ready to go?" I ask, my voice perfectly neutral.
He looks up, startled, like he forgot I existed. "Yeah. Yes, of course." He turns to Delaney. "You're okay to drive?"
"I'll be fine." She smiles at him, then at me. "Take care of her, Grayson. She looked a little tired earlier."
In the car, Gray reaches for my hand. I let him take it, but I don't squeeze back.
"You okay?" he asks. "You've been quiet."
I keep my eyes on the window, watching the lights of Beverly Hills slide past. "I'm fine."
"I shouldn’t have stayed beside her that long," he says. "I kept thinking if I could settle her down, she wouldn’t make a scene. After everything she’s done, I still fell for it."
"She's a lot of things."
He looks down at our joined hands. "I made keeping her quiet more important than finding you. Again."
"And did keeping her quiet work?" I turn back to the window before he can answer.
He flies at dawn. I lie awake and listen to him pack, and I tell myself that next Friday is the line. That night, I get my award. I prove that I exist outside of this marriage. I make a decision.
I mean it. I have to mean it.
Because Delaney was right about one thing: I can't keep being the background in my own life.