Chapter 1
He was late.
My eyes kept finding the clock, no matter how many times I told myself to stop looking. Five minutes had passed. Then another. The second hand crept around the face with maddening patience, each little tick marking another moment of his absence.
The space beside me remained empty.
I looked away before anyone could catch me staring. My fingers tightened around the glass, slowly turning it in my hand. The ice had melted into the drink, leaving it lukewarm and flat. I took a sip anyway, swallowing without really tasting it.
Around me, the party carried on without missing a beat. Laughter rose and fell around the room. Glasses clinked. Music threaded through the conversations, the bass humming beneath my feet.
Everyone seemed perfectly comfortable.
Everyone except me.
My attention drifted back to the man across from me.
What was his name again?
Chad?
Brad?
Something equally forgettable.
He was still talking, his mouth moving through a story I’d lost somewhere between the market crashing and a club he’d apparently joined. Every few seconds, he paused just long enough to make sure I was still listening before continuing.
I gave him a nod when his eyes landed on me. It seemed to be all the encouragement he needed. He smiled and carried on, picking up his story without missing a beat.
The words washed over me. I caught fragments here and there, enough to keep my expression interested. My thumb traced the rim of my glass, circling the same spot until the motion became mindless.
At some point, I realized I was holding the glass hard enough for my fingers to ache.
My eyes flicked toward the clock.
Another minute had slipped by.
I could almost feel the seconds accumulating, each one stretching the wait a little further.
It was getting ridiculous.
Cassian was late. That was all.
People ran late. People got held up. People had perfectly reasonable explanations for disappearing when they were supposed to be somewhere.
Still, the empty space beside me seemed to grow larger with every passing minute.
My gaze moved across the room.
Everywhere I looked, there was someone I’d spent weeks trying to get into the same room.
Investors I’d tracked down. Executives whose schedules had taken weeks to coordinate.
People who could open doors for Cassian that he needed opened now.
People with enough influence to turn a single conversation into a meeting, a meeting into a partnership, a partnership into something that could change his business.
He should have been moving through the room by now, shaking hands, collecting numbers, remembering names, turning polite conversations into opportunities before anyone had a chance to forget him.
Instead, I was here alone, carrying a conversation that should have been his while my smile stayed fixed in place.
My eyes found the entrance. Guests filtered through in twos and threes, coats disappearing into waiting hands, greetings exchanged before they disappeared into the crowd.
Still no Cassian.
I excused myself from ChBrad with a tight smile and slipped into the crowd, aiming for the first corner I could find where nobody would expect me to talk.
Getting there took far longer than it should have.
Every few steps, someone stopped me for another greeting, another question, another exchange that required the right smile and a polite laugh at precisely the right moment.
By the time I finally broke free, my cheeks hurt.
Ugh. I’d forgotten how exhausting these things could be. Hours of standing, pretending to care about people whose names I’d probably forget by morning, keeping my expression pleasant while every part of me begged for somewhere to sit down.
Usually, I’d have disappeared hours ago.
Tonight, I stayed because Cassian needed this.
He’d never said so. Cassian would sooner swallow broken glass than admit he needed help, let alone ask for it. But the signs had been there for months, scattered through the little things he probably thought I didn’t notice.
The tension that stayed knotted in his shoulders long after his suit jacket came off.
Meals left untouched beside his laptop until the food went cold.
Nights when I’d find him asleep at his desk, cheek pressed against his forearm, only for him to jerk awake and reach for the keyboard before his eyes had fully opened.
He kept insisting he was fine.
I knew what Cassian looked like when he was fine. This wasn’t it.
A few months ago they had lost the Bali project, the landmark resort his company had chased for years, the biggest bid they had ever submitted.
It had left the entire company in a kind of silence no one knew how to break.
That loss began everything. After it, the setbacks seemed to multiply, the Milan property ran into delay after delay, its completion date drifting first to autumn, then to spring, then further.
Then, another project was pushed back. Rumours started making rounds about investors getting nervous.
Each setback left him more exhausted, but instead of slowing down, Cassian pushed himself harder.
Late nights became routine before either of us seemed to notice.
I’d be half-asleep when the front door finally opened, followed by the muted thud of his shoes and the rustle of his jacket being dropped over a chair.
Sometimes he’d make it to his study. Other nights, exhaustion caught him before he got there.
I’d wake to find him folded into the corner of the sofa, his laptop balanced across his thighs, his head tipped against the cushion while the cold light from the screen flickered across his face.
I’d stand there in the dark, wondering how someone could look so tired and still wake up the next morning determined to do it all over again.
Somewhere along the way, our marriage had started shrinking around his schedule.
Dinner used to be the part of the day I looked forward to most. We’d sit across from each other and let the evening stretch without checking the time, talking about everything and absolutely nothing.
A stupid thing I’d seen that afternoon could turn into a twenty-minute conversation.
One of his stories would remind me of something else, which would lead to another story, and suddenly the food between us had gone cold because neither of us had noticed.
Now dinner was whatever we could steal between his meetings and emails.
I’d start telling him about my day, sometimes saving a story all morning because I knew he’d want to hear it over dinner. I’d wait for the right moment, fork suspended above my plate, already smiling as I began.
Then his phone would light up beside his glass.
His eyes would flick toward the screen.
“Give me a second,” he’d murmur, already reaching for it.
I’d nod and take another bite.
My food would cool in front of me while his attention stayed fixed on whatever had appeared on that screen.
I’d take a sip of water, move something around on my plate, pretend to be interested in the television playing across the room.
Every few moments, my eyes would drift back to him, searching his face for some indication that he was nearly finished.
Sometimes I’d wait so long that I’d forget where I’d been in my own story.
When he finally looked up, I’d still be sitting there with my fork in my hand, the words I’d been trying to tell him stranded somewhere between my thoughts and my mouth.
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
I’d open my mouth, ready to pick up where I’d left off.
It had been something about my day. Something that had made me laugh, irritated me, or reminded me of him. I’d carried it around all day, saving it for this exact moment, already knowing the little smile I expected to see when I told him.
I’d try to find it again.
But his eyes looked tired. His phone was still lying beside his plate, close enough for him to reach without thinking. His attention had already started drifting toward it.
The excitement I’d carried into the conversation was gone.
I’d lower my fork.
“Nothing.”
Even our silences had changed.
There had been a time when sitting beside Cassian without speaking felt like its own kind of conversation.
We’d share the sofa with our books open in our laps, occasionally nudging each other’s feet beneath the blanket.
Sometimes he’d reach for my hand without looking up.
I’d rest my head against his shoulder, and neither of us would think twice about the silence stretching between us.
Now, it stretched for different reasons.
There were nights when we occupied the same room for hours, his attention fixed on a screen while mine kept drifting toward him, waiting for some small opening. A moment when he’d look up and actually see me. A question about my day. A reason to believe he had noticed I was there.
Anything that reminded me we were still two people sharing a life, rather than two schedules happening under the same roof.
I couldn’t remember the last time we’d simply been together without something waiting for him in the next room, without his phone buzzing between us, without his attention already belonging to something else.
I’d started missing him while he was sitting right beside me.
So I decided to take matters into my own hands.
He hadn’t asked for my help. He probably wouldn’t.
Fine.
If he wouldn’t ask, I’d find a way to help without making him say the words.
And what better way than putting every possible solution in the same room?
The guest list kept growing. One name became five, five became twenty, until the whole thing looked less like a birthday celebration and more like a networking event wearing a very expensive disguise.
One bad deal couldn’t erase everything he’d built. His name still meant something. His work still spoke for itself.
Tonight, I was putting an opportunity back within his reach.
All Cassian had to do was walk in and take it.
I pulled out my phone and called him again, pressing the device to my ear while my eyes swept over the room.