Chapter 7 Wardrobe Adjustments
SEVEN
Wardrobe Adjustments
Liam
The air car was waiting. The driver opened the door and Liam gestured for April to enter first. She touched the leather once before she sat, fingertips checking whether it was real.
Liam slid in beside her, the door closed, and the driver pulled away.
She held herself with her spine almost straight, hands folded a little too neatly in her lap, ankles crossed. He'd been paying attention for three years. He knew what her shoulders looked like when she was braced.
The city slid past the windows. Liam watched her reflection in the glass—watched her shoulders drop half an inch.
The car’s hum filled the silence. April’s fingers moved once on her knee, then stilled again.
He hadn't planned to say any of it. The quiet made room, and if he didn't use it now, he'd spend another three years watching from the outside and calling it responsibility.
Watching was safe. Watching was what you did when you'd been raised to believe that the family's equilibrium mattered more than what you wanted.
"You asked my father about his buildings once.”
He kept his eyes on the city. He couldn't look at her, couldn't see the expression on her face when he needed to get this out.
"The things he designed before Sterling became… all of it."
He remembered his father's expression shifting. The polished mask slipped for a moment.
"You'd looked them up. Knew which ones were his. Didn't flatter him, you treated him like a person who used to make things, asked him something real, and he answered like he'd been waiting for someone to try."
"I'm scared that's the deal. You make enough money and one day you wake up and realize you traded your life's passion for a balance sheet. Rich, respected, and hollowed out by the choices that paid best."
The car moved through an intersection
"The first time Chad brought you to dinner, you walked into my mother's house like you didn't know you were supposed to be intimidated. You laughed at her jokes like you meant it. You even offered to help clear plates."
"In a Sterling home."
He turned his head to look at her directly.
"And Chad sat beside you like you were background."
She went still the way you did when something you'd felt for years suddenly had a word for it, and he didn't look away. Didn't soften it. Let it sit there, named, between them.
"You walk into that house and my father stops performing. My mother stops being sharp. They become people instead of a brand."
He'd seen it happen. Every time.
“You make people behave better than they planned to, pull good out of them like it was there the whole time.”
His gaze returned to the glass. "Everyone except Chad, who somehow managed to stand next to you for years and stay exactly the same."
The driver changed lanes. The kind of transition you didn't feel unless you were paying attention. Liam felt it.
"I hated him for it."
"And I hated myself more for pretending my silence was responsibility."
Sterlings don't interfere. Sterlings watch and remember and file it away for later and call it strategy.
"Chad forgot your Christmas gift that year."
He remembered the way she turned it into something funny so fast, like she'd practiced the reflex.
Everyone had laughed. Even Chad. Especially Chad.
But he'd seen her face fall when the laughter stopped.
And he'd been sitting there watching her do it and he hadn't said anything. He'd just… gone home and started buying things: watches and gifts, small fixes that didn’t fix anything.
The corner of his mouth pulled, closer to a wince than a smile.
"You made a joke about minimalism. Everyone laughed. And then you excused yourself to the powder room."
April sucked in a breath through her teeth. "There was a mirror in there. The light-up kind that showed you exactly how close you were to falling apart." She swallowed. "I used to check my face in it. Make sure nothing showed."
She didn’t look at him when she said it.
Liam's fingers flexed once on his knee. She'd come back out every time looking like nothing had happened. And he'd let her. Even though he knew.
"You remember things. Small things. The kind no one bothers to retain because they aren't useful."
"I mentioned chess once and a week later you handed me a beautiful hardcover copy of a book of endgames. You gave it to me like you were passing me a pen,” No announcement. No performance. “Like it was normal to care.”
He looked at her.
"You left the four-dollar sticker on."
April made a soft sound that might have been trying to be a laugh.
"I was afraid if I peeled it off I'd be admitting I was trying," she said. "Like I was reaching."
He could have just let it go. Let her think she was the only one who'd been afraid of what a sticker meant.
"I left it too."
He considered stopping there. Letting it be just that. A detail, not the whole shape of what it meant.
"It's on my coffee table. Where I can see it every day. So I don't forget there are still things I want"
The car moved through another block.
"And I wanted you."
The restraint he'd been wearing flickered and failed and he looked at her like he'd been trying not to for three years.
"And I did nothing."
April didn't look at him. Her thumb found the ring and twisted it once. Then again, harder the second time. The metal caught and pinched and she flinched before smoothing her hand flat in her lap. The ring stayed crooked on her finger.
The car rolled over a seam in the road. A tiny bump. A reminder that they were still moving, still inside physics and traffic lights and other people's Tuesday afternoons.
His reflection flickered over storefronts in the glass. He wondered, distantly, how many times April had seen herself this way—lit up, unguarded—and gone back out anyway.
Her hand closed around his.
He held still, didn’t squeeze too hard, didn’t turn it into more than she was offering. Just let her hand rest in his and tried to figure out what to do with the fact that it was there at all.
The light turned green. The car moved forward.
April's voice came out lighter than he expected.
"So you've been pining for three years and your move was… buying your brother anniversary watches?"
"It wasn't the right move. But it was the only one I had."
The car pulled up to a building with no sign on the door.
April's hand flexed in his. He let go—he'd had it for less than five minutes and already his hand felt wrong without hers.
He stepped out first. Then he turned back, standing in the open doorway, afternoon light catching the expensive lines of his suit.
He offered his hand again.
April took it and stepped out of the car.