Chapter 1 #2
The thought's petty, and I hate it. I hate that I measure my marriage in laughter now, as if I'm rationing proof. I hate that another woman’s hand on a pair of scissors can make me feel eighteen and replaceable. I hate that Janine’s smile still has the power to shrink me.
I hate most of all that I'm angry with Sebastian when he looks so tired.
He didn't ask for this to be easy. His father’s legacy sits on his shoulders like a hand that never lifts.
Every headline matters, every donor matters, and every review matters.
If tonight goes wrong, people will blame him.
Not Janine. Not Katrina. Him. I know this.
I love him. Those two facts keep walking into each other and leaving bruises.
“Chloe.”
I turn. Sebastian stands beside a marble column, partly shielded from the main walkway by hanging vines threaded with tiny lights. He holds out his hand, and relief hits me so quickly I almost sway.
I go to him. “Hi,” I say.
His fingers close around mine. “Hi.”
For one moment, the night becomes simple. His thumb brushes my knuckle. Up close, I can see the tension near his eyes.
“You okay?” he asks.
It'd be easy to say yes. It'd be so easy. I've built half my adult life around making yes sound believable. Instead, I look past him. Janine is speaking with a cluster of reporters near the reflecting pool, and Katrina stands at her side now, smiling down at someone’s phone.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Sebastian’s attention sharpens. “What happened?”
I lower my voice. “Your mother keeps moving me.”
His mouth tightens. “Moving you?”
“Out of photos. Out of the center. Off the dais. Behind flowers once, which I have to say was a new one.”
The smallest breath leaves him, almost a laugh, but not quite. “Chloe.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” He looks toward his mother, then back at me. “Tonight's chaos. She’s managing press angles.”
“She’s managing me out of them.”
His fingers flex around mine. “That’s not what this is.”
I wish he hadn't said it so quickly.
“It feels like what this is.”
He exhales and glances over his shoulder. Someone calls his name from the terrace, but he ignores it for now.
“This is for show,” he says. “Katrina's the face of the campaign. That’s all. The press wants her beside the project. They want the sparkle, the music, the easy headline. It doesn’t mean anything.”
My throat tightens around the words I want to say: It means something to me. Instead, I ask, “And where am I supposed to stand while everyone gets their easy headline?”
His expression softens then, and that almost undoes me.
“Come here.”
He draws me closer, not fully into his arms because we're still in public and there are cameras everywhere, but close enough that his voice drops into the private register I know.
It's the one that belongs to late nights, kitchen counters, and mornings when he presses his face into my neck before the day takes him.
“I know this's been a lot,” he says. “I know I’ve been distracted. Once we get through the opening, we’re leaving.”
I blink. “Leaving?”
“The island.” His thumb strokes over my ring. “No calls. No launch meetings. No mother. I’ll have Oliver handle the first wave of post-opening numbers. We’ll take two weeks. Maybe three.”
A month ago, those words would've opened something bright in me. A private island. Sebastian barefoot and unreachable. Long mornings, warm water, and his hand on my back. His attention returned to me like something misplaced and finally found.
I still want it. That's the worst part.
I want the island. I want him. I want to sleep beside my husband without waking to the cold blue light of his phone, and I want to be kissed without feeling like I should be grateful for the interruption in his schedule. But the want turns inside me, and underneath it is something tired.
I don’t want to be loved only where no one can see it. I don’t want to be a wife he remembers when the gates are closed and the cameras are gone.
“I don’t want to wait until the island to feel married to you,” I say.
He goes very still. The words are quiet. They're not dramatic, and somehow that makes them worse.
“Chloe.”
A burst of applause rises behind him. He looks toward it by instinct. The movement's tiny, but I feel it like a hand letting go.
Katrina's stepped onto the small stage set up before the castle theatre. A producer gestures sharply, and the host is waiting with a microphone. Janine is already looking for Sebastian, her smile fixed, her eyes not smiling at all.
He looks back at me. “We’ll talk about this tonight.”
“When?”
“As soon as I can get away.”
“That sounds like something people say before they don’t get away.”
A little frustration cuts across his face. “I’m trying.”
“I know.” And I do. That's the knife.
If he were cruel, this'd be simpler. If he were careless in a way I could point to cleanly, if he looked at Katrina the way the cameras want him to, or if he laughed at me for being hurt, I could gather my pride and walk.
But Sebastian's tired, pressured, and pulled in ten directions.
He thinks he's asking me to endure one more night.
He doesn't understand that I've been enduring one more night for months.
“Sebastian,” Janine calls, pleasant and sharp. “They’re ready for you.”
He closes his eyes for a fraction of a second, then he lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my knuckles. The kiss is brief, hidden by his body from most of the room. Private. Of course it's private.
“I love you,” he says.
My heart hurts so badly I'm close to missing my answer. “I love you too.”
He releases me and steps back into the light.
Katrina takes the stage like it was built around her. Maybe it was.
The castle theatre rises behind her in white stone and mirrored glass, its towers glowing faintly blue against the dark. Above the stage, thousands of tiny lights glitter in the canopy. Starlight Court is beautiful. Even hurt, I can see that. Especially hurt, maybe.
Katrina accepts the microphone with both hands. “Good evening, Austen Parks,” she says, and the crowd roars.
She laughs, delighted, then presses one hand to her chest. “I can’t tell you what an honor it is to be here tonight as we open this magical new chapter together.”
We.
I stand near the front with the spouses, family associates, and board-adjacent people who haven't been invited to speak but are expected to look supportive. Janine stands closer to the stage steps, angled toward the cameras.
Sebastian joins Katrina beneath the lights.
The applause changes when he appears. It deepens.
It's not the high, frantic sound Katrina pulls from her fans, but something heavier, more respectful.
Austen Parks is family entertainment, fantasy, nostalgia, and controlled wonder.
Sebastian's the man expected to preserve all of it while making it new.
He gives a brief speech. It's good, of course it is. He thanks the teams, designers, performers, construction crews, and operations staff. He mentions his father once, and the crowd softens.
He doesn't mention me. He doesn't have to; I know that. This isn't a wedding toast. I'm not a department, I'm not an investor, and I didn't pour concrete, design the hotel systems, or negotiate Katrina’s contract.
Still, I stand there with my ring catching stage light, and I think of every dinner gone cold while I waited for him. Every event I attended alone because Starlight Court needed him more. Every time I told myself that supporting him quietly counted.
Maybe it does. Or maybe I'm just tired of being quiet.
Katrina steps closer as Sebastian finishes. The host returns and asks them both to pose for the official opening shot.
“Face each other slightly,” someone calls. “Great. Katrina, hand on the lapel maybe?”
She laughs. “I don’t want to wrinkle him.”
The crowd laughs too.
Sebastian says something I can’t hear. Katrina places her hand against his chest. Not his lapel. His chest. Her palm rests flat over his heart as if she knows it belongs there. The world narrows to that single point of contact.
Sebastian doesn't move away. He probably can't. Not without making a scene, turning one staged photograph into twenty headlines, or embarrassing the celebrity partner his mother has spent months parading through every meeting and press call.
Katrina looks up at him and says something, and Sebastian laughs.
This time it's not small, and it's not polite.
His head dips toward her. The cameras catch it: the smile, her hand on him, the beautiful pop princess looking up at the handsome park heir like the story's finally found its proper ending.
The crowd loves it. Of course they do. They've been trained to love a fairy tale. They don't know what it costs the woman written out before the final scene.
My fingers go cold around my clutch. I try to breathe through it: in through my nose, out through my mouth. I'm thirty-two years old. I'm not going to cry because a famous woman touched my husband’s chest during a photo call.
Except it's not just her hand. It's Janine moving me by the elbow, the photographer apologizing after reading my badge, and Sebastian saying this's for show.
It's the island held out like a prize for surviving public humiliation with good posture.
It's the private kiss on my knuckles before he leaves me standing alone.
The camera flashes keep going. Katrina’s hand stays where it is, and Sebastian smiles down at her.
Something inside me gives, not loudly, and not all at once. It's more like a thread pulled too many times, finally slipping loose from the fabric.
I take one step back. No one notices. I take another.
Janine glances at me, sees movement, and her expression hardens for the space of a blink. Then a reporter speaks to her, and she turns away.
I should stay. I should be gracious. I should wait until Sebastian can get away and have the conversation he promised. I shouldn't make tonight about my feelings. I know all the shoulds. They've become a cage with good manners.