10. Heather
— ? —
Heather
Six Weeks In
I’ve stopped counting down to the end date.
The realization hits me in the middle of a cocktail party, standing by the bar with a drink I’m not tasting, watching Grayson across the room.
He’s making conversation with someone’s husband - something about foundation budgets, probably, the usual tedium - but every few minutes his eyes find mine, checking, connecting.
I catch myself watching for the particular shape of him at events now. The way he holds his glass. The angle of his shoulders when he’s listening. The slight shift in his expression when he’s pretending to be interested in something that bores him.
I catch myself, full stop.
I don’t like how easy it’s become.
“You’re staring.” Clarice Whitmore drifts in from my left, champagne in hand, her smile doing the work her eyes won’t. “At your own boyfriend. How sweet.”
“Clarice.”
“Don’t look so suspicious. I’m just making conversation.” She sips her champagne. “The gossip has shifted, you know. People are starting to think you two might actually be the real thing.”
“What makes them think that?”
“The way he looks at you.” She nods toward Grayson. “Like you’re the only thing in the room worth seeing. Men don’t fake that, darling. Trust me, I’ve tried to buy it.”
I follow her gaze. Grayson has noticed us talking; his eyes narrow slightly, assessing, protective even from across the room.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“Love usually is.” Clarice finishes her champagne and sets the glass on a passing tray. “Word of advice? Don’t overthink it. You both spent too many years with the wrong people. Maybe this is the universe’s way of apologizing.”
She drifts away before I can respond, leaving me alone with my thoughts and a drink I still haven’t tasted.
Don’t overthink it.
Easier said than done.
***
At the cocktail party, Penelope corners me by the windows.
She’s showing more now, her dress emphasizing the swell of her belly, her face arranged into an expression of fragile vulnerability.
“Heather.” She says my name like we’re friends. “I’ve been hoping we could talk.”
“I can’t imagine what we’d have to say to each other.”
“I made a mistake.” Her voice catches, perfectly timed. “I never meant to hurt anyone. Kirk pursued me. I was weak.”
“You were weak for three years.” I hold her gaze. “Somewhere in there, weak turned into a choice.”
“That’s not fair-”
“Fair?” The word comes out sharper than I intended. “You want to talk to me about fair? You spent three years in my husband’s bed, and then you stood at that gallery and told a room full of people that I was settling for a man who couldn’t give me children. Fair doesn’t apply to us, Penelope.”
“I was hurt. I said things I didn’t mean-”
“You said things you’d been saving for exactly the right moment to cause maximum damage.” I step closer, and she has the grace to flinch. “That’s not pain. That’s strategy.”
Her expression hardens. “You think you’re so much better than me. With your new boyfriend and your sympathy and everyone feeling sorry for poor betrayed Heather. But you’re not better. You’re just playing a different game.”
“At least I’m honest about the game I’m playing.”
“Are you?” Her smile goes toxic. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you traded one man for another the second it became convenient. Same story, different leading man.”
“The difference is I’m not lying to anyone.” I let the words land. “Can you say the same?”
She opens her mouth to respond, but something across the room catches my eye.
Grayson is standing by the bar. A woman I don’t recognize - blonde, beautiful, the kind of woman who looks like she’s never had a bad day in her life - has her hand on his arm. She’s laughing up at him, leaning close, finding reasons to touch him that can’t possibly be accidental.
My grip tightens on my glass until my knuckles ache.
The heat climbing my throat owes nothing to the wine.
Penelope follows my gaze. Her smile widens.
“Looks like yours is wandering too.” She says it loud enough for nearby guests to hear. “Funny how that works.”
My face goes hot. I can’t deny the jealousy - it’s written all over me - and Penelope’s smirk says she knows exactly what she just exposed.
“Excuse me.”
I set down my glass and walk away, my composure cracking with every step. I don’t go toward Grayson - I can’t, not with this feeling clawing at my chest - I go toward the door that leads to the roof terrace.
The night air hits me like a slap.
I grip the railing and stare at the city, breathing hard, trying to make sense of what just happened. It’s not real. Whatever Grayson is or isn’t doing with that woman, it doesn’t matter. We have rules. We have boundaries. This is theater.
Except I left a perfectly good party because another woman put her hand on his arm.
I press my palms flat against the cold stone and make myself say it, just to me, just once.
You’re jealous. Not performing jealous. Not strategically jealous for the benefit of some gossiping crowd.
The real, ugly, stomach-twisting kind, the kind I haven’t felt since the early days with Kirk, before I trained myself to stop wanting things I might lose.
That’s the part that scares me. Not that woman and her manicured hand. Me. The fact that somewhere in the last six weeks I stopped pretending and didn’t notice the exact moment it happened.
I think about the way he checks for me across every room. The coffee, stirred counterclockwise. The pullout couch he took without being asked, the night I fell apart in a hotel and he held on and asked for nothing. None of that was in the contract. None of it was theater.
And here’s the truth I’ve been outrunning all night, the one the city lights won’t let me look away from: a fake relationship doesn’t end with you on a freezing terrace, shaking, because someone smiled at the man you’re supposed to be pretending to love.
This was never going to stay pretend. I just didn’t want to be the one who admitted it first.
I came up here to get my face under control. Instead I’m gripping a railing forty floors up, learning that I’m already gone.
Except theater doesn’t make your chest ache.
Theater doesn’t make you want to cross a room and stake a claim you have no right to.
“Heather.”
His voice behind me. I don’t turn. I keep my eyes on the city, on the cold smear of headlights forty floors down, like the skyline might hand me an excuse if I stare hard enough.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I tighten my grip on the railing until the stone bites into my palms.
“You’re lying.” Not an accusation. Just a fact, laid down quiet between us.
Footsteps on the terrace, unhurried. He comes to stand beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him against my bare arm, not quite touching. He doesn’t reach for me. He just waits, the way he always does, like he has all night and nowhere else he’d rather be.
“I saw you leave.” His voice is soft, pitched under the hum of the party leaking through the door behind us. “You looked upset.”
“I’m fine.” I say it to the city, not to him.
“You’re many things.” He turns his head toward me, and I feel the weight of it, the full attention I’ve spent six weeks pretending not to crave. “Fine isn’t one of them.”
The wind picks up off the rooftop, threading cold between us, and still he doesn’t move away. Still he waits.
I finally look at him.
It’s a mistake.
The city lights paint him in gold and shadow, catching the sharp angles of his face, the soft curve of his mouth. He’s removed his jacket somewhere along the way, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, and I’m suddenly aware of his forearms in a way that makes my face flush.
***
His forearms. I’m falling apart over his forearms.
“Who was that woman?” I ask, even though I know the answer, even though asking reveals everything I’m trying to hide.
“Catherine Walsh.” He tilts his head, studying me, the way he studies a room before he decides how to move through it. “Foundation donor. Why?”
“No reason.” I turn back to the railing, giving him my profile, hoping the dark eats whatever my face is doing.
“Heather.” Just my name, low, and it pulls at something behind my ribs.
“I said no reason.”
“And I said you’re lying.” He steps closer, the warmth of him at my back now, and I catch his scent - cedar and warm skin, achingly familiar after six weeks of standing too close for the cameras. He lets the quiet stretch a beat. “You were jealous.”
The word lands between us like a grenade.
“I wasn’t-”
“You were.” He’s very close now. Close enough that I’d have to step back to breathe properly.
I don’t step back. I won’t give him that.
“I watched you from across the room. Watched your face the second she put her hand on my arm.” His voice drops.
“You looked like you wanted to put her through a window.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” It comes out thin, all the edges sanded off, fooling neither of us.
“I’m not flattering anyone.” His hand comes up, slow enough that I could turn away if I wanted to, and we both know I don’t want to. His fingers brush a strand of hair from my face and linger at my temple, featherlight. “I’m stating facts.”
His touch sends electricity skating down my spine. My lips part. My breath comes faster, and I hate that he can see it, hate that my body keeps narrating everything my mouth won’t say.
We shouldn’t do this. The thought is distant, fading, drowned out under the warm press of his fingers at my temple. We have rules. We have boundaries. This is supposed to be-
“This is getting complicated,” I hear myself say.
“I know.” His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world up here and the party below doesn’t exist.
“I think it’s been complicated for a while.”
“I know that too.” He doesn’t pull his hand back. If anything he leans in, until I can feel his breath stir the hair at my temple, until the cold rooftop air is the only thing left between us and even that feels like it’s thinning.
His hand slides from my temple to my jaw, tilting my face up. His thumb traces my lower lip, and my body responds in ways I can’t control, pulse hammering, stomach tightening, a flush spreading down my throat and across my chest.
I can feel the heat of it. Can see his eyes track the color as it blooms beneath my collarbone, disappearing into the neckline of my dress.
He can probably see my pulse jumping in my throat.
Can probably tell that I’m pressing my thighs together, that my nipples are hard beneath the silk, that my whole body is screaming for something I shouldn’t want.
He knows, I think. He can see exactly what he’s doing to me.
The thought should be mortifying. Instead, it’s gasoline on an already-raging fire.
I want him to see. I want him to know. I want him to close the distance between us and do something about the ache that’s been building for weeks, the one I’ve been lying about every time I told myself this was just theater.
His sleeves are rolled to his elbows. I’ve been staring at his forearms all night - the flex of muscle, the dusting of dark hair, the way his watch sits against his wrist - and I hate myself for it.
I hate that I’ve spent an hour cataloging the line of his throat, the breadth of his shoulders, the exact shade of his eyes in different lighting.
This is not how allies behave.
This is not how fake girlfriends think.
“So what do we do about it?” I whisper. The question is barely sound, more breath than voice, and the second it leaves me I want it back.
“I don’t know.” His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there, and I feel it like a touch, like he’s already decided and is just giving me the courtesy of catching up. “But I know what I want to do.”
“What?” My fingers have found his shirt without my permission, curling into the fabric at his chest, holding on instead of pushing away.
“This.”
He kisses me.
Soft at first. Testing. His hand slides from my temple into my hair, cradling the back of my head, giving me every second in the world to pull away.
I don’t pull away.
My hands fist in his shirt, dragging him closer, and the kiss deepens.
His tongue slides against mine and I make a sound I don’t recognize - something desperate and needy, dragged up from somewhere I’ve kept locked for ten years - and he answers it with a low groan against my mouth, his arm banding around my waist to haul me flush against him like he’s been waiting all night for permission to stop being careful.
His hands find my hips, pulling me flush against him, and I feel exactly how much he wants this - how much he’s been wanting this - pressing hot and insistent against my stomach.
“Grayson-” His name comes out broken against his lips.
“Don’t.” His mouth moves to my throat. “Don’t tell me it’s still just theater. Not when you looked at me like that downstairs.”
“How did I look at you?”
“Like I belonged to you.” He bites gently at the sensitive skin below my ear, and my knees nearly buckle. “Like you’d fight anyone who tried to take me away.”
“What if I would?”
He pulls back just far enough to meet my eyes. His pupils are blown wide, his breathing ragged, his careful composure completely undone.
“Then maybe we need to stop pretending we know where the line is.” His thumb traces my jaw. “Because I stopped seeing it weeks ago.”
The rooftop door opens.
Someone stumbles through, drunk, looking for fresh air, too wrapped up in their own mess to notice us.
By the time they find their balance, Grayson has stepped back, his hands in his pockets, his expression smoothed into something that could pass for casual conversation.
But I can still taste him on my lips.
I can still feel his hands at my hips.
And I know, with absolute certainty, that whatever game we’ve been playing just changed permanently.