Novels by authoreffizy

The gala ballroom glittered with exactly the kind of wealth that made my dress, however carefully chosen, feel suddenly inadequate. Chandeliers the size of small cars. A string quartet playing something I half recognized from a commercial. Henry's hand rested at the small of my back as we entered, steady, grounding, though I noticed he kept scanning the room the way a man scans a battlefield rather than a party."Relax," I murmured. "You look like you're expecting an ambush.""With this family, that's not an unreasonable expectation.""Comforting, as always.""I try." A faint, tired smile tugged at his mouth. "Stay close tonight. Please.""Worried I'll wander off and embarrass you?""Worried about exactly the opposite."He wasn't wrong.Celeste found us within fifteen minutes, gliding across the room in a dress that probably cost more than my first year's salary, champagne flute dangling from perfectly manicured fingers."Henry." Her voice carried, pitched just loud enough for the sur

ROSELINE’S POVThe nausea hit before I'd even fully opened my eyes, a slow, rolling wave that had me bolting for the bathroom before coherent thought caught up with my body. I made it, barely, and knelt there afterward with my forehead pressed against cool tile, breathing through the aftershocks.A soft knock sounded at the door."Roseline?""I'm fine." My voice came out rough, unconvincing even to my own ears."You don't sound fine.""Pregnancy's glamorous like that."A pause. Then, quieter, "Can I come in?"I should have said no. Some vulnerable, stubborn part of me wanted to handle this alone, the way I'd handled everything alone for most of my life. But the tile was cold, and my legs felt unsteady, and I was so tired of pretending strength I didn't currently have."Okay," I said.Henry eased the door open slowly, like he expected me to change my mind, and crouched beside me without a word. He didn't say anything dramatic. Didn't hover with obvious concern or ask a dozen questions

HENRY'S POVThe east wing still smelled the same. Dust and old wood polish, a faint trace of something floral I could never place as a boy and still couldn't now, though it caught in my throat the same way it always had.I'd come to collect a box of old files Daniel needed, family records nobody had touched in years, stored in what used to be my mother's sitting room because apparently nobody in this family could bear to repurpose the space for anything else. I told myself that was the only reason I was here. I didn't entirely believe it.The room looked smaller than I remembered. A child's memory inflates everything, I supposed, turns ordinary ceilings into cathedrals, ordinary windows into something vast enough to hold an entire sky. Now it was just a room, faded wallpaper, a window seat where she used to read to me, dust thick enough to write my name in if I'd wanted to.I didn't want to.I found the box of files exactly where Collins had said it would be, tucked beneath a stack of

"You could have just let me make the tea," I said, picking the dropped pan up off the floor before he could reach it."You shouldn't be the one cleaning up a mess I made. Especially not tonight.""Is there a schedule I don't know about?""There should be." He took the pan from my hands, his fingers brushing mine for half a second longer than necessary. "I startled you. Figured the least I could do was finish what I started."I should have gone back to bed. The rational, careful version of me, the one who'd written three pages of conditions and meant every line of them, knew exactly how I should have ended this moment. That version of me had a long list of reasons, all of them sensible, none of them loud enough to actually move my feet.I sat down anyway.He moved around the kitchen with quiet, careful efficiency, kettle, two mugs, a tin of loose leaf tea I hadn't known we owned. The silence between us had shifted somewhere in the last few minutes, less careful now, less like two stran

The apartment was enormous, which somehow made it worse. Floor to ceiling windows, a kitchen bigger than my entire old place, a hallway with so many doors I'd gotten lost twice already looking for the bathroom."Your room's the second on the left," Henry said, setting my last box down in the entryway. "Mine's at the end of the hall. There's a guest suite between us if you'd rather more distance.""The second door is fine.""Okay," he said. He hesitated a beat, like there was more he wanted to say and couldn't quite find the shape of it. "For what it's worth, you can rearrange anything you want. This isn't meant to feel like my apartment with your name added to the lease.""Noted."We stood there a moment, both of us surveying the boxes scattered across hardwood floors that had clearly never seen a cardboard box before in their polished lives, and I felt, for the first time since signing that certificate, the full, strange weight of what we'd actually done, married that morning, moved

"Breathe," Rebecca Moore said, adjusting the collar of my dress with quick, practiced fingers.Henry's assistant had hired her the week after the contract was signed, a wedding coordinator who specialized, apparently, in exactly this kind of event, small, fast, and quietly explained away to anyone who asked. She'd shown up with a binder, a calm voice, and the particular efficiency of someone who'd planned a hundred weddings and judged none of them. "You look like you're about to walk the plank instead of down an aisle.""Feels about the same.""It never does, once you're actually standing there. Trust me." She stepped back, studied me with the critical warmth of someone who genuinely wanted this to go well, not just professionally. "You look beautiful, by the way. In case nobody's said it today.""Nobody has, actually.""Well, you do." She squeezed my hand once, brief and sincere, the first real warmth I'd felt all morning in a day built entirely out of careful arrangements and necess