Scandal

The penthouse becomes the only place I actually want to be.

It’s strange, how fast it happens Lucas has a key now. I gave it to him three weeks ago, dropped it on the counter like it wasn’t a decision that terrified me, and he’d looked at it for a long moment before pocketing it without a word, like he understood exactly what it cost me to hand it over.

We don’t talk about what this is. We don’t have to. It’s in the the way I’ve started clearing my evenings without fully admitting to myself why, the low, easy quiet that settles over the place when he’s there sketching on the balcony while I finish up emails I’m barely reading.

I’ve never had this. Not with Anastasia, not with anyone. I didn’t know I wanted it until I had it, and now that I do, the thought of not having it feels like something closer to panic than I’m willing to examine.

“You’re staring again,” Lucas says, not looking up from his sketchbook.

“I’m allowed to stare. You’re in my apartment.” I replied while still maining my pose, this time his painting me…naked yeah he somehow convinced me to sit for a nude portrait.

“Mm. Very generous of you.” He glances up, and something in his face easy, unguarded, mine, in whatever quiet way he’ll let himself be makes my chest ache in a way I don’t have a name for.

I don’t examine that either.

Anastasia corners me on a Tuesday.

“You missed the Hendersons’ dinner.” She says it lightly, arms crossed, standing in the doorway of my office like she’s decided this conversation is happening whether I want it to or not. “And the Whitfield gala. And you haven’t slept at the house in I actually don’t know how long, Ethan.”

“Work’s been demanding.”

“Don’t.” Her voice sharpens, just slightly. “We don’t lie to each other. That was always the one rule.”

I don’t have an answer for that, because she’s right, and because the lie sitting between us isn’t really about the Hendersons or the gala at all.

“The engagement party’s in three weeks,” she says, softer now. “People are going to notice if you’re not around before then. My father’s going to notice.”

“I’ll be there.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She studies me the way she does sometimes, too perceptive for my own good. “I asked where you’ve been.”

I don’t answer. She doesn’t push, but I catch the look on her face before she leaves not hurt. Something more like the first thread of suspicion pulling loose.

That night, alone at the house for once, I sit with a drink I don’t finish and let myself think, actually think, about the wedding for the first time in weeks.

Lucas makes me happy, I’ve never been happier all my life. Being with him isn’t a requirement or a responsibility I’ve had since birth he makes me feel seen and loved.

Three months from now. A wedding, a marriage alliance.

I used to be able to picture it without feeling anything. Now, every time I try to picture standing at that altar, all I can see is Lucas’s face the last time I left the penthouse quiet, smiling at me sweetly as always.

I don’t want to marry her.

The thought arrives so plainly, so unceremoniously, I sit with it a long time, waiting for the guilt to catch up to it, the loyalty, the decades of this is simply what happens.

It doesn’t come.

What comes instead is a kind of clarity I haven’t let myself feel in years cold, unwelcome, undeniable.

I don’t know how to undo fifteen years of promises.

But for the first time, I’m not sure I want to keep them.