Chapter 5

Boardroom

Natalie's POV

I woke before the alarm.

For a few seconds I lay still, staring at the ceiling while the night before came back in pieces: the photographs, Daniel's voice on the phone, his promise that we would talk when he came home.

We hadn't talked.

He had come home late, moved around the apartment as though nothing had happened, and gone to bed without giving me the conversation he'd promised. I turned my head toward his side of the bed. Empty. The sheets were already cold.

I pulled on a robe and went to the kitchen. Daniel was at the counter in a crisp white shirt, buttoning his cuffs with one hand and scrolling his phone with the other. He looked completely normal.

That made me angrier than guilt would have.

"Morning," he said.

I poured coffee instead of answering. "You said we'd talk."

His hand paused at his cuff. "I know."

The answer was too casual. "You didn't come home."

"I got held up."

"Until midnight?"

"Nat, I said I would explain." He checked his watch. "We're already running late."

A laugh almost escaped me, and there was nothing funny in it. "Of course we are."

Small footsteps padded up behind me. "Mommy, you're up!"

Noah stood in the doorway in his pajamas, hair sticking up on one side, rubbing his eye. I crouched and he walked straight into my arms.

"Daddy said he's taking me to school today."

I looked up at Daniel. He had already picked up his keys. "You're taking him?"

"Yes." It came easily.

Daniel hadn't taken Noah to school in months. I didn't ask why he'd suddenly decided to do it today. I was afraid of what the answer would be, and more afraid of how well he'd have prepared it.

"Go get dressed, baby."

"I am dressed." He looked down at his pajamas and grinned. "For school."

He ran off, and Daniel slid his phone into his pocket. Everything about that morning felt slightly rearranged, as if he had decided that if he moved quickly enough, I wouldn't have time to ask the questions he'd spent the night avoiding.

When Noah came back in his uniform, Daniel held out a hand. "Come on, buddy."

Noah took it, then turned around in the doorway. "Mommy?"

"I'll see you later."

He smiled and followed his father out. The apartment went strangely quiet behind them.

I felt it then, plainly: he wasn't hiding from me. He was managing me. And he was doing it with our son's hand in his.

---

The boardroom was on the thirty-second floor of headquarters. I had rehearsed this morning in my bathroom mirror for two weeks. I would walk in with my laptop, stand at the head of that long glass table, and take the board through Second Skin for ten minutes. My name was on the agenda. That had felt enormous.

Instead I took a seat along the far side, near the middle, close enough to see the screen and far enough back not to be noticed.

I was noticed anyway. Every glance that reached me was a small photograph: a board member's eyes flicking to my face, then away. Nobody said anything. That was the worst part. They were being polite about it.

Marcus was already at the head of the table with a folder open in front of him. When I sat down, he looked up. For a moment the only thing between us was the length of the glass.

I hated how glad I was that he was there.

Gordon read out the agenda in a steady voice. "Item three. Second Skin design walk-through. Natalie will—"

"I'll be covering that one," Daniel said, already rising, already smiling.

Marcus looked down at the agenda in front of him, then at Daniel, and finally at me. He said nothing. He didn't need to. I saw him read the page and understand.

Daniel took the clicker.

The first slide appeared, and it was mine. Every line. Every adjustment. Every night I had spent refining it after Noah was asleep. He spoke smoothly, confidently, explaining the concept as if it had been built inside his head from the start. He even told the story I had told him, about how the first sketch had been drawn on the back of a grocery receipt, as though it had happened to him.

I kept my hands flat on the table. If I stood up now, every eye would land on the woman from the photographs, and Daniel knew it. That was why he had chosen today. My silence was the only thing keeping me in the room.

He reached the heart of it. "The convertible structure lets the wearer move between the two silhouettes without changing the garment."

That was mine too. That was the part I had fought for.

"That concludes the design walk-through," Daniel said, and clicked to the last slide. It was a credits page. Under the collection name, in large type, it read Design Lead: Daniel Whitmore. At the very bottom, in small gray letters that were almost hard to make out, it read Assisted Development: N. Reyes-Whitmore.

Marcus was still looking at the screen.

"Who developed the convertible structure?"

Daniel didn't lower the clicker. "The team."

"I asked who developed it."

The room grew very quiet. Daniel smiled faintly. "It was collaborative."

"Was it?"

The smile slipped. "I directed the overall vision."

"And the development?"

Daniel glanced at me. "Natalie assisted with some of the technical work."

Assisted.

My pen was digging into my palm. It wasn't only the word. It was every night I'd spent on it, and the receipt, and my whole idea folded into a single small gray line at the bottom of a slide.

"The agenda I approved lists this walk-through under N. Reyes," Marcus said. "Why isn't she presenting it?"

"After the week she's had, I thought it would be kinder—"

Kinder. Every head in the room turned toward me. That was what Daniel had done. He had taken the scandal, the one thing I couldn't defend myself against, and used it to explain why I couldn't be trusted with my own work.

I wanted to stand. I couldn't feel my legs.

"Then that was a decision for her to make," Marcus said. His voice was calm, calm enough to make the silence around it heavier. "Responsibility and authorship aren't the same thing, Daniel."

"Marcus—"

"We'll revisit design credit before any launch materials go out." He closed his folder. "Noted."

Nobody spoke. For a second, no one moved at all.

I sat there while the room tried to decide what it had just seen. Part of me wanted to thank Marcus so badly that my throat hurt. Part of me was terrified of what he had just cost me, because Daniel would not forgive a public correction, and he couldn't touch Marcus.

He would take it out on me.

The meeting moved on. Gordon read the next item, someone turned a page, a chair creaked. The room slid back into itself with a speed that would have been funny if I could have felt my face.

When it ended, the board filed out in twos and threes, murmuring. I stayed in my seat, my laptop unopened in front of me, pretending to gather my notes because I didn't trust my legs yet.

Daniel walked around the far end of the table. He passed behind my chair, and he stopped.

He didn't touch me. He leaned in just enough that no one else could hear, and he smiled, for the benefit of anyone who might be looking.

"We'll discuss this at home, Natalie."

He said it so lightly that no one in the room noticed it was a threat.

No one except me. And, from the head of the table, Marcus, who had seen him stop behind my chair.