Chapter 3

Eleanor Holt's front door was dark green with a brass knocker that had been polished so many times it had probably forgotten what unpolished felt like.

I stood in front of it and did my usual thirty second ritual — straighten up, breathe, remind myself that I was a person who belonged places and not a stray who had accidentally followed Liam home three years ago and never left.

It helped. Slightly.

Liam rang the bell. Eleanor opened the door with the specific warmth of a woman who was genuinely happy to see you, which still caught me off guard every single time.

"Nova." She took both my hands. Squeezed them. "You look wonderful. Come in, come in."

We came in.

The house smelled like something roasting and old wood and that particular expensive-house smell that wasn't a product, just money settling into the walls over generations. Gerald was already in the sitting room with a drink, which meant he'd been there long enough to need one, which was always a sign.

"Liam." Gerald. Then a pause that lasted just long enough to be deliberate. "Nova."

"Gerald," I said pleasantly.

Cole appeared from the kitchen holding what looked like an entire cheese board and pointed at me with a cracker. "Nova. Finally. Come tell me what's actually going on in the world, everyone here is ancient."

I liked Cole.

We were halfway through drinks and Eleanor's excellent lamb when the front door opened.

I felt Liam register it before I heard it — the slight shift in his posture, the jaw, the way his hand tightened briefly around his glass. Three years and I had catalogued his tells the way I'd catalogued Daisy's moans. Automatic. Unavoidable.

Rhett walked in.

He was late, which I suspected was on purpose. He said something to his mother — brief, warm in the way of someone who didn't do warm easily — and took the empty seat across the table. He acknowledged Gerald with a nod. Cole with slightly more. Liam with the specific neutrality of someone who had decided neutrality was the most devastating option available.

Me, he looked at for exactly one second.

"Nova," he said.

"Rhett," I said.

We returned to our food.

The thing about Rhett Holt was that he was the quietest person in any room he entered and somehow still managed to be the most present. He didn't perform. He didn't fill silence or compete for it. He just sat there being completely unbothered and it drove Liam absolutely insane.

I found this privately fascinating.

"The Mercer account," Gerald said to Rhett somewhere between the main and the dessert. I hadn't been following the conversation. I rarely followed the business conversations — they weren't for me, which everyone at the table understood, which was fine.

"Handled," Rhett said.

"I heard there were complications."

"There were. Now there aren't."

Gerald made a sound that meant he had more to say about this. He always had more to say. He was the kind of man who treated conversation like a territory he needed to keep defending.

"You could've brought Cole in on it," Gerald said. "Made it a family effort."

"It didn't need Cole."

"It needed someone —"

"It needed me," Rhett said. "So I handled it."

The temperature at the table dropped two degrees.

Liam put his fork down. I clocked this immediately because Liam putting his fork down was never about the fork.

"Must be nice," Liam said, "always knowing best."

Rhett looked at him. Just looked. Didn't respond.

"I'm just saying." Liam's voice had that particular quality it got when he was building toward something — light, almost joking, with edges underneath. "Some of us might also have useful input. Some of us do also work for this company."

"You have a title," Rhett said. "That's not the same thing."

Oh.

The table went very still.

Cole reached for the bread basket with the focused determination of someone who had decided the bread basket was now his entire world.

"Excuse me?" Liam said.

"You heard me."

Liam stood up. Actually stood up, chair scraping back, and for a second I thought — genuinely thought — that we were about to have a completely different kind of evening.

"Liam —" Eleanor started.

"No, Mum, I want to hear him say it again —"

Rhett looked up at him from his seat. Completely unbothered. Not even tense. Just: are you done? in posture form.

"Sit down," Rhett said, quietly.

"Don't tell me —"

"Liam." Gerald, sharp.

"He can't just —"

"Sit. Down."

It was Eleanor. Soft but final. The voice she used when she was done managing and starting to feel it instead. Her eyes were bright in a way that wasn't happiness.

Liam sat down.

The dinner continued.

I ate my dessert and watched Rhett from across the table and thought about how interesting it was — how a man who said almost nothing could get so completely under another man's skin just by existing in the same room. How Liam, who charmed everyone, who had never lost an argument with me or anyone else in his social circle, went smaller when his brother was present.

I didn't like Rhett Holt. I didn't know him well enough to like him.

But he had something. Some quality that operated below noise level. Something that made rooms rearrange themselves around him without his permission.

I filed this away.

By the time we moved to the sitting room, Liam had recovered enough to be pleasant. Rhett was on his phone in the corner. Gerald had resumed his drink. Cole was telling me about a trip he was planning and I was half listening and half watching Liam watch his brother and thinking about how exhausting it must be to spend your life resenting someone who doesn't notice.

Then Liam said something to Rhett too low for me to hear.

Rhett looked up from his phone.

Whatever Liam had said, it landed. For the first time all evening, something moved behind Rhett's eyes. He stood up from the armchair. Slowly. With the specific energy of someone who had decided to stop ignoring the situation.

"Say it again," Rhett said. Still quiet. That was the frightening part — he never got louder, just more still.

"I said —"

"I heard you." Rhett crossed the room in three steps. "Say it again."

Cole stood up. Eleanor said boys in a voice that meant she was already exhausted by what was about to happen. Gerald did nothing, which told me everything about Gerald.

Liam shoved Rhett's shoulder. Actually shoved him.

Rhett didn't move. Didn't even rock back. He just looked at Liam's hand on his shoulder and then at Liam's face with an expression that said: that's the best you have?

"You're a spoilt child," Rhett said. "You've always been a spoilt child. Dad made you that way and you've never once tried to be anything else."

Liam swung.

Rhett caught his arm.

Eleanor made a sound. Cole was already between them, both hands out, saying something I couldn't hear over the noise of my own heartbeat. Gerald stood in the doorway of the sitting room and watched his sons like he was observing a weather event — invested, slightly, but mostly just waiting to see what the damage would be.

It was over in thirty seconds. Cole physically separating them, Eleanor's hand on Liam's back, Rhett stepping away like he'd made a decision and the decision was: not worth it.

He straightened his jacket.

Picked up his phone from the armchair.

Said goodnight to his mother. Not to anyone else. Just his mother.

And left.

The room settled into the specific quiet of aftermath — broken things rearranging themselves, everyone deciding how much they'd seen and what they'd be pretending not to have seen tomorrow.

Liam was doing his jaw thing. Eleanor was doing her everything is fine thing. Gerald was doing his drink.

I looked at the door Rhett had just walked out of.

Welcome to my life, I guess.