Chapter 3 - The Lounge

Ivy's POV

Julian wanted to fix things between us over drinks at the Halcyon Lounge, in front of exactly the kind of crowd that would report back to every gossip column in the city if the fixing went well — and photograph every second of it if it didn't.

Ivy had built the plan herself. Neutral territory, soft lighting, a guest list curated down to people who'd spin the reconciliation as a misunderstanding rather than a scandal. She'd done this a hundred times for other people's marriages and relationships. She had never once had to do it on her own.

"You look beautiful," Julian said, sliding into the booth across from her like the last forty-eight hours hadn't happened. "Thank you for doing this."

"I'm not doing it for you." She kept her voice level, professional, the same voice she'd use with any client who'd embarrassed himself in public. "I'm doing it because if this engagement collapses in a scandal, it takes my father's company down with it, and I've spent three years keeping that company alive. So smile, hold my hand, and don't give anyone a reason to ask follow-up questions."

Julian's jaw tightened, but he nodded, and for twenty minutes it almost worked. She laughed at the right moments. He kept his hand over hers on the table. The room, watching them the way people in the rooms like this always watched people like them, began to relax into the story they were being told.

Then Camille Whitfield walked in.

Ivy recognized her instantly, she is the woman from the hotel elevator, the reason for the last two days of damage control and watched Julian's whole body go rigid beside her.

"Tell me she's not on the guest list," Ivy said quietly.

"She wasn't invited."

"That's not the same thing as an answer."

Camille didn't approach their table, but she didn't need to. She simply existed in the same room, laughing too loudly at something a friend said, glancing over just often enough to make sure Julian was watching. Ivy felt the entire carefully constructed evening tilt sideways.

"Fix it," she said under her breath. "Now. Or I walk out that door and let the story write itself."

Julian stood too fast, nearly knocking over his drink, and crossed the room toward Camille with the kind of urgency that told Ivy everything she needed to know about which relationship actually mattered to him. She watched them argue in low voices near the bar, watched three separate phones come out to record it, and felt three years of careful reputation management unraveling in real time in a room full of people who lived for exactly this kind of collapse.

"You look like you could use a rescue."

She didn't have to turn around to know the voice. Roman had appeared at her elbow like he'd been summoned by the disaster itself, dressed like he'd walked out of the same expensive world as everyone else in the room and somehow still made all of them look like they were trying too hard.

"What are you doing here?"

"Julian invited half the Ashford family as a peace offering. I'm the only one who showed up." His gaze flicked toward the bar, where Julian and Camille's argument had escalated into something people were no longer bothering to hide filming. "Looks like the peace offering isn't going well."

"Don't," Ivy said. "Don't do things when you enjoy this."

"I'm not enjoying it." And to her surprise, he wasn't — his jaw had gone tight in a way that looked almost protective. "I'm wondering how many of those phones are going to end up online in the next ten minutes, and whether you want to still be sitting in this booth when they do."

She looked around the room properly for the first time since Camille had walked in, and her stomach dropped. He was right. This wasn't a contained situation anymore. This was a live scandal with an audience, and every second she stayed made her look complicit in whatever came next.

"I need to get out of here without it looking like I'm running."

Roman held out his hand. "Then don't run. Walk out with me instead. Give them a different story to talk about."

---

Roman's POV

He hadn't planned this. He'd shown up to the Halcyon because some old, stubborn part of him needed to see for himself whether Julian actually deserved her, and the answer had arrived faster and uglier than he'd expected.

But offering her his hand in front of a room full of cameras — that part he hadn't planned at all, he didn't see it coming and he had about half a second to decide whether he meant it before her fingers slid into his.

Her hand was steadier than he expected. His wasn't.

"Where are we walking to?" she asked, voice pitched low enough that only he could hear it.

"Doesn't matter. Just walk like you meant to leave before any of this happened."

She matched his pace exactly, chin up, spine straight, every inch the woman who managed other people's disasters for a living — except her hand was gripping his like it was the only steady thing in the room, and Roman found he didn't want to let go of it even after they'd cleared the door.

Outside, the night air loosened the tight coil in his chest that had been there since he'd watched Julian storm across that room toward another woman while Ivy sat alone in a booth trying to hold a fake engagement together with sheer professional will.

"That was reckless," she said, finally pulling her hand back once they were clear of the windows. "The whole city is going to be talking about the two of us walking out together instead of Julian and Camille."

"Would you rather they talk about Julian and Camille?"

She didn't answer right away, and that told him more than any answer would have.

"I should go home," she said instead.

"I'll drive you."

"Roman—"

"You just watched your fiancé argue with another woman in front of forty phones," he said, quieter now. "I'm not putting you in a car alone tonight. Let me do this one thing. No conditions."

She studied him for a long moment under the streetlight, and something in her expression cracked open just slightly — enough that he caught a flash of the woman he used to know, underneath all the careful armor she'd built since.

"Fine," she said. "One ride. That's all."

He should have felt like he'd won something.

Instead, halfway to his car, her phone buzzed with a text, and he watched her face go pale as she read it.

"What?" he asked.

She turned the screen toward him without a word.

It was a photo — the two of them, hand in hand, walking out of the Halcyon together — already circulating with a caption that had nothing to do with Julian and Camille at all.

Is Ivy Callahan already moving on to the OTHER Ashford brother?

Ivy looked up at him, and for the first time since the parking lot, Roman had absolutely no idea what to say.