CHAPTER TWO

COLE'S POV

I knew exactly who she was the moment my father told me her mother's name.

Vera Calloway. Junior journalist. Sharp, careful, and currently sitting three pews ahead of me at my father's wedding looking like she wants to disappear through the floor. I watched her face when I walked in and said her name. She went completely still — the kind of still that isn't calm but controlled. Like someone who has spent years learning how to take a hit without showing it.

I know that kind of stillness. I built the same thing in myself.

The ceremony is exactly what my father does — polished, expensive, and performed with the precision of someone who has rehearsed sincerity so many times it looks real. I stand where I'm told to stand and say what I'm supposed to say and the entire time I'm aware of exactly where Vera is sitting and the fact that she hasn't looked at me once since I walked in.

She's disciplined. I knew she would be.

At the gala I watched her work a room she pretended to hate. She catalogued every person in it without appearing to look directly at anyone. She asked questions that sounded like conversation. She listened in a way that felt like being the only person in the room. I noticed all of it and found it fascinating and then she laughed — really laughed — at something I said and I stopped analyzing and just stayed.

That was the part I didn't plan for.

I've thought about that laugh more times than I want to admit in the three weeks since.

The reception moves to the garden after the ceremony. My father working every corner of the room like the event is a business function, which for him it always is. I move through it all and eventually find Vera exactly where I expected — at the edge of everything, slightly removed, watching.

I cross the room and she sees me coming and doesn't move. I respect that. She's not going to run from this and she's not going to pretend it isn't happening. She's going to stand her ground and manage it and that is exactly the kind of person she is.

"We should talk," I say.

"I disagree."

I almost smile. "You're not even a little curious how I know your name?"

"I've thought about nothing else since you said it." She keeps her voice completely flat. "That doesn't mean I want to have this conversation here."

"Then where?"

She glances toward the far end of the garden where a stone bench sits away from the main gathering. She moves toward it without answering and I follow and we sit down with enough distance between us that it looks like two people being polite.

"You knew who I was at the gala," she says. It isn't a question.

"No. I found out after."

She looks at me. "How?"

"My father mentioned your mother's name when he told me about the wedding. I looked her up. Found you." I pause. "Your byline isn't hard to find."

"And you didn't say anything. You let me walk into that wedding without any warning."

"Would a warning have changed anything?"

She opens her mouth and then closes it because we both know the answer. Nothing about the situation changes regardless of when she found out. The wedding still happened. Our parents are still married. We are still whatever we are now.

"This is a disaster," she says quietly. Not to me specifically. Just out loud.

"It's complicated," I offer.

"That's one word for it."

I look at her profile. She's staring at the garden with that same expression she had at the gala when she thought I wasn't watching — something honest underneath the composure. At the gala it looked like loneliness wearing the mask of independence. Right now it looks like someone doing rapid calculations about a situation that has no clean solution.

"I need you to know that night has nothing to do with any of this," she says. "Whatever happened — it was before any of this existed. It doesn't carry over."

"I know."

"I mean it Cole. It can't."

"I understand."

She finally turns to look at me directly and I hold her gaze and don't look away because I want her to see that I'm not dismissing what she's saying. I hear her. I'm agreeing with her. And we both know that agreeing with something and being free of it are two entirely different things.

That night exists in me the same way I suspect it exists in her — not loudly, not as something I've been dramatic about, but as something that sits in a specific quiet place and doesn't move. The conversation at the bar. The way she argued with me about things that didn't matter and was completely right every time. The moment she decided to trust me with something she didn't have to trust me with.

I haven't stopped thinking about it either. I'm just better at not showing it.

"Okay," she says finally. Steadying herself. "We're stepsiblings. By paperwork. We are going to be civil and appropriate and completely normal about this."

"Completely normal," I repeat.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Say things back to me like they're funny."

"I wasn't."

She narrows her eyes slightly. I keep my face straight. She looks away first and I count that as nothing because this is not a competition and I am not twelve years old.

We sit in silence for a moment and it settles into something that is almost comfortable before she ruins it by being right about something.

"This is going to be impossible," she says.

I don't answer because she's correct and saying so out loud won't help either of us.

My father appears across the garden looking in our direction and smiles — easy and warm — and raises his glass slightly.

I raise mine back.

Vera doesn't move.

"He's watching us," she says quietly.

"He watches everything."

She absorbs that. I can feel the question forming before she asks it.

"Cole." She keeps her eyes forward. "What exactly does your father know about you?"

I look at my father across the garden. He's already turned back to his guests. Smooth and unbothered and in complete control of every person in his eyeline.

"Less than he thinks," I say. "And more than I'd like."

She turns to look at me.

"What does that mean?"