Chapter 4: The Long game

Serena’s POV

“I just want to say for the record,” Chloe said from the bed, watching me step into my heels, “that the Elena I know would rather eat glass than attend a work gala.”

“People change.”

“You keep saying that.” She sat up and crossed her legs. “Before the accident you wouldn’t even work at Dominic’s company. You said corporate events made you want to disappear into the wallpaper. You once left a dinner party early because someone started talking about quarterly projections.” She tilted her head. “Now you’re the one asking to go?”

I picked up my earrings and put them in one at a time.

The dress was deep green. Fitted. I had chosen it three weeks ago specifically for tonight. That was also not something Elena would have done. Elena apparently chose her outfits the morning of and changed her mind twice. 

I knew this because Dominic had mentioned it once with the particular fondness of someone describing a habit they loved. He had looked at me after he said it with that expression he had been wearing more and more lately, like he was trying to find the woman he remembered inside the one standing in front of him.

I smiled and changed the subject and he let me, the way he always let me, because Dominic was many things and one of them was patient.

One year since I became Elena and every night when I went to bed, I wondered if it would be my last. 

“I’m branching out,” I said.

Chloe gave me a look. “You’ve been branching out for a year. You joined Dominic’s board. You restructured two of his subsidiary companies. You started working eighteen hour days.” She paused. “Elena used to paint on weekends and forget to eat lunch.”

“The doctors said the amnesia…”

“I know what the doctors said.” She stood up and came to stand behind me, looking at us both in the mirror. Her voice went quieter. “I’m not saying it’s bad. You seem happy. Focused. More of this new you, which is a strange thing to say about someone who can’t remember who they were.” She put her chin on my shoulder. “I just miss you sometimes. The old you.”

The guilt in my chest intensified.

This was the part I could never prepare for. Not Dominic’s searching looks or the board meetings where I had to pretend not to know things I absolutely knew. This. Chloe missing her best friend, whose place I’d taken.

“I know,” I said quietly. Because I did not know what else to say.

Anika appeared in the doorway in her pajamas, hair everywhere, holding her stuffed rabbit by one ear and looking at me with the solemn assessment of someone who had opinions about everything.

“You look like a princess Mama,” she announced.

The knot in my chest tightened again in a completely different direction.

I crouched down in my dress and heels and she walked straight into my arms and I held her for a moment with my eyes closed and breathed her in. 

A mother. I was…a mother. And apparently, a wife. 

“Thank you baby,” I said. “Be good for your nanny.”

She leaned back and looked at me very seriously. “Will Daddy be sad if I eat his leftover pasta?”

“Absolutely yes. Do it anyway.”

She grinned and disappeared back down the hallway and I stood up to find Chloe smiling at me. 

“Okay,” she said. “You’re a good mum. Whatever else is different, that part is real.”

I turned away before she could see my face.

Dominic appeared in the doorway ten minutes later in a black tux. He stopped when he saw me. Put the phone in his pocket.

“You look…,” he started.

“Delicious.” Chloe chirped in. 

“I was going to say extraordinary.” He crossed the room and his hands found my waist. “Are you ready?”

I met his eyes in the mirror.

One year of learning to be Elena; and living a life that had slowly, quietly wrapped itself around me until I could not always tell where it ended and I began.

And tonight the thing I had been building toward for all of it was finally here.

“I’ve been ready,” I said, “for a long time.”

——-

The ballroom was the kind of room that reminded you exactly how much money looked like when it stopped trying to be subtle. 

Dominic moved through it like he owned the floor plan. People turned. Conversations paused mid-sentence. 

His hand stayed warm at the small of my back as he steered us from group to group and I smiled and shook hands and said the right things in exactly the right order..

All the while my eyes moved through the room methodically, without appearing to look for anything at all.

I spotted a man near the bar from behind. Dark hair. The particular set of broad shoulders in a black tux that stopped my breath mid-chest. He turned slightly and I saw his jaw and I felt my stomach tighten with anticipation and dread until he turned fully. It was a man I had never seen before in my life and I breathed out so hard the woman beside me glanced over.

“Are you alright?” Dominic murmured near my ear.

“Fine,” I said. “Just warm.”

He flagged down a passing waiter and handed me a glass of water and I drank it and told myself to get it together. I had not survived a whole year of being someone else to fall apart because a stranger had similar shoulders to the man I thought he was.

Twenty minutes later I excused myself and slipped into the corridor outside the main ballroom.

It was quiet out here. Cool. The kind of quiet that felt like breathing after holding your breath. I stood with my back against the wall and closed my eyes and just existed for a moment without performing anything.

Twelve months, I reminded myself. Twelve months of building toward this. Tonight was not about feeling anything. Tonight was about positioning. About being in the right room at the right time in the right dress with the right name on Dominic’s arm. About planting the first seed of something that would set my plan in motion.  

I could do this.

I opened my eyes and pushed off the wall.

My heel caught the edge of the corridor runner and the world tilted so suddenly, I stumbled. I grabbed for the wall, missed and was already preparing my body to meet the ground when a hand closed around my arm. 

I straightened and turned to thank whoever had caught me and the words left my body entirely.

Killian Rhodes stood close enough that I could see the exact grey of his eyes. 

He went completely still, his face pale as paper. 

Not the stillness of someone embarrassed about grabbing a stranger. Something else. Something that moved through him visibly, like a current, like recognition without a source.

His hand was still on my arm.

Neither of us moved.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. His voice came out hoarse. “I thought you were…” He stopped. He looked at me again, harder this time, like looking harder might resolve whatever was happening to him. It did not appear to resolve it. “I don’t…” He let go of my arm and stepped back and pressed his hand briefly to his forehead. “I think I’m going crazy. I’m sorry. Are you alright?”

I had prepared for this moment for a long time.

I had rehearsed every version of meeting this man again that I could imagine.

And yet, I found myself speechless in front of him. 

“I’m fine,” I replied, my voice managing to sound even. “Thank you for catching me.”

He nodded. He was still looking at me.

“Killian.” Dominic’s voice came from behind me. I felt his hand on my back. “I see you’ve met my wife.”

Killian’s eyes moved to Dominic. Then back to me as he processed the information. 

“Elena Reyes,” Dominic said, and I watched Killian process the information slowly. “Killian Rhodes. He runs Rhodes Incorporated.”

“Elena,” Killian repeated. Quietly. Like he was testing it.

I smiled at him with Elena’s face and Elena’s mouth and one year of my cold, patient fury behind my eyes.

“Lovely to meet you,” I said, stretching out a hand. 

What I didn’t expect was the goosebumps that traveled up my skin when he took my hand…

Or the way my fingers tightened in his without meaning to…

Or the question that followed.

“Have we met before?”