score

POV: Hazel

SCORE

The ball was six hours away and nobody had told me.

I stood in the entryway of the Varyn estate and let that settle while Kaden's mother finished her sentence. She had greeted us at the bottom of the stairs with a smile that had nothing behind it and the first thing out of her mouth was that she had expected me to walk through the door with a baby on my hip.

Nobody moved for a second.

Then Kaden said her name. Just that. The way he shut down anything he did not want to continue. His mother blinked at him and then looked back at me with an expression that said she was only joking and we both knew that was not true.

"I'm saying what everyone here is already thinking," she said pleasantly. "One year, Hazel. The family had hopes."

"We're handling it," Kaden said.

I glanced at him. He was not looking at me. He was looking at his mother with that particular stillness he used when he wanted a conversation to die. I noted that he had said we. Filed it away without knowing what to do with it.

Before his mother could find her next angle, I heard footsteps from the far end of the hall.

The matriarch’s frown softened the moment her eyes landed on me. Dressed in a luxurious purple dress and jewelry.

She crossed the hall and pulled me in without asking. Both arms. No hesitation.

I had not realised how much I needed that until it was happening.

She pulled back and looked at me properly. Her hands stayed on my arms and her eyes moved over my face with real attention. Not calculating. Just looking.

"You're thin," she said.

"I eat," I said.

She did not look convinced. She turned to Kaden with considerably less warmth.

"She's thin," she said again. An accusation this time.

"She eats fine," Kaden said.

"Then why does she look like this." She did not wait for an answer. She turned back to me and patted my cheek once, firmly. "We'll fix that while you're here. I'll have the kitchen make whatever you actually like."

From the doorway of the sitting room, his mother made a sound that was not quite a response and disappeared inside. I watched her go.

The matriarch was still looking at Kaden. Her expression had shifted into something quieter and more dangerous than irritation.

"A woman like this," she said, conversationally, "does not wait forever. Beautiful. Intelligent. Patient beyond what she should have to be." She tilted her head slightly. "You would do well to remember that before someone else does."

Kaden didn't show much expression. Not that I'd expected any. He had a talent for that. Criticism slid off him like water and he kept moving.

The matriarch let it go. She looked back at me, and something shifted in her expression like she had just remembered something important.

"You're ready for tonight, I hope," she said.

I kept my face even. "Tonight?"

She blinked. Then she looked at Kaden.

He said nothing.

"The opening ball." She said slowly. "We hold it every year. It's this evening." She looked at Kaden one more time, something firm and disappointed in it, and then back to me. "You'll need a dress. Matching. Tonight everyone will be watching and I want you both looking like you belong to each other."

Kaden cleared his throat. "We'll go now."

Twenty minutes later we were in the car heading back into Sky Shade City.

He drove with one hand on the wheel and I sat with my hands in my lap and neither of us mentioned what the matriarch had said about belonging to each other. The silence between us had its own texture by now. I had learned to read it. This one was not hostile. It was just empty. The kind of empty that had stopped pretending to be anything else.

He pulled up outside a store I recognised by the lack of price tags in the window. He put the car in park and before he could even get his seatbelt off his phone rang. He looked at the screen.

"Go," I said. "I'll manage."

He looked like he was about to argue. Then the phone rang again and he answered it and I got out and closed the door behind me.

The store was quiet and cool. A woman in a cream blouse appeared and I told her what I needed. Evening dress, tonight, something that wasn't trying too hard. She moved and I followed and I went through the options quickly because I knew what I didn't want. I had spent a year wearing things chosen for other people's preferences. Not today.

I found it at the back of the floor. Black. Floor length. Low back. I held it against myself in the mirror.

This was what I looked like when nobody was telling me what colour to wear.

I took it to the fitting room. While I waited I moved to the lingerie wall and found what I was looking for quickly. Black, minimal, purposeful. Not like the blue. That had been about hope. This was about something more specific.

I had a plan for tonight. Get Kaden to drink. Not sloppy, just enough. Enough to lower whatever wall he had built that I still could not find the door in. The ball was the perfect setting. Low lighting, good music, the loosened version of everyone in that room. Including him.

One real night. That was all I needed.

I brought both items to the counter. The assistant folded them into a garment bag and slid it across with a smile.

“You look absolutely stunning in that dress,” she said, eyes warm as she scanned the tags. “Truly beautiful. Your husband is one very lucky man to have a woman like you on his arm tonight.”

I smiled back, but the words landed like stones in my stomach. Lucky? If Kaden actually felt lucky, I wouldn’t be standing here buying black lace that was supposed to do what I apparently couldn’t on my own. He wouldn’t need a plan or whiskey or anything else to finally see me. He barely noticed the woman standing right beside him most days.

“Big night?” she added, still beaming.

I looked out through the glass front of the store. Kaden was still in the car, phone to his ear, completely locked into whatever world I was not part of.

"I'm counting on it," I said.