Chapter Thirteen

Ethan 

He did not sleep. 

He told himself it was the whiskey and the general mess of the week. He told himself several things over the course of that long, silent night, lying flat on his back in the dark with his phone face down on the nightstand like it might bite if he ever looked at it again. 

Three messages.

Two numbers.

No names.

“How long do you think you can keep pretending?”

“I know what you did, Ethan Cross.”

“Don’t bother looking outside.”

By morning, he had made a decision, the only kind of decision a man like him knew how to make under pressure: he would not chase it. Chasing implied fear, and fear implied there was something worth being afraid of, and Ethan Cross did not hand strangers that kind of power over him for free. Whoever it was would either come forward with a demand, in which case he would deal with it the way he dealt with everything, calmly and with money if it came to that, or they would grow bored and go quiet, the way most cowards eventually did.

He showered. He dressed. He went to work.

—

The office was his sanctuary. It kept him grounded and reminded him what he was in total control of. It was reliable, even in its chaos.

By nine thirty he'd taken a call from a nervous board member about the leaked velvet photos, signed off on a fiver design he privately thought was ugly, and talked Lena out of firing an intern who'd sent a contract to the wrong person and nearly cost them a deal.

“She's lucky," Lena said, closing her folder with the quick calm of a woman who had spent almost a decade making his mess disappear before he would notice them.

“They were more amused than angry, which is probably the best outcome we could've hoped for”. 

Good.” Ethan didn’t look up from the pages on his desk, Julian’s latest revision, still open, still unread since the night before. He’d told himself he would get to it first thing. It was nearly ten. “Anything else?”

Lena hesitated, which was never a good sign. 

“Preston Wade is outside. Says it’s about the messaging on the Velvet story.”

“Send him in.”

Preston Wade had joined Cross Media a little over a year ago, poached from a rival company for his talent at turning bad press into forgettable press, and Ethan had to admit he was good at his job. He was also weird in a way Ethan had noticed but never quite put a mind to. Quite hard to read also, early thirties, always dressed a shade too well for the room, always standing a half-step closer than the conversation required, always smiling like he knew something you didn’t.

Mr. Cross.” Preston let himself in without waiting for an answer, easing the door shut behind him with a soft, deliberate click. “Got a minute?”

“Make it quick.”

“You always say that.” Preston crossed the room unhurried and dropped into the chair across from the desk, one ankle resting easily over his knee. “Short version, we say nothing else about Velvet. Let the photos from your dinner date with Miss Victoria Lang do the talking. Powerful man, stunning date, business as usual. The story gets boring on its own within the week.”

“Fine.”

“Unless you’d rather it not get boring.” Preston slid a folder across the desk, and when Ethan reached for it, Preston didn’t pull his hand back right away, letting their fingers stay close a moment longer than the exchange required before finally withdrawing.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” Preston’s smile didn’t waver. He stood, taking his time about it, and let his gaze drift slowly, gradually, from Ethan’s face down and back up again, the kind of look that made someone feel the creeps just by being on the receiving end of it.

“You’ve seemed distracted this week. More than usual.” He continued.

“That’s not your concern.”

“Everything about you is my concern, Mr. Cross. It’s the job.” Preston tucked his hands into his pockets, unbothered, and lingered at the door a moment longer than he needed to. “For what it’s worth, I think the quiet ones are always the most interesting.

The door clicked shut.

“What the fuck does that mean”? He muttered to himself. 

Ethan sat very still for a moment, an unpleasant prickle crawling up the back of his neck that he couldn’t quite name and didn’t like at all. It was nothing, probably. A man who flirted with everyone because it got him further than being good at his job alone would have. Ethan had met a dozen versions of Preston Wade over the years, all of them harmless in the end, all of them more interested in being noticed than in anything real.

Still. He made a mental note to keep his office door open the next time Preston asked for a minute.

He thought, briefly, of the messages still sitting unanswered on his phone, and wondered, for one unwelcome second before he pushed the thought away entirely. “It couldn't be” he shook his head and picked up Julian's fresh revision and got to work. 

—

He left the office at noon, which he rarely did, and seldom did that when  he had a personal matter to attend to. She didn’t ask. She never did.

Claire’s gallery sat on the ground floor of a converted building near , all white walls and careful sophisticated lighting, currently full of sculptures. 

 She was standing near the front desk when he walked in, dark hair pinned back, reading glasses pushed up into it, looking exactly like the woman he’d married twelve years ago and nothing like her at all.

“Well,” Claire said, not looking up from the clipboard in her hands. “Isn't this a surprise?

Is this a social call?”

“Do I usually show up for social calls?”

“No. Which is how I know it’s a crisis.” She set the clipboard down and studied him properly, something in her expression softening at whatever she saw on his face. “You look terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.” She led him to the small office in the back and closed the door, dropping into the chair behind her desk while Ethan stayed on his feet, too restless to sit. “Talk.”

He told her most of it. Not the texts though, those he kept to himself, some instinct telling him it was safer that way, though he couldn’t have said exactly why. But the rest came out in pieces: Julian. The contract. The night neither of them had known was coming until it already had. The leak. The moment in that hotel room  where he’d leaned in and then talked himself out of it at the last second.

Claire listened without interrupting, the way she always had, one of the reasons their marriage had lasted as long as it did despite everything it was built on top of.

“So,” she said, when he finally ran out of words. “You want him.”

“It’s not that simple.”

It’s exactly that simple, Ethan. You’re overcomplicating it because complicating things is what you do instead of admitting what’s right in front of you.” She tilted her head, considering him. “I’m not saying you’re in love with the man. You barely know the man. I’m saying you can’t stop thinking about him, and it’s eating you alive, and you’re too stubborn to just say that out loud.”

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “That’s not—”

“It’s fine, by the way. Wanting someone isn’t a character flaw.” She said it lightly,but there was an old, dull edge underneath it that never fully went away, the particular tiredness of a woman who had spent years being someone’s cover story. “I just don’t want to  watch you build another careful little cage around yourself so you don’t have to admit you want something you’re afraid of.”

“Claire.”

She held up her hand. “I’m long past angry about our failed marriage Ethan. Well mostly.”

She leaned back. “Don’t tell me it’s complicated. Tell me what’s actually stopping you from finding out what it is before you decide it’s nothing.”

Ethan dragged a hand through his hair and told her the rest,  the dinner with Richard Harrington, the message from Lena that had landed like a blow he hadn’t braced for, the ugly, possessive heat that had risen in his chest at the thought of another man’s hands anywhere near Julian.

Claire’s eyebrows lifted slowly. “You’re jealous.”

“I’m concerned about how it looks.”

“Oh don't be so posh”. She rolled her eyes.

He smiled briefly at the expression.

“Ethan.”Her voice was flat, unimpressed, exactly the tone she used to use when he tried to talk his way out of an argument during their marriage. “You took your girlfriend to dinner for the cameras and came home to obsess over a text about your writer having dinner with someone else. That’s not appearances. That’s jealousy. You don’t have to be in love with a person to want them all to yourself. Sometimes it’s just wanting. That’s allowed too.”

He didn’t have an answer for that, which was, if anything, more irritating.

“Here’s my advice, for whatever it’s worth,” Claire said, softer now. 

“You don’t have to know what this is yet. You've known him for only a few weeks. But stop pretending you don’t feel anything just because you feel it's inappropriate, and stop punishing yourself for wanting something before you’ve even let yourself have it.” She stood, rounding the desk, and pressed a hand briefly to his arm. 

“You don’t owe the world a version of yourself that fits neatly into a headline. You never did. I just wish I’d understood that before I let you convince me it was fine.”

Ethan looked at her for a long moment, throat tighter than he expected. “I’m sorry, Claire. For all of it.”

“I know.” She smiled, small and a little sad. “Now get out of my gallery before you make me cry in front of a very expensive pile of scrap metal.

He didn’t call Julian.

What was he to say? 

He thought about it the entire ride back to the office, phone sitting heavy in his pocket like something he could feel through the fabric. By the time he reached his desk, he’d started and deleted four separate messages, none of which said anything close to what he meant, all of them sounding either too formal or too obvious.

Instead he opened the manuscript again and made himself read, forcing his attention onto the words instead of the man who’d written them, though it did little good, Julian’s voice lived in every line regardless, sharp and alive in a way Ethan’s own carefully arranged life had never once managed to be.

His phone buzzed. He flinched before he could stop himself, some part of him already braced for another unknown number, another accusation dressed up as a question.

It was Lena. Reminder: strategy meeting at 3. Preston’s presenting.

Ethan stared at the message for a moment, an unpleasant chill settling low in his stomach that had everything to do with the memory of Preston’s hand hovering too close, and a voice that had said the quiet ones are always the most interesting like it meant something more than it should have.

He set the phone down and reached for his coffee, only to find it had gone cold.

It was going to be a long afternoon.