Chapter 4

JULIETTE

Constance Hartwell crossed the driveway like the snow owed her an apology for existing.

"Where is he." She did not look at me once. Her eyes went straight to Delphine, straight to Oliver on her hip. "Where is my grandson. Is he hurt."

"He's fine, Constance. He's fine." Delphine's voice cracked with relief the second the attention landed somewhere other than the painting.

"Fine." Constance rounded on me now, coat still open, snow catching in her dark hair. "I heard there was an accident in this house. An accident involving my only grandson."

"Oliver knocked a painting off the wall," I said. "He's not hurt. He shoved me into a banister, if anyone's counting bruises."

"Don't be dramatic, Juliette."

"I'm not being anything," I said. "I'm answering your question."

Constance's mouth thinned into a line so familiar it could have belonged to Sebastian. "This family has lost enough this week. I won't stand here in the cold and listen to you turn a four year old's grief into a weapon against his mother."

I did not answer that. There was no version of this conversation I could win, and I had stopped trying to win conversations like it a long time ago.

"Say something," Constance snapped. "Or does the silent treatment work on everyone in this family except the people who actually deserve it?"

"I don't owe you a defense, Constance." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Ask Oliver what he did. Ask Delphine where she was standing when he did it. I'm done explaining myself to people who decided I was guilty before they got out of the car."

Delphine flinched at that, but she did not correct me, and Constance did not ask her to.

It was Adrian who broke the silence, not me.

"Constance." His voice was even, almost gentle, the kind of tone people used when they wanted to be the only calm thing in a room. "Nobody's accusing anyone of anything. I think everyone just wants Oliver checked over and the rest sorted out somewhere warmer than a driveway."

Constance turned on him like she had only just registered he existed. "And who exactly invited you."

"No one," Adrian said simply. "I invited myself."

That earned him a long, assessing look, the kind reserved for people Constance had decided not to trust yet. She said nothing else to him. She simply swept past all of us toward the front door, Delphine and Oliver trailing behind her like she had pulled them along on an invisible leash.

Which left Adrian and me alone on the front steps, snow still falling steadily between us.

"You didn't have to come," I said.

"I know."

"Then why did you."

He studied me for a moment before answering, like he was deciding how much of the truth I could handle standing in the cold. "Because I heard about Griffin. And because I heard you flew home early from a trip three nights before that, sick, alone, and I couldn't stop thinking about why."

My chest went tight in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. "You've been keeping track of me."

"More than I probably should have," he admitted. "I told myself I wouldn't. I did a bad job of it."

I should have stepped back. There was a version of me, once, who would have. Instead I stood there in the cold, close enough to see the exact shade his eyes went when he was choosing his next words carefully, and let the silence stretch out a beat longer than it needed to.

"You look at me like you're still deciding whether I'm real," I said quietly.

"I am," he said. "I've pictured this conversation a hundred different ways. None of them started with a funeral and a shattered painting."

"You blocked my number three years ago, Adrian. You made it very clear you didn't want to know anything about my life."

Something shifted across his face, quick and sharp, like I had said something that genuinely surprised him. "Is that what you were told?"

"That's what happened."

"Juliette." He stepped closer, close enough that I could see the snow melting on his eyelashes. "I never blocked your number. Not once. Not for a single day in three years."

The wind seemed to go very still around us.

"That's not true," I said, but even as I said it, some old certainty I had been carrying for three years started to crack down the middle. "Your friend told Sebastian you cut me off. Sebastian told me you never looked back."

"My friend didn't tell Sebastian anything," Adrian said quietly. "I don't have friends who talk to Sebastian."

"Then who did."

"I don't know yet," he said. "But I intend to find out. Someone spent three years making sure both of us believed a lie convenient enough to keep us apart, and I'd like to know who benefited from that."

I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, exactly, whether he suspected someone specific, but the question never made it out. My phone buzzed once in my coat pocket, a text I did not have time to read, and somewhere behind us the front door banged open hard enough that I flinched.

Before I could ask him anything else, headlights swung into the driveway behind him, fast, too fast for the ice, and a car I recognized immediately skidded to a stop at an angle that suggested whoever was driving had not planned on stopping gently at all.

Sebastian got out before the engine had fully died.

He looked between us once, taking in exactly how close Adrian was standing to me, exactly how neither of us had stepped back when the car pulled in.

"You," Sebastian said, and his voice had gone somewhere low and dangerous I had genuinely never heard from him before. "Get away from my wife."

"Ex-wife, technically, by tomorrow morning," I said, before Adrian could answer for himself. "Or did you forget already what you signed at that table last night."

Sebastian's jaw worked like he was chewing on several different responses and swallowing all of them. He looked at Adrian instead. "This is a family matter. You need to leave."

"Funny," Adrian said, not moving an inch. "That's the second time today someone's told me this is a family matter. And both times, it's had nothing to do with the actual family."

"I'm asking you nicely."

"No," Adrian said. "You're not. And even if you were, it's not your call to make anymore. You signed a paper last night that says so."

"Watch yourself."

"I've been watching plenty," Adrian said. "Mostly the way she flinched the second your car came around that corner. That's not a reaction people have around men who actually make them feel safe."

Sebastian closed the distance between them fast enough that I stepped forward on instinct, one hand out, not sure who I meant to stop. Adrian did not back away, did not even raise his hands, just stood there watching Sebastian come like a man who had already decided nothing thrown at him tonight would land harder than what I had already told him.

It didn't matter, in the end, whether Sebastian meant to swing or just meant to talk. Sebastian never reached him.

Because that was the exact moment Rosa came flying out the front door, coat forgotten, face white as the snow around her, shouting words that made every other conversation on that driveway stop dead.

"Ma'am, it's Delphine. Something's wrong with the baby."