LOGINAfter moving out, I made one rule for myself: nothing from the Grimwood house was allowed through my front door if I could help it.It had taken two months for the apartment to stop feeling temporary and start feeling like home. At first, boxes had filled every corner, most of them still unopened. Gradually, I unpacked what I needed and forgot about the rest. Eventually, I threw some of it away when I realized I hadn’t missed anything inside. I had learned which floorboard near the kitchen creaked loudly enough to wake me if I stepped on it at midnight. I’d also discovered that my upstairs neighbor practiced the trumpet badly every Tuesday evening. Somehow, I’d grown fond of the muffled, off-key music drifting through the ceiling.It was a small rule, more symbolic than practical, but I stuck to it because there were so few things in my life I could still control. I didn’t want the Grimwood house following me into my new home, reminding me of everything I’d left behind. Still, I hadn’
We heard the cart before we heard the knock, its wheels squeaking against the floor somewhere down the hallway. Both of us went rigid at the same instant, scrambling for our clothes with the graceless panic of two people who had entirely forgotten that an office building after hours still occasionally required actual cleaning.Only seconds earlier, I’d been lying against his chest, both of us still catching our breath, wrapped in the loose-limbed, unguarded quiet that comes after finally saying something you’ve spent years too afraid to admit. The squeak of wheels shattered that quiet instantly, jolting us back to the fact that being reckless and being private were not the same thing.“Hide,” Roman hissed, already yanking his shirt over his head. He fumbled with his buttons, fastening them in all the wrong holes.“Where exactly do you suggest I hide in an office with glass walls on two sides?”He had no answer for that, and neither did I. We were still frantically reassembling ourselv
I told him in his office after hours, with the building empty except for a security guard three floors down who had stopped actually watching the monitors around nine.He went very quiet when I finished, staring at the photo Ivy had sent me, Julian’s associate frozen mid-conversation with a woman who had apparently decided to sell both of us out for reasons I still did not understand.“Of course,” he said finally, his voice flat with an exhaustion that went beyond simple tiredness. “Of course he’s building a file. Why wouldn’t he? Everyone else in my life is either lying to someone or being lied to. It would be strange if Julian Cross wasn’t quietly assembling a weapon somewhere in the background.”“Roman.”“I’m fine.”He was not fine. He set his phone down on the desk with exaggerated care, like a man who did not trust his own hands not to throw it across the room if he moved too quickly. The lamp threw half his face into shadow. His tie was already loosened, and I had been trying, f
Ivy found me in the supply closet during my break, which felt like an unnecessarily fitting place for the conversation we were about to have.I was sorting through a box of folded tablecloths when she slipped inside and closed the door behind her. She looked around the cramped room before turning to me, her expression serious enough to make me put down what I was holding.“What happened?” I asked.“Nothing happened.” She paused. “Well, something happened, actually.”I stared at her.“Rosalie, I followed Priya during her lunch break.”I blinked. “You did what?”“I followed her.” Ivy lowered her voice, although there was nobody nearby to overhear us. “Before you start, I know how it sounds. But she’s been acting strange for weeks. The long breaks, the way she keeps checking her phone and hiding the screen whenever someone walks past. I wanted to know what she was doing.”“And you thought following her was the best way to find out?”“I didn’t have a better idea.”“That doesn’t make it a
Desmond had been driving for this family longer than I’d been alive, and in all those years, as far as I knew, he had never once offered an opinion about anything that wasn’t directly related to traffic.He had driven me to school as a child, waited patiently outside the piano lessons I quit after four humiliating months, and collected me from a hundred small errands over the years. He had never once made me feel like a burden, unlike so many people in that house. I had always liked him in the quiet, uncomplicated way you grow fond of someone who has simply always been there, reliable and easy to take for granted.“You’ve been quiet tonight, Miss Rosalie,” he said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the Grimwood estate. Another wedding planning dinner was finally, mercifully, behind me. “Quieter than usual, I mean. You’ve never been much of a talker in this car, but tonight feels different.”“Long evening,” I said, which was true in the way most of my recent
Vivian brought up the masks three weeks into wedding planning, while debating whether the ceremony should have a theme, and I felt the room tilt around me. By then, our Thursday evening planning sessions had become a ritual neither Roman nor I could escape. Every week brought three more hours of binders, vendor emails, and decisions I had no choice but to help make. I had learned how to sit through them without letting my feelings show, but that didn’t mean they hurt any less. “I keep coming back to the idea of incorporating masquerade elements,” Vivian said, flipping through a folder of inspiration photographs spread across the dining table. Roman sat beside her, while I occupied my usual seat opposite them. “That’s technically how Roman and I got engaged, in a way, and that night was really important to me. Everything seemed to click into place between us afterward. I thought it might be nice to bring a little of that back. Masks for the cocktail hour, perhaps. Nothing too elaborat







