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Semua Bab Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late: Bab 51 - Bab 60

70 Bab

From Whether To How

CHAPTER FIFTY ONEFrom Whether To HowAria's POVHe texted at eight.When you're ready. I'll be here.I was already awake. Had been for an hour, lying in the quiet of Nina's guest room with the morning coming through the curtains and the baby moving in the slow way she moved in the mornings, unhurried, like she was easing into the day alongside me.I typed back.Eleven. The house.Then I got up and showered and sat at Nina's kitchen table with tea and the notebook and tried to draw something and found out I couldn't, which told me I was more nervous than I thought I was.Not afraid. Just awake to the weight of it. The conversation was from whether to how, which meant it was already decided, which meant the only thing left was to sit across from him and say the things that needed saying and figure out together what the how actually looked like.That should have felt smaller than it did.It didn't.Nina came in at half past nine and looked at the untouched notebook and the second cup of

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The week Before

CHAPTER FIFTY TWOThe Week BeforeAria's POVThe week moved differently than I expected.I had thought it would feel like waiting. Like the days between a decision and its consequences, holding still until the thing arrived. But it didn't feel like that. It felt like the week itself had a purpose, like every day of it was doing something specific that needed doing before Sunday.Monday I told Jerome.He was at his desk when I knocked, the green suit jacket on the back of his chair, reading something with the focused attention he brought to everything. I told him directly, no preamble, that I was moving back to my husband's house at the end of the week and wanted him to know before anyone else at the studio did.He looked up from what he was reading."Is this going to affect the show?" he asked."No," I said. "Three weeks out. Nothing changes.""Good." He looked back down at his reading. "Congratulations, Aria.""That's all?" I said."What else would you like?" He turned a page. "You m

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First Night

CHAPTER FIFTY THREEFirst NightAria's POVWe carried the bags upstairs together.Alex took the heavier ones without asking, which I let happen because my back had been reasonable all week and I had no interest in testing it on a staircase with luggage. He carried them to the bedroom and set them down and stepped back and I stood in the doorway and looked at the room.It was different.Not dramatically. The furniture was the same, the bed, the chest of drawers, the wardrobe. But the quality of the room was different, warmer somehow, less of the careful untouched atmosphere it had carried before. The wardrobe door was slightly open, which meant it was being used. There was a book on the nightstand on the right side, his side, with a bookmark in it a third of the way through. The curtains were the same ones but they hung differently, like they had been opened and closed regularly instead of being left in a fixed position.A room that had been lived in.I walked to the wardrobe and opene

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Sunday Dinner

CHAPTER FIFTY FOURSunday DinnerAria's POVI woke up in the house on Sunday morning and lay still for a moment letting that be real.The light through the curtains was the south facing kind, different from Nina's apartment, warmer and more direct, and the sounds outside the window were different too. Less traffic. The tree. A bird somewhere in the garden that had opinions about Sunday morning.Alex was already up. I could hear him in the kitchen below, the particular sounds of someone moving through a kitchen with purpose. I lay there and listened to it and thought about all the mornings I had been the one moving through that kitchen with purpose while he slept or had already left, and how strange and right it was to be on the other side of it now.I got up and showered and went downstairs.He was at the counter with coffee already made and something in the oven that smelled like it had been there a while. He looked up when I came in."Morning," he said."Morning," I said. "What's in

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Two Weeks Out

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVETwo Weeks OutAria's POVMonday arrived like a starting gun.Not because anything dramatic happened. Just because two weeks and three days to show day meant that every hour from now on was accounted for and the studio understood that without anyone needing to say it. I could feel it when I walked in on Monday morning, the particular shift in a room when a deadline has moved from abstract to imminent.Lena had updated the schedule wall over the weekend. It was denser now. Model fittings Monday and Tuesday. Final fabric checks Wednesday alongside the run-through Jerome had called. Finishing work Thursday and Friday. The weekend for anything the week had not resolved. Then show week itself, which lived on the schedule in a different colour because it was its own country.I stood in front of the schedule for a moment when I arrived and let it land properly.Then I turned to the collection and went to work.The model fittings started at ten. Jerome had cast well, which h

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The Run Through

CHAPTER FIFTY SIXThe RunThroughAria's POVWednesday came with rain and a message from Kwame at six in the morning.Coming back today. My sister is stable. I need to work. Please don't argue with me about it.I typed back immediately.The ninth look has been waiting for you. Come in whenever you're ready. Not before you're ready.His reply was three words.I'll be there.He arrived at nine, quieter than usual, with the particular stillness of someone who had been through something and was not yet all the way back but had decided that being back was the right direction. He sat at his desk and looked at the ninth look on the form and nobody said anything to him about where he had been and that was exactly right.By ten he had identified the problem with the ninth look that had been sitting just out of reach since the fittings. It was the sleeve. Not the length, not the construction, just the way the sleeve attached at the shoulder, a degree of angle that was almost correct and therefor

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Twenty Two Weeks

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVENTwenty Two WeeksAria's POVThursday I noticed Lena had moved my chair.Not dramatically. Just slightly closer to the center table and slightly higher, which I only understood when I sat down and realized I no longer had to lean forward quite as far to reach the sketch boards, and that the angle meant less strain on my lower back over the course of a long day.I looked at the chair. Then at Lena, who was at the schedule wall making a note with the focused attention of someone who had absolutely not just adjusted a chair and was not going to discuss it."Lena," I said."The hem on the seventh look," she said, without turning around. "Bisi wants to look at it again this morning before we do anything else.""Lena.""Nine o'clock. That's when Bisi said."I looked at her for a moment."Thank you," I said."For what?" she said, still not turning around.I let it go and sat in the adjusted chair and started my day.It was not the only thing. Over the course of the morning

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Her Name In Print

CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHTHer Name In PrintAria's POVThe article came out on Friday morning.I didn't know it was coming. Thomas Adeyemi had not warned me this time, which was different from his approach before the Cavendish Corp piece, and I understood why. That article had been about a family and a crime and people who needed time to prepare. This one was about work.Adaeze sent me the link at eight fifteen, before I had left the house, with a message that said only: read this before you come in.I sat at the kitchen table in my dressing gown with my coffee and opened it.It was in a serious fashion publication, the kind that covered the industry properly rather than the gossip around it. The headline was clean and direct.The Return of Aria Cavendish: How One Designer's Comeback Is Quietly Redefining Maison Elara's Next Chapter.I read it with both hands around my coffee cup.Adeyemi had done what he always did. He had been thorough and he had been careful and he had not sensationalize

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Show Week

CHAPTER FIFTY NINEShow WeekAria's POVShow week arrived like a different kind of weather.Not dramatic. Not a storm. Just a shift in the quality of everything, the air in the studio, the pace of conversations, the way people moved between tasks. The same people, the same space, the same collection. But the energy had changed the way energy changes when something you have been moving toward has finally stopped being something ahead of you and become something you are inside of.Monday the venue went into full production. Lighting rigs completed. Runway polished. The front of house team arriving with their guest lists and their seat assignments and the particular organised efficiency of people who did this regularly and knew exactly what show day required.I went to the venue in the morning and stood at the back of the space and looked at it fully assembled for the first time.The runway was longer than it had felt during the run-through, which was the venue's lighting playing tricks

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The Night Before

CHAPTER SIXTYThe Night BeforeAria's POVI did not second guess the collar on the sixth look at two in the morning.I want to be clear about that. Bisi had predicted it. She had said it with the certainty of someone who had watched designers lose their minds in the final hours of shows they had already finished and I had said I wouldn't and I didn't. The collar was fine. The collar had been fine since week four and was going to remain fine and I went to bed at eleven and that was that.What I did do was lie awake for two hours thinking about everything except the collar.Not the collection. That had been let go of properly, which was the necessary thing, the releasing of it from your hands into the world's and accepting that what it was was what it was going to be. I had done that standing in the empty venue on Thursday morning and it had held.What I lay awake thinking about was smaller and more specific than the collection.I thought about the notebook. About all the pages I had fi

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