جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

POV: CharlotteI heard the front door at half past six.I’d been in the library for three hours, not writing, just sitting in the reading chair with the notebook closed in my lap and the afternoon light shifting slowly across the floor and the specific low hum of someone waiting for something they’re not sure how to begin.His footsteps in the entrance hall. Helen’s voice saying something brief. His footsteps again, heading toward his study the way they always did when he came home, the reliable geography of his evening routine.I got up.I met him in the corridor outside his study before he reached the door, and something in my face when he turned and saw me made him stop walking immediately.“Charlotte,” he said.“Victoria is meeting you here on Thursday,” I said. “At two o’clock. For the Morrison account.”He didn’t say anything right away, and I watched him process it, watched the moment he understood that I knew and understood how I’d fou

POV: CharlotteHe knocked at half past ten.Not the tentative knock of someone hoping I’d already fallen asleep and they could tell themselves they’d tried. Three quiet, deliberate knocks, the kind that said I’m here and I’m not leaving until you answer, and I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t standing on the other side of this door waiting for exactly this.I’d been sitting on the edge of the bed since I came upstairs, the room dark except for the lamp on the bedside table, the hollow feeling from the corridor settling slowly into something more complicated than anger, something that had more grief in it than I’d expected.I got up and unlocked the door.He was still dressed, which meant he hadn’t been to bed, which meant he’d been somewhere in the house since I came upstairs sitting with whatever the corridor had left him with, and something about knowing that, about the fact that he hadn’t simply moved on to the next thing the way he sometimes moved on to t

POV: CharlotteI excused myself before he finished his second cup.Not dramatically. Not in a way that announced itself as anything other than a woman who was tired and going to bed at a reasonable hour. I said I was going up, I said goodnight, I picked up my cup and took it to the sink and walked out of the kitchen without once letting my face do anything it wasn’t supposed to do.I made it to the second floor landing before I stopped.I stood there in the corridor outside the library with my hand on the banister and the quiet of the house around me and let myself feel it properly for the first time since he'd started talking, the full weight of it, the thing I'd been holding at arm’s length for the past twenty minutes while I performed listening.She’s sharp. Sharper than I remembered.I knew what that feeling was. I’d been feeling some version of it my entire life, growing up in a house where Victoria’s accomplishments were discussed at dinner and m

POV: CharlotteHe was still in my doorway.I hated that my eyes had filled. I’d spent most of my life being very good at not crying in front of people and I was currently failing at it in real time, which was infuriating, and I looked away for one second to get it back under control.When I looked back he was watching me with that expression that had no performance in it whatsoever.“You don’t have to explain,” I said. “I know it was professional.”“I know you know,” he said. “That’s not why I’m here.”He came inside and closed the door and stood close, closer than explaining required, and I looked up at him and waited.“Whatever I think of Victoria’s work,” he said, “is completely separate from what I feel about you. I should have been paying enough attention tonight to know that saying one thing while sitting across from you was going to feel like the other. I wasn’t paying attention. That’s my fault.”“Damien—”“I’m not finished,” he s

POV: Victoria I stayed late on a Thursday. Not noticeably late. Not in a way that required explanation or announced itself as anything other than a woman finishing what she’d started, tidying loose ends from the meeting, making notes while the details were still fresh. The Morrison account gave me legitimate reason to be at my desk for another hour after Lucas had gathered his things and said his goodbyes and the assistant who managed the meeting room had quietly disappeared. That left Damien. He was still in his office at the end of the corridor, the door not quite closed, the light underneath it visible. He was always the last one working. That wasn’t something I’d manufactured, it was simply true of him, the kind of man who had built something large enough that it never fully let him go, and who had perhaps never looked too hard at whether he wanted it to. I tidied my papers. I c