Chapter Eight
The Return
The Meridian Fashion Preview was the kind of event I normally loved — a hundred designers competing for a hundred buyers' attention, the air thick with ambition and perfume and the particular high of work you've made with your hands on display for strangers to judge.
Tonight I was distracted.
Lily and I were at the far end of the venue when I saw him.
Ethan Carter moved through the crowd like he'd rehearsed it — which, knowing him, he had. Tall, easy smile, the kind of confidence that reads as charm until you've seen what it conceals. He was heading toward me with the particular focus of a man who'd decided something.
I considered leaving.
I didn't leave.
"Soph." His voice landed like a hand on my shoulder. Familiar. Presumptuous.
"Ethan." I kept mine level.
"You look—" He exhaled. "God. You look incredible."
"Thank you. Enjoy the preview." I turned.
"Wait." His hand caught my arm. Not hard. But there. "Please. Just five minutes."
Lily, beside me, had gone very still.
I turned back because walking away felt like running, and I was done running.
"I made a mistake," he said. "The biggest mistake of my life, and I know you know that." His voice dropped. "I never stopped thinking about you. Not for a day."
"Ethan—"
"You're married to a contract, Sophia. Everyone knows what that is." His eyes held mine, and for a second I saw the man I'd loved at twenty-one — the earnest version, before ambition calcified him. "It doesn't have to be permanent."
I was composing my reply when I felt it.
A hand at my waist.
Warm. Steady. Laid there with the absolute certainty of ownership.
I hadn't heard him arrive. I hadn't known he was coming.
Lucas stood at my shoulder. Not in front of me — beside me. In the particular way of someone who is not protecting you from a threat but simply making a fact known.
"Carter." One word. Silk over steel.
The warmth in Ethan's face closed off. His hand dropped from my arm.
"Lancaster." He managed a neutral tone. Barely.
Lucas didn't say anything else. He didn't need to. His hand at my waist said everything his voice declined to.
Ethan looked between us once. Then he nodded, something shuttering in his expression, and moved back into the crowd.
Lucas's hand stayed at my waist for three more seconds. Then it withdrew.
I turned to look at him.
"You didn't have to do that," I said, keeping my voice quiet.
"He was bothering my wife." Flat. Final. Like it was simply a statement of logic.
He turned his attention to the nearest display piece — a sculptural jacket in architectural white — and studied it with genuine focus, as if the entire interaction had already been filed and closed.
I stood beside him and tried to identify the feeling that had taken up residence in my chest since the moment his hand found my waist.
My wife, he'd said.
Two words. Zero sentiment. Pure contract.
I had absolutely no explanation for why they didn't feel like nothing.
