Part 2
She had learned to live smaller.
Now she hated herself for it.
“You asked me to come up here,” Nora said. “You said Adrian wanted to clear the air before the luncheon.”
“I asked you to come up because I wanted to see whether you would.”
Nora drew a breath that hurt.
“That’s not normal.”
“No,” Sabine said. “What’s not normal is a woman showing up at her ex-fiancé’s family event in white and pretending she’s just here to support his aunt.”
“That isn’t why I came.”
“Then tell me why you came.”
Nora opened her mouth.
No answer arrived that would sound clean enough.
She had come because Celia Mercer had called her after two years of silence and said, in the careful voice of an older woman who believed regret could be made useful if you handled it gently, that Adrian had asked about her. She had come because Celia said the foundation’s new arts program had been built from ideas Nora once wrote in a notebook and left behind in a drawer. She had come because there were things that should not remain buried simply because the people involved were too embarrassed to dig.
She had come because part of her still wanted Adrian to look at her and know she had not done what everyone said she had done.
But she could not give Sabine any of that.
“I came because Celia invited me,” Nora said.
Sabine bent slightly at the waist.
“You’re still waiting for him to choose you.”
Nora looked up at her.
“I’m waiting for you to stop lying about me.”
The words made the room go quiet.
Sabine straightened.
A muscle moved near her jaw.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough.”
“No.” Sabine’s voice dropped. “You know scraps. You always knew scraps. That was your problem.”
Nora pressed her palm more firmly to the floor and tried again to rise. Sabine stepped closer before she could get her feet under her.
“Stay down,” Sabine said.
The command was almost casual.
Nora froze.
Sabine looked at her face, at the pain Nora had failed to hide, and something like satisfaction passed through her eyes.
“You know what the worst part was?” Sabine asked. “It wasn’t how pathetic you looked after you left. It wasn’t the emails. It wasn’t Celia calling me every month like I had somehow taken something from her.”
Nora said nothing.
“The worst part was that he never stopped talking about you.”
Nora’s breath caught.
Sabine smiled, but her eyes looked wet.
“Not the way you think,” she said. “Don’t flatter yourself. He talked about you because he felt guilty. He talked about you because he thought he had failed you. He talked about you because you were always so good at making him feel like the bad man in his own story.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Fair?” Sabine repeated, and now the word cracked. “You don’t get to say fair.”
Nora looked toward the doors again.
Sabine noticed.
“You think he’ll walk in and save you?”
“I don’t think that.”
“You did once.”
Nora’s silence was enough.
Sabine’s face hardened. “That was your mistake.”
She raised one foot.
The pointed burgundy heel hovered near Nora’s ribs.
Nora’s body reacted before thought reached her. She curled sideways, one arm across her stomach, shoulders lifting toward her ears. She did not scream. She could not. The sound caught somewhere behind her teeth.
Sabine did not bring her heel down.
Not yet.
The double doors opened.
The sound of gold handles turning cut through the room like something breaking.
Sabine stepped back so quickly that the movement looked almost practiced.
Adrian Mercer stood in the doorway in a black tuxedo jacket, white shirt, black bow tie, and a white pocket square folded cleanly against his chest. His dark hair was neatly styled, his posture composed in the way it always was at public events, as if every room came with a set of expectations he had been trained to meet.
Behind him, partly obscured by the door, stood Celia Mercer in a pale suit. Her blonde hair was swept into an elegant knot. She had one hand resting lightly against the doorframe, not entering, not speaking.
Adrian stopped.
His eyes moved from Sabine to Nora on the floor.
For a fraction of a second, nothing showed on his face.
Then confusion arrived.
Then concern.
“Sabine?” he said.
Sabine turned toward him.
The transformation was immediate.
Her shoulders folded inward. Her hands rose to her face. Her mouth opened in a gasp that seemed too large for the quiet room. She stumbled back one step, then another, as if she had been struck rather than standing over someone who had just fallen.
May you like
“Adrian,” she said.
Nora watched her do it.
