Chapter 9
She wore nothing there at all.
A bare wrist can be a confession if you know what used to be on it.
Chase saw me.
His smile did not fall. It hardened.
For a moment, we stared across the ballroom.
I remembered him at thirty-two, sleeping on the floor of our first apartment after a twenty-hour surgery shift, his head on my lap while I answered emails on my laptop. I remembered the scar on his left thumb from a broken wine glass the night we celebrated his first clinic profit. I remembered him saying, “We are building something no one can take from us.”
We.
That tiny, foolish word.
Then Sloane noticed me.
Her eyes widened just enough.
She touched Chase’s arm.
He excused himself and crossed the room.
Every person he passed turned slightly. Chase had that gravity. People expected him to be the center of any room he entered, even when he was walking toward his own destruction.
“Evelyn,” he said when he reached me.
“Chase.”
“You came.”
“I was invited.”
His jaw flexed. “You were asked to be respectful.”
“And I wore black.”
His eyes swept over me. For the first time in months, I saw something genuine break through his performance.
Desire.
Then anger at himself for feeling it.
“You look dramatic,” he said.
“You look nervous.”
A smile flickered on his mouth. “I’m concerned about you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Lower your voice.”
I laughed softly. “I am not the one with an audience.”
He stepped closer. His cologne reached me first, clean and expensive, layered over panic.
“You need to leave,” he said.
“From the hotel?”
“From the gala.”
“Why?”
“Because this is not good for you.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
I tilted my head. “The concern. It almost sounds like love if no one listens carefully.”
His eyes went cold.
“Do not make a scene.”
“Chase, I have never had to make one. You bring your own lighting.”
His hand closed around my elbow.
Not hard enough to bruise. Hard enough to remind me that we were married, that he was taller, that public rooms forgive men for touching what they claim.
I looked down at his fingers.
He let go.
“Evelyn,” he said, very quietly, “you don’t understand how this looks.”
“I understand exactly how this looks.”
“Sloane is fragile.”
“She steals well for someone fragile.”
His nostrils flared.
“There it is,” he said. “That cruelty. That’s what people don’t see. You always were cold.”