LOGINScarlett's POVMy mother's voice arrived a half second before she did, bright and unaware of everything simmering beneath the surface of the evening."Ezra, my dear." She smiled at him with the easy warmth she extended to guests, oblivious to what her hospitality was actually housing. "The room is ready for you. Would you like white or red wine sent up?"Ezra rose immediately, the transformation instant and seamless, the careful, cold thing I'd glimpsed a moment ago folding itself away behind manners polished to a shine."Thank you very much, ma'am, but I'm done with alcohol for the night." He offered her a smile that looked, infuriatingly, completely sincere. "Sparkling water will be just fine. And thank you again for your hospitality. You've been more than generous.""You're more than welcome, my dear." My mother beamed at him the way she'd once beamed at me, and something in my chest twisted at the sight of it, at how easily he'd claimed a piece of her warmth that should have belon
Scarlett's POVThe balcony had emptied itself of my mother's warmth and was now just a balcony again, which is to say it was beautiful and indifferent and large enough that two people could stand in it without being close to each other if they were careful about where they positioned themselves.I had poured the wine before I fully decided to pour it.The bottle was still on the table from my mother's earlier hospitality, and my hand had found it with the automatic motion of someone reaching for something familiar in an unfamiliar moment, the glass filling with the deep red of a Cabernet that James kept in quantities that suggested he understood the therapeutic value of good wine on difficult evenings.Ezra was still standing.Not intruding. Not filling the silence with the social effort that some people deployed when silence made them uncomfortable. Just present in it, looking out at the garden with the settled quality of someone who had made peace with being somewhere he was not ent
Scarlett’s POVClean and cold, the specific guilt of deceiving someone whose trust you had done nothing to deserve to lose, someone whose delight in the deception was genuine and warm and entirely uninformed."But Mum…""I'm sure Cade and James won't mind." She had the particular forward momentum of a woman who had made up her mind and was now in the implementation phase. "So go and tell the housekeeper to prepare the guest room.""It's fine, Mrs Blackwood." Ezra's voice, from the chair, carrying the appropriate note of genuine reluctance, the protest of someone who did not want to impose and meant it. "I can find a hotel, it's really no trouble…""Nonsense." My mother picked up her glass, looked at it, set it down again with the decisive quality of someone closing a chapter. "Scarlett has been hiding you from me. And now that I have finally met you, we have to bond properly." She smiled at him with the complete, uncomplicated warmth she gave to people she had decided were family, and
Scarlett’s POV My room had become a holding cell.Not literally, not in the way the underground parking level had been a holding cell, not with guns and concrete and the specific cold of genuine captivity. But in the functional sense of a space I was occupying because leaving it required a performance I had not yet assembled the materials for, because the corridor beyond the door contained a sitting room that contained a man who was pretending to be my boyfriend at the instruction of the man I actually loved, and navigating that corridor required a version of myself I was still in the process of constructing.I paced.The room was large enough that pacing was possible without immediately hitting a wall, which was something, the Blackwood estate having been built with the generous spatial logic of people who understood that rooms should be larger than the furniture in them. I made use of the space, moving from the window to the wardrobe and back, from the wardrobe to the door and back
Cade's POVMy father was in his study when I found him.Not the main study, the one with the mahogany desk and the folder systems and the careful architecture of a man who conducted serious business in serious spaces. The smaller one, the one off the east corridor that most people in the house did not know existed, that James used in the early mornings and the late evenings when he wanted to think without the performance of his primary workspace around him.The door was slightly open.I knocked anyway."Come in."He was at the window, which was where he went when he was working through something, standing with a glass of something amber and his reading glasses pushed up onto his forehead and the specific quality of a man interrupted mid-thought, turning toward the door with the measured patience of someone who had learned, over decades, that interruptions were either worth their cost or they were not and there was no value in being irritated about them before you knew which kind you w
Cade's POVThe door had barely stopped vibrating from the force of her breath against mine when the knock came.Sharp. Sudden. Real.Scarlett jerked back like she had been burned, her fingers slipping from my shirt as if touching me had become dangerous in a split second. I felt it too. That shift. That snap from heat to something tense and fragile.“Hey son, can I talk to you for a sec?”My father’s voice cut clean through the moment.Scarlett’s eyes widened. For a second, she looked like she might bolt straight through the wall instead of the door. She moved fast, crossing the room in hurried steps, stopping by the window like she had always been there. Like nothing had almost happened.Like I had not almost ruined everything.“Come in,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level.The door opened, and my father stepped in, his presence filling the room before he even spoke again. His eyes went to me first, then shifted, catching the figure by the window.He paused.Not long. Just enough
Cade's POVThe first thing I became aware of was the smell: leather, sex, and Scarlett's perfume, a combination that should've been illegal. The second thing was the crick in my neck from sleeping in the cramped back seat of my truck. The third thing was the phone vibrating against my ass like a ja
Scarlett's POVThe silence in the house was suffocating. Every creak of the floorboards, every hum of the air conditioning, and every tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway felt like it was mocking me. I stared at Madison's text for the hundredth time, the photo burning itself into my retinas
Cade's POVThe silence in the truck was suffocating.I'd managed to get Scarlett into the passenger seat without another word, her body rigid, face turned toward the window like she couldn't bear to look at me. The engine rumbled beneath us as I pulled out of the construction site, leaving behind t
Scarlett's POVThe dining room felt like a stage set for a play I hadn't rehearsed for.Crystal chandelier casting prismatic light across white linen tablecloth. Fine china that probably cost more than my entire education. Silverware arranged with the kind of precision that spoke of old money and o







