His Brother's Ex, His Unborn Child

ELENA The dress cost more than most people's rent, and it still wasn't good enough for Liam. I had learned that lesson early — nothing ever quite was — but I still stood in front of the floor-length mirror at Maison Éclat and let myself believe, for exactly thirty seconds, that this one might be different. The gown was a deep champagne silk, bias-cut, with a neckline that skimmed the collarbone and pooled into a slight train. It made me look like I belonged somewhere important. Which, technically, I did — the Carter Foundation's annual gala was the kind of event that ended careers and started scandals in the same evening, and as Liam's wife, I was expected to be flawless. "Stop turning," Isla said from the velvet chair behind me, not looking up from her phone. "You've checked that angle four times." "I'm looking for a reason to say no." "You won't find one. You look exceptional. Buy the dress." Isla Moreau had been my closest friend since college — sharp as broken glass and twice as elegant, the kind of woman who could dismantle a room with a single raised brow. She had come today less for the shopping and more, I suspected, because she didn't trust me to spend three hours alone with my own thoughts. She wasn't wrong. I smoothed the silk over my hip, looking at my own reflection with the careful eye I used when hanging new acquisitions at the gallery. Proportion, balance, the way light fell. It was easier to assess myself as an object than as a person. "Liam will say the neckline is too low," I said. "Liam says everything is too something." She finally looked up. "The neckline is perfect." I almost smiled. "Elena." The voice came from behind me — smooth, performatively warm, with that particular note of surprise women use when they are not surprised at all. I met the reflection's eyes before I turned. Chloe. She stood in the center of the boutique like she'd arranged herself there, one hand resting on a display case, the other holding a garment bag with the Maison Éclat insignia pressed in gold. She was beautiful in the cold, architectural way that required significant effort and more significant money. Her smile reached precisely as high as it needed to. "I didn't know you shopped here," she said. "I've shopped here for years," I replied, pleasantly. Something flickered in her eyes. Not offense — more like recalculation. Chloe worked in luxury retail — a different house, a competing floor, the kind of position that required her to be perpetually adjacent to wealth without quite inhabiting it. I had seen her at a handful of Carter events. She was always at the edges of photographs, always somehow in Liam's orbit. I had told myself it meant nothing. I had been very practiced at telling myself things meant nothing. "Picking something up for the gala?" she asked, her gaze traveling down the champagne silk with an expression that was almost admiration and almost something else entirely. "Yes." "Lovely choice." She tilted her head. "Though I heard the dress code this year skewed more toward black. Very editorial. I got my invitation early enough to coordinate." A small pause. A smaller smile. "Did you get yours early?" Isla went very still behind me. The truth was that our invitation had arrived late — three days after the rest of the Carter family's, according to Liam's mother, who had mentioned it with the particular brand of casualness designed to sting. Liam had waved it off as a clerical error. I had let it go, the way I let most things go. Now, standing in champagne silk under the boutique's warm lights, I felt the small, deliberate pressure of Chloe's words like a thumb pressed against a bruise. I looked at her for a moment — really looked, the way I looked at art I was trying to understand. What was underneath. What it was actually saying. Then I smiled. "Early enough is relative," I said. "What matters is what you do once you arrive." I glanced briefly at her garment bag. "I'm sure you'll coordinate beautifully." It landed exactly where I intended it to. Not cruel or loud. Just precise. Chloe's smile didn't waver, but something behind it did. She said something about running late, touched her hair once, and moved toward the register with the careful composure of someone who refuses to let you see them leave. Isla waited until the door closed. "Early enough to coordinate," she repeated, quietly delighted. "Elena." "I didn't say anything." "That's what made it perfect." I turned back to the mirror and smoothed the silk again, but the satisfaction lasted only a moment before something smaller and heavier settled in its place. Not because of Chloe — I could manage Chloe. It was the invitation, and what it meant, and the long list of similar small things I had trained myself to stop counting. Isla was watching me. "I'm fine," I said, before she could ask. "I know," she said, which meant she didn't believe me. I bought the dress. Outside, the city was beginning its late afternoon shift into gold. We walked slowly, shopping bag in hand, and I let myself breathe the open air and say nothing for a few minutes. Isla didn't fill the silence. It was one of the things I loved most about her. "She knew," I said eventually. "About the invitation." "Yes." "Which means someone told her." Isla didn't answer, but her jaw tightened in the way it did when she was being careful not to say what she thought. I had stopped asking her to share those thoughts a long time ago. Some truths, I wasn't ready for. My phone buzzed. Liam. I hesitated — just a fraction of a second, barely perceptible — then answered. "Hey." His voice was warm. The warm voice. The one he used when he wanted something or when he was in a good mood, and on good days I couldn't always tell which was which. "Hey," I said. "Where are you?" "Just finishing up at Maison Éclat. Getting something for the gala." "Good." A pause, then, with a note of something that sounded almost playful: "Don't make plans for after the gala." I stopped walking. "Why?" "Because I have a surprise." I could hear the smile in it. "I've been planning it for a while. I thought we needed something just for us. No family, no events, no obligations. Just—" a beat— "us." Something opened in my chest. Small, cautious, embarrassingly hopeful. "What kind of surprise?" "If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise." He laughed, and for a moment he sounded like the man I married — easy, warm, full of gestures that felt like they were made for me and not for an audience. "Trust me. You'll love it." "Okay," I said softly. "Wear the new dress. Whatever you got." "Even if the neckline's too low?" A pause. Then, lightly: "I'm sure it's perfect." When I hung up, Isla was watching me with an expression I recognized — part fondness, part something that lived just behind her eyes like a warning she kept choosing not to give. "He has a surprise," I said. "I heard." "After the gala. He said something just for us." She nodded slowly. "Isla." "I'm not saying anything." "You're thinking something." "I'm always thinking something." She looped her arm through mine as we turned toward the parking garage. "I hope it's wonderful, Elena." I leaned into her slightly, the dress bag rustling softly between us. And despite everything, I let myself feel it. Hope.