Adrian Velasco stepped into the party like a man who knew exactly how much oxygen he could steal from a room. He wore a dark grey coat over a casual dress shirt, hair slightly tousled, hands in his pockets like this was all mildly amusing.
Althea's grip on her glass tightened just slightly. Max's smile dropped like a curtain.
Max hated that the feeling came so easily. Adrian had always been that way; effortless where Max had to grind, magnetic where Max only managed polite gravitation. Even now, in a room where Max had earned the applause, Adrian could stroll in and tilt the gravity back toward himself. Like nothing had changed. Like Max was still the shadow and he was the sun.
Adrian spotted them almost immediately, gave a nod to someone by the drinks table, then walked over with the kind of effortless ease that made Max's jaw tighten.
"Didn't expect to see me?" Adrian said, smiling like nothing had ever gone wrong.
Max's voice was flat. "What are you doing here?"
"Got an invitation. For my little brother." He looked around. "And how could I pass up cake with plastic swords?"
Althea's gaze didn't leave him. She hadn't seen Adrian in months, really. Not since everything had fallen apart. She wasn't sure what she felt yet. She just stood still, unreadable.
Adrian's smile faltered slightly. "I'm not here to ruin anything."
"Too late," Max muttered.
Adrian sighed. "I didn't come for a fight. I just—" He turned to Althea, more serious now, genuinely apologetic. "I came to say something."
She blinked.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. For what I put you through. For dragging you into my mess and then leaving you to carry the weight."
Althea stood quiet for a moment. Max's arms were stiff at his sides.
"You didn't deserve it," Adrian said. "And I don't expect forgiveness. But you deserved the apology."
Althea breathed in slowly. The memories flickered behind her eyes; of confusion, of hurt, of being a placeholder in someone else's love story. Her heart twisted. She hadn't expected this, not here, not tonight. But there was something in his voice that wasn't performance, not for once. Just quiet regret.
She nodded slowly. "…Thank you. I appreciate that."
Max stood rigid, jaw tight, arms crossed. "You think an apology will just—"
"Max." Althea's voice was gentle, a hand brushing his arm. "It's fine."
He turned to her, and something in his chest sank. The look in her eyes… soft, forgiving. Toward Adrian.
Max turned to her, eyes narrowing slightly.
For a flicker of a moment, Max felt small.
It was ridiculous. he was a grown man, the CSO of a company, someone whose name went on contracts and proposals and whose signature actually meant something. But all it took was Adrian walking into a room and suddenly Max was sixteen again, standing in the corner, watching his brother absorb every ounce of light like he was born to it.
And worse, under all of it, was the thought he didn't want to name. The one that burned quietly under his ribs. Maybe Althea's heart still leaned toward him. Even a little.
She had been so soft when she forgave him, her voice gentle in a way Max wasn't sure he'd ever heard directed at him. He told himself it was just who she was. kind, gracious, endlessly willing to offer someone a second chance.
But the part of him that still remembered being the overlooked brother couldn't let it go.
If she ever looked at Adrian the way she used to, or maybe still did, then what was Max, really? Just the filler role, the stand-in, the placeholder husband in a private game he was starting to wish wasn't pretend.
He exhaled slowly, gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles paled, and tried to swallow the feeling before it grew teeth.
The room gradually resumed its rhythm. People glanced at the commotion, then awkwardly looked away. An intern sneezed into a napkin and accidentally knocked over the punch bowl.
Althea turned to him. "Hey."
He didn't answer. She frowned. "Max?"
He finally looked at her, but the warmth from earlier was gone. replaced by something careful. Guarded.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah." His voice was low. "Just… thinking."
She opened her mouth, but he gave her a small, practiced smile and gestured toward the snack table. "I'm gonna grab something. You want more of those?"
"…Sure."
He walked away before she could say anything else.
Max stood by the refreshments table, pretending to read the label on a bottle of seltzer. But his thoughts were spinning, loud and disorganized.
He knew he shouldn't care. He knew Althea was kind, that she forgave more easily than he did. That's who she was. Always giving people more chances than they deserved.
But tonight, when Adrian stood in front of her, and she looked at him like that.
That softness. That stillness. Max felt like he'd been handed the truth, quiet and brutal: She might still love him.
And the worst part? He couldn't blame her.
Max had known, deep down, that this arrangement wasn't meant to last. That they were temporary. That this strange, quiet life they'd built would come with an expiration date.
But that didn't stop it from hurting. Because somewhere along the way, he'd started wishing it wasn't pretend.
Somewhere between shared breakfasts and midnight talks and folded laundry and plum dresses… he'd started wanting things he had no right to want.
He stared down at the glass in his hand, saw his own reflection in the rippling amber surface. A stranger in his own life. The worst part of slow love was how silently it bloomed. And how violently it hurt when it was no longer yours.
End of Chapter 44.