Wren's pov
Lena has been perched on the lobby stairs for twenty minutes by the time I finally come down. I know because she texted me twice while I was still upstairs, once declaring she was "in position," and once just a single, impatient question mark. I ignored both. Some things you have to face without backup commentary.
Rhett is standing in the doorway when I reach the bottom. Dark suit, crisp white shirt, no tie. He looks... devastating in that effortless way that feels almost unfair. Like someone designed him to make the air feel thinner. Our eyes meet and he stops mid-motion, whatever he was saying to Lena dying on his lips.
He doesn't speak.
He doesn't have to. Lena leans forward on the third step, chin in her hands, grinning like she's won the lottery. "For the record, I helped her pick that dress."
Heat rushes to my cheeks. I walk straight past both of them toward the door, clutching my camera bag a little too tightly. "Let's go."
My heart is already hammering and we haven't even left the building.
>>>
The Harrington Foundation dinner is exactly what I expected and somehow nothing I was prepared for.
It isn't just the money dripping from every surface. I've been in expensive rooms before. It's the way people move in them, like everything is a chess game played with smiles and glances. Every laugh carries weight, every question has three layers. I don't speak this language, and the awareness of that sits heavy in my chest the entire night, like a stone I can't swallow.
So I shoot. I always shoot when I feel lost. The camera gives me distance, a reason to observe instead of participate. It lets me hide in plain sight.
Rhett moves through the crowd like he built the room himself, which he practically did. People turn toward him instinctively, conversations bend in his direction. He shakes a few hands, declines others with that smooth precision that doesn't feel like rejection, and eventually positions himself near a column by the tall windows. From there he can see everything.
Including me. Though I don't fully register how often his gaze drifts my way until much later.
I seem to be interesting to people tonight. Three different guests approach me in the first hour, each wearing that faint look of surprise, like I'm a puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit the picture. I don't mind. I ask them questions about their work, their causes, their lives. They talk, they leave looking flattered. I move on. But underneath it all, my nerves feel stretched thin, vibrating with the effort of pretending I belong here.
>>>
The woman finds me near the bar.
She's elegant in that polished, expensive way that looks effortless but clearly isn't. Every detail, hair, dress, posture, carefully chosen. She smiles first, which means she already knows exactly who I am.
"Nadia Hartwell," she says, extending a hand. Her voice is warm honey. "You must be Caden's sister. He spoke about you. I was so sorry to miss him before he left town."
Something tightens in my stomach. "Did you know him well?"
"We moved in the same circles." She says it lightly, but her eyes flick toward Rhett across the room. "He's been different lately, hasn't he? Have you noticed?"
The question lands like a hook. I tell her I've only just met Rhett, keeping my voice steady. She nods, but there's a knowing glint there that makes my skin prickle. She asks about my photography, my studies, my plans, like she genuinely cares. I answer honestly, because that's what I do. Only later will I realize how skillfully she steered everything. How much she learned about me while revealing almost nothing about herself.
I dislike her immediately. The feeling is sharp and ugly. For ten minutes I try to convince myself it's just jealousy, that she's beautiful, confident, clearly comfortable in Rhett's world in a way I'll never be. The kind of woman who fits seamlessly. Then I spend another ten minutes telling myself I have zero reason to feel jealous, that Rhett is nothing to me but a temporary shadow my brother asked to watch over me.
The lie sits heavy. Because the first round of convincing only proves there's something here I'm terrified to name. A pull. A dangerous curiosity. The memory of his voice in the car, low and steady, saying my name like it mattered.
I grab a fresh drink and escape the bar, my pulse uneven.
>>>
Twenty minutes later, the older man corners me.
He's well-dressed, silver at the temples, and stands eight inches too close from the first word. He asks what I do, then immediately answers for me, assuming things about my life based on nothing but how I look. He's mid-sentence about some gallery board he sits on when the air around me shifts.
Rhett is suddenly there.
He doesn't touch me. Doesn't speak. He just 'exists', solid, tall, radiating that quiet authority. The older man glances at him, recalculates, and makes a hasty excuse before slipping away.
My cheeks burn. Relief and something warmer tangle in my chest. "You didn't have to do that," I say quietly.
"I know."
"Thank you."
He doesn't reply. We stand in silence near the bar for a moment, and it isn't uncomfortable. It feels charged. Like the space between us is holding its breath. Then he drifts back toward the windows and I return to my camera, heart still racing from the brief closeness.
All night I've been aware of him. The way his eyes find me across the room. The way my body seems to know exactly where he is at any moment. It's exhausting, this constant low hum of awareness I can't turn off.
>>>
The car ride home is quiet, the city lights streaking past like blurred thoughts.
I stare out the window, shoulders tight with the kind of tired that has nothing to do with the hour. It's the exhaustion of performing all night. Of feeling watched, of watching someone back while pretending you're not, of pretending the way Rhett looked at me didn't make my stomach flip.
"You didn't have to step in," I say again, softer this time.
"I know." His voice is low in the dark. "But I wanted to."
The words hang there. I don't know what to do with them. Part of me wants to push, to ask what this is, what 'we' are becoming. The rest of me is terrified of the answer. I'm not supposed to feel this, this confusing mix of safety and danger when he's near. Not when my life already has too many cracks.
I get out of the car in front of my building. The night air feels cooler against my flushed skin. Before I can close the door, my phone rings.
Dad.
I answer because Warren doesn't call this late without reason. His voice is wrong from the first word, too measured, too careful, like he's reading from a script he's practiced in the mirror.
"I was just thinking about you, kiddo," he says. "Have you been sleeping all right?"
My throat tightens. I wait.
"The dreams," he continues gently. "You haven't been having those dreams again, have you?"
I stand frozen on the pavement as the city moves around me, cars, strangers, life rushing by while I feel suddenly small. I think about every version of the nightmares I've never told him about. The ones where the past claws its way back. The ones that leave me gasping in the dark, reaching for a camera that isn't there, trying to capture something solid before it all slips away.
"What dreams?" I say, forcing lightness I don't feel.
But my hand trembles around the phone. And for the first time tonight, the emotional weight I've been carrying all evening, the confusing pull toward Rhett, the unease from Nadia, the vulnerability of being seen, crashes fully into the fear that my past might not stay buried. That maybe nothing in my life stays controlled for long.