ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRE PLUS-ONE

Billionaires of Manhattan

Book 9

ANNIKA MARTIN

Copyright © 2026 by Cinnamon Crane LLC

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems or AI training, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover by Annika Martin

ISBN: 978-1-944736-62-0

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The Accidental Billionaire Plus-One

This is a standalone romcom, part of the Billionaires of Manhattan series.

All I did was mail one of my sister's rejected wedding invitations to a stranger. 

A notoriously private, famously grumpy billionaire stranger. 

As a joke. Mostly. (I also sent one to Ryan Gosling. Don't ask.)

But then a helicopter nearly flattens the reception tent at my sister's Hamptons wedding, and out steps the billionaire—wearing a tux, a scowl, and carrying a gift. 

What?   

The bride’s side wants to know if he’s with the groom. 

The groom’s side wants to know if he’s with the bride. 

My sister absolutely cannot find out he’s here because of me! 

So I intercept him and beg him to pretend he’s my plus-one.

And he says yes. 

Not because he’s nice. The man lives alone on a yacht and reportedly hates everyone. He has his own reasons for wanting to fake-date a broke dance teacher—reasons he refuses to explain because he is the SURLIEST MAN ALIVE. 

But four days of forced proximity is a long time.  

Long enough to discover that beneath all that billionaire-grade hostility, he’s surprisingly good at protecting me when things fall apart. 

The problem?

Fake dating him is starting to feel dangerously real. 

And falling for the surliest man alive was  definitely  not part of the deal. 

Chapter One

KELSEY

My sister, Danielle, always lines up her pens parallel with table edges. I forgot that about her. I forgot so much about her.

I missed so much about her.

But now here she is—here we are, sitting at a coffee shop together, addressing invitations for her upcoming wedding as though the last three years of estrangement didn’t happen.

I’m thrilled.

And also a little confused.

She’d texted me six weeks ago.

Hey, what are you doing June tenth? Would you want to come to your big sister’s wedding? And help do some boss calligraphy on the invites? I could come down to the city...maybe that first weekend in January?

I’d read the text over and over, wondering if she’d meant to send it to somebody else. But who else knows calligraphy? Calligraphy was Danielle’s and my thing. We took classes as teenagers. We were into it.

I drafted my response text elsewhere so she wouldn’t see the dots going forever. I finally landed on:

Hey! Big congratulations. I’d love to!

And here we are.

This morning, I’d carefully asked her what had changed, and she’d just said, “It needs to be over.”

I’d waited for more. I really wanted more, but I hadn’t wanted to rock the boat, so I’d just told her I agreed.

People come in and out. The espresso machine erupts behind us now and then, followed by the whine of milk being steamed. Cups knock, spoons clink, someone laughs too loudly near the register. Everything so normal.

Except for us. Just us sitting here is earthshaking!

I keep sneaking glances at her. What shifted things? Was there new information? Or did my family wake up one morning and realize I would never ever ever in a zillion years do such a thing?

So...do they see how wrong they were about me, and they feel shitty?

The last words my mother said to me were, “We have nothing to say to each other unless you come forward with what you did.” And Danielle and Dad were right there with her.

The still-unaddressed cream-colored envelopes sit in a stack between us.

“You sure you’re scone-crumb free over there?” she asks, and for a second, I’m thrown back to childhood, to her fussing over my messy ways.

“Definitely!” I say, maybe too brightly. “If one single crumb lands on an envelope, I’ll personally mail it to the bottom of the Atlantic where vengeful shrimp will feast upon its shame!”

She doesn’t quite smile, but she doesn’t quite frown either. She starts in on the next invite.

“I’ve been brushing up,” I tell her. “L’s were always my weak suit but behold...” I show her my latest creation.

“Not bad!” She concentrates on her own. “I sadly have not improved my Q’s.”

I bite back the impulse to make a joke. Tone it down, I tell myself. Danielle hates when you’re a lot.

But then I can’t help it. “Hopefully you aren’t inviting Quiston Q. Questerbury.”

She smiles faintly, and suddenly I can’t bear it any longer.

“Dani... I have to know, though...did some new clue about the true culprit come to light or what? Because you know I would never...”

She pauses, her pen hovering over thick paper. “We are choosing to believe you. You’re my sister. Mom and Dad’s daughter. And I’m getting married, and what would that be without you? You say you didn’t do it, Kelsey.”

Choosing to believe. What does it mean?

“And we are indeed inviting Quiston Q. Questerbury.”

I snort and focus on the next invite.

Choosing to believe. The phrase replays in my mind.

It’s not believing. Or is it?

I can’t sit here interrogating her about it. I’m going to be present. The more they’re around me, the more they’ll remember who I am.

I’m innocent, and they have to know that deep down, because they know my heart—that’s the bottom line.

I think I deserve an apology, but this is a first step toward one. And I’ve missed them so much.

I focus on the next envelope. We complete another stack and I put on my coat and carry them to the mailbox across the street.

“So how’s the dancing?” she asks when I get back inside.

I fill her in. She seems surprised I’m in a big Broadway production—the Anything Goes revival. I tell her about my teaching gigs. She tells me about a Caribbean cruise she and her fiancé took over this past holiday season.

“Wait, you skipped the family hoedown at Aunt Mae’s? I was just telling my friend how it’s the perfect holiday place, like enchanted on every possible level, and our games...” I trail off. My voice is so full of longing—even I hear it. “Of course Christmas in New York can’t be beat. When the snow falls?” I smile brightly. “Perfection.”

I don’t include my little New York tradition of how I used to pretend I had somewhere to go on holidays so my friends wouldn’t feel sorry for me. They busted me eventually and made sure I wasn’t alone going forward.

I also redact my habit of waking up at night with a hole in my heart the size of a New York bagel, or this burning sense of injustice at being wrongly blamed for something I didn’t do.

“I’ve always heard Christmas in New York is amazing,” she says. “The magic of it.”

Danielle slides an invitation across the table. There’s my name, complete with a giant K. She always did make her initial caps extra giant. “This one’s for you.”

I make a surprised face. “Whatever could it be?” I joke. “Oh wow! And a plus-one!”

“Might there be a plus-one?” she asks slyly.

I mumble something about schedules and logistics. Because like a dork, I want her to think I have this amazing life and an amazing boyfriend.

“Sounds like your plus-one is a busy and important person!”

Through the sister universal translator, it comes out as “You are so full of shit, you don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

No, I don’t. And I don’t want one. Men have been a disaster zone for me lately.

Or kind of always.

“We’ll hold it open,” she assures me with the confidence of somebody who knows they definitely don’t have to hold it open. “We’ve built in flexibility with so many people traveling.”

“Awesome!” I dive back into the calligraphy trenches. I pepper her with questions about Mom and Dad and all of the Oakfield gossip. I cannot believe how much I’ve missed over these past three years.

We start on the last pile of invitations. “If we have extras, what do we do with them?” I ask.

“Toss them.”

“I have all these wedding TikToks in my feed, and there is this hilarious trend where people⁠—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. No offense but I won’t be taking any wedding advice from TikTok.”

“No, no, it’s funny! People send invitations to celebrities and fabulously wealthy personages, because sometimes their assistants automatically send gifts without really checking out who they are⁠—”

“Wait, what?” Danielle frowns. “Send invites to rando celebrities in hopes of a present? You know who does that? Losers.”

I look down at my pen. “I mean it’s kinda funny though.”

“If you’re a loser. This is a wedding, not a caper to get free stuff.”

“It’s not about getting free stuff,” I say too quickly. “It’s just...a silly thing...”

Another silence threatens, but then I spot a woman waiting up at the counter wearing tight leggings and giant legwarmers like marshmallows. “1980s on, dude!” I say, reviving an old joke from our past where we’d add the phrase “on, dude!” onto any random noun for maximum sisterly snark.

She follows the direction of my gaze and snorts. Then she points to a guy holding a puppy, and women from the line are petting it. “Puppy trap on, dude!”

And then she really laughs.

I smile so wide my face hurts.

We go back to writing the invites.

I glance uneasily at the blue mailbox across the street.

And I swallow hard.

Gulp.

Because somewhere inside that mailbox, mixed amongst the bills and postcards and regular mail, are three wedding invitations—one addressed to Ryan Gosling, one addressed to Harry Styles, and one to Bruno Blackwood, the reclusive billionaire watchmaker I recently read about in the Sunday Ledger.

Apparently, he’s been famous in the watchmaking world for some years, but recently, some enterprising magazine writer realized, hey, he’s a hot billionaire watchmaker who lives on a yacht and shuns society. Clickbait!

And from then on, he’s been a subject of intense interest. Today on my fave gossip subreddit, somebody put up a rare photo of him scowling out from a lectern where he was giving a talk on some nerdy watch topic. And apparently hating every minute. A very hot hater of the audience. Scowl incandescent.

So he got a wedding invite.

I’d screwed up the calligraphy on those envelopes anyway, and I didn’t know what to do with the screw-ups. And then I imagined Danielle’s delight unwrapping a crystal bowl from Ryan Gosling. What a fun surprise!

Ugh, what was I thinking? My friend Noelle is a letter carrier, and I have talked to her about her job enough to know there is no way to get those invitations back now that they’re in that blue mailbox. There is just zero chance.

I have to pray they never send gifts.

Danielle can never find out. Because she’s right, it’s what you do when you’re a loser. What was I thinking? It seemed just... funny, I guess, but it’s not funny at all. Not when things are maybe finally getting better with my family.

Chapter Two

BRUNO

Six months later

The helicopter’s distant whine cuts through my morning silence, coming closer and closer. I don’t have to look up from the watch face I’m polishing to know it’s carrying one of my brothers. Russell, probably, here to beg me to fly back with him to the family estate and be in this American Spotlight segment.

Which cannot happen. Not ever.

I set down the peg tool I was using, polishing compound still on the tip.

My custom workbench rides on hydraulic stabilizers of my own design to make up for the ocean’s churn. Precision tools gleam in their designated spaces.

Both of my younger brothers have been hounding me about coming home for this thing for months. Yes, it’s great exposure for their struggling vineyard, but if my brothers knew what else could get exposed, they wouldn’t be pushing it, either.

But they don’t know. And they never can.

If I’m not in the documentary, it’ll effectively kill it. Our family is old and storied and regal and all that, but it’s me they want. The recluse. The mystery man who won’t give interviews. The subject of all of that unfortunate press.

My absence is the only card I hold, and I intend to play it.

I take one last look at the watch face I’ve been working on; its perfectly polished black surface glints darkly. One thing, at least, is exactly as it should be.

A text alert sounds. It’s my assistant, Sadie. A series of exclamation marks and then one word.

Calling.

Not a good sign. I never talk to people if it can at all be avoided.

I pick up on the first ring.

“Russell’s heading your way.”

“I hear him.”

“There’s something you need to know: Adrian’s found a way to force your hand on the documentary.”

“Good luck with that,” I say.

“No, listen—Adrian has uncovered some clause in the trust documents that stipulates that if any Blackwood brother refuses to participate in officially designated family business matters without a legitimate prior commitment, or agreement of the other remaining siblings, they forfeit their controlling interest in all Blackwood-owned businesses.”

Ice slides through my veins. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I am. They could take control of your watch business if you don’t show up for the filming.”

I swear under my breath. I added my watch business as a division of Blackwood family holdings because I wanted my brothers to inherit it in case something happened to me. Not like I’ll ever start a family of my own; I’d rather pull out my own teeth.

“Get legal on this thing. Figure it out.”

“I’ve already spoken with them,” she says. “They’ve gone over it exhaustively.”

“And?”

“Your best hope is the ‘legitimate prior commitment’ clause. We need to find you a commitment that can’t be rescheduled. Some kind of unavoidable event to attend for the next three days, ideally starting today.”

“Options.” I head down my private staircase to the public deck of the yacht below, phone to my ear, hand trailing the rail. A sharp whistle sounds—two short blasts, which means I’ve been spotted moving through the ship. By the time I reach the aft deck, the crew has already assembled, shoulders squared, eyes forward, white uniforms perfectly pressed. Chief Steward McGillicuddy stands at the head, clipboard against her hip, expression neutral.

I pass without stopping, walking to the railing. Russell’s bird is coming in. I can see his silhouette through the glass.

“Will a conference or a summit work? Those can’t be rescheduled.”

“So you’d be willing to attend something...in person?” She says this like she’s shocked. Of course, Sadie doesn’t understand what’s at stake. She doesn’t understand why this documentary simply cannot go forward.

“Yes,” I say.

“In person?” she clarifies.

“I do own several means of transportation. What about Dubai Watch Week? Isn’t that happening right now?” I imagine myself walking in, taking a few photos, and flying home.

“Umm... I’m not sure that’ll work at this juncture...”

“At this juncture.” Sadie only uses that phrase when she’d rather not say what comes next.

“Why not?”

“Well, you turned down their keynote. Rather...emphatically.”

“I did?”

“You told them their co-chair was...” I wait while she accesses whatever she’s accessing. Sadie keeps notes on everything. “...‘an opportunistic hack who wouldn’t know craftsmanship if it slapped him in the face.’ I’m afraid...they rescinded your invite.”

I grind my molars together. Past me should have been more diplomatic. I wait on the aft deck as the helicopter comes in, rocking gently as it lowers. “The metallurgy symposium in Geneva?”

“Um...you once said their main sponsor’s understanding of molecular structure was ‘kindergarten at best’?”

“Doesn’t the Horological Society have a monthly dinner in London?”

“Maybe.” A pause. “But do you remember that one time you told the guest of honor his body of work was...uh...”

“Never mind. There’s got to be something else.”

The helicopter touches down, sending vibrations through the deck.

“Wellllllll.”

“What?”

It sounds like she’s rooting around in papers now. Sadie works out of my Tribeca office, which she keeps immaculately organized.

“Okay, you were invited to a wedding in the Hamptons, but it’s just a gift get.”

“What’s a gift get?”

“It’s some sort of trend on TikTok where couples invite as many billionaires or celebrities as they can find addresses for to their wedding in hopes that assistants will auto-send presents without checking if you actually know the couple. I have a file where I keep them after I cross-check against your address books and⁠—”

“So I was invited.”

“Well, yes.”

“How long does this thing last?”

She takes a beat to process what I’m getting at. “You can’t go to the wedding of perfect strangers.”

“They invited me.” Russell’s bird touches down on the helipad. “How long does it last?”

“Three days. Welcome cocktails at six tonight.”

“The three days that they’ll be shooting at the estate?”

“Yes, it aligns perfectly.”

A wedding. I’d rather get a root canal from an evil clown, but desperate times... “I’m going. Figure it out. Get me the details.”

“Bruno, you don’t know these people. You didn’t even RSVP!”

“I’m sure whatever gift you get for me to give them will more than make up for that.”

“This is a bride’s big day. You can’t crash it.”

“Of course I can. They invited me. I’ll drop off my present, take a few pictures, and go home.”

“Bruno, no. They followed a silly trend to get a nice gift.”

“That’s odd. It sounds more like a scam to me.”

She sputters some protest.

“Text me the itinerary and dress code. Figure it out.” I click off before she can launch into her usual lecture that human beings aren’t watch movements.

If only.

The crew is still in formation. They haven’t moved, and they won’t move until McGillicuddy dismisses them, and she won’t dismiss them until I’m out of sight.

Contrary to what Sadie might profess, people are at their best when they behave like clockwork, and that’s how I run this boat. Every member of my crew is a functioning part in a larger system—precise, disciplined, dependable. The military is a frat house compared to how I run my ship.

People are overly attached to the human element, as if it’s something to be treasured. I prefer to minimize it where I can.

Russell steps down from his helicopter, hair whipping, squinting against the rotor wash. He straightens his jacket and waves at me.

I cross my arms and wait for him to descend the stairs that lead down past the captain’s bridge, past my private deck where my quarters and workshop are. It’s a cloudy day, relatively calm. The ocean is a murky green with patches of dark that signal puffs of wind.

To the west, Long Island’s spine dissolves into haze, the last of the mainland. To the east, the Atlantic. Nothing between us and Portugal. Like the edge of the world.

He reaches the bottom and crosses the gleaming wood planks past perfectly coiled lines toward where I stand.

“What now?”

“Is that any way to greet your favorite brother?”

“Let me save you time. The answer is still no.”

“Come on, Bruno! One interview.”

One interview. That’s how they’re describing the documentary now, as if it would stop at one interview.

“Not happening.”

“They’re arriving as we speak. An entire production team. They’re expecting the whole family to be there.”

Translation: they’re expecting the famous reclusive brother to be there.

“I specifically told you no from the start. I also told you that I wouldn’t be changing my mind. I don’t know what’s so difficult about it.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. “What’s a guy gotta do for a drink around here?”

I sigh and lead him toward the interior, past the line of crew members.

He waves a hand in front of the deckhand’s face. My deckhand gives him no reaction.

“Leave him alone.”

Russell snorts. “Sorry you’re stuck working for my brother.” He catches up to me as I make my way to the bar.

“My people are professionals. Let them do their jobs.” I pour us both a drink and hand him his.

He makes his pitch once again. American Spotlight has millions of viewers. Free advertising for the vineyard. They won’t air the segment if the whole family’s not there. Can’t I ramble around the wine cellar with Adrian and him and mumble a few things about our family’s history in front of the camera?

“This is just a backdoor way for them to get an interview of me.”

“Number one, that’s a pretty arrogant way of viewing it, and number two, even if it were true, is it so bad? Do you really prefer us to come begging to you hat in hand to support the winery?”

I clench my jaw. “You know damn well that I’m happy to provide whatever funds you need at any time.”

“But you wouldn’t have to provide us funds if you just come do a fucking cameo there. You’re a public figure now whether you like it or not. What’s the harm in appearing in this thing? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Of course it doesn’t make sense. To him.

My brothers don’t know what I know. They don’t understand that making a juicy little documentary out of our family will cause secrets to unbury themselves.

I toy briefly with telling him. They’d shut that documentary down so fast. But then, Jesus Christ. There’s no fixing what it would do to them.

Needless to say, I don’t take that road. I take the road where I’m the asshole, not wanting to do the documentary for whatever selfish reasons. It’s a road I’m pretty handy at driving on.

“I told you no, and you should’ve taken my word for it.”

“Bruno, please.” There’s a thread of desperation in his voice. He doesn’t want to have to pull out the big guns and threaten my watch business. That would be more Adrian’s style.

“I have a prior commitment that cannot be rescheduled.”

Russell has the good sense to look embarrassed.

“That’s right, I know all about the new legal flex. You can tell Adrian that trying to force me to appear in this thing by threatening my watch business? Very bad form.”

“I know, I know. I told him not to use it,” Russell says. “Not cool to force your hand, but he just wants the winery to stand on its own two feet. We’d do the same for you if it were for your watch business.”

“You need to honor my decision.”

Russell bites his lip. He doesn’t want to honor my decision, or more like, he doesn’t want to go back and tell Adrian he’s honored my decision.

“Look, I have to get ready for this thing.”

Russell studies my face. “Be real. You don’t have a commitment.”

“In fact I do. All the way through to Monday, so...” I gesture at his helicopter.

Russell crosses his arms. “That seems a little convenient. What is this very important event?”

“I’m attending a wedding in the Hamptons, if you must know.”

Russell nearly chokes on his scotch. “You hate weddings.”

“But sometimes they’re unavoidable.”

“Whose wedding is it?”

“You wouldn’t know them.”

“Are they business peers? No. Why would you bother? But it’s not like you have friends. There’s no wedding.”

“There is. I’ll send a picture or two.” I gesture at his bird with both hands now, a sort of behold type gesture. Behold your helicopter upon which you will fly away.

“Oh you want me to leave? And miss this chance to see you off to this very important wedding you must attend? Which will miraculously force you to miss all three days of shooting?”

“If that’s how you want to spend your afternoon, I won’t stop you.”

My phone pings again. Welcome cocktails start at 6. Ceremony tomorrow morning. Pasting itinerary below. Gift due at Eastside Marina within the hour. Check with bosun for onboard ETA. Bosun to confirm helipad clear by 5:15.

Good. I’ll put on a tux, drop off the present, snap a few pictures of myself to send to Russell and Adrian, and be back here in time for a late dinner.

“College friend?” He narrows his eyes. “No. No way. You hate everyone.”

“Delightful as this is, I do need to pack and wrap things up in my workshop.”

“Be serious!” His expression is a cross between amusement and outrage. “There’s no wedding.”

“My guy’s coming in just after five to take me there. You’ll have to be cleared out by then.”

Russell takes another sip, studying me over the rim of his snifter, which does nothing to conceal his smile. “Hamptons? Why make your pilot come out? I’d be happy to give you a ride on the way back.”

“You don’t want to wait all that time.”

“I don’t mind. I insist.”

Fine. Let him give me a lift. He can report it all back to Adrian.

“Great, I’ll have Sadie cancel the ride.”

“Great.” Russell makes himself comfortable in one of the deck chairs.

Chapter Three

KELSEY

Idrag my suitcase up to reception, hoping to escape to my room and do a quick change-aroo from harried, rumpled, sweaty Kelsey—fresh off a packed Long Island Railroad car, hair doing something I probably don’t want to know about—to breezy, polished, wedding-perfect Kelsey.

I hand over my ID with a gracious and carefree smile, because that is the attitude I plan to have this weekend. I’m confident. Optimistic. A fun relative who people want to be around. Yes, I was wrongly accused and shunned, but I don’t arrive bitter and defensive about it, because that’s not me, and also, I have nothing to hide, and I never did.

I picture myself walking up to my mother with that energy—inhabiting it so completely that she remembers that she knows me, that she knows my heart, realizes I never was the kind of person to make off with a family heirloom.

As she SHOULD! Because seriously, what the hell?

And I have a beautiful hotel room waiting. According to the hotel website, there are French doors and ocean views in every room. My view back home in the city is the brick building behind ours and some really rusty drainpipes, so I’m hugely looking forward to this.

There seems to be some confusion at the desk. Some consultation. Finally a staffer takes my bag and beckons me to follow him.

“Wow. Do you always personally lead guests to their hotel rooms?” I ask.

“No, not usually...” he says sheepishly.

My heart begins to pound. Was there some kind of notation next to my name? Known thief?

“So I’m getting the celeb treatment?” I joke hopefully.

“Well, so nobody said anything to you?”

“About what?”

“There was an overbooking problem, and it’s not a usual guest room.” He gives me a wince and then starts down some stairs.

Wait. Are we going into a basement?

“So I’m getting bumped from the room I booked?” Make that the very expensive room I booked. I pretty much drained my savings to make this whole thing happen.

“Your sister said you were aware of the situation...”

“She must’ve forgotten to tell me,” I say. “It’s fine.”

How bad can it be? This hotel caters to the wealthy elite, so I’m sure even their worst room is awesome.

Maybe it’s a garden-level room. Maybe it has its own wee terrace.

My heart sinks as we go through a staff-only door, and down a service corridor that smells like cleaning products. We pass a young man sitting on an upturned bucket, scratching his chest while he looks at his phone. Finally, my guide unlocks a door, and I step into a room that is furnished with mismatched hotel furniture, probably yesteryear castoffs from upstairs, a window that looks out onto a giant dumpster, and a suspicious stain on the wall that I will myself to believe is water damage.

“We put staff here in a pinch, but it’s just been cleaned and you have the whole hall to yourself. No noise from wedding revelers.”

I turn to him. “But on the upside, it’s free, right?” I say hopefully.

“We’ll be extending a twenty percent discount,” he announces.

“I’m sorry, what? A twenty percent discount puts this in line with some of the best hotels in Manhattan.”

“I’m so sorry, it’s out of my hands. Of course, you’ll still have access to all of the amenities.” He begins to list off the amenities.

“No, no, I get it. I know you didn’t make this decision. It just seems a little bit… unfortunate. For me.”

“I can give you contact information for management...”

“That would be good,” I say despondently. I’ll try to get more of a discount, but they have me over a barrel. No way will I make some big kerfuffle at my sister’s wedding. That’s the last thing I’d want to do.

He leaves me and I sink onto my very soft and lumpy bed, trying not to think of the reel I saw on Instagram of the photographer’s assistant’s room with its French doors opening to a balcony with postcard views of the ocean.

She’s the photographer’s assistant. And I’m Danielle’s sister. Literal sister of the bride.

Maybe their contract specifies getting nice rooms. I’ll be going with that thought.

And it’s not like I’ll be spending all my time in here. I’ll be out and about, enjoying seeing my family. And enjoying the wedding! I love weddings. I’m always excited when I see brides and grooms doing wedding shoots in Central Park or the subway or Times Square or up on the High Line. And this is my sister. And I’m back with my family! Back-ish. My family who are choosing to believe me. Which is certainly a step in the right direction, though “knowing I’d never do such a thing” would be vastly preferable.

I crack the window, then immediately close it. Dumpster smellsville.

I pull out my garment bag and wince.

My outfit for today had seemed so chic at the thrift store, what with its vintage, understated elegance à la Grace Kelly, a fashion icon of Danielle’s. But now that I’m here in this Hamptons world of breezy whites and pastels, it seems a little shabby. Also, it’s practically a winter dress.

A shabby winter dress. And not really very Grace Kelly-ish at all.

I used to know how to dress for this kind of thing. Even as the artsy weirdo of the family, I knew how to fit in. But that was a long time ago. My wardrobe in the city is big earrings and fun boots and bright colors. Awesome amazing clothes that my family would never approve of.

Did I just completely lose the muscle of fitting in with them?

And I landed on a brown wool dress in June.

And are those moth holes? How did I not notice moth holes?

I dig through my suitcase for tomorrow’s dress, hoping to swap. It’s an off-the-shoulder mod-print maxi I’d been so proud of. But looking at it now, in this hotel, in this light—I can practically hear my mother’s voice. What was she thinking?

I pull everything else out. Lay it all on the bed.

It’s bad. So bad.

I dig to the bottom for my post-wedding breakfast dress—navy, simple, seen better days. The hem is slightly uneven, and the fabric has that shine that comes from too many washes. This, too, was supposed to be understated elegance à la Grace Kelly.

It’s certainly understated. That’s the most I can say for it.

It will have to do.

The welcome cocktail party is in full swing by the time I make it up to the terrace. I spot Mom immediately near the fountain with Aunt Mae and think about beelining over there, but I force myself to look away.

Not yet.

Let it happen naturally.

My grandmother Ernestine, a.k.a. Granny Ernie, rushes over and clasps my hands inside hers. “My sweet girl. I’m so happy you came.”

I hug her without holding back. Deep down, I always felt like she was the only one who questioned the family groupthink on my supposedly thieving ways, though in the end, she did go along with the group cold shoulder. Still. Right now she feels like an ally. I’ll take it.

Over her shoulder, I catch sight of Dad, working his way through the crowd, enduring air kisses.

My face warms with feeling when I see him. “Dad got tortoiseshell glasses,” I say stupidly. Like that’s the most surprising, noteworthy thing that’s happening here. Oh my goodness.

“Come on, then.” Granny Ernie hooks her arm through mine and pulls me toward him. “Look who I found!”

Dad turns around. “Kelsey!” There’s a tiny hesitation in his smile, but that’s just paranoia, because no way would Danielle have invited me without Dad’s blessing.

“Happy wedding,” I chirp. I go in for a hug because I’m thinking positive. I quickly let him go. “This is wonderful. Loving the new glasses!”

Dad launches into a monologue of how the glasses look a little too professorial for his tastes, like everything is just totally normal and the past three years didn’t happen.

I grin. “Can you even believe Danielle is getting married? Ol’ Tyler finally came through!”

“Took him a while, but he finally saw his way clear,” Granny Ernie says.

Dad agrees enthusiastically.

Granny Ernie purses her lips. “I just heard about the room situation. I could try to put you somewhere off-site⁠—”

“No, no, it’s fine! You know me, I roll with the punches.”

Dad frowns. Did that sound like I accused the family of metaphorically punching me?

“We dancers are resourceful and flexible,” I add, “and all I care about is for Danielle and Tyler to have an amazing weekend.”

He studies me for a moment too long. Is he wondering what’s up with the dress?

I force myself to smile. Progress, not perfection; isn’t that what they say?

“Kelsey!” My cousin Meredith wraps me in a long, relaxed hug.

Dad and his professorial glasses take this moment to ramble elsewhere.

“God, I’ve missed you!” Meredith says. “No one makes fun of Aunt Mae’s hats like you do.”

“Meredith!” Granny Ernie scolds. But Granny Ernie is just as big of an offender as anyone.

“Oh that’s all I’m good for?” I joke. “It’s all about the hats?”

Meredith does this fun little thing we used to do where you poke the other person with alternating pointer fingers. I laugh and do it back, and suddenly I’m transported back to a world of inside jokes, and us collapsing in giggles during family events. I’ve missed all this so much, my chest aches.

A waiter glides over and the three of us take champagnes.

“Bottoms up!” Meredith says.

“That’s for a whiskey and shots,” Granny Ernie scolds.

Our Burlington cousins, Sara and Ben, wander up.

“Have you been doing shots, Granny Ernie?”

Granny Ernie holds a pointer finger to her lips.

“I’m so glad you’re here. It’s been too long!” Sara says.

Does she really mean it? Is she actually glad? I need to stop second-guessing this situation ASAP. And as long as you hang in there with people, anything is possible.

“Act as if,” my friend Mia says.

We all catch up. After Granny Ernie drifts away, Cousin Ben lowers his voice. “Jesus Christ, did they finally get their heads out of their asses?”

I paste on a bright smile. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Back in black!” Meredith clicks her glass to mine.

I get filled in on everybody’s lives, and I tell them what’s happening with me. I’ve glanced over at Mom a few times. She’s working the room. She’ll make her way over.

My cousins are excited and interested in the whole Broadway experience and I could talk about it for hours.

Mom is over by the fountain, clapping loudly. “Group photo time!”

I find myself swept into the center of the family cluster, wedged between my cousins like old times. Mom ends up just a few people over. After this, she’ll drift over—it’ll just happen. The photographer gets us arranged, and for a few seconds it feels genuinely okay. Real. The way my shoulder presses against Sara’s, the way Granny Ernie squeezes in front insisting she doesn’t need to be in back, Danielle taking center stage.

When we break up into smaller groups, I hang back, giving Mom the opening.

She heads toward the bar with Aunt Mae.

I finish my champagne.

“Kelsey!” Danielle glides over, radiant in her flowing sundress. We compliment each other’s dresses, though I’m putting a lot more heart into admiring hers than she is into admiring mine.

“Hey, I have the perfect job for you. The kids are dying to learn a dance routine for the reception. What do you think?”

I think it’s babysitting duty, but in truth, I’m a little relieved. Things still feel awkward, especially with my own mother not saying hi to me, and it’s been a little exhausting keeping up my positive front.

“What do I think?” I say. “I think little kids are my jam.”

Danielle smiles.

I head across the beautifully manicured yard to the kids tent, where a couple of weary looking babysitters clearly need a break.

“I got this! Go get some food or something!” I tell them.

They grab their phones and head off.

This is a perfect way to make people remember why they used to appreciate me...and hopefully make them appreciate me anew.

In no time, I’ve got a two-year-old on my hip and ten kids lined up two deep, already picking up the simple hip-hop moves I’ve adapted from the studio’s most popular routine.

“Arms strong!” I demonstrate the wave again. “Like you’re painting the sky!”

A little girl in red, who was shy at first, is now front and center, hitting every beat. Some of the boys who were too cool for dance are getting into it on an athletic competitive level.

“That’s it! Now add the attitude!” I give them an attitude demo. They’re all wide eyes and giggles and then they go for it. Adults can sometimes get sick of my energy... It’s a thing with me. Especially guys. I’m “a lot,” apparently. “Extra.”

Lucky for me, kids love it when you’re “a lot.”

And these kids are actually good. They are going to kill it out there.

The babysitters wander back, hanging out in the shade with their phones, randomly shouting encouragement.

Danielle drifts by the far tent pole. Even she looks impressed.

I wander over.

“They’re doing pretty well,” she says.

“Just wait until you see the finale. Janey, show our fabulous bride that spin⁠—”

Just then the music gets drowned out by a whump-whump-whump.

The kids stop dancing. The tent top flutters. The boys run out from under the tent. “Helicopter!”

All of the kids are out of the tent suddenly, followed by the babysitters. It’s a full-on dance routine mutiny as a sleek black helicopter touches down on the far lawn.

Napkins go flying.

One of my cousins grabs her hat, shrieking.

“What the hell?” Danielle says.

The door opens and a man in a tuxedo steps out, hair flashing like burnished brass in the sun. Wide shoulders. Brows like deep golden slashes.

Bruno Blackwood.

Is this a dream? A nightmare? An alternative timeline where the worst possible thing happens?

Bruno Blackwood, reclusive watchmaker. Hater of all he sees, subject of feverish Reddit threads, and recipient of a joke wedding invitation I sent because I thought it would be funny if his people sent a present.

Well, he is carrying a very large gift wrapped in silver and white. He has a designer duffel slung over one shoulder, and he starts out toward us, like arriving to a stranger’s wedding in a helicopter is an everyday thing for him.

He’s bigger than I’d remembered from photos. And somehow more there.

My whole family’s watching. Confused.

Danielle’s future sister-in-law, Cara, comes over and grabs her arm. “Is that one of your people?”

“No way,” Danielle says. “He’s not one of yours? He’s somebody’s. He’s heading this way with a wedding gift.”

Cara frowns. “Is he an actor of some sort?”

Danielle turns a suspicious gaze to me. I can hear the words screaming in her brain: What did you do?

My heart bongos in my ears. Bruno Blackwood has arrived just in time to make me look like a screw-up when my entire mission here is to remind my family that I’m a trustworthy person who belongs here.

How could I have sent those stupid invitations to rando celebs?

And why oh why did he come?

Luckily, everybody is too stunned to go out and greet him. This is my chance.

Or more like, my Hail Mary.

I put my hand over my chest. “He came! I didn’t think he’d make it.”

Danielle frowns. “This is your plus-one? You didn’t RSVP for a plus-one.”

“He must’ve had a last-minute change of plans or something and decided to surprise me.”

“We gave the caterer certain numbers,” Danielle is saying, even though I happen to know people dropped out at the last minute.

“I’m sure he won’t eat much!” I’m off there like a shot, weaving around stunned guests with their little plates of hors d’oeuvres, and then bolting across the expanse of green grass to intercept him.

Bruno Blackwood stops when he sees me bulleting toward him. I’m sure I’m a scary sight, running at him in my sad blue dress.

Behind him, another man is climbing out of the helicopter. He has the same burnished brass hair as Bruno—light brown with plenty of gold, like the fixtures on a really high-end farmhouse renovation.

“Bruno.” I touch his sleeve and lower my voice. “I just want to profusely apologize for sending you that wedding invitation. It was a stupid joke sort of thing trying to impress my sister, a.k.a. the bride. I swear to bejesus, I didn’t mean to fool you or make you think you knew us and like you had to drop everything and come to this wedding. Clearly, I wasted your valuable time, and for that I am so sorry. Like so, so sorry! And I’ll explain everything later and I’ll find a way to make things right—I swear I will⁠—”

Is that an annoyed expression on his face? I can’t tell. I can’t read him. It’s like his intense handsomeness is blocking my brainwaves.

“But right now, I’m begging you, like I will literally owe you my firstborn, if you would just, for the next few minutes, play along like we know each other in front of my family. You’re my plus-one, okay?”

Then, in a low voice, he says, “Can we carry out this ruse without my having anything whatsoever to do with your firstborn?”

I stiffen. “Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Yes.” The other man is catching up. Bruno flicks his gaze to him and then back to me. “I’m your plus-one?”

“If only you would do that, I would be so deeply in your debt. And I get it; you probably have everything a person could ever need...”

Before I can finish my desperate plea, Bruno’s arm slides around my waist and pulls me against him. He kisses my hair.

I nearly go catatonic. What? He’s actually playing along? I feel like I’m in a dream.

“Name,” he growls into my head.

“Um... Kelsey?”

“Was that a question? Are you sure or do you need a second to decide? Because you sound like you might not be sure what your own goddamn name is.” He is annoyed. Well, why wouldn’t he be?

“Kelsey Winters.” I pull back and gaze up into his eyes. “Thank you, thank you thank you thank you⁠—”

He settles a warm hand on my cheek. All words fall out of my brain as he gives me a smile that’s beautiful as the sun and all the stars. “I’ve missed you, baby.”

The man who shares Bruno’s hair color and excellent bone structure stands a few feet away, blinking at us uncertainly, as though we’ve just shapeshifted into Care Bears or something.

Bruno turns to him. “Thanks for the ride, Russell.”

Russell eyes me, incomprehension all over his face. Is it my catatonic state showing on my face? Is it my sadface dress? “You’re not going to introduce us?” Russell asks.

Bruno sets a hand on the small of my back. “This is Kelsey. Kelsey, allow me to present my brother Russell. Russell is now leaving.”

Russell’s eyes flick to Bruno. “Oh, come on. Come on,” he adds, emphasizing the “on.”

Bruno frowns. “Come on...what?”

Russell looks me up and down. “You expect me to buy this?”

Bruno lowers his voice to a growl. “Take that insulting tone with Kelsey one more time and we’ll have a problem. Understood?”

Russell’s suspicious gaze suggests that nothing is understood.

Bruno lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles. My heart nearly pounds out of my throat.

“And you met where?” Russell asks.

Bruno grumbles something that sounds like “none of your business” at the exact same time I blurt out, “He saw me in my Broadway show. Anything Goes.”

“Bruno doesn’t like musical theater,” Russell says.

“And you’re an expert on my taste since when?” Bruno asks.

“Since I happen to know you don’t like anything fun. Or lively or funny.”

I can see at this point that Bruno’s “none of your business” was the superior answer, but it’s too late.

I smile up at Bruno. “Well, he liked Anything Goes. He was waiting outside the theater door to meet me.”

“Kelsey?”

I spin around.

It’s Danielle, coming up with Cara and some of the cousins. Hopefully the babysitters have gotten back on the job.

“Behold my sister, Danielle, a.k.a. our beautiful bride-to-be.” I try to say it jokey and not like I’m giving him critical information for our ruse. “This is my friend Bruno and his brother Russell.”

Danielle looks at the helicopter. At Bruno. At Russell. At me.

“His brother’s not actually staying. He just gave him a ride.”

Bruno puts out his hand. “I’ve heard so much about you, Danielle.” The way he says it, so sexy and rumbly, I nearly melt.

So does Danielle, judging from her dumbfounded expression.

What have I done? I have to get him out of here.

Chapter Four

BRUNO

The introductions go on and on.

Somebody invites Russell to stay and have a drink, and if there weren’t camera crews flying into the estate, he’d probably go for it. He gets out of there, thank God, and we head toward the main gathering area, a broad stone patio spread beneath sailcloth tents strung with small lights. White linen tables ripple in the ocean breeze, and hydrangeas overflow from massive planters. Servers wander through the crowd with trays of champagne.

People seem stunned by the appearance of Kelsey’s big city boyfriend, even a bit put off. I wonder briefly if it’s an issue with the RSVP like Sadie warned, or maybe because we are so obviously mismatched as a couple.

But as the introductions go on, I get the feeling that some of this weirdness is directed at Kelsey.

If she notices, she doesn’t show it; she glides through it all with determined brightness.

A pair of hotel porters approach. One takes the gift; the other takes my bag.

“Put it in her room. I’ll unpack it myself.”

“Yes. Naturally!” Kelsey says, baffled. “Okay, yeah.”

The other porter turns to her. “Room number?”

“Um... I’m in 2B.”

The porter cocks his head politely. “That was... 2B?” Clearly people who arrive in helicopters don’t stay in 2B. Scruffy little opportunists who try to scam billionaires out of gifts is who stays in 2B.

“You heard the lady,” I say. “2B.”

This sends them off.

I watch Russell’s helicopter disappear over the horizon. I don’t blame him for being incredulous. The last time he and Adrian pressed me on the subject of meeting someone and settling down, I believe I replied along the lines of, “You mean join the whole death march of love and family like a fucking lemming off the cliff?”

My little scammer is practically vibrating with nervous energy, chattering to her sister about how we’ve been keeping our romance under wraps, but I knew how important this wedding was, and of course was eager to meet the family.

She’s high energy and expressive. If her words were written out on a caption underneath her face, every sentence would be followed by three exclamation marks.

It would have to be somebody like this, wouldn’t it? I’ve never been one for romance, but back when I succumbed to various obligations that required dates—before I figured out that a man could literally be his own island if he lived on a yacht, before I realized that fucking a woman was in no way worth tolerating a woman—my type was morose, reserved, fashionable women who made zero emotional demands on me. Women who acted, at all times, just like their photos in magazines.

I do not go for dimples. I do not go for bright eyes. And I certainly do not go for women who are walking, talking exclamation marks.

“How could you not tell me you were involved...” Her sister flicks her eyes to me.

“I promised I wouldn’t.” Kelsey links her arm in mine. “Bruno is devastatingly private and he hates the paparazzi.”

“Hate them,” I grumble.

Kelsey gives me an amused smile, dimples out in full force, as if my hatred of the paparazzi is somehow amusing.

“So much!” she whispers dramatically. “They give him fits.”

“I wouldn’t say fits,” I say.

“Not literally fits,” she says.

At least it wasn’t Adrian in that helicopter. Adrian has five times the bullshit detector Russell ever had. He can spot a lie from miles off. He’d have had questions I’m not prepared to answer.

Of course, Russell will be filling him in right about now, texting furiously:

No, it’s not made up. He’s actually here with someone. Yes, a girl—a real one. Not his type at all. No designer dress. No pout. Just...normal.

This whole setup is so perversely outlandish, it might be brilliant.

She’s chattering away about her admiration for my watches, now. She’s tall for a woman. Her thick dark hair has a large purple streak down one side that in no way matches her matronly blue dress.

“Bruno is fascinated with the concept of time,” she says.

I grind my teeth together. “Though, as I’ve told you, I don’t consider time a concept.”

More people gather around. I’m introduced to the mother of the bride, a woman in a cream sequin blazer and smart slacks. “Kelsey!” Her air kisses on Kelsey’s cheeks don’t quite land. “So good of you to come. And you’ve brought a date!”

Kelsey beams at her mother. “Mom! So good to see you. You look amazing.” She introduces us and repeats the stage-door story.

“A Broadway show!” the mother exclaims, as if this news is a mixed bag. Mom’s not so sure how she feels about a Broadway show. I’m not so sure about how I feel about Broadway shows either, but if I had a daughter, I’d probably know she was in one.

Well, every family is its own little piece of hell, and this piece of hell belongs to this Kelsey woman.

She pulls me closer. “I bet you’re tired after your trip. I’ll show you to our room.”

“Good idea.”

We head across the yard to the walk that leads to the hotel.

“Thank you again,” she says as soon as we’re out of earshot. “I know you don’t know me...” She keeps on with the thanks.

It’s boring and tiresome to be thanked extensively for things, so I tune her out, strategizing my exit. I pull out my phone and text Sadie to track the helicopter to make sure Russell’s really going back to Newport. I won’t call my own helicopter to come get me—that’s too obvious. I’ll have her send a car around the front of the hotel to take me to the marina and have one of the crew come out in the tender boat to meet me. I’ll be back on deck by nightfall. I check my watch and text my chef to have a meal ready in two hours, three tops.

The girl stops blathering. “Bruno!”

“What?”

“You’re not even listening, are you?”

“No.”

“I just don’t know what your thoughts are. Like...you’re not really staying here, right?”

“Don’t you worry. You got your gift and your fifteen minutes of fame, and I got what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“Excuse me?”

“What did you want?”

“A scheduling conflict for the weekend.”

“Ohhhh. So that’s why you came.”

“It certainly wasn’t my love of strangers’ weddings.”

She snorts, and we enter the hotel, which is passable, I suppose in that trying-to-be-Hamptons-chic way. But much to my surprise, instead of heading to the elevator or up the grand staircase, she takes me into a stairwell and we head down. Could the B in room 2B truly mean basement? I match her pace down a hallway that’s seen better days.

She stops at a door that looks like it might lead to the boiler room. When she opens it, I realize that was optimistic.

“This is your room?”

A look of embarrassment flashes across her face. “There was some kind of overbooking event and I got volunteered as tribute.”

“Do the rats handle turndown service or is that extra?”

“What do you care? You’re not staying here.”

“Certainly not,” I say.

“You don’t have to be like that. I mean, yes, it’s substandard, but—look at the wallpaper. Isn’t it amazing?” She slides her hand over a patch of wall unblemished by various stains I’d rather not think about. “Probably left over from before the place went preppy. Don’t you love the little boats and people with parasols? And there’s a random bird here and there... It’s got real personality, and a kind of faded glamour aspect.”

The little scammer has opinions about crusty old wallpaper. I would have thought her taste would run more to Gucci.

So she doesn’t add up. Not my problem.

I check my phone. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to do some photos and make an appearance, have a drink out there, do more photos, and then I’m out of here. You can make my apologies for me.”

She nods. “I’ll tell people you had a watchmaking emergency.”

“Watchmaking doesn’t have emergencies.”

“Maybe one of the tiny gears broke. Or the second hand is misbehaving. Or your diamond-encrusted whatever needs emergency encrusting.”

“No, you’ll say I had to leave. You won’t elaborate on why. Something came up and he had to go.”

“But what if they want to know what?”

“You say ‘something came up.’”

“But I’ll already have said that.”

“And you’ll say it again. Add a shrug if you must.”

She furrows her brow. “But that makes it sound like you didn’t give me a reason. Like you just left.”

“I don’t trouble you with the complexities of my life.”

“That doesn’t say much for our relationship.”

“I’m different than other men you’ve dated. You’re thrilled to be with me, and happy with whatever I give you.”

“Oh my God.” She twists her face into an expression of utter disgust. This woman. Everything she feels goes straight to her face. It’s almost alarming. “I would never be in a relationship like that.”

“That’s the only kind of relationship I’m ever in. You’ve made compromises.”

“You’re the one who was waiting outside the theater door, begging for a moment of my time.”

“Something came up.”

“Yikes. Okay.” She looks out the window where an employee is dumping a load of garbage.

I don’t know much about weddings, and I very much prefer to keep it that way, but it seems like the sister of the bride should have a better room than this.

“What I don’t get is, why would somebody like you need a scheduling conflict? I thought billionaires get to do whatever they want?”

“Not this billionaire. Not this weekend.”

“What’s happening this weekend?”

“None of your business.” I look around the room. “We need to get a good number of pictures before I leave, but probably not in here. Maybe in the lobby. Do you have something more presentable to wear?”

“Excuse me?”

“Clothes. I’m guessing you have something more presentable for tonight.”

She straightens. “I’m not even a real person to you, am I?”

“Which is convenient, because I’m not a real person to you either.”

She huffs and moves toward the closet. “The clothes situation is not ideal for what you’re going for, I’m afraid.”

I glance around the room again and a darker thought occurs to me. Russell—or worse, Adrian—could make one phone call and find me in this storage closet masquerading as a hotel room. I pull out my phone. “Sadie. I’m at the Hamptons Royale and we need an upgrade.”

“Good luck with that,” Kelsey mumbles.

Sadie wants to know the checkout date. I relay the question to Kelsey.

“Sunday,” she says.

Sadie gets on it.

“Don’t bother. They’re fully booked.” Kelsey’s still buried in the closet. “There’s nothing available.”

“There’s always something available.”

“There isn’t here.”

“We’ll see.”

Kelsey is throwing outfits on the bed.

My phone buzzes. A text from Sadie. We’ll be in the top-floor suite.

“Staff is coming to relocate us to the top-floor suite. We’ll do pictures there.”

She turns around. “What’s this, now?”

“We’re switching rooms.”

“You can’t just come in here and take over like I have no say in anything.”

“What was that out there? Please please please please please? I believe those were your exact words.”

“It wasn’t that many pleases.”

“And now you’re getting a better room. How is that a problem?”

“Because you can’t just come in here and tell me how things are going to work.”

“Would you rather I go out there and tell them about your TikTok trick?”

Her eyes go wide. “Are you literally blackmailing me?”

“I’m upgrading our accommodations because we’re both invested in pulling this off.”

“You are seriously the worst. Do you just live in a world where nobody says no to you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Highly recommended.”

She makes a face. As faces of disgust go, it’s a strong one. “You were on Broadway, you said? I believe it. These faces of yours could be seen from the moon.”

“Oh, ha ha. You’re horrible.”

“I’m sorry, can you remind me who invited who to this wedding on false pretenses?”

“It wasn’t false pretenses, it was stupidity. Normal people get to be a little stupid sometimes.”

“Look. We’re upgrading. We take a few photos, we go to the cocktail party tonight, and then I’m out of your hair. Meanwhile you’re sleeping in a suite and your sister gets a wedding present that will make her cry. Think of it as the Cinderella treatment.”

“It feels more like the Rapunzel treatment to me.”

I roll my eyes despite myself.

Chapter Five

KELSEY

There’s a knock at the door.

“Come,” Bruno says because apparently when you’re a billionaire, you don’t have to add excess words like in.

Three employees materialize in matching charcoal uniforms: two women and a man.

The taller woman clasps her hands. “Mr. Blackwood. Ms. Winters. May we offer you complimentary cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on the palace balcony while we oversee your relocation to the Ocean Crown Suite?”

Bruno exhales through his nose like a man condemned to suffer an unbearable inconvenience. “Will we have the palace balcony to ourselves?”

“We’ve cordoned it off for you,” she says.

“Wait,” I say. “We’re doing this now? I’m going to need another practice session with the kids before their dance.”

“We’ll have you moved in a jiffy.” The younger woman starts gathering my clothes from the bed with the sort of careful handling they definitely don’t deserve while the man goes into the bathroom.

I cringe, trying to think if there are weird wads of tissue anywhere or Q-tips that didn’t make the flight to the trash can. “Umm...excuse me?”

He pops his head out. “Miss?”

“I can pack the bathroom myself. It’s a bit chaotic in there.”

“They don’t mind,” Bruno says. “Let’s go.”

The woman holding my clothes gives me a sunny smile. “We’ll be very thorough and discreet.”

“No, it’s just that...okay.” I grab my phone, my favorite muumuu beach cover-up, and a bright pink shawl. “Sorry in advance. Regarding the bathroom.”

“Shouldn’t you be wearing your wedding guest attire for the veranda photos?”

“This is my wedding guest attire.”

Something flickers across his expression.

“What? I put this pink shawl over the dress and it’s basically a whole new look.”

He does not appear impressed.

I grab the cover-up. “And this is my beach cover-up. I could wear this, too. You’re allowed to go a little wild with a beach cover-up. This one is from my actual closet. The other stuff is more to please the family.”

Bruno stares at the cover-up.

“Yesteryear couture, baby. It’s fun and wild!”

“What size are you?”

“Size? Basically a medium. Or large.”

He’s texting furiously.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re upgrading your wardrobe.”

“What? I’m not a giant doll for you to dress.”

“If only.”

“My dresses are fine.”

“Fine for your charade, maybe. Not for mine.”

“Okay, yes, some of this stuff is me trying to be something I’m not. And failing. Most of it. But this cover-up? It belongs on the French Riviera.”

“Perhaps the bottom of it.”

“My clothes are fine.”

He gives me this look with just his left eyebrow raised. What does it mean?

“I’m the sister who marches to her own fashion drum.”

The eyebrow goes higher. Okay, it’s a skeptical look.

“You can’t just upgrade everything, including me.”

“You invited a billionaire, and now you’re getting a billionaire. This is the billionaire experience.”

“I think I’d rather have the axe murderer experience.”

“The night is young,” Bruno says.

I try not to smile. I hate that he’s funny. You don’t get to be hot and rich and funny.

Yet here we are.

Apparently unfair advantages are also part of the billionaire experience.

Here’s the thing about being managed by a billionaire: it happens so smoothly you don’t notice until you’re already on the veranda, which turns out to be a lush and stunningly gorgeous paradise of flowers and lounge chairs, and it’s cordoned off just for you so that the riffraff can’t bother you, and there’s a bottle of champagne and a cheese plate sitting on the table.

“So all this is just for us?” I ask.

Bruno waves. “If you want it.” Like it’s a plate of live eels or something.

I taste every different kind of cheese. “This one has caramelized onions in it!”

Color Bruno uninterested.

I finish my tour of the most exquisite cheeses known to humankind while he pays attention to his phone and endures the displeasure of being here, which he seems to express through his eyebrows, and most specifically his left eyebrow, which he raises a lot as if to assess or inspect, but even when he’s not raising it, it never quite settles level with the other, like his brows are just slightly uneven, adding to the sense that he’s always in scrutiny mode.

I re-apply my lipstick. “Okay, let’s do this. Grab a glass and we’ll do a face-only selfie shot.”

We decide on the ocean as our background and I take a few pictures.

“Some of these turned out cute! Should I text them to you?”

“Text them to my assistant, Sadie.”

I give him a jaded look. “You don’t want to give me your number, do you?”

“No.”

Unbelievable!

“Well, just so you know, I’ll be routing this through several fake IP addresses, so when you fall in love with me and try to find me next week, good luck.”

“I’ll just show up at your stage door.”

I give him a big smile-frown. “I suppose this is a good time to inform you that after the third time you showed up there trying to get in, we had to electrify the doorknob.”

His expression is unreadable.

“But at least we’ll have these fantastic photos to remember each other by.” Right then, I get a fun new idea: I put on the pink shawl over my dress and arrange myself on one of the couches lifting my glass and making a kiss-face. “Grab your phone.”

“I don’t take pictures.”

“What do you mean, you don’t take pictures?”

“It’s a known thing. I do not take pictures.”

“Who doesn’t take pictures? How do you document your life?”

He points to his head.

“But what about fun events in your life that you want to remember forever and ever, and show your family and friends and all that?”

“I don’t have events like that.”

“I feel like that’s an axe murderer thing to say.”

He shrugs, and it’s only here that I remember the whole hermit-living-on-a-yacht thing, and I feel a little bit bad for him suddenly. This guy literally lives alone on a yacht. That article about him never explained why, exactly. In any case, what would he photograph? Some seaweed? An incoming squall?

“Anyhow, we’re doing your alibi right now, so if I really were your girlfriend and you’re here meeting my family at a family wedding, you’d surely take pictures then.”

“I don’t take pictures. Other people take the pictures.”

It’s here I’m really getting what I’m dealing with. Yes, he’s hot and a little bit funny, but is he just another kid I need to manage? I use the timer to do the kiss face picture, and we take some cocktail party shots with me with my pink shawl over my sad blue dress, so yay for one more costume change.

I partake of more of the cheese plate while Bruno does something on his phone and then a pair of hotel workers appear to lead us to our new room, which turns out to be on the top floor of the hotel.

Scratch that: it is the top floor.

The room is all silk curtains and ocean views and a marble bathroom like something out of a magazine. I wander through it in a daze, half expecting an angelic choir to descend from the ceiling.

Bruno surveys the whole thing with a faint sigh. Oh, the life of an antisocial billionaire.

“When they put me downstairs, they said nothing else was available.”

“You didn’t expect them to put you up here, did you?”

“Maybe they would’ve put Danielle and Tyler up here, since they are the ones getting married.”

“Not in this suite. Anyway, it sounds like this suite was booked for one of the three days.”

“But now it’s not?”

“Sadie took care of it.”

“What does that mean? Did she make them an offer they couldn’t refuse?”

“More or less.”

“You think everything is for sale.”

He gives a little shrug, oh-so-amused. “Anything worth having.”

I narrow my eyes. “And it is my most fervent wish that I hope someday you find the one thing you want more than anything in the world, and it’s the one thing your money can’t touch. And it’s excruciating.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment, darling. Maybe we could work that into our wedding vows.”

He’s insufferable. Though admittedly, that was a good one.

I explore the place. It has two palatial bedrooms and a spa-like bathroom that’s all inlaid with beautiful blue mosaic tile, and there are plants and a sunken tub and a sauna and, much to my delight, a closet with the fluffiest robes I’ve ever seen. I smile. It’s hard to be mad when there are fluffy robes like this in my closet. I put one on and bring the other one out to toss at Bruno. “Costume change! We are nailing this!”

He inspects it and puts it on.

I go over and tuck his collar into the fabric, my knuckles catching his neck, connecting with warm skin, just for a second. He doesn’t move. I keep going.

“This is our just-bathed, had-wild-sex selfie,” I say, snapping a picture. “You are so eager to please me. So very eager.” Snap snap. “I have to say you don’t do badly. There’s room for improvement for sure, but we’re working on your skills.”

“My skills in that area do not need work.”

“You get a little chin dimple when you scowl and I love it.” I tip the phone toward him. “And when you’re pleasuring me, your brow furrows, because you are really concentrating. It is so cute. You are so into me.”

He scowls harder. I smile wider and take another selfie.

I already know it’s hilarious, but I have to see. I hold it up. There we are: me, luminous and delighted in my fluffy robe, and Bruno in his billionaire grump mode. “This is our couple dynamic. I am unbelievably delightful and you are thrillingly scowly.”

He moves from scowl to growl.

I grin. “Seriously, you are so lucky. Of all the fake girlfriends you could have had, you got me. I have stage skills. And it takes a lot to get me down.” I tip my head against his shoulder and snap one from above, cheek to cheek.

“The fact that it takes a lot to get you down just shows you have no discernment.”

“Hashtag no discernment!” I take another one.

His lip quirks. For a split second I think he found that funny. Then I decide it’s probably a grimace. I remind myself that I want to be here, but he doesn’t. He just likes being all alone on a boat.

I suddenly feel bad for him again and stop joking around.

“Seriously, Bruno, I am grateful for you playing along. The fact that I’ve been invited here to this wedding is huge for me. There were some major family misunderstandings that have kept me apart from my family for a while. But the air is clearing now, and it means everything to me. And I’m really glad that you’re getting something out of it.”

“And your sister gets a present from a billionaire.”

“What is the present, anyway?”

“No idea,” he says. “But it’ll be expensive. Isn’t that what’s important?”

“I never cared about the present. I just wanted Danielle to have this...I don’t know, this moment of surprise and delight. It was a total whim. I’d flubbed the calligraphy on a few of the extra invites, and I didn’t want Danielle to think I was being careless, and then I remembered these reels I saw where you invite famous people to your wedding. You had just that profile in The Sunday Ledger, and everybody’s been obsessed with you ever since, so I invited you, Ryan Gosling, and Harry Styles.”

He frowns, unamused, and glances at his watch.

“I know. I thought it would be funny. I imagined Danielle telling wedding stories—the flowers, the light, how beautiful everything was—and then she’d get to say, ‘and Ryan Gosling sent a crystal fruit bowl!’ It would be this fun thing between us. A reminder of how we used to be. I was the little sister who did wild, spontaneous things and she’d get swept up in them with me, and she’d grab my hands and laugh and look at me like she used to...”

I stare out at the ocean. Why am I telling him all this? This whole story is just making me sad.

“When I hear myself spelling it all out, the plan was clearly flawed.”

Bruno snorts. “Ryan Gosling sending a crystal fruit bowl?”

Chapter Six

BRUNO

The dress problem is solved. That’s what I pay Sadie for.

Concierge there helped me locate a local stylist willing to grab a selection of cocktail dresses and show up with her bag of hair and makeup tricks. Expect her in a few.

I give her a thumbs up.

Right on cue, there’s a knock at the door. It’s the concierge with a woman dressed in black, all sharp angles and professional authority right down to her hair, which is slicked into a severe knot. She has a garment bag over her shoulder and is pulling a small suitcase. She introduces herself as Margot.

I lead her into the main area and call for Kelsey.

Margot’s eyes scan the suite approvingly before landing on Kelsey, who crosses from her bedroom, barefoot. Still in the blue dress.

“You’re the medium/large?” Margot seems skeptical.

“Well, uh...”

Margot unzips the garment bag.

Kelsey’s eyes go wide. “You brought an actual Dior dress?”

“Three sizes. This is their summer collection. Mist blue.” She picks one out and hands it to Kelsey. “I think this one will fit.”

Kelsey holds it a little bit away from herself, like it might bite her. “Wow. Very...intense.”

“Is there a problem?” Margot glances between us, confused. “This garment is from the same collection as one of the photos your assistant supplied me with. It seemed as if you wanted something architectural with structured shoulders...”

“Soooo structured,” Kelsey whispers.

“This is exactly what we asked for,” I assure Margot, though I can see now that, while it’s the preferred dress for the sorts of women I used to escort to family-connected benefits and galas, it is exactly the wrong dress for Kelsey.

But what does it matter? It’s the right dress for my date, and that’s what Kelsey begged to be. My date. Her plus-one. And she herself admitted that she brought the wrong clothes to the wedding. How is this not a win-win?

Apparently not when Kelsey’s involved.

“I feel like the bodice could double as a bulletproof vest,” she says.

“It’s a classic sheath silhouette with steel boning,” Margot explains. “It creates a long, clean line anchored by shoulder geometry. Go ahead and try it on!”

“I don’t know. They’d be less surprised if I went out there in a clown suit.”

Margot’s eyes flick to Kelsey’s blue dress and her expression tightens.

Something strange flickers in my chest. “Let’s get this going.” My voice comes out sharper than intended. “Don’t you have that kid dance thing to finish leading?”

With a sigh, she disappears into the bedroom with Margot following. I head out into the living area to get some work done and not worry whether my fake date is happy about her dress situation.

Murmured voices and click-clacks emanate from the far bedroom. Water runs. There’s a blow dryer. Not thirty minutes later, Kelsey strolls into the suite’s main room.

I look up from my laptop and don’t immediately look back down.

She is utterly transformed. It’s...surprising.

Her hair has been shellacked back from her face, sleek and controlled, with her dark curls gathered and cascading down from angular white clips. The purple streak has been tucked away somewhere. The icy-blue dress hugs her curves, as though she was poured into it.

Her lips are rosy, her lashes darker and more defined. Cheekbones I hadn’t noticed before have emerged, contoured into prominence.

Technically, she looks attractive. Stunning, really. The kind of woman you’d see at a charity gala or an investor dinner. The kind of woman I’ve taken to a hundred of those things...

Kelsey catches my eye. “Ground control to Major Tom!” She flattens her palms and does a stiff robot motion with her arms.

Margot rolls her eyes as she emerges behind her with her gear. “You look stunning. You are really carrying this off! Very nice. Very natural.”

Natural?

Kelsey catches my eye, hers shining with amusement.

Natural.

For a split second, we’re in on a joke together.

I pull my gaze away from Kelsey’s and thank Margot. She packs herself off, wheeling her case out with brisk efficiency.

“You look great,” I say.

Kelsey tilts her head as if to say, puh-lease.

“You look like somebody I’d date.”

“Yeah, you need to get out more.” She pauses. “Or maybe less.”

She turns to examine herself in the large mirror by the entryway, and I watch her face as she takes in her reflection. I track the movement of her hands as she runs them over her hips, down and up and...I wait...and down again.

The dress does fit her perfectly. Arrestingly so. I note that as a fact and look elsewhere.

“I can’t really breathe in this thing,” she says, almost to herself. “Is that normal? Is breathing optional at billionaire events?”

“You get used to it.”

She meets my eyes in the mirror. “Hard pass.”

“Look at the bright side. You wear an expensive dress you hate for a few hours, and you get this gorgeous suite all to yourself for the rest of the weekend.”

“Hmm.” She goes back into the bedroom and emerges with a small white purse thing dangling from her wrist.

“So how long have we been together?” she asks as we take the private elevator down to the lobby level.

“Long enough for you to invite me to a family wedding, it seems.”

“Not good enough. People are going to want details.”

“Have you never learned how to stonewall? How long have we been together? Long enough. Where was our first date? A little place we like to keep a secret. When did you know it was serious? You know when you know. See how that works?”

She snorts. “That’s not stonewalling, that’s being an insufferable enigma.”

“So be it.”

“Do you have a favorite food? A favorite musical artist? A favorite color.”

“No, no, and black.”

She swears under her breath, lips moving expressively. My eyes trace the column of her throat. The swell of her breast above the slight shimmer of the fabric.

“My favorite food is the maraschino cherry, same as my friend Tabitha. Favorite musical artist: right now I’d have to say Florence and the Machine, or maybe ABBA. Favorite color: dusty violet purple. Not that you asked. And I know that you are dying to practice-kiss me now that your people have me dressed up like the kind of outer-space robot you’re into, but you’re going to have to contain yourself.”

I swallow back the dryness in my throat. “Kissing is not something I need to practice.”

“Groan.”

The elevator doors slide open and we pass through the lobby across polished marble floors between enormous floral arrangements, then out through French doors onto a red stone terrace.

Wide stone steps flow gracefully down to a vast expanse of manicured lawn where white tents are billowing gently in the early evening breeze beyond.

“I’m going to say we’ve been together a year,” Kelsey says. “The show had a pretty big opening week about a year ago. It would’ve made sense for you to have seen it then.”

“Sounds good.”

“If you aren’t going to help make our story, you at least need to stay nearby so I can keep our lies straight. Because if people get you alone, they are one hundred percent going to interrogate you, and honestly this whole thing is already wildly unbelievable.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m a master of being an insufferable enigma.”

She slips her arm through mine as we begin our descent. Her hand is small and warm against my forearm. The shoes Margot brought are giving her trouble on the stairs, and she grips more tightly.

“You’re really into stonewalling.” She glances up at me. “That’s an interesting skill.”

“One of the most underrated.”

“What are the others? Stoic brooding? Arrogant helicopter arrivals? Dressing women in science fiction garb?”

A group of cocktail-attire-wearing guests are conversing brightly at the bottom of the stairs, champagne flutes catching the light. A string quartet plays something mildly classical near a fountain.

And then it starts: a double take here, a whisper there. People who saw Kelsey earlier in her other dress have noticed that she’s descending the stairs in couture.

Kelsey tightens her grip on my arm. Is she pleased? I can’t tell. I find that I want her to be pleased.

“Kelsey?” A woman stops mid-conversation, flute paused in mid-air. “You look...my goodness.”

“Thanks! You look great, too.” Kelsey’s voice is back to that brightness she had before, as though she’s performing in some way.

The sister, Danielle, materializes at her side. “Whoa! I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Well...it’s not every day my sister gets married.” Something passes between them.

But I don’t need to.

Danielle studies me next, looking as baffled as she did when I arrived.

“I’m going to finish getting the kids ready for their little performance, and Bruno wants to come with,” Kelsey says.

The other woman waves dismissively. “I’m sure whatever they do is going to be fine.”

“We haven’t even worked out the finale!” Kelsey protests. “I have something fun cooked up.”

“Okay, well.” Danielle turns to me. “Bruno, Tyler’s hanging out with some of the guys over by the bar if you’d rather not deal with a herd of kids. I’m sure you and Kelsey don’t need to be joined at the hip all weekend.”

“Actually, I’d like to watch Kelsey finish up with the kids.”

Kelsey beams up at me. “We both have such busy schedules; we never get to spend enough time together.”

“Tyler tells me you live on a yacht,” Danielle says. “That must make logistics hard.”

“Have you been to his yacht, Kelsey?” the other woman asks.

I cringe inwardly. Lord knows what Kelsey is going to come up with, but then she looks up at me with a twinkle in her eye. “We make it work.”

That’s my girl. I pull her close; she tucks against my side like she belongs there. I kiss the top of her head. “Let’s go.”

Danielle looks between us like she’s not sure about this whole thing. You can almost see the wheels turning in her head.

“I’m excited for you to see this, Bru!” Kelsey pulls me away toward a white tent on the far side of the lawn.

“Make that the last time you call me Bru.”

“And I call you Brunhilda when you’re in the doghouse.”

“Except you don’t,” I say.

We walk in silence for a few paces, the sounds of the cocktail party fading behind us.

“What was the major family misunderstanding that you think has gotten cleared up?” I ask before I can think better of it.

“Nothing important. Not anymore,” she says without looking at me.

“Was it you misunderstanding them or the other way around?”

“They were misunderstanding something about me, but they see now that they were wrong.”

This surprises me. From what I’ve seen, the family is coming off a bit angry and standoffish. Like they’re the victims, somehow. I want to push further. I tell myself it’s not my business.

“MISS KELSEY!”

A small body hurtles out of the tent opening and attaches itself to Kelsey’s legs. Within seconds, she’s surrounded by a swarm of children.

“We practiced the spin!”

“Clarice keeps messing up the arm part⁠—”

“I do NOT⁠—”

“Miss Kelsey, watch what I can do!”

“Is that your BOYFRIEND?”

This last question is shouted by a tiny girl with pigtails. Eight pairs of eyes turn toward me.

Kelsey makes a big “you caught me” face. The kids laugh and then she laughs—this laugh is a messy, unself-conscious laugh with a snort in there, which makes the kids laugh anew. It comes to me that the bright bell-like giggle she did with her family is fake.

“This is my friend Bruno, and he wants a sneak peek.”

“He looks mean,” the pigtailed girl whispers.

“He’s not mean,” Kelsey says. “He’s just...very, very serious. No one knows why. Guess what his favorite color is.”

The kids scream out the names of every possible color.

“I’ll tell you the answer after we nail the ending and do one full run-through, how about that?”

“They’re not going to be happy with the answer,” I say under my breath.

“Oh, they’ll be happy. It’s outrageous.” With that, she joins the kids and leads them in a dance—as best she can in that dress, which really does look confining. Did none of my former dates have that problem? Then again, they didn’t move around much. They were really only there to stand around.

I don’t enjoy children as a rule, though I don’t encounter many of them. One of the perks of having money is that you don’t have to interact with people you don’t want to interact with. But Kelsey seems to have a genuinely good time with them. And they’re certainly having a good time with her. The girls want to be her.

I get it. There’s something mesmerizing about the way she moves, a kind of wild freedom, even poured into that dress.

She has such a compelling presence; no doubt that’s why she got picked for a Broadway show, which I’m quite sure is a cutthroat world. She clearly has lots of training, but her effervescence would give her an edge.

Eventually she declares the kids ready, and we emerge from the tent with them all trailing behind us. It’s just before six—the official start of the cocktail party, according to Sadie. And indeed, the terrace has filled with wedding guests. Waiters glide through the crowd with more trays of champagne. A string quartet still plays the same aggressively pleasant music.

The bride and groom take their places near the steps and thank everyone for traveling—some from as far as California, even Canada. There’s a good deal of blather I don’t listen to: gratitude, excitement, promises of a beautiful weekend ahead.

Danielle announces that the children have prepared a “special surprise” and would everyone please direct their attention to the lawn.

Kelsey squeezes my arm. “Showtime!”

The kids line up on the lawn, vibrating with energy, some hopping outright. Kelsey positions herself off to the side near a potted plant as the string quartet launches into Bohemian Rhapsody.

I should be checking my messages. Texting Sadie about the car. Instead I’m watching ten children dance and mime opera. One boy wanders into another. One girl decides to abandon the choreography entirely, but Kelsey brings her back from the brink with ease.

I suppose it would all be charming. If you like that kind of thing.

My gaze keeps drifting to Kelsey, who has resumed her position behind the potted plant, leading from the side with big movements.

She really is good.

But this is what she does, isn’t it?

The finale involves a chaotic group pose. The crowd erupts in applause. The children jump and scream.

Kelsey hangs back, clapping for them.

One of the cousins appears at my elbow. “She always was good with kids.” There’s an odd sense of reluctant admiration in her words.

Kelsey rushes up, slightly breathless, cheeks flushed. “You guys better not be talking about me!”

“Ha, no!” the cousin says a beat too quickly. “Hey, somebody’s been wanting to meet you!” She waves excitedly to somebody. “It’s Tyler!”

“Our handsome groom!” Kelsey says, concluding accurately that I didn’t remember.

The groom is a beefy blond man who pumps my hand enthusiastically. “Bruno Blackwood! We’re so stoked you’re here.” He continues shaking my hand. “I’ve followed your work for years, ever since you put out that Epoch edition.”

“Ah, the Epoch.” I nod, feeling awkward.

“You found room in a market that, who knew you could build that niche? Just ultra luxury all the way. Handcrafted.”

“Well, I killed a lot of watches to get where I am today.” This is something I say when people give me compliments, because what am I supposed to say? I know the watches are good. I work on them day and night. I’ve arranged my life so people will leave me the hell alone so that I can do that and only that.

Then I remember Sadie’s advice. “A simple thank you will do, Bruno.”

“Anyway, thank you,” I say, hoping he will stop talking.

“Is it true that you refused to make a watch for Prince Harold of Strondovia? Because he doesn’t take proper care of his things?”

I scowl at a row of flapping white flags. “It’s true.”

“How did you know he doesn’t take proper care of his things, though?”

“I was seated at the table with him. It was simply obvious to me. I don’t remember how.”

I do remember how, but I don’t say. It was something he said about his horses.

Tyler grins. “And TKO Storm?”

I frown. “Who?”

“The musician? Won five Grammys? Mega huge...”

I sigh. “He brought a group to his meeting with me and barely knew about the watches, just that he should want one. That’s not a commission for me.”

Tyler enjoys this. I have a feeling he’s going to ask about more commissions that I refused; the list of them floats around the internet and perversely makes my watches more sought after. I don’t like to talk about the people I’ve refused. I ask him how he met his beautiful bride, but somehow, he brings the conversation back to the watches.

I look over and catch Kelsey’s eye.

Chapter Seven

KELSEY

Tyler has Bruno cornered. I go over and take Bruno’s arm in mine. “Were those kids amazing or what?”

Bruno smiles. “Truly a spectacle.”

I narrow my eyes. “As in, we made a spectacle of ourselves?”

“How do you know I didn’t mean spectacular?”

I give him a big smile. “Thank you! It was spectacular, wasn’t it?”

Tyler gets pulled away by a cousin, and just then, Mom appears. She’s put a cute jeweled barrette in her short gray hair.

“Talk later!” he calls.

“Kelsey.” Mom looks me up and down. “Wow.”

She’s visibly pleased. Which breaks my heart a little, because this is not my style. Not my man. Not my life.

But hey, they let me back into the family, so I’ll take it.

“Regarding the room,” Mom says. “We didn’t realize there were going to be two people in that room.”

So she knew about the room. “Yeah, it is a little...small.” I use quote fingers for small. Small is a euphemism. “But it turned out they moved us to a different one, so we’re good.” I pull out my phone, really wanting to change the subject before they find out we have the palace, a better room than the happy couple. “Hey, has anybody seen the weather report lately? Last I looked it was going to be pure sun.”

Mom frowns. “I thought the place was sold out.”

I’m pulling up the weather with real commitment. “Twenty percent chance of showers,” I announce. “Not too bad.”

“I just don’t understand. You got a different room within the same hotel?” Mom asks.

“I had them move us to the Ocean Crown suite,” Bruno says unhelpfully.

I close my eyes for half a second.

Danielle’s head comes up. “We wanted the Ocean Crown suite. They told us it wasn’t available.”

“It wasn’t,” Bruno says.

I pocket my phone. “Somebody had it booked through Monday, but then that changed at the last minute.”

Mom purses her lips and my heart sinks. “The hotel still should have offered it to Danielle and Tyler first.”

“My people reached out to them,” Bruno says.

Danielle squints as she puts this together. “Oh.”

Mom makes a sound that manages to encompass both injury and outrage. My heart sinks even more.

“It’s not that amazing of a room,” I try.

“Oh, I believe you completely,” Danielle says. Then she hears herself. “Kidding.” She takes Mom by the elbow and steers them both away.

I watch them go. “Great. Now I’m the materialistic diva who shows up in Dior and demands the best suite.”

“I doubt they would think that about you. Considering your taste in wallpaper.”

“And yet.” I make a hand motion to encompass the whole disaster.

“They’re family. They should be happy you’re in a decent room.”

My face feels hot. “I’m sure they are on one level. It just feels a little weird to have the most glorious room. Like going to a wedding in a pretty white dress and outshining the bride.”

“Perhaps they should not have put you in a broom closet.”

“I was fine with it.”

Bruno makes a scoffing sound.

“I was! I’m resilient. I’m the kind of person who can roll with any situation. And the wallpaper really was lovely.”

Bruno gives me a hard look. His eyelashes are really lush. They set off the gray of his eyes.

“I’m flexible and resilient. It’s one of my superpowers.”

“If you say so.”

“You don’t think I’m resilient?”

“You call it resilience; I call it putting a happy face sticker on a dumpster.”

“That might be overstating things.” Even so, I appreciate it.

I was only included in one photograph before Bruno arrived, but now that he’s here, we’re getting our picture taken with everybody.

It’s fun to feel like I’m back in the thick of things, to walk down memory lane with people. I remind Danielle of the wild weddings we’d put on with our dolls. In another picture, I link arms with Dad and try to bond over the New England Patriots, a subject I brushed up on specifically for this purpose, but he doesn’t seem very responsive. Like maybe he’s down on the Patriots now.

Every time somebody wanders up and talks to Bruno about watches, they ask for a photograph. And every time, I insist that a photograph be taken with my camera as well, and I’m forwarding them all to Sadie. Aunt Mae even comes up, and we do photos for her, and then I make her lend me her hat and shawl for a photo, and it looks like a different outfit.

“Did you see that? We can pretend that’s what I’m wearing tomorrow.”

“Lord help me,” he grumbles.

“I’m a fun girlfriend.” I grab a champagne off a passing tray, surveying the scene. “I can’t believe how much I missed over these past three years. Some of these kids graduated. An uncle died and I couldn’t be there. Three Christmases I missed.”

“You were estranged from your family for three years?” He sounds surprised.

“And now I’m back!” I say, putting on a big smile. But it’s possible I’m not totally back. It’s not exactly the reunion I’d hoped for. I’ve been trying not to admit it to myself, but people seem a little frosty. I get Mom and Danielle being harried being that it’s a wedding, but some of my cousins have been mysteriously monosyllabic. Do they feel like assholes for excommunicating me? Or are they still suspicious? Do some people still think I did it? Maybe it’s going to be a gradual thing. Maybe a few people are starting to realize how wrong they are about me, but I guess I can’t expect everybody to see the light at the same time.

It’s fine. The truth eventually wins out. That’s what I’m telling myself.

I can feel Bruno’s gaze on me. I don’t even want to know what he’s thinking.

I lift my glass to the light and watch the bubbles rise. “Champagne bubbles are one of my favorite visual things. I really feel like they’re underappreciated on an aesthetic level.”

Bruno makes a sound I can’t decipher, which is appropriate being that I can’t decipher his expression either.

Granny Ernie wanders up and I kiss her cheek. “Granny Ernie, this is Bruno. Bruno, my grandmother.”

“Look at you two! Who would’ve thought? A watchmaker!” She looks him up and down. “Kelsey’s last few boyfriends were all theater and artist types. What happened?”

Bruno pulls out a charming smile that melts my mind. Where did that come from? He says, “She’s had it with artists.”

I link my arm in his and tip my head against his surprisingly solid bicep. “Though you could argue that Bruno brings great artistry to his watchmaking.”

“There is no art to watchmaking,” Bruno says. “It’s engineering. Every component in its place, every interaction predictable.”

I snort. “You polish meteorites for your watch faces. But that’s not artistic.”

“Meteorite is stable. It’s been around for billions of years. An ideal watch face material.”

I say, “I think ‘ideal’ is a code word for beautiful and you won’t admit it.”

Bruno says, “Ideal isn’t a code word, it’s an objective assessment.”

“My objective assessment is that you have an entire artistic vision that you’ve disguised as engineering.”

“Now I see it.” Granny Ernie raises a glass and walks off.

I snort under my breath. I watch her make her way across the lawn.

Bruno sighs.

“Granny Ernie is usually a little sharper than that. But I guess it shows we are pulling it off.”

“Which is actually a miracle because the story you concocted? Where I go and stand at the alley door next to the theater, waiting for you to come out after the show? It would never happen. My people would’ve reached out to your people and arranged something.”

“Maybe this time was different.”

“Wouldn’t happen. I can’t believe my brother bought it.”

I turn to him. “I love how intense you are about that. You would never let yourself be so swept away by love that you would do something impulsive.”

“Your point?”

“Someday you’re going to meet somebody, and it will be all bets off, and you’ll do something just like that.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“That is my hope. My fervent hope for you. And she rebuffs you, and you realize too late that you’ve been such a jerk.”

“You have a lot of fervent hopes for me, none of which will ever materialize, sadly.” Bruno checks his watch. “My boat will be at the marina in an hour.”

“And I do think you’re an artist,” I say to him. “I think you doth protest too much that you aren’t.”

“I think you doth use the line that I doth protest too much too much.”

“Well, soon you won’t have to endure all the doth-ing and silly dancing and people calling you an artist. And I’ll take this dress off and be able to breathe again.”

He furrows his brow. “You mean to say you’ve been holding your breath this long?”

“Yeah. And my rib cage is being crushed, and I have to walk like a Barbie doll. I’m like...” I put my face into a mask of agony, all very Greek tragedy.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s my embodiment of agony.” I do it again.

He reaches into his pocket. Suddenly he has his phone up and there’s a click.

“Oh my God, did you just take a photo of me embodying agony? That is not a nice-boyfriend picture to take.”

“Maybe I want something to remember you by.”

“Hilarious,” I say. “And I thought you didn’t take pictures as a billionaire.”

“I don’t, generally.”

I look at the railing instead of him. A good boyfriend would want a picture of that, but not for the purposes of mockery. A good boyfriend would appreciate my embodiments. He’d say, wait, do betrayal again. He’d have favorites. He’d keep a whole album.

Unfortunately, every guy I’ve dated eventually arrives at the same conclusion: that I’m “a lot.”

Sometimes “too much.”

It’s honestly impressive how universal it is, like dudes across the Western Hemisphere have some root-based communication systems like mushrooms where they transmit concepts and preferences to each other.

Usually it doesn’t bother me.

But standing here in a borrowed Hamptons dress beside a fake boyfriend who somehow feels like my only ally in this entire place—a fake boyfriend who is clearly counting down the minutes until he can leave me behind—it’s just hard.

“And that’s what you take a picture of.”

Bruno gives one of his mysterious half shrugs.

“Here’s my embodiment of how much you suck.” I narrow my eyes at him.

“That’s not very expressive.”

“How much you suck doesn’t deserve to have an expressive embodiment.”

“Ouch.”

My cousin Meredith comes up. “The gift you brought is so big. Did you get Danielle and Tyler a trombone?”

Chapter Eight

BRUNO

The Winters family doesn’t make sense. I don’t like that, but I tell myself it’s not my concern. A car should be coming around within the hour. Sadie will see that my luggage is down there, and all I have to do is stroll out of here.

The cousin zeroes in on Kelsey. “You know what the gift is.”

Kelsey leans in conspiratorially. “It’s a perfectly preserved baguette from Princess Diana’s wedding.”

“It is?”

“They kept it frozen in a vault beneath Buckingham Palace.”

The cousin blinks, stunned.

Kelsey is laughing, now, her face animated in a way that makes the structured Dior dress look even more wrong on her.

I smile in spite of myself. She’s not my type, but I can understand how another man might be completely undone by her. The liveliness. The impulsiveness. The way she throws herself fully into every thought and emotion as though restraint has never once occurred to her.

Uninhibited. She’d be like that in bed, too; she’d react. She’d gasp and argue and clutch at you and say exactly what she was thinking without shame. A certain kind of man would find that impossible to resist.

Something tightens in my jaw. It takes a moment to realize the annoying sound in my periphery is the text alert. I check my phone. It’s Sadie who has texted me several times, including one text with multiple exclamation points followed by:

CALLING NOW.

I head across the lawn. I answer before the first ring finishes. “What.”

“You’re trending.”

“What was that?”

“You’re back on social media. Someone at the wedding sent photos to Page Ten. You’re trending.”

I blink. “I’m what?”

“Trending. ‘Reclusive Watchmaker’s Secret Romance Revealed.’ There’s a photo of you kissing her hair—blurry, but it’s you. The helicopter arrival made reels. And someone apparently got video of you being followed out of a tent by a small army of children?”

I put my hand to my forehead. “I thought they had moved on from me.”

“You’re an eligible billionaire bachelor who lives on a yacht and refuses to give interviews. People want what they can’t have.”

I glare out at the crowd. Unbelievable. Maybe I should have predicted this, but I try to have nothing to do with social media and gossip sites and all of that. I don’t always know how it works. Nor do I particularly want to.

“The Sunday Ledger describes you as ‘the man Manhattan most wants to meet and least expects to.’ And now you’re out and about. That put you back in the spotlight.”

“I so dislike human beings,” I say.

“The comments are quite something,” Sadie says. “Your date is apparently some kind of minor Broadway dancer?”

Kelsey throws her head back, laughing at something her grandmother said.

“They’d better not be roasting her.”

“Oh,” she says, surprised. “No, I wouldn’t say they’re roasting her. It’s more like, who is she? Why her?”

“It’s none of their business,” I bite out. “We’ve been conducting our romance in secret, we’re good at covering our tracks, and I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem is that the moment you leave, it’s billionaire hermit abandons mystery woman on every feed. And guess who loses their excuse for skipping the documentary?”

“My brothers don’t read tabloid gossip.”

“Are you willing to bet your business on it?”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re going to have to stick around.”

I groan.

“Two more days. She’s an actress and you’re a man of few words. You can pull it off.”

I glare up at the cloudless blue sky. Sadie doesn’t know why it’s so important to keep my family out of the spotlight, but she knows how to get a thing done, and unfortunately, she’s making sense.

My escape hatch is now a trap.

I stand there for a moment after we hang up, watching the party continue its insipid swirl of champagne and small talk. Kelsey stands off by herself, taking it all in with a hopeful expression.

She really wears her heart on her sleeve.

Nobody’s ever told her not to do that. Somebody really should, but it’s not going to be me. I’m not here to get involved in somebody’s drama. I’m just here for the alibi, and that alibi is officially extended.

I cross the terrace, weaving through clusters of guests who try to catch my eye. Kelsey sees me coming and her brows furrow. It seems she’s learning to read my moods.

“We need to talk. Now.”

“What’s going on?”

I steer her toward an alcove off the main terrace, my hand on the small of her back. Her body is warm through the fabric. As soon as we’re alone, I drop my hand.

“Sadie just called. Someone at the wedding sent photos to the tabloids.” I hold up my phone, the gossip site already loaded. “We’re trending.”

She takes the phone. She looks confused as she reads the headline, and then horrified as she makes sense of it. The photo is grainy, clearly taken from a distance, but it’s obviously us. My arm around her waist. My lips against her hair.

“‘Reclusive Watchmaker’s Secret Romance Revealed’?” She looks up at me. “Oh, no.”

“Indeed. If I leave now, the whole world will know I’m not here.”

“No, you can still leave. We just need an excuse. We could have an argument. That works, right?”

“You don’t understand. I needed an excuse for the entire weekend. I can’t have it getting back to my brothers that I left a couple of hours after I arrived.”

“You can leave in secret. I’ll say you’re deathly ill in the room.”

“My brothers will never believe it.”

“Maybe I’ve left you tied up to the bed all weekend. You failed to please me.”

I give her a dark look.

“Okay, what’s your plan?”

“I have to stay. There’s no way around it.”

“Excuuuuuuse me?” Her voice pitches up. “You’re staying? For how long?”

“The duration of the wedding weekend.”

“No. No, no, no.” She shakes her head. “I’m just now getting back in with my family and you’re going to make me lie to them all weekend? With photographers apparently lurking around documenting our every move?”

“You were already lying to them.”

“But not like, with us having to embody the lie!”

“But you’re so good at embodiments.”

“This isn’t funny. Do you have any idea how much it means to me that they invited me? And now I have to maintain this elaborate fiction? You’re going to have to figure out a different excuse. I won’t let you stay.”

“There’s no going back now.”

“Yes, there is. You can figure out a different alibi.”

I pocket my phone. “Not happening.”

“You can’t just force your presence on me like that.”

“We both have a story to sell. I’d say that it’s best that we work together.”

“As opposed to...”

I shrug.

I see the recognition dawn on her face that there’s a hint of extortion here—we’re both keeping our mouths shut about something, aren’t we? Her chin lifts—regal—and her hazel eyes catch the light. There’s a molten quality to the golden flecks in there, and they just burn.

She’s breathtaking when she’s furious.

This woman. She really does need to learn to control her expressions. Showing everything gives people leverage over you.

“Unbelievable. Fine. Stay. And you’ll actually...participate? There are events.”

“God help me.”

“God help me,” she says. “I have to spend the weekend pretending to be involved with the most beastly man in the history of watchmaking. I’m an actress, but even I have my limits.”

“The Sunday Ledger described me as ‘the man Manhattan most wants to meet and least expects to.’”

Those icy gold eyes continue to bore into mine. She says nothing.

“I’m simply saying there are worse fates.”

“Yes, but very, very few. Oh, and I love how you memorized your own press. Nice touch. Beastly and arrogant.”

“And on the upside, you have a beautiful place to stay, and you can order whatever you want to the room.”

“You think that matters to me?”

Before I spent time with this woman, I would’ve thought it would matter to her a lot. But now I believe it doesn’t. Which is odd. Like an engineering problem where the numbers refuse to add up.

Chapter Nine

KELSEY

An hour later, I’m on the balcony with the door cracked behind me, thankfully out of my dress, trying to let the salt air calm me.

The cocktail party wound down soon after Bruno got the call. Thank goodness, because I was in no state to carry on as the loving girlfriend.

Bruno disappeared into one of the bedrooms, but not before he tossed a black AMEX onto the table and told me to order anything I need for the weekend.

“How about a wheelbarrow of Xanax?” I’d said.

And with that he was gone.

Was it a commentary on my clothes? Yes, I brought many wrong clothes for this wedding, but what does it matter? A wedding is about bonding and celebrating; it’s not a fashion show. Anyway, Bruno has enough photos to last the weekend. No way am I going to wear another robot dress. I’d rather put a hot poker up my nose.

Bruno is nowhere to be seen the next morning, but his credit card is still there, taunting me. I want to throw it off the balcony. As if I’m going to order gowns and jewels or whatever. But why wouldn’t he think I want that? He seems to think I’m a scammer after all.

It stings because that’s the kind of thing my own family thinks or at least thought. That I’m the kind of person who takes what isn’t hers.

Today is the croquet brunch; at least I have my tennis outfit—a cute little skirt and polo top that I actually like. And I have my all-wrong mod-print off-the-shoulder dress for the ceremony.

Maybe it will be okay.

I text with my friend Francine for a while, catching her up on the unfortunate events of the weekend. She’s heard of Bruno, of course. Everyone has.

Bruno Blackwood as in the watches?

Hates people and lives on a yacht?

That’s the one.

And you’re FAKE DATING him??

It’s a long story.

I send her some pictures.

What the hell are you wearing?

This is how he dresses his girlfriends.

That’s not a dress, that’s a Victorian posture corrector!

Dude, you can’t even breathe in it. I think he needs his women a little lightheaded, so they don’t realize what they’ve gotten into. His fave color is black.

It’s like you’re fake dating Rasputin over there.

I send back a string of laughing emojis. She demands a full debrief when I’m home.

Then I’m texting with Lizzie, who tries to cheer me up by sending baby goat videos. She’s obsessed. One after another they come—goats in pajamas, goats jumping on things, goats fainting dramatically.

I hear laughter outside and go and look out over the porch railing. There is a coffee setup out there and I can see Danielle and some of her friends and Mom and a few of the cousins laughing. It’s something to do with some streamers gone wrong.

Why didn’t they ask me to help? I told them I’d help in any way they needed this weekend. I’m artistic, and I’m far more dexterous than most women. I think about running down there to help, but then, with a sinking feeling, it occurs to me that they might not want my help.

I tell myself that maybe it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. They invited me, didn’t they? They want me here.

We’re choosing to believe you.

You’re family.

But something’s wrong. Has it just been too long? Has some irreversible damage happened with them believing the wrong thing about me all these years?

I pull out my phone and look at Lizzie’s goats, because going around with that just-cried-swollen-eyes look is not how I want to show up on my sister’s wedding day.

I pull myself off of the porch and put on some ABBA, because doing yoga to ABBA always helps my mood. At the class I always go to, we set an intention with every yoga routine, but I’m at a loss for what intention to set. I just want to be included again.

I manage to lose myself in the poses. The song “S.O.S.” plays.

It’s while I’m in the middle of bow-pulling pose that I have the feeling that I’m not alone. I crane my head around and there’s Bruno standing just inside the doorway, all rigid, like a steel pole got affixed to his spine; the hair along his forehead is dark with sweat, as is the collar of his T-shirt, and most notably, he’s wearing sweatpants, slung low over his slim waist, and there’s a little strip of skin above the waistband, lightly furred, the fur pressed flat and damp against his belly.

I start to wobble, and then I have to break the pose not to fall down. “What?”

“Nothing... I just...” He mumbles something about taking a run.

Has he never seen somebody do yoga? “Yoga is a very important exercise for dancers.” I transition into a half-moon pose. “It’s good on an athletic level but also for serenity. With this routine, I have set an intention to have a nice time this weekend in spite of having to fake date the most beastly and arrogant billionaire ever.”

“I’m the most beastly and arrogant of all billionaires now? That’s quite a distinction.”

“Yeah, you really had to work for that one.”

He claps his hand onto his sweaty chest. “I just want to say that I couldn’t have done it without my beloved fake date who tried to scam me out of a gift.” With that, he proceeds to the bedroom.

“And she is paying dearly every step of the way!” I yell after him with zero serenity.

The water goes on and he proceeds to take an inordinately long and distracting shower, no doubt lavishing suds over every inch of his billionaire skin, especially that little slice of exposed belly that was perhaps marred by road dust, which would have stuck to his warm sweaty skin and required extra attention in terms of lathering and warm, soapy bubbles.

What am I doing?

I focus back onto the hated reverse Ardha Chandrasana. I hold it extra long, hoping to expunge him from my consciousness.

Chapter Ten

BRUNO

I’m sitting on our veranda, trying to catch a moment of peaceful reading before we have to be down to the infernal croquet brunch. I’ve scanned through the Times as well as Kelsey’s Instagram account, which was linked from one of those articles Sadie sent to me. I hadn’t meant to dive so deeply into it, but I am posing as her boyfriend, after all. And it’s interesting to see her life. She really is different from her family—her life, her personal style, especially the quality of aliveness that she has.

Kelsey comes out dressed in some sort of tennis outfit and leans against the rail. “You’re probably jaded about this view, living on a yacht. I never will be.”

I put the device aside. “What’s your view in Manhattan?”

“Similar to our former room in this very hotel. Brick wall. A pipe with some truly expressive rust. Not the best ever.”

“So why don’t you move? If you don’t like your view.”

“I have amazing friends in the building. The rent isn’t terrible for the neighborhood, and it’s near my Broadway gig and the place where I run a dance program.”

“You run a dance program?” I ask. I saw a lot of pictures of kids, but… She runs it?

“Yeah, an after-school dance program. What? Is that so shocking?”

“You don’t seem like the organizational type.”

“I’m not at all the organizational type. Unless I care about a thing.”

That is so her. She would’ve been the kind of student to give her teachers fits: perfectly capable of doing the work, but completely uninvested unless it interested her, at which point she’d excel. “So you care about teaching kids to dance? That’s your thing?”

“For sure. People think about dancers learning a few steps or something, but it’s so much more than that. The kids get exercise and they get to express their emotions and their personality, and that is so important, you can’t even imagine. I work with a lot of kids where it’s their only expressive outlet. And with arts cuts these days...” She narrows her eyes and there’s that icy fury again. “Well, my friends and I have been doing a bunch of outreach to schools that are most affected or that most need it. Our little way of saying FU to that.”

I press my lips together, suppressing a smile, thinking how on-brand for Kelsey, taking up major pursuits as an FU to something.

She turns away, looking back out at the ocean. “It involves us taking a lot of subway rides and a lot of us pushing cafeteria tables and benches around, but it’s worth it. We’re giving these kids something that they desperately need. I get chills, sometimes thinking about how some of them blossom.”

“You don’t have a car?”

“On what planet would we have a car?”

Right. Manhattan. Parking and all of that, I guess. “And what’s this Broadway show you’re in?”

She regards me suspiciously. “Is that genuine curiosity, or are you doing homework?”

“The show is part of our story. I should know the details.”

Her dimples appear in full force. “Liar. I think you’re just so fascinated with me. You must know all!”

“Do I have to research it myself?”

“Absolutely not. Stay right there.” She disappears into the suite, returning with her iPad. She sits beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her skin, and holds up the screen. I look at the screen.

“I don’t have a huge part. My friend Mia’s one of the leads. But I dance. And I sing a little.”

She hits play. The device comes alive with music, color, and movement.

I’m not looking for her, but I see her instantly, tap-dancing away in satin shorts over fishnet stockings, with a sequined top and a little hat set at a jaunty angle. There’s this unguarded, even unbridled quality to the way she moves, making the dance look easy and fun, though I’m sure it’s neither. Her legs are long and extraordinarily powerful. Deft. Shapely. But of course, she’s a dancer, every bit as much of an athlete as a sprinter. “So this is tap dancing.”

“Have you never seen tap dancing?”

“I grew up with two brothers and attended military boarding school. When would I have seen anything like this?”

“Your parents sent you to military boarding school?”

“My dad sent us. After my mom died. He was not really wanting to raise three young kids.”

“I’m so sorry about your mother.”

“It was a long time ago. She drowned.”

“Oh no.”

I mumble something about her shoes and towel left behind in the sand and the fierce currents.

“And you lived in that military school full-time?” she asks.

“That is the idea of boarding school.” I keep my focus on the screen.

She looks at me for an uncomfortable moment.

“Tell me about this,” I say.

“This show is called Anything Goes. It’s a musical from the 1930s. The main protagonist, Reno, has this very exuberant entourage called Reno’s Angels, and that’s us. Basically like backup dancers.”

It really is mesmerizing. The footwork is dizzyingly precise. I take the tablet without thinking. I don’t give it back. I’m puzzled by the way she’s in perfect time with the other dancers, but also somehow doing her own thing entirely.

“Right?” she says. “I mean, you got one look at me up there, and is it any wonder you couldn’t stay away?”

Chapter Eleven

KELSEY

He raises his left eyebrow ever so slightly as he watches the title number. I watch him watch, feeling so sad about his mother. Just gone one day. And then he gets sent to a military school?

“What is the plot of the show?”

I can’t believe he’s asking me questions about my show. “Reno is this nightclub singer on an ocean liner. There’s a stowaway chasing a girl who’s engaged to a stuffy lord who’s completely wrong for her. Cue the mistaken identities, wild dance numbers, eventually a happily ever after.”

We’re all in white and the whole stage just ignites.

He seems to be concentrating hard. At one point, a muscle flexes in his jaw.

“This number is my favorite.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, holding the iPad, following the action. A little thrill moves through me because I think he might actually be enjoying it. This revival is so bright and campy. When you’re up there you never get to see the audience’s faces.

I shouldn’t care whether he likes it, but I love that maybe he does.

“Look look look!” I say, maybe too excitedly. We hit the big tap break—sixteen of us in perfect unison, arms thrown wide. “Right?”

“The whole show is this kind of thing?”

“You’ve literally never seen a musical? Not even on TV?”

“No.”

“Musicals are the best. Every song has its own mood, and sometimes a side character gets this number you never saw coming and you find out what was in their heart. And when everybody’s going at once...” I press a hand to my chest. “A feast.”

I should stop talking. Talking about Broadway and dancing and all of that is one of the places where I’m liable to veer into “a lot” territory.

Watch out. Kelsey is a lot. Kelsey is “extra.” And this poor guy doesn’t even want to be here. He’s basically a hostage.

But I can’t help myself. “Okay, look at this one. You cannot imagine what it took to pull this off.”

I fast-forward to the lift sequence in “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” The part where the lead gets taken up by four of us. We are a delight in feathers.

I hold my breath, watching him watch it.

His brother said Bruno doesn’t like anything fun or lively. Is he just being nice?

Back during the early run of the show, I used to have this elaborate dream that my sister and my parents would turn up one night and they’d surprise me afterward, falling all over themselves to tell me how much they loved it. I even had a place picked out to take them to dinner afterwards—this fun taco bar that my gal pals and I love, and they’d marvel at the creative combinations. You don’t get these tacos in Vermont!

And from the way they’d describe the show, it would be obvious they’d been watching me the whole time, even when the action was somewhere else. And they’d just eat up my behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and my friend Mia, a.k.a. Reno herself, would stop by the table with some of my friends, and my family would get to see that I have built this amazing community not to mention a solid career in one of the most brutal industries there is. They’d see how wrong they were about me and regret their horrible view of me. And we’d talk the way we used to, about our actual lives.

Well, the restaurant is still there. I’ve never taken anyone from my family.

“What do you think?” The instant the words are out of my mouth, I regret them. I hate how needy I sound.

“It’s entirely you,” he says.

I grin.

Wait...

“Is that a good thing?”

He blinks, seeming to come back to himself. Like he was in a trance or something. “One thing’s for sure, it’s proof that you should be able to pull off our charade this weekend.”

That’s what he got out of it? That’s what he has to say?

Fine. He doesn’t like anything lively. Got it.

I take the iPad from him. “I’ll pull off the charade like a boss. You have no idea. I’ll even tap-dance if you’re good.”

A croquet brunch is the kind of thing I was made for—a little bit sporty, a little bit festive. White wickets gleam in the late morning sun; the mallets are lined up like rifles.

I keep pace with Bruno, who’s wearing a cream linen suit and white shirt, like he just stepped off the set of Downton Abbey. And his gray eyes are sparkly in the sun, making his resting scrutiny face softer and cuter somehow. I really do hate how handsome he is.

We pass a pole with white streamers flapping lazily in the wind. There are buckets of white calla lilies at the base of it.

“Tell me this is the only event today,” he says.

“There’s a boat ride at one. Tyler loves boats. We’re probably expected to go. Unfortunately, Danielle won’t even be there, and she’s the one I came for.”

“So don’t go.”

“People will notice. We can’t be bad citizens.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are other people to consider in life?”

Bruno sighs.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is the consideration of other people so tedious?”

He raises his left brow, so above it all.

I say, “Noted. I’ll cross ‘other people’ off my list of things to care about right after we finish this game. And I’ll scratch out their faces in any photos I see.”

His lip quirks. “There’s no need to go that far. A magic marker will do.”

Bruno joking now? I like it more than I should.

“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” I whisper.

Danielle and her bridesmaids have clearly coordinated; there’s a whole vintage nautical thing happening, all cream and navy and wide-brimmed hats. Outfits that ruffle fetchingly in the breeze. In fact, everyone seems to have gotten a memo I didn’t receive, including Bruno, with his English countryside getup.

And then there’s me in my tennis skirt and polo shirt, which I thought was “sporty chic” but now realize reads more as “country club employee who wandered onto the wrong lawn.” I’m probably undoing all the fashion cred I earned during my star turn as Mrs. Roboto.

Never mind. It’s no secret I’m the black sheep of the family. This is a celebration, not a fashion show; the point is to have fun and bond.

My cousin Dennis hands Bruno a mallet. “Good luck today.”

Bruno nods and moves on. Dennis hands me my mallet.

“Thank you, sir!” I take the mallet. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

“No need, but there is a hundred-dollar deposit on each one.”

“You mean I can’t abscond with it?”

He goes very still for a moment.

“Kidding,” I say.

He drifts away. I watch him go, mallet in hand.

Ugh, why did I make that joke? My heart starts pounding like mad for no reason at all.

I go to stand next to Bruno, who seems to be testing the weight of the mallet. He examines the head; actually sights down the handle like he’s checking for warping. He’s so nerdily precise with things.

“It’s croquet,” I whisper. “Not brain surgery.”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” he says.

He’s like a big, grumpy English countryside bear who’d rather be hibernating, but if he has to do this, he’ll be all precise. He definitely found the right job, choosing watchmaking like he did.

“So I’m guessing you know how to play this game?” I ask.

“I grew up in Newport. So, yes, I’ve played croquet,” he says.

“You grew up in Newport?”

“You really didn’t read the article at all, did you?”

“Well, grumpy billionaire watchmaking hermit on a yacht seemed like a pretty comprehensive snapshot.”

He grumbles. Was he always like this? Was he scared being sent off to military school at such a young age? Were his little brothers sent along with him? If Bruno was seven, they had to be very young. Is that why he’s so sullen all the time? And what is this mysterious event he needed an excuse to get out of? And what does he do out on that yacht besides watchmaking? It seems like a lonely existence. Does he have any friends or guilty pleasures of any kind?

He turns to survey the lawn, and I notice a cowlick at the back of his head—this one chunk of hair that doesn’t fall in line with the rest of his hair. Everything else about him is deliberate, and that one piece of hair just lives its life.

I find it wildly charming.

Teams are assigned. Bruno and I end up on a team alongside Tyler and Danielle, which means I need to not suck at this.

My first shot goes three feet and curves left for no reason. I try to laugh it off. “A mind of its own!”

Danielle and Tyler are both surprisingly good. Have they been practicing? I cheer them on.

Bruno lines up his own shot. He seems to be weighing the geometry and reading the lawn and who knows what else, and then he cracks it practically through the wicket.

People clap.

My second overshoots the wicket by a solid yard.

“Bold strategy,” Tyler says diplomatically.

“I’m keeping everyone guessing,” I say brightly. “Including myself.”

A few people titter politely.

Bruno kills it again. It’s like somebody told him to go out there and do an embodiment of competence porn, all crisp linen and devastating focus, casually dominating yet another activity he has no business being this good at.

On the upside, he’s making up for my lack of croquet chops, but I wish he didn’t have to.

“I’m going to nail this one,” I announce, lining up my next shot.

“I believe that’s known as aggressive optimism,” somebody says.

The ball rockets off at a wild angle, missing two wickets entirely. Again I laugh it off. Hey, it’s just a game. But I’m trying to make up for it by pointing out when people do really good shots and giving them props.

Bruno’s rolled up his sleeves now, the crisp white shirt folded back to his elbows.

In all of the fuss today over the strip of skin above the elastic of his sweatpants, I didn’t notice his forearms. Serious forearms. Dense, solid forearms. How does a watchmaker even get forearms like that? Is he down in some underground forge smelting his own gears? There’s a light sheen of sweat at his temples now, too.

He grips the mallet and lines up his shot, jaw set, eyes fixed with intense, one-pointed concentration. There’s something weirdly hot about that level of focus, like he disappears into it completely. So precise as to be almost indecent.

One of Danielle’s bridesmaids literally licks her lips.

I glare hotly at the side of her head. Not that I care, but it’s the principle of the thing: he’s my fake date.

“Why am I not surprised,” Tyler says, drifting over toward Bruno, “that a watchmaker would understand geometry.”

Bruno rumbles some surly-bear answer I don’t hear and takes his shot. It’s his best one yet.

Someone calls for a drinks break.

I accept a glass of lemonade from a passing server and watch Bruno head toward the refreshment table with his forearms and shocking precision, so controlled.

Except for my friend the cowlick, just doing whatever it wants back there.

Chapter Twelve

BRUNO

The sandwich table is stocked with finger sandwiches and canapés. I grab something with smoked salmon and find a spot near the hedge where nobody will bother me about yachts or watches.

Or take my goddamn photo.

Kelsey is terrible at the game, but she seems to be having fun, or at least she’s trying to create fun, trying to be a good citizen, though from where I’m sitting, it looks an awful lot like she’s auditioning for these people’s affection.

She’s standing in a group of women, smiling at her mother who’s going on about something, and definitely not smiling back.

Don’t do it, I think. Don’t put yourself out there like that.

But then, this is her family, not mine. I’m only here for the alibi.

I check my watch. This weekend is forty-one percent over. Soon to be fifty percent over. The curve goes down from here.

And that’s when I hear a voice coming from the other side of the hedge. It has an unpleasant, even spiteful edge to it.

“—absolutely shameless, showing up like this. Nobody but Granny Ernie wants her here.”

Another voice. Female. Sharp with disapproval. “I wouldn’t show my face.”

“And what’s up with Blackwood? What is he doing with her?”

I go still.

“Well, we know what she’s doing with him. Hashtag moneybags.”

“He saw her in some Broadway show⁠—”

“...just glorified stripping.”

Something hot builds in my chest. I shift, trying to get a look at the speakers.

A laugh. Mean and certain. “Buy a clue. Nobody wants you here.”

“Did you see what she’s wearing? Like she’s about to serve tennis balls.”

I spot them and I’m heading over—to do what?—when the father and the uncle appear. The father shows me something vintage on his wrist, seeking commentary. I give him something. I don’t know what. I’m not really there.

Nobody wants you here.

I look around. The two of them are gone.

I think of Kelsey at breakfast, excited about the croquet brunch. Kelsey talking about wanting to create a moment of delight for her sister with the TikTok trick. Kelsey in that terrible basement room, insisting she was fine, she was flexible, she could roll with anything.

She thinks she’s winning them back, but it seems she’s wrong. For whatever reason, they’re faking it. I grind my teeth together.

“Bruno? Mr. Blackwood?”

Tyler is talking to me, pointing to something in my hand. My sandwich. I’ve crushed it. Some of it’s on the ground.

“Excuse me.” I toss the remnants in the garbage, grab a napkin, and head toward Kelsey.

I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know what I’m doing at all. But I’m moving toward her where she stands talking to some relative. She looks up and smiles as I approach, like she felt me coming, and something loosens inside me.

I slide an arm around her. They continue their conversation, which seems to be about an upcoming Christmas. Kelsey seems excited. She loves Christmas and there’s no better Christmas than a Christmas with her family, apparently. It seems they do a lot of caroling.

All I can think of is what those women said. Nobody wants her here. Is it true? That would certainly explain the awkwardness I’ve sensed the whole time I’ve been here. What exactly is going on here? Is this family pretending to want her here when they actually don’t? Playacting at love?

I happen to have some experience with this sort of thing.

And I do not care for it.

Not one bit.

“Kelsey,” I say the first moment we get alone. “This whole thing isn’t going the way you think it is.”

“Excuse me?”

I lower my voice. “These fucking people are not above board. Your family⁠—”

“Not above board?” She searches my face. “That’s an awful thing to say about my family.”

“I’m just telling you⁠—”

“Well, don’t. I won’t have you insulting my family. You don’t know them at all.”

“I may not know them but⁠—”

“I’m serious here.” She grabs her mallet and turns to me, chin up. “They’re my family. You’re my fake date. Stay in your lane, okay?”

I grip my mallet. She’s right. I’m her fake date. This isn’t my family. I don’t know these people. I’m not involved.

The game is resuming. Teams are reforming. I scan the positions.

There—the woman with the sharp voice. Her ball is sitting pretty near the third wicket.

I line up my shot.

The mechanics of croquet are simple, really. Geometry and motion, like everything else. Angles, force, weight, resistance of the grass...

Her ball goes sailing into the hedge. It’ll be a lot of work for her to get it out.

“Oh dear,” I say. “Apologies.”

She gives me a tight smile. “No harm done.”

I spot another target on my next turn: the bridesmaid who was laughing with the sharp-voiced woman; her ball is exposed, a clear shot.

Click.

Into the rough grass. Also very difficult to hit out of.

“Tricky field,” I observe to no one in particular.

Kelsey is watching me. I can feel her attention like a physical thing.

A few turns later, I send the bridesmaid’s ball careening away from the wickets.

“You’re very good at this,” Tyler says, appearing at my elbow. “Did you play competitively?”

“I played as a kid.”

The game proceeds. I notice Kelsey is gripping her mallet too loosely.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey what?” She says this just a little standoffishly—she’s still unhappy about what I said about her family.

“Check this out.” I stand behind her, place my hands over hers, and adjust her hold. “Thumbs pointing down.”

She turns her head. Her lips graze my cheek. “Are you doing a boyfriend thing right now?”

“That is my role.” And I’m liking it a little bit too much. “Think about the mallet as a pendulum, not a bat.”

She feels good against my chest, and her hair smells good—something like sage. We take a practice swing.

“Loosen the grip.”

“Like this?”

“Perfect.” I let her go.

She turns to me. “Thanks. Contrary to appearances, I don’t want to suck.”

“You don’t suck.”

She twists her lips in protest, and I want to kiss them, just like that.

“Another pointer.” I settle my hands on her shoulders. Her eyes catch the sun, green threaded through with golden brown. They’re never the same twice. Like her. “Relax your shoulders and let the mallet do the work.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’re an athlete. You’ve got this.” I force myself to let her go.

She takes my pointers to heart on the next turn and takes a respectable shot and spins to do a shocked embodiment.

“Yes!” I pump my fist.

My next shot hits one of the hedge women’s balls into a sand trap thanks to a clean angle off the third wicket.

Kelsey’s expression has shifted into something I can’t quite read. Curiosity, maybe. Or wariness.

She lines up her next shot and gets it right up to the next wicket.

“So close!” She turns to the group with a theatrical expression of mock despair, bringing the levity, whether it’s deserved or not.

And it’s not.

I take my next shot and drive her mother’s ball into kingdom come.

Kelsey wanders over near me. “Bruno.”

“Hmm?”

She’s flushed from the sun, a few curls escaping from wherever she’d pinned them, standing there in that tennis outfit. Maybe it’s ridiculous that I’m feeling protective over her. I can’t seem to stop. “Are you targeting people?”

“That’s part of the game.”

“It feels like more. What’s going on?”

I say, “What’s going on is that I’m your boyfriend.”

She studies me. “So this is the Bruno Blackwood boyfriend experience? You go insult my family and start picking people off in croquet? Because newsflash: this is a wedding. A celebration of love.”

“Your shot.” I nod toward the field.

“I’m telling you.” She goes over to her ball. She concentrates, takes her shot, and hits it clean through the wicket.

I clap. Nobody else does.

Is she seeing this? Probably not. She’s so happy to be here. She needs to be less vulnerable with her emotions; she’s like light patterns on water, bright and dazzling, but so easy to destroy.

These fucking people.

Did you see what she’s wearing?

I get an idea. I grab my phone and text some very specific instructions to Sadie.

The game stretches on. There’s another snack break. Mercifully, it ends.

Teams drift toward the brunch setup, toward drinks, toward the boat excursion Tyler’s been hyping all morning.

“Everyone’s welcome on the boat tour,” Danielle announces. “They’ll do a lap around the harbor, maybe stop for swimming if the weather holds⁠—”

“We can’t,” I say.

Kelsey turns to me. “What do you mean we can’t? I thought we could⁠—”

I lean in. “You said you didn’t want to go.”

“I don’t want to go at all, but...” She leans in. There’s a light in her eyes, just this side of mischievous. “...we have no excuse.”

I bracket her face, fingertips sliding across her jaw.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, eyes sparkling. “Are we doing a sex excuse? You think you’re going to kiss me now?”

My gaze lowers to her lips. “I am definitely going to kiss you now.”

“When I told you we needed a practice kiss, I didn’t mean in front of everybody.”

“This isn’t for practice.” I press my lips to hers. Her mouth is warm. Softer than I expected.

Her breath catches against my mouth. For a fraction of a second, she goes still—then seems to melt into me.

I stay a half second longer than I mean to. Another half second. She makes this breathy sound of desperation.

Somebody whistles and I come back to my senses. I force myself to let her go.

Her lips are parted. Dumbfounded.

“We’ll see you at the ceremony,” I say to the group. I take Kelsey’s hand and draw her back toward the hotel.

She comes with me in stunned silence for a dozen steps. “Well...what the hell?”

I marshal my thoughts enough to form a coherent sentence. “You’d have to agree it was the logical out.”

Chapter Thirteen

KELSEY

We head into the hotel, air-conditioned against the muggy warmth. Not that I can tell temperature at this point; my whole body is buzzing weirdly.

The people-hating billionaire can kiss. Really, really kiss.

Well, I spent all that time watching Bruno with his stern scowls and rock-hard forearms and his competence-porn moves, and then suddenly he’s bracketing my face in his hands, and his lips are on mine; of course something short-circuited.

Of course.

You’d have to agree it was the logical out.

That kiss was a lot of things...logical is not the word that comes to mind, though.

Inside our suite, I fling myself down on the couch.

“I mean, okay, I’m glad not to be on that boat,” I say, apropos of nothing. “Honestly, it’s a lot of Tyler’s people and I barely know them. Being a captive audience on open water while everyone quizzes us about our relationship does not sound fun.”

“I’m sure they won’t miss us,” he says.

“My point is that you can’t just decide things like that.”

He gives me his raised eyebrow.

His raised eyebrows aren’t the cheesy and dramatic kind, rather they’re subtle, giving his otherwise stern face an amused look, if you catch it at the right angle.

And then there are the eyes, which intensify when the brow quirks up.

I look away. This guy sweeps in here with his borderline extortion and a shithead comment about my family, combined with fake kisses and fake-protective-boyfriend act and the freak dresses.

It’s all a bit mind-bending.

But none of it needs to make sense, it just needs to work. He’s just a step up from an AI boyfriend.

We noodle on our phones for a while and then there’s a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” I call.

“Mr. Blackwood, Ms. Winters. It’s Margot.”

I sit up. “Dude. Tell me you did not order another robot dress.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then what is Margot doing here?”

I get up and fling open the door. Margot is standing there with a rack beside her, garments sheathed in protective covers.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “Whatever he ordered, I’m sure it’s very nice⁠—”

She looks bewildered. “I thought I was working on your instructions, Ms. Winters.”

“My instructions?”

She holds up her phone. “It wasn’t easy to source everything on short notice, but I think I have some things in here that might work.”

I turn and look at Bruno, whose attention is fixed on his phone. “And what instructions might these be?” I ask.

Margot reads from her own phone. “Faded glamour. Nothing stiff. Easy to move in. Vintage French Riviera. Movement over structure. Dusty Violet. Champagne bubbles. And this.”

She tilts the phone toward me.

I blink.

“I think it might be wallpaper?” she says. “It’s my understanding that this was one of the moods.”

The wallpaper from the room downstairs that I loved.

Bruno says, “I’m going to go do some work in the lobby.”

“If you recall, I have a dress. It’s not my favorite, but it will do fine.”

“I know. You don’t have to look at what might be a collection of faded glamour, vintage French Riviera, not costume, purple, champagne, bubbles, and the wallpaper.” He picks up his laptop. “You don’t have to bother at all. I probably wouldn’t if I were you.”

I narrow my eyes. Yeah, he wouldn’t, but I would, and he knows it.

He leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.

“Well!” Margot wheels the rack toward the bedroom. “Should we take a look?”

It seems assholish not to.

The first dress emerges from its plastic cocoon and I gasp.

It’s the color of champagne, all golden bubbles and shimmer, with an iridescence that catches the light when Margot turns it. I want to gasp again. And again. It’s covered in teeny-tiny hand-sewn beads like wee stars.

“What is this witchcraft?” I whisper.

Margot grins. “Right? That’s Maddy Mackee. She works out of a studio in Montauk.”

I reach out and touch it. Kitten soft.

“And this one—” She pulls out a violet, almost the exact shade of the streak in my hair, with a neckline that drapes rather than structures. “Damien Washington. He’s obsessed with how fabric moves. Watch.”

She gives it a gentle shake. The skirt ripples like water.

“Oh, wow,” I whisper.

“I know.” She’s grinning now. “And this one...” The next is dusty rose with cap sleeves and a full skirt. Very Grace Kelly at a fabulous veranda party. And the fabric’s print is tiny geometric birds.

“Like the wallpaper,” I say.

“It wasn’t easy to find that mood, but...”

“Also? These are things I would totally wear!”

“Bruno had me take a peek at your Instagram. So that I could get a sense of your style.”

Bruno knows my Insta?

She keeps pulling. Seafoam green with asymmetrical draping. Coral with a low back and a skirt made for twirling. Deep teal, sophisticated and playful, with pockets hidden in the seams.

Every single one is something I would actually choose. Something I would actually love.

“Can I try the champagne one? Not that I’m going to wear it. Just to test it.”

She wheels the rack into the bedroom. “Try whatever you want. I’ll be in the living room. Yell if you need help with zippers. Shoe options in the box.”

Naturally, the champagne one fits like it was made for me. It hugs rather than confines. The skirt moves when I move. The shoes are completely danceable.

Dammit.

I step out. Margot clasps her hands.

“That’s the one for the ceremony. You look like a movie star.”

Not so sure about movie star, but it is a very me dress—if I lived in a parallel universe where I had the budget and the occasion to justify it. I twirl. I really need to stop twirling.

I try the violet faded-glamour one. It makes my eyes look brighter, my hair darker. I feel like I should be on an Italian terrace somewhere with an Aperol spritz.

I try the dusty rose. Perfect for the gift-opening brunch—celebratory but not overdressed, and the skirt blooms when I spin.

Let’s just face it, I try every single one.

I can’t believe Bruno managed all this. Like he took one offhand comment about wallpaper and champagne bubbles and built something from it.

I change back into lounge pants and come out.

Margot jumps up. “Final decisions?”

“You did amazing work, but the thing is, I did have a dress. Even though—” I cast a longing glance toward the bedroom.

She grabs her bag. “Lucky for you, you don’t have to decide. They’re all bought and paid for. I’m twenty minutes away for alterations, and if you want me to do returns or exchanges, I can manage that as well.”

With that she simply leaves.

Chapter Fourteen

KELSEY

Ispot Bruno in a leather armchair near the window of the hotel lounge, a glass of something amber in his hand. Scotch, probably. He looks like a scotch person.

He’s staring out at the lawn, all flags and tents, very knights-of-the-round-table encampment.

I’m pleased to see his cowlick is still doing its own thing. There’s that.

I go right up to him. “I don’t know whether to punch you or give you a fake kiss.” I touch the errant chunk of hair, smooth it down. It springs back immediately.

“You won’t get it to go down.”

“You’re fighting dirty. The wallpaper?” I sink into the chair next to him. “Did you go down there and take a picture of it?”

“I had one of the bellboys do it.”

A waiter comes over and I order a champagne with a cherry. “I appreciate the gesture.”

He makes a sound that could be roughly translated as no big.

But it was big. Not so much the dresses, but the feeling of having someone in my corner. And also, yeah, the dresses. The waiter brings my drink, and I fish out the cherry and pop it in my mouth.

Bruno is watching me now. That focused attention that makes me feel like a watch movement he’s trying to understand. I’m slowly getting that this is maybe his superpower—he watches, and he catalogues, and then he sends someone to find dresses that are champagne bubbles and wallpaper and things I mentioned once in passing. Also, he figures out just how you want to be kissed.

Maybe that’s why he’s a good kisser. He’s a highly deliberate person. Devastatingly deliberate. Too bad he’s an emotionally shut-down kazillionaire recluse who would be a nightmare to date and who would never date somebody like me anyway.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

“I guess now you think I’m going to wear one of them, don’t you?”

“Are you?”

I gaze out at the wedding-ready lawn and the sparkling ocean beyond. The answer here is a resounding fuck yes, I’m going to wear one.

“We’ll see,” I say.

“It wasn’t just for you,” he says. “I do have my own charade to run. Someone took pictures and they’ll probably take more.”

Is he just saying that? Appealing to my practical side? I hold up my glass. “Well. There happens to be one that’s all champagne bubbles and scattered stars that I could definitely see myself in. But I want to lodge a formal complaint that you are the worst.”

“Noted.”

“And also thank you.”

His eyes crinkle minutely. I can’t tell if it’s the light or a super suppressed smile. His face is just so arresting when it’s on the move. “You’re welcome.”

“Weddings,” I say. “Right?”

We sit in companionable silence. He’s looking out the window with that gaze of concentration, like he’s having thoughts. Is he thinking about the kiss? But why? The kiss was just a chess move to him.

“What?” I ask.

“The misunderstanding with your family,” he says. “You never told me what it was.”

I take a sip. The bubbles tickle my nose.

I wasn’t planning on telling him, but for some reason, I want to. It’s a little bit because he feels like an ally. And a little bit because I want him to know I’m not a piece of shit.

And suddenly I’m launching into it.

“My great-great-grandmother was a dancer,” I begin. “Naomi Winters. She performed in some of the most famous theaters in Europe, and she had this tiara—rubies set in silver, absolutely stunning. Very valuable, not the piece itself, but the rubies. She wore it during a legendary performance of Giselle at the Paris Opera House. It’s been in our family ever since.”

Bruno is watching me with that quiet intensity. He’s not raising his eyebrow, but the eyebrows are definitely uneven, and I think it means he’s listening hard.

“A few years ago, I was putting together this dance recital. A big one—my own choreography, original music, the whole thing. And I wanted to wear the tiara. To feel connected to her. Like I was part of this lineage of dancers.” I laugh a little. “Stupid, maybe.”

I leave a pause for him to say it wasn’t stupid. He doesn’t. Just keeps listening.

“My mom let me borrow it. A lot of my family came in for it. The recital was one of the best nights of my life. Afterward we had this party, and I took the tiara off and hid it somewhere I thought was safe.” I swallow. “It was stolen.”

“From the party?”

“Yeah. And then a few weeks later, the empty setting—just the silver, no rubies—turned up at a pawn shop near my apartment.”

Bruno’s expression doesn’t change, but something sharpens in his eyes.

“A witness claimed that someone matching my description had been asking about selling antique jewelry in the area. Dark hair, purple streak.” I touch my hair reflexively. “And right around that time, a patron donated a significant amount for our new studio space, and my family saw the deposit and thought...”

“They thought you sold the rubies.”

“It’s so outrageous. As if I’d ever do that. That tiara wasn’t just jewelry to me; it was her legacy, something I absolutely cherish.” My voice wavers. “I should’ve figured out a better place to put it, I know that. The theft is a hundred percent on me, and I’ll always feel horrible about it. But to think I would tear it apart for the money...” I shake my head. “When I realized they thought it was me, that I had faked the theft, so I could keep the tiara and sell the rubies… I can’t tell you how devastating it was. I’ve always been the black sheep of the family—you’ve probably figured that out—but I never questioned the idea that they knew who I was. I was like, this is me. You know me. But it was like suddenly I was a stranger.”

Bruno lowers his gaze to his glass, pondering. He’s an amazing listener and I find myself wondering what part of watchmaking is listening.

“It was like one minute I was inside by the warm, cozy fire and the next I’m locked outside, standing in a blizzard. And I was so ashamed. Ashamed for what they thought about me. Ashamed that I was careless with something irreplaceable.”

“It doesn’t sound like you were careless. You found a place to tuck it away. You thought it was safe.”

“But it wasn’t safe, was it?” I pull apart the cherry stem. “When I wouldn’t cop to the crime, they cut me off. Just kicked me out of the family. They blocked me on all communication. Even Granny Ernie. Well, I’m pretty sure somebody blocked me on her devices.” I don’t say it was probably Mom. It hurts to think it, and I don’t want to name her and make it true but who else?

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I didn’t tell my friends for a long time. That first Christmas, I let everyone think I was going somewhere, but I stayed in my apartment working on a dance routine. I thought it would be cleared up, and I just didn’t want people to know. My friends know now and they always make sure I have somewhere to go for holidays, but it’s not the same. Of course, I refused to give up. I’m sure you’re not surprised by that.”

His lip quirks. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“I sent Christmas cards and birthday cards. Some of them were returned unopened. That didn’t stop me. I sent messages about little milestones. You can’t block the mail. I just kept the door open. And it paid off. Danielle reached out this past January to ask me to help her address invitations. And to obviously come to the wedding.” I smile. “It was an amazing feeling. Danielle had come over to my side. I was being invited back in. I think they had mulled it over and maybe realized I wouldn’t ever do anything like that.”

“So they didn’t find any specific evidence to show you’re innocent?”

“No. They must have just realized, God, Kelsey would never! They’re choosing to believe me. That’s what my sister said. Well after all, I’m family.”

“Choose to believe you,” he says.

“It sounds bad when you say it. I’ll admit, I would have wished for something more whole-hearted, but⁠—”

“Have you ever considered hiring a private investigator?”

I blink. “What?”

“An investigator. To find the real culprit.”

“But they believe I didn’t do it now. I mean, they seem to. They invited me here.”

“But what if you could give them solid evidence that it wasn’t you?”

“They’ve let me back. They’ve as much as admitted their error. It feels weird and aggressive to launch some investigation. And even if there’s lingering doubt, which maybe there is, I’m handling it. If I need a private investigator to make my family true-blue believe I’m not a thief, I’ve already lost.” I meet his eyes. “Wouldn’t you rather have people know your heart than accept you based on facts in a file?”

“I’d prefer neither.”

I gust out a laugh. “So full of shit.”

Something flickers across his face. He looks away, back toward the harbor.

“I have the truth on my side. I always felt like my family members would look inside themselves and realize deep down who I truly am. They know I’m chaotic and impulsive and sometimes I lose label makers and forget to return candy thermometers, but they know I’d never do a thing like this. And they’re letting me back in. It shows that when you hang in there and stay in connection with each other, that is the win. Not some random PI who they may or may not believe.”

“But what about the lingering doubts?”

“I’m sure there are some, but you know what? I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep being me. And they’ll see.” I set down my glass. “We’re family, Bruno. The truth always comes out; not because someone hires a detective, but because connection heals things. Staying in there with people and keeping the door open, that’s what works.”

“That’s rather idealistic.”

“Well, I am idealistic, and I will live and die by that sword.”

He looks troubled, somehow.

And then I catch sight of a couple of cousins crossing the lobby, all dressed up. “Shit. We have to get ready.”

“We have nearly an hour. All I need is five minutes.”

“Dudes,” I say, mock disgusted. I get up and head to the elevators.

Chapter Fifteen

BRUNO

She sets off, long legs eating up the marble, hair flowing, and that particular brightness she has that’s hard to quantify.

I have no stake in any of this. I shouldn’t care what she believes. She has asked me to stay in my lane.

But it’s excruciating.

She sent Christmas cards that came back unopened. She watched their lives through a fake Instagram account. She addressed wedding invitations with her sister like old times and took it as evidence that everything was fine, that they’d come around, that love had won.

No one wants her here.

I should tell her.

But would she hear it? Would she care? She’s too idealistic. How does a person like this survive in the world, thinking connection heals things and that emotions are more important than facts?

It’s obvious she didn’t steal that thing. How could these people think otherwise? What is wrong with them? She’s clearly the most sentimental person here. You could see the emotions fly through her face like a Pixar movie; she’s got tons of heart, but what she needs is a bit of armor.

I drain my scotch.

It’s not my place to get involved.

Even so, it grates on me. Just the principle of it, that’s all.

I pull out my phone. I scroll to Laney Waller, the investigator I used when I first looked into my mother. Discreet, thorough, expensive. The kind of professional who finds things that don’t want to be found.

I press call.

I give her the details: the tiara, the timeline, the pawn shop, the witness who saw a woman with dark hair with a purple streak. The patron whose deposit arrived at exactly the wrong moment. I tell her to focus on who had access to the party, who had motive, who might have known about the loan.

“Keep this discreet. It stays between us.”

A pause. “Understood.”

I hang up. Set the phone on the desk.

Wouldn’t you rather have people know your heart?

I go upstairs to get ready.

Chapter Sixteen

BRUNO

She emerges from the bedroom transformed. She’s champagne bubbles and scattered stars and a full-dimple grin, full-on radiant.

The dress hits her curves exactly right. Like it was made for her. And the way the color sets off her skin. And then there’s the plunge of the bodice. I’m still taking inventory when I find myself looking at her mouth. I stop doing that.

“What? You don’t like it?”

“It’s perfect.”

“Thank you.” She does a little twirl and the skirt blooms out around her and settles back. “I feel so happy in this.”

They don’t deserve her.

“Are you mad about something?”

I go to her and free a thread from the strap, smoothing it flat. A small thing. The only useful thing I can think to do. “There.”

She beams at me. “Thank you, Mr. Exactitudinal.”

“That’s not a word,” I whisper.

The ceremony is held in the garden overlooking the water. White chairs arranged in precise rows. A string quartet plays Mozart.

Apparently, rain came into the forecast this afternoon—it’s been threatening up and down the entire East Coast, dark clouds gathering and dispersing, but the sky above the Hamptons stays clear for the wedding.

I settle into my chair beside her and try to focus on the ceremony. The bride appears. The groom tears up.

But I can’t stop looking at Kelsey, eyes bright with unshed tears, hands clasped in her lap, fingers moving slightly, unconsciously, like she’s counting beats.

The officiant speaks. Vows are exchanged. At some point Kelsey reaches over and squeezes my arm. I don’t think she even realizes she’s done it.

After a short break in the program, people are led to a vast seating area under the tents. The tables have elaborate centerpieces. Strings of fairy lights like fanciful spiderwebs overhead. Waitstaff glide through with yet more champagne.

“Oh!” Kelsey’s face lights up when she sees our place cards. “We’re at the front. Near Danielle and Tyler!”

Interesting.

I feel somebody watching me. I look up. Tyler catches my eye from across the tent and gives me an enthusiastic thumbs up.

I’m starting to hate these people.

We take our seats next to some of the most favored cousins. Dinner is adequate. Dessert appears. The speeches drone on. And through it all, a steady stream of relatives and friends of the family move past our table, drawn by curiosity about the reclusive watchmaker and his unlikely date.

“So how did you two meet?” somebody asks.

Kelsey launches into the story with her usual enthusiasm. “He saw my show. Anything Goes—I’m one of Reno’s Angels. He waited at the stage door after.”

“You waiting at the stage door?” The woman—an aunt, I gather—looks skeptical. “At a Broadway theater?”

Kelsey glances nervously at me.

I take her hand. “I couldn’t look away.” I address the aunt. I address all of them, the growing cluster around our table. “Have any of you seen it? Have you gone to see the show she’s in?”

People mumble excuses, mutter promises that they hope to.

“It’s okay!” Kelsey chirps.

“She’s not one of the leads, not technically. But she has incredible presence. Charisma. And every move is deliberate—she knows exactly where her weight is, where her attention is, what she’s doing with both.” As I speak, my eyes slide from one of them to the next, burning with contempt, and it makes each one of them break eye contact and look away. “You tell yourself to follow the story, to pay attention to the program—and then you realize you’ve missed three scenes because you’ve been watching her instead.” I pause to look them over like misbehaving children. “So yes. I waited at the stage door. Forty-five minutes. She came out last. I had no good explanation for what I was doing there.”

Kelsey’s cheeks are pink. “If I’d known you were out there that long, honey⁠—”

“You didn’t even know me.”

She blinks. “Well, true.”

“But wouldn’t you have people do that?” the aunt presses. “Someone like you—surely you’d have an assistant reach out to arrange something.”

“When a man sees a woman like Kelsey, he doesn’t outsource a goddamn thing.”

The table goes quiet.

Kelsey opens her mouth, closes it.

The aunt clears her throat. “Well. Wonderful.”

The interrogators drift away. Kelsey leans in close. “Wow. Somebody is just full of surprises.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I say.

“So cool. Mr. Bruno Blackwood wouldn’t outsource that shit! No siree!” she teases.

I lower my voice. “Not a thing.”

She studies my face. “You might’ve made them feel a little bit bad, though, for not seeing my show.”

“They should feel bad.”

“People are busy,” she says. “And we’re just coming back together, you know? They might not even have known about it.”

I give the middle distance a dark look.

She lays a hand on my arm, with a warning glance. She does not want me to malign her family.

Fair enough. Stay in your lane.

Tyler appears at my elbow. “Bruno! Man, I’ve been dying to ask you about the new moon phase complication I heard you’re developing...”

I let him pull me into a conversation about gear trains and lunar cycles, which is probably good, because I am getting invested. Involved. Nobody wants that; least of all, me.

Kelsey turns to chat with one of the cousins, and they go to check on something.

Eventually Tyler’s dragged off for some wedding-related activity, and I’m left standing at the edge of the tent, hoping nobody recognizes me.

Too much to ask for, as it turns out.

A man stumbles into my peripheral vision. One of the uncles, I think. Red-faced, listing slightly to the left.

I pull out my phone, as if I’ve just gotten a call.

“You’re the watch guy,” he announces, too loud. “The billionaire boyfriend.”

“I am. Sorry, I have to take this.” I head out of the tent and across the dark lawn.

He laughs and catches up, clapping me on the back. “A vape? Lemme join you.”

“A call. You’ll excuse me.” I continue to the far end of the space.

He’s like a parasite, following me.

I stop at a tree and turn to him. “Leave me.”

He jabs a finger in my general direction. “I’m just saying, you’d better watch out with that one.”

Something cold settles in my chest. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying that you seem like a smart guy. Probably got a lot of nice things. You’ll want to watch your valuables with this one is all I’m saying.”

I pocket my phone.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa.” He backs up, alarmed by whatever he sees in my eyes.

I grab his lapels and slam him against the tree, letting his head knock into it.

He has to tilt his head back to meet my eyes.

“Now,” I say, “what was that you had to tell me?”

“N-nothing.”

I cast my voice low and hard. “She did nothing wrong.”

“Well. She would say that.”

The cold thing in my chest crystallizes into something harder. “And the family’s position? I was under the impression that people had rethought their stance.”

The uncle laughs. “What? No. Nobody thinks she’s innocent.”

I grind him harder against the tree. “Then why is she here?”

He narrows his eyes.

I push him higher, letting him feel the rough bark. His feet are dangling in the air.

“Okay, okay, Granny Ernie forced it. Said Danielle had to give Kelsey a part in the wedding and invite her. She’s paying for this whole wedding, you know.” The liquor on his breath nearly makes my eyes water.

I keep him there, pulse racing. “So Granny Ernie believes her?”

He casts a hazy glance off to the side. “Uh...working theory is she just wants everyone in the pictures.”

“This reunion. It’s all for show.”

He seems to register something in my expression and tries to pull away. I crush him harder. I can’t punch him, but I can make him hurt. “Say one more word about my date, and I will make you sorry.”

“I was trying to do you a favor⁠—”

“Do you understand?”

He nods.

I let him go. He stumbles away.

“Go. Run.”

He turns and runs around the tent.

I stand there in the dark. What the hell am I doing? I am not a man who loses control. That’s all I need, to get arrested for assault.

I smooth my jacket. Straighten my cuffs.

Stay in your lane.

Chapter Seventeen

KELSEY

There’s a feeling that family gives you that I don’t have a word for. Like you’re being hugged without even touching, and you’re safe, because these are your people, and you belong to each other.

Because you’re home.

I’m thinking about this because it’s the opposite of how I feel right now.

Mom is over by the dessert table with Aunt Patricia and Aunt Bev, all three of them tilted together like they’re sharing a fun secret. She throws her head back laughing at something. She looks so happy. She looks exactly like herself.

I try to catch Danielle’s eye, but there’s something happening on the other side of the room. Maybe cake soon.

The cousins are piled on a love seat near a heat lamp, three of them, legs draped over each other in an easy pileup of people who’ve been doing that their whole lives. I used to be in pileups like that.

I drift over. “Hey!”

A beat. Then another.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

Everything so polite. I perch on the arm of the nearest chair. “I was just thinking of that summer when we got in so much trouble for jumping into the pool from the Hendricksons’ roof. Oh my God, I think I was grounded for months.”

People smile.

“Good times,” somebody says unenthusiastically.

Their conversation restarts, but it’s thinner now. Like I broke something when I came by.

I smile when someone glances at me. I nod at things that are nod-able, but all the while, I’m feeling like an idiot. I really want to leave, but I don’t want to have it be drama. So I wait.

Finally I push up. “Time for a drink!” I walk away before I can do anything embarrassing. Like cry. Or ask them if they’re mad. Or protest my innocence like I did way too much.

Three years. I wrote Christmas cards. I addressed their wedding invitations in my best handwriting. I told myself we were getting there, that love was winning, that this weekend was proof.

Maybe it was foolish.

Across the room, Granny Ernie is holding court with a cluster of little kids, her voice animated, hands painting pictures in the air. They’re rapt. She glances up as I approach, her face lighting.

“Kelsey!” Bright and warm and real. Relief moves through me.

But then one of the kids tugs her sleeve, and she turns back, mid-thought, finishing whatever she was telling them.

I hover for a second, then drift back.

Okay.

All of these people who have known me my whole life, and right now I can’t find a single one of them who wants to be standing next to me.

I scan the room for Bruno. He was walking out with Uncle Jasper a little while ago. Uncle Jasper actually clapped him on the back like they’re the greatest of friends. Uncle Jasper, who barely even said hi to me. At least my fake date’s a hit.

Well, he’s done more tonight than the role requires.

At some point a string quartet starts up—something slow and waltz-y, romantic. The first dance.

Danielle and Tyler take the floor. Danielle told me they weren’t planning on learning a whole dance number and “performing like circus bears.” It was a good call not to overdo it. At some point they abandon the formal moves of the waltz for something more intimate, forehead to forehead.

I smile. The waltz is a boring, stuffy dance, all rules and rigidity. I love that they’ve off-roaded from it.

The parents go out. Mom and Dad, and Tyler’s folks. I catch Mom’s eye, but she doesn’t seem to see me.

The grandparents head out, box-stepping and beaming. Kids come out. Some of the younger couples. A bunch of the cousins from the couch stream out and start doing goofy moves to the waltz music.

Again I search for Bruno. He’s not near the bar, not at the edge of the tent.

I doubt he’d want to dance, but it might be nice not to stand here all alone. He’s probably back at the suite counting the minutes before he can get out of here. I wouldn’t blame him.

I keep a pleasant expression, standing there alone, watching everyone. My eyes feel hot, but I keep that smile going.

Broadway training for the win!

Movement on the far side of the tent catches my eye.

Bruno.

My heart lifts. Which is stupid. He’s just my fake date.

But there’s something different about him. He’s not disheveled exactly, but there’s a charge to him, a darkness, like things are all wrong. He looks across the dance floor and locks eyes on me. Something is definitely wrong. Suddenly he’s on the move, stalking around the perimeter.

He hates it here.

I dragged him into this mess of a family. He thinks they’re full of shit and all that.

He looks over at me, still coming, eyes locked on to mine. He stops in front of me and holds out his hand.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

His voice comes out rough. “Dance with me, Kelsey.”

“You dance?”

He doesn’t answer. Just waits with his hand out.

Feeling strangely shy, I place my hand in his palm. He closes his fingers around mine and pulls me onto the floor, eyes fixed on mine.

His hand settles at the small of my back—firm, deliberate. His other hand takes mine and lifts it into position.

I’m about to make a joke, like, are you channeling Captain Von Trapp, but then we’re moving, and I realize with a shock that he knows this dance. Not just knows it. Owns it.

A waltz—so formal and controlled with its precise footwork and rigid rules. Of course this is the dance Bruno Blackwood would know.

“Did something happen?”

“Is it not customary to dance at a wedding?”

“Where did you learn this?” I whisper.

“Military school.”

Of course. Military schools teach that sort of thing. And Bruno would learn it perfectly. Bruno would’ve been the hulking, scowling military-school prodigy who followed every rule with scary precision.

I have never loved the waltz—there’s zero room for improv or personality, and it’s not beautiful like ballet. There’s not much thrilling about it at all, really.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

But dancing with Bruno, the waltz stops feeling restrained. He turns all that rigid precision into something dangerous. Like the precision itself is what’s dangerous. Because there’s some kind of wild intensity involved.

My feet move automatically. I know the basics, but he could guide a complete beginner through this without breaking stride—hand firm at my back, eyes fixed on mine, stern and dark and utterly focused.

But I happen to know the dance. And I stay with him. I move with him. We’re breathing together inside this rigid choreography and something about that—the precision, the harsh focus of his gaze...

Oh my God, is this hot?

“You really know how to waltz,” I say, dimly pointing out the obvious.

We turn. He pulls me tighter, eyes fixed on mine.

And I’m thinking about the way he kissed me. The same energy. Intense. Single-minded. All that force locked inside control.

It’s exciting.

He’s exciting.

The other couples and the fairy lights have all gone soft at the edges. There’s just the music and the frame of his arms.

He holds me close, closer than the dance requires.

And I really just want to kiss him again.

The dance ends.

“Well…” I’m trying to think of some joke, but I can’t. Apparently, I’m hypnotized by the unexpected hotness of the supposedly most boring dance in the world.

He says, “Let’s get out of here.”

I let go of his hand and take off my shoes. “We probably need to say our goodbyes.”

“Do we?” he says.

I look around. People are pretty caught up in their revelry. I grab his hand and smile. “Maybe not.” I pull him away from the tent and then tug on his arm like I’m a five-year-old trying to get him to run. He looks conflicted for a moment, his eyes darting left and right, but then he gives in and starts running, and I’m pulling him along, the grass cool and wet on my feet.

And something about the sheer weirdness of this whole situation, getting this cold stoic billionaire to run across the grass with me, it makes me start laughing, and that makes him start laughing.

We end up on the crew veranda, breathless. It’s the first time I’ve felt okay all night. More than okay. I really had a horrible time.

I felt like a ghost in that tent, pathetic and alone.

Until he came and pulled me into his arms. And I just fit there.

Chapter Eighteen

BRUNO

The veranda is dark enough. That’s something.

I stand at the railing watching the white lines of surf break against the shore, trying to get ahold of myself.

I am not a man who gets emotionally involved. I have organized my life around not being that man. I live on a boat in the ocean, for God’s sake.

I have a system. I have a yacht that runs with perfect precision and a climate-controlled workshop where I build things with my hands that keep perfect time.

Yet somehow, I keep reacting to Kelsey’s family as though they’ve done something to me personally.

I wanted to destroy that uncle. Make him sorry for opening his mouth. Pushing him against that tree felt cathartic.

I should have taken that as a sign to go to bed, but what did I do instead? I stepped back into the tent, and when I saw Kelsey standing there, so alone, so hopeful, and beautiful, all smooth skin and champagne bubbles and those powerful legs, my judgment apparently stopped functioning. Maybe it was the scotch, but I haven’t had much. I find myself wishing I had, to have that as an excuse for my behavior.

And once my hand settled at her back, once we started moving together, things began slipping. She followed me, but not like other partners do. There was a reckless trust in the way she moved with me. Responsiveness. Fearlessness. And suddenly I was inside the dance instead of controlling it.

I felt wild, frankly.

And that is not me.

If I charted my self-control since arriving here, the line would be heading decisively downward. Plunging, I believe is the word.

Meanwhile my foolishness is breaking records, along with my willingness to forget why I avoid entanglements in the first place.

I should leave tonight. I could leave tonight. I didn’t love the fact that half the wedding appeared to be filming the dance while I quietly unraveled in public, but if my brothers care to follow up on things here, they’d be convinced. To say the least.

The door opens behind me. I don’t have to look to know she’s standing there, to feel her, as though we’ve gotten linked up in some powerful and primal way.

I shouldn’t turn, but I do.

She’s still in the dress, feet bare, carrying two glasses of something with ice. She holds one out without a word and I take it.

The glass is cold on my fingers. There’s a lemon slice in mine and a maraschino cherry in hers. Water. “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” she says.

“We both put in our time. We got what we needed.”

She settles into one of the chairs and draws her feet up beneath her. The wedding rolls on below us. The quartet is doing a cover of something modern that I can’t quite place. Bursts of laughter drift up.

I lean against the railing and look at her instead of the view. My self-control notches down a bit more. I study my glass of water.

“What did you need from all this?” she asks. “You never said.”

I consider not answering. I’m good at not answering. Instead, for some reason, I ask, “How much do you know about my family?”

She tips her head. “Rich. Old money. I’m thinking you have a collection of sunglasses with the little strings on the back and maybe even some cravats. A top hat or two.”

“My family is not as wealthy as it once was. Most of my money came from a process I developed. I was trying to stop my watches from losing twelve seconds a year. I developed a thermal hardening process to do it. As it turned out, the aerospace industry had been trying to solve the same problem.”

“So you sold your process?”

“Licensed it. Lots of industries use it these days. My two younger brothers sank what money they had into making the estate into a vineyard and event space. There was actually a working vineyard there decades ago, but things have fallen into disrepair. Let’s just say it is a grand, sprawling money pit, and it’s not profitable. Which is fine—I was happy to give them what they need. Recently a production company approached them about a segment. American Spotlight. Apparently it’s a documentary show.”

“Oh, I love American Spotlight. They did that thing on that circus guy who had ten wives who didn’t know about each other.”

“Yes, they love a nice juicy human-interest story. They approached my brothers about doing a spotlight on my family’s history and the vineyard project. My brothers said yes.”

She tilts her head, baffled. “Huh.”

“They led the American Spotlight people to believe that all three brothers would be on-site.”

“Oh.” It doesn’t take long for her to put it together. “You think it will be about you.”

I sit. It’s strange, talking to another human about it all. Strange to hear the words. “I’ve lost count of the number of people who have tried to get me on camera for an interview since that piece ran in the Sunday Ledger.”

“You do inspire curiosity,” she says.

“And I’m not that precious; I’d bite the bullet and appear in the thing to give them a boost if it were only about that, but it’s more. Splashing our family stories onto screens across the nation and the world...let’s just say things about the Blackwood family could get unburied. Things my brothers don’t know. Things that they’re better off not knowing.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “And if you don’t appear, you think that kills the documentary?”

“Nobody wants a documentary about a vineyard.”

“Fair.”

“This is the weekend for shooting the thing. I told my brothers all along that I wouldn’t appear, but they never understood how committed I am to that position, and they were unhappy when they realized I wouldn’t be giving in. One of my brothers decided to play legal hardball. I won’t bore you with the details, let’s just say I need a legitimate scheduling conflict. Something unmovable. Something more than me being an asshole.”

“You’re not an asshole.”

“Oh, don’t let this weekend confuse you.”

“It would be bad if they found out?”

“Devastating,” I say. “It would unmake them. Trust me.”

“You’re protecting them.”

I sip my water. “You know those maraschino cherries are full of chemicals and dyes. They’re not even a fruit.”

“So they say.” She reaches over and touches the back of my hair. “You have this sprig of hair that won’t go down.”

“I’m aware.”

“It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

“Your bar is a bit low.”

She looks serious. “You’re not going to tell me the secret.”

“No.”

She moves her fingers to my collar. Lust shudders through me—I can’t remember the last time I had such a fierce need to touch a woman. To explore a woman. To fuck a woman. I take her hand and press it between mine. I kiss her thumb. My self-control floats up into the dusk along with the music.

“If I guess, will you tell me if I’m right?”

“No.”

She narrows her eyes. “So you won’t confirm or deny.”

“Correct.”

She considers this with great seriousness. “Is it cannibalism?”

“No comment.”

Her eyes go wide. “No comment. Meaning it could be. Meaning your family’s legacy is built on a foundation of⁠—”

“No comment.” I kiss the tip of her pointer finger, a bad idea on so many levels.

She’s grinning now, snuggling in next to me. “Dear diary. Bruno Blackwood will neither confirm nor deny that his family’s historic fortune is rooted in cannibalistic practices.”

I chuckle, and then, almost involuntarily, I reach over and pull her onto my lap, enjoying the press of her body against mine far too much.

She’s laughing, startled, one hand landing on my chest to catch herself. Below us the wedding goes on. The music is something slow now.

“I’m sorry you have to carry that.”

I draw one finger along the side of her neck, noting the way her breath changes, finding the beat of her pulse under her skin. I’ve never known anybody who’s such an open book, just flung open to the world.

I don’t know if it’s bravery or foolishness.

She looks at me straight on. And the way I see her right now, she’s not fragile or confused, or even in need of any protection. She’s a fucking marvel.

And I have spent so long being an island.

I put my lips to her ear. “We cannibals always start with the earlobe. It’s a delicacy.”

Chapter Nineteen

KELSEY

It starts as the joke with the whole cannibal thing, and his breath is warm and I’m just laughing, I’m still laughing when his teeth close gently around my earlobe.

Eep!

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t rush. Just holds there, teeth on my earlobe, breath against my neck. Who does this?

But...wow. My heart beats in full jackrabbit mode. Even the night seems to change moods, from a lovely pastel evening sunset to the strange to a darkly thrilling summer storm.

I can’t remember how to breathe.

He releases my earlobe, and his lips trail—slowly, ever so slowly—down the side of my neck. Not kissing; it’s more like he’s reading me.

This crafty, crafty watchmaker.

I’m still sitting sideways on his lap with one hand on his chest, and I can feel his heart beating, strong and steady.

He draws one finger along my collarbone. It’s the same path he traced earlier, but so different now, like he’s deciding things.

I kiss his cheek.

“Bruno,” I whisper.

He continues on his excruciatingly slow and deliberate finger path. I suppose it shouldn’t be a shock that Bruno is so wonderfully deliberate, that he turns out to be a man who observes and adjusts.

His lips find the hollow of my throat, and I tip my head back.

Below us the wedding is still going, all music and laughter and the clink of glasses, and I’m up here in the dark with my fake date, and his finger is on my skin, making the thoughts fall from my mind.

“Bruno.”

He lifts his head. Looks at me.

In the low light his gray eyes are almost black, and the level of focus in his gaze is devastating in the most delicious way. I’ve been looked at as a dancer, a performer, a girl on the city street, a black sheep, but I have never been looked at like this.

He cups my face in one hand and my belly tightens. His thumb traces my lower lip. He watches his own thumb do it.

The jackrabbit inside me bounces off the walls now. It’s full-on parkouring. Is that a word?

Then he kisses me.

Newsflash: Bruno kisses like he dances—all controlled, focused intensity.

And I’m into it.

My hand finds the back of his neck. I shift my weight and open my mouth wider. He adjusts instantly, changes the angle, deepens the kiss, reading me.

Nobody has ever read me like this. Nobody has ever danced with me like this.

His hand moves from my face to the back of my neck, and then down. The dress has a low back, and his palm is electric against my bare skin.

I make a sound that’s just south of a squeak.

With exquisite yet terrifying patience, he slides his hand from my back around to my ribs, and up, and I think if he doesn’t touch my breast, I might actually die a sad and tragic death.

Instead he traces the edge of my bra inside my dress. Or maybe he’s examining the construction of the dress, or maybe just maximizing my utter neediness by making me wait.

“You’re killing me,” I whisper.

Wicked fingers slide the dress off my shoulders. He finds a nipple, and I gasp as he rolls it between his finger and thumb, adjusting the pressure until he finds the exact amount that makes my spine arch, because apparently he is just evil.

I’m grinding against him. More, please! That’s what my grinding says. More attention to more parts. For starters.

I smooth my hands over his hard shoulders, wishing his shirt wasn’t on. I find his buttons and start undoing them. “Off with this, sir!” I joke, and then I make a sound like a cat, ignoring the voice in my head that says you’re being a lot right now, Kelsey. You’re being too much.

But we are going to fuck tonight. That is a freight train that will not be stopping and it’s not like he might break up with me afterwards. This thing ends tomorrow either way. I don’t have to care if he doesn’t like how extra I am.

It’s liberating.

His other hand is at my hip and he’s not guiding me, exactly—he’s allowing me. Adjusting to my rhythm. Matching me.

His mouth is at my neck again. The hollow below my ear. Teeth, then tongue, then a scrape that sends electricity down to my toes.

I suck in a breath. “Double gasp!”

His breathing turns a little faster. A little less controlled.

His fingers leave my breast and trail down my stomach, sliding under my dress, up along my thigh. So slowly. So deliberately.

I am full-on shaking as he pushes my dress up over my thighs and pauses, toying with the elastic of my panties.

Is he waiting for a yes, or just trying to drive me insane?

“Keep going!” I gasp.

His fingers dive under and find me. I’m embarrassingly wet, but the rough sound he makes tells me he’s into it.

“Don’t stop,” I say as he finds my clit and does wicked magic on it. He’s adjusting, reading, like he’s working on something small and precise that he has to get exactly right, which he does, finding the exact best mind-blowing rhythm, and it comes to me that this might be a watchmaker thing.

A really good watchmaker thing.

I bury my face in his neck, mumbling OMG into his skin, fingers clutched in the fabric of his shirt. Below us, someone laughs and the music plays on, but it’s like another reality down there, a far lesser reality, because I’m on Bruno Blackwood’s lap, and he can play killer croquet, and make watches just right, and apparently these skills definitely, one hundred percent, transfer to sexytimes.

“Don’t stop,” I say yet again like a maniac.

He presses a fraction harder, keeps the rhythm, his other hand firm at my hip, and I can feel this tight, bright coil building like crazy, and his mouth is at my ear, breathing, just breathing, because that’s him, Mr. Metronome, making me shatter apart into a thousand pieces while sitting on his lap while the party goes on below.

He holds me through the aftershocks, fingers moving gently, reading me, easing me down. Like he knows the exact moment the sensitivity tips from good to “no no no too much!” Like he can feel it in my body before I can.

I’m panting against his neck, legs trembling. I put my lips to his neck and make a sound of exactly how I’m feeling, which might be described as a weird hum of happiness. This is something I would never do with another man because weird, fun sounds fall in the category of Kelsey is a lot.

I wait for him to pull away. To say something dry and deflecting.

Instead he growls.

What was that?

Right then, something inside him seems to snap. He hooks an arm beneath my knees and another around my back, and he lifts me clear up from the couch in a rough, urgent motion, like instinct has seized control of him. We’re moving into the suite before I can even catch my breath.

I loop my arms around his neck, nibbling at his jawline. He holds me so tightly my ribs can feel the force of it. Most notably, his breathing is uneven against my skin. Like whatever iron fist of control Bruno had over himself is slipping loose.

He carries me through the dark living room without turning on lights. His jaw is set. His breathing is controlled again. He’s gotten his control back, but I saw it go, and I loved it as much as I love the unruly cowlick at the back of his head or the crinkles where his eyes give him away. He’s like music that’s a lot of build, and the payoff may be subtle, but you so want and love it.

He sets me on the bed and stands over me, seeming to try to master his emotions.

I grin. “Come here.”

His breaths come heavily. He removes his jacket and unbuttons the rest of his shirt, slowly, one button at a time, watching me watch him.

“Are you tormenting me?”

“Maybe.”

His chest is broad and shadowed and I want to touch him but something about the way he’s doing this—the pacing, the control—makes me wait. He’s setting the tempo like with the waltz and I’m here for it.

His hand stops on the last button, fingers frozen mid-task, watching me, because he is a wonderful, evil watchmaker who will make me wait, and I am loving it, but two can play at this game.

I sit up and pull the dress over my head and throw it across the room.

He finishes with his own shirt and settles it over a chair back. His body is dense and powerful; it’s the body of a man who runs punishing distances and hulks around on a boat doing things with anchors, probably.

He leans over me, one knee on the bed, one hand flat against my stomach, warm and wide, urging me back.

His hand moves up. Over my ribs. Between my breasts. He traces the line of my sternum with one finger, all the way up to my throat. He sees so much, and I’m feeling suddenly shy, but then his mouth goes everywhere his hand went, down my throat, between my breasts, down my stomach. He moves like he has all the time in the world to explore this strange new land that he’s learning with his mouth and his hand.

He hits the realm of the nipple, and I arch into him and my hands find his hair, thick and slightly damp. I hold on.

“More of that,” I breathe.

He gives me more of that. Then his mouth is on my other breast, and his hand is sliding down my stomach again and I’m grabbing at his belt.

He catches my wrist and pins it gently by my hip. “Not yet.”

“Eep!”

The shape of his cheek changes, like he might be smiling, and he kisses my hip bone, and then he kisses the crease where my thigh meets my torso. He traces it with his tongue.

At this point, I’m vibrating like a tuning fork, every nerve in my body hanging on what he’ll do next.

What he does next is to put his mouth on my sex. And licks. Once. Again.

I make a noise like an animal caught in a fence, and maybe a little bit liking it.

He keeps on with the locked-in focus, the relentless consistency, just like on the veranda, except his tongue is involved now, and his hands are gripping my thighs demon-tight.

“Bruno—God⁠—”

He stops and looks up at me, eyes dark, breath ragged. I reach down and grab his hair. “Come here.”

Something flickers across his expression, and he lets me pull him up. I reach for his belt, and this time he doesn’t stop me.

His pants come off and I was right—everything about him is serious. I wrap my hand around his cock, and he hisses between his teeth. His head drops forward. He pushes my hand away and fumbles around, and somehow, he has a condom, and he’s rolling it on with steady fingers. Well, almost steady.

He positions himself over me. One hand braced beside my head, the other guiding himself. He looks down at me.

“Kelsey.”

“Yeah?”

Nothing, apparently. He just wanted to say my name.

He pushes into me slowly, inch by inch, watching my face. Reading me, the way he reads everything.

“Yeah,” I say, and this time it’s not a question.

When he’s all the way in, he stops.

We both stop.

He’s large and the fullness of it is intense and neither of us moves; we’re just breathing, foreheads close, his weight on his arms, and for a moment it’s not about sex at all. It’s about being this close to another person. It’s about staying right in there.

Then he moves.

Slow, deep strokes, and the rhythm is mind-bendingly perfect.

I wrap my legs around him and tilt my hips and suggest something faster, and he goes for it. It’s like a dance with us, and I’m not being polite with what I want or toning it down or anything. I’m not softening myself into a pleasing shape the way I sometimes do on dates. I’m just here. Full volume. Pulling him closer, wrapping tighter.

And let’s just say we’re good together. Great together. At sex, anyway.

I run my hands up his back. Feel the muscles working, the controlled power, the heat of his skin. I pull him closer and he allows it, his chest against mine, his face in my neck, and the intimacy of it is everything.

His breath is ragged at my neck. “Fuck.”

He says it like he’s angry at himself or something.

I tighten around him with my wicked dancer’s muscular control and his whole body jerks.

“What are you doing to me?” he gusts out.

Backatcha, I think, as the pressure builds in my spine, in my thighs, in the soles of my feet.

“I’m going to⁠—”

“I know,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

He changes the angle ever so slightly, one hand shifting my hip. I come with his name in my mouth and my fingers digging into his back and my whole body clenching around him.

He follows me. More than that: his precision shatters when he comes. His breath goes all wrong, and he presses his face into my neck, and there’s this vulnerability there for a split second, there and gone.

He lies on his back after, and I’m on my side, facing him, head propped up on my hand. Our breathing is slowing down at different rates—mine first, because I’m used to recovering from physical exertion.

“So deliciously ill-advised,” I whisper.

He looks up at the ceiling, and I get the feeling that he’s reassembling, somehow, like his whole precision-engineered way of being is clicking back into place like the components of one of his watches. Though he’d probably have a problem with that description. I’m sure his watches don’t click into place. I’m probably thinking of Legos.

I press my palm to his chest. His heart is still going fast. “Where did you go?”

He rolls onto his side, facing me, and his hand comes up and moves a strand of hair from my face. His touch is precise again. “I’m right here.”

I move closer and kiss his chest, feeling suddenly sad that this is it, our one and only night. But maybe that’s why it’s amazing. We were stolen out of our worlds and thrown together, the most outlandish pair possible.

I fall asleep with his heartbeat against my forehead.

Chapter Twenty

BRUNO

Iopen my eyes and see 8:32.

What the hell?

I haven’t slept past six in—I actually can’t calculate it. Years. Possibly since boarding school, when the 5:45 bell would rouse us to make our beds and stand at attention for inspection. My internal clock is as infallible as my watches.

Usually.

It will take me four minutes to dress, but Kelsey will need much more. We should already be moving.

But I don’t move.

Her hair is splayed out on her pillow like a messy mane, her mascara lightly smudged under one eye. I lie there trying to absorb everything about her: the tone and cadence of her breathing, the tiny mole on her cheekbone, the soft crease between her eyebrows.

Maybe I am a cannibal.

Her right hand is curled near her mouth like she fell asleep mid-thought. My mind goes back to those fingers fisting my shirt, the way she pressed her face into the side of my neck.

The sounds that she made into my skin.

I should wake her. And what I really should do is tell her what I overheard about her family—that they only invited her as a condition of Granny Ernie footing the bill for the wedding. But the timing couldn’t be worse, considering how transparent she is with her emotions. That family is everything to her, and I’d be sending her to the farewell breakfast broken and tearful.

But if not now, when?

I steal another minute. I’m a cannibal and a thief.

My helicopter is due at eleven o’clock; I could push the departure to 1 PM and I could tell her the truth about her family back up at the room, maybe help her work out what to do and protect her from her worst impulses. She doesn’t seem to be a logical thinker when stressed, whereas when I’m stressed, I lock down and get more logical.

I imagine ripping those people a new asshole. To pretend you love somebody and it’s all a self-serving crock? What the fuck is that?

I know exactly what that is. I know how it feels.

Kelsey would never fake like that. It’s not just that she’s incapable; she wouldn’t want to. She cares about emotional truth. I love that about her. Her emotional honesty feels exhilarating.

I force myself to shake her shoulder. “Hey. Kelsey. Hey.” Of course she’s impossible to wake up. “We’re going to be late.”

Her eyes fly open, because Kelsey doesn’t do anything gradually. “What! What’s going on?”

“The breakfast. We are going to be late.”

She blinks at me and then a smile breaks across her face. “Hey, you.”

“It’s 8:37. Breakfast is at nine. We need to move.”

“Best fake wedding date ever.” She slides her hands around my neck and pulls me in for a kiss.

It’s not the kiss from last night. It’s warm and careless and tastes like sleep.

When was the last time I was kissed by somebody like this? I bracket her cheeks and kiss her back. Until I force myself to stop. “We have to be there in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes!” She grabs my wrist and looks at my watch. “Bruno, that is not enough time.”

“You need any help?”

She scrambles out of bed, naked, grabbing things off chairs and the floor and eventually disappears down the hall, presumably into her bathroom. The shower turns on, and then she starts singing an ABBA song in a funny voice, like that’s how she takes a shower.

I go linger in the doorway to her bathroom. “You okay? Do I need to call somebody? Next of kin?”

The water goes off. She bursts out and grabs a towel. “Dude, are you going to the breakfast like that?”

Right. I have to get ready, too.

I head for my closet and grab black trousers and a white shirt. I won’t be needing a tie; this is a daytime breakfast, not a state dinner. I button my shirt watching my own hands in the mirror. They’re steady. I’m almost surprised that my eyes look normal, no trace of how far away from myself I got last night.

It’s good I’m going back to my real life. That wasn’t how I am. This isn’t how I am.

I know better.

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, responding to emails, when Kelsey emerges in a dusky purple dress, and even with her hair half dried and an earring between her teeth, she’s fucking gorgeous.

“Can you...” She turns.

I cross the room and zip the dress the rest of the way. My knuckles brush her spine.

“Thanks!” She puts the second earring in and turns to face me. “Dude.”

Something tightens in my chest. I say, “We should go.”

She holds my gaze for a beat. “I suppose your extraction team is already in position with synchronized watches or whatever.”

I lower my voice. “There’s no such thing as synchronized watches.”

Her face splits into a huge smile. “I have loved having you as my fake wedding plus-one, Bruno.”

I close the distance between us, put a knuckle under her chin and kiss her.

Me too, I think.

Chapter Twenty-One

BRUNO

The east terrace is a stone expanse on the side of the hotel crowded with balloons and wedding guests and umbrellas and buckets of white flowers everywhere.

It’s just breakfast, people.

Kelsey’s dress moves in the breeze as we wait in line in front of the espresso station. Now and then she goes off to say hello to someone while I hold our place. I put in our orders and bring our drinks to the table, something sweet and ridiculous for Kelsey; a simple cappuccino for me.

“All it needs is a maraschino cherry,” I say, setting it down in front of her.

“If only.”

The uncle I wanted to pummel last night has found a seat on the other side of the patio. Good.

It’s here I notice the text Adrian sent some forty minutes ago. It’s unlike me to miss a text like that, but apparently I was lying in bed watching Kelsey sleep at the time when it came. Like a fucking poet or something. And I’ve been focused on squiring her around ever since. The zipper. Her beverage. These last moments.

It really is for the best that there’s a hard stop.

I pull up the text.

It’s Adrian.

Great news! Weather delay has pushed the Spotlight shoot out by several days. Crew won’t be leaving for Hungary until Thursday. So no scheduling conflict anymore. We’ll expect you whenever you can get here. Russell and I are looking forward to it.

I read it twice, and a dark pit settles deep in my stomach.

They’ve extended shooting?

Presents are being opened. Crystal, silver, dishware in a color called “fig.”

All the while my mind is racing. I need an excuse that takes me through Thursday. Something that will satisfy the family trust contract language. Kelsey’s gift is opened. It’s a salad bowl—ceramic, painted with lemons and green leaves winding around the rim. Kelsey is explaining why she chose lemons, talking too fast the way she does when she’s nervous.

“Really lovely,” her mom adds, already looking at the next gift in a way that makes me want to break a great deal of crystal stemware.

Kelsey keeps smiling. It’s good I didn’t tell her this morning.

It comes to me that I’m going to need her to help out some more with the alibi. Is that possible? I think through everything she’s said. Her Broadway show is on hiatus for the next week or two, but she did have something coming up… A friend’s birthday dinner, I think. She wouldn’t want to miss that. But if I make it worth her while...

“Bruno!” Kelsey shakes my arm. “They’re opening your gift!”

Tyler rips off the paper and his eyes go wide. Even Danielle looks surprised. “Bruno, this is⁠—”

“Congratulations,” I say.

Tyler holds it up for everybody to see. “It’s a half-hull model of the Vigilant, the 1893 America’s Cup defender, mounted on mahogany.”

One of his groomsmen stands over it. “Some museum-quality shit right here.”

Danielle beams. “This is incredible!”

“Your sister told me how fond you are of boats,” I say. Which is true but has nothing to do with the present. Sadie would’ve stalked their socials.

People marvel over the gift.

Under the table, Kelsey squeezes my hand.

I look down at her fingers wrapped around mine, bright nails against my skin.

It has to be something that can’t be rescheduled.

And then it comes to me: A one-year-anniversary trip with my girlfriend. On the yacht. I could have Sadie work out an itinerary that would send us up the coast for a very specific reason. A reservation that’s impossible to get. I have to move fast to pull it together.

I excuse myself to make the call.

“They’ve extended shooting,” I say to Sadie.

“How long?”

“Four more days.”

She exhales audibly. “After you suffered through an entire weekend at a stranger’s wedding!”

“Look, I’ve got an idea. I told Russell that Kelsey and I have been together for a year. You’re going to make a reservation somewhere up the coast that’s impossible to get into. Make it somewhere that takes two days to get there. Somewhere that Kelsey would’ve heard about or read about, and she’s fixated on going.”

I can hear Sadie typing on the other end. “You’re lucky this woman is on board for more of this fake relationship...”

I look over at her, standing, now. Gesticulating. Kinetic. She’s telling some old family story, hair glossy in the morning light. No, she won’t want to miss her friend’s birthday—that sort of thing is important to her.

So what might be more important?

I may not know people, but watchmaking has taught me to pay attention to the internal movement—the thing that animates everything. She showed me hers.

And I’m thinking about that dance outreach program of hers. Having to take subways and buses to get to these kids whose arts programs have been cut. She cared about that a great deal. I could buy the program a van and donate something. It would need to be a good number. More than good—a thrilling number. I work through the things she said about her apartment, her life. Everybody has a number, and everybody has a thrilling number.

Sadie’s back. “Score! I’ve got you in at the Bailey Cliffside, a historic lighthouse dining room. Very exclusive. They’re typically only booked Wednesday through Sunday, but I did some horse trading to get it open on Tuesday. It’ll cost you.”

“That’s fine.”

Sadie mumbles, working out the details. “Updating the helicopter manifest to include Ms. Winters. I’ll brief Captain Bane on the revised northbound itinerary and have him coordinate a private mooring near the property. Anything else you want locked down?”

“We’ll need a way for them to park the van.” I give her Kelsey’s cross streets. Tap tap tap. Sadie locates contract parking right away. “One left. I’m grabbing it.”

We talk food. I’m thinking back over the things Kelsey went for. Sadie will coordinate with the chef.

I reply to Adrian’s text:

Still can’t make it. I’ve prepared a special anniversary-week cruise up the coast with Kelsey. I’ve set up an elaborate onboard celebration. I’ve pulled out all the stops. And then we have reservations up the coast later in the week. You’ll film without me.

Take that, I think.

I hit send.

I pocket my phone and walk back to the table. The presents are winding down. Someone is passing around a cheese plate. Kelsey is showing Granny Ernie something on her phone. She gives me this easy, uncomplicated smile.

Of course she’ll be happy about this opportunity.

I pull her over to the croissant station. “I have a proposition.”

She blinks. “A proposition?”

“My brothers’ documentary shoot got extended. My alibi needs to be extended. I’m thinking about an anniversary cruise⁠—”

“Bruno, I’d love to help you, but I have to be in the city for Francine’s birthday party.”

“What if I made it worth your while? In exchange for helping me out, I’ll donate a van to your dance outreach program as well as a $300,000 operating fund.”

Kelsey straightens. “Three hundred thousand? And a van?”

“You did say the program involved a lot of public transportation.”

“All for our dance outreach program?”

“Yes.” I smile. “Sadie has already grabbed a parking spot for the van just two blocks from your home.”

She looks confused. “Okay. Wow...”

“You had mentioned your intersection.”

“No, it’s just that...so this is already happening?”

“We had to button it down quickly.”

Her lips form into a plump little frown. “And you already let your brother know and all that? Like this is what you’re going with? An anniversary cruise?”

I lean in. “And I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by the menu.”

“So it’s all set in stone.”

“Yes.”

Her pretty brows draw together. What’s going on? She seemed pleased enough with the number. “I thought you’d be happy.”

She sets down her coffee. “It’s just that...you just assumed I’d say yes?”

“It was my intention to make it worth your while.”

“Meaning you’ve worked out the offer that makes it so I can’t say no. Like an aggressive business takeover.”

“I offered something that I thought you’d want⁠—”

“You didn’t even ask. You worked out the number that makes it so I can’t say no, and you went ahead and made the plan.”

“I thought it would seem like a win-win.”

“I feel like you took all the things I told you about my life and made them into a formula...as though I’m just like whoever you had to kick out of our suite in order to get it for the weekend.”

I lower my voice. “That’s not how I see you.”

“I think it is. You used your Clockwork Orange watchmaker brain to figure out the offer that I can’t refuse, and you somehow don’t see anything wrong with it. I know you’re a billionaire who lives on a yacht like Bluebeard Svengali or whatever, but people don’t like being bought and sold like commodities.”

“In no way do I see you as a commodity.”

“Yeah, right, you don’t. It’s more like you see me as one of your stupid fancy watches, and you can just wind me up and adjust my gears.”

“I was not winding you up, more like I was taking into account what moves you internally.”

“Oh my God, so you are looking at me like a watch!”

In this small instance, but that’s an opinion I should keep to myself.

Russell’s words come back to me. The more time you spend on this yacht, the shittier you’re going to get at peopling, and someday that’s going to bite you in the ass.

Kelsey’s shaking her head hotly. “I’m just a gear in one of your stupid fancy watches, huh? Well, guess what? I’m a bent gear and I’m going to bend myself into a weird shape and also bring sand with me and you can put that into your watch.”

“Can we just please forget about the watch comparison⁠—”

“And the money’s probably nothing to you. You probably have some money earmarked for charitable giving for tax purposes somewhere else, and now the Boys and Girls Club or the Ferret Rescue Brigade won’t get it anymore. It’s just nothing to you.”

“Is this a no?”

“Don’t insult me by acting like I have a choice. Obviously, you knew I’d say yes or you wouldn’t have confidently made plans that involve me without consulting me. So yes, I’ll smile for the camera and eat your food, but if you think there’s any sexytimes included in this package, you are so sadly mistaken.”

“All I require is that you appear in a few photos and enjoy a nice yacht ride. That’s all I require.”

“Fine.”

I truly do not understand why she’s so angry. Would she be less angry if I’d asked her beforehand? And what do I care? It’s good that she’s angry. I don’t do entanglements—no matter what happened last night.

“I hope your yacht is big.”

“The yacht is 164 feet.”

She narrows her eyes. “Is that big?”

“It is.”

“Good. Plenty of room to steer clear.” She huffs out a breath. “I should let my friend know that I won’t see her on her birthday. And pack.”

“Sadie’s got the staff packing up the room.”

“Of course. Wow. You really were confident of your calculations about me. Do I even get to say goodbye?”

“Kelsey.”

“What? It seems like a legit question considering you’ve conscripted me onto your ship like I’m an impoverished Oliver Twist character.”

“You’re no conscript.”

“Employee, then.”

“Say goodbye. Take your time. Staff will load our luggage in the helicopter.”

She smooths her dress, puts on a bright smile, and starts her round of goodbyes. I join in, doing the minimum.

She’s hurt for whatever reason, but I have to think she’ll be grateful when she has time to think about the money. And yes, I suppose in a way she is my employee, now.

Best that those lines are clear. Especially that they’re clear to me. I will not be allowing them to become unclear again; that much is certain.

Things feel back under control again, and I will myself to find this comforting.

I finish my coffee and go to meet the helicopter.

Chapter Twenty-Two

KELSEY

Ispend the entire helicopter ride on my phone.

First I text Sienna to beg her to cover my Tuesday and Thursday classes, which involves some class-covering horse trading where I come out with the shit end, but what can I do? I let Mia know I won’t be at yoga on Wednesday morning, and then finally I text Francine a highly apologetic text about missing her birthday dinner.

Hold the phone—the hot recluse is paying you three hundred large to ride around on his yacht with him for a few days?

He’s donating it to our outreach program, and if you knew how high-handedly he purchased my ongoing fake-date services, you wouldn’t think he was hot.

I will happily take all the details from your yacht ride as a late birthday present.

Also, he’s objectively hot.

He didn’t even ask me. He literally put it into motion, knowing I would say yes.

He just assumed you could be bought?

Yes, and the horrible thing is, he’s right.

I send her a helicopter selfie.

Riding the helicopter like a pound of cod.

Cutest pound of cod ever.

Srsly not to make light of it. That is a shit feeling when someone treats you like that. You’re worth more than that. But it’s not like you’re going to spend the money on Gucci bags and fancy restaurants. It’s for the kids.

Frown face. That’s what makes it so manipulative.

I check the show Slack, which is the main message board for everybody in the cast and crew of Anything Goes. There’s not really anything new on it, but I read in depth on some stuff that doesn’t even pertain to me. Basically I don’t want to interact with Bruno right now.

He sits across from me, also reading something, seeming unhappy that I’m unhappy. His face looks all hard and steely.

Good. Stay on your end.

How quickly things change. Just this morning I was in full-on sparkle-unicorn mode when I opened my eyes and saw him there, all pretty gray eyes and expressive eyebrows and burnished-bronze beard stubble. I was positively glowing from the magical night we had, and all the hot sex. For a while there, I was even wondering if this impossibly wonderful hookup could last.

The thing is, it seemed like so much more than a hookup. I thought he was into me and interested in me as a person the way I was interested in him. I didn’t think he’d use all the little details I shared with him to manipulate me.

But what did I expect? The man lives alone on a yacht and needs elaborate excuses to escape family functions so that some sort of dreadful secret doesn’t come crawling up into the light like a hairy centipede.

Red flags gone wild.

I’ll make the best of it. I’ll download a few ebooks, wear the pretty dresses and sit around on his stupid boat reading.

And then maybe burn the dresses.

Or not, because they are gorgeous.

I open my calendar and start rearranging things, and I absolutely do not look out the window.

But then I do.

We’re flying over Long Island Sound, and the light is turning the water into silver sparkles, and there are sailboats below us like little white dots.

And then there it is.

I see it from maybe half a mile away. My first thought is, Whoa.

It’s enormous and forebodingly aerodynamic with its dark hull, sharp lines, and multiple decks stacked in slanted tiers. Even from here, the boat has a certain sharklike attitude. If he could wrap the thing in barbed wire, he probably would.

I go back to my phone. I am a woman who has been conscripted against her will and I am NOT going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me press my face against the glass like his boat is so amazing.

I glance out the window only one more time, briefly, just gauging how close we are.

There’s a helipad up top, or at least I’m assuming that’s what the giant H in a circle is on the very top of the boat.

“We’re descending,” Bruno says. These are the first words he’s dared to speak since we took off. He knows I’m mad.

“Yippee,” I say to my phone, which he hopefully understands as the speaking equivalent of a thoroughly unenthusiastic thumbs up.

The helicopter banks and drops. My stomach lifts. The helipad is growing larger, the empty deck rushing up to meet us.

We touch down. The blades sound like they’re slowing. Bruno unbuckles his seat belt like this was nothing but an Uber ride. He opens the door and steps out and offers me his hand.

“I got this.” I grab my purse and follow him out. The wind from the rotors whips my hair into my face and my dress is doing something a little obscene and I’m clutching my bag and my phone and trying to look dignified, but I really want to get out from under those blades.

Bruno takes my arm and leads me to the edge of the platform. “You don’t have to duck like that. The blades can’t touch you.”

“It feels like they might!”

We start down a flight of stairs that descends from the helipad down past two levels to a large, luxurious, open-air deck below, which features a hot tub and various lounge areas, some of them shaded by canopy things, and there’s even a small bar area. It’s everything you’d ever want in the most wonderful living room ever.

There are five people lined up at the very foot of the stairs all dressed in white uniforms, shoulders squared, hands behind backs, eyes forward. I feel like I’m in a presidential receiving line.

A whistle sounds—two short blasts.

“Hi!” I say when I reach the bottom.

The woman at the head of the line steps forward. She’s maybe fifty with platinum-gray hair pulled back tight in a ponytail and she’s holding a clipboard. “Welcome aboard, Ms. Winters.”

Bruno says, “Chief Steward McGillicuddy will see to all of your needs.” With that, he strolls over to a man in a captain’s hat who has just appeared through a door.

The rest of them continue to stare into the distance like mannequins in the Tommy Hilfiger polo-shirt department. They are all absolutely motionless, except for a dark-haired guy whose jaw seems to tighten and release a lot, like he’s trying not to laugh or maybe not cry out in agony.

“Hey, everyone. I’m Kelsey.”

Chief Steward McGillicuddy claps twice and does a strange hand signal that morphs into some other hand signal, and the crew members scatter, a few racing up the steps toward the helicopter; the others dispatch to places unseen.

So much for the introductions.

McGillicuddy’s pen is poised over her clipboard. “Your stateroom is on the main deck, portside. Your luggage will be placed there shortly. Dinner is served at six sharp, breakfast at seven. Any dietary requirements?”

“Umm... a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with every meal?”

“Okay. And as for food.”

“No, that was a joke—I’m a wine person. As for food, no mushrooms?”

McGillicuddy notes this on her clipboard. “Wine preferences?”

“Whatever you have open.”

“Consider it all open.”

“A dry white?”

McGillicuddy notes it on her clipboard, then turns and walks.

I follow, clutching my purse to my chest. We head through a pair of double doors into an interior lounge area that is even more sumptuous than the exterior lounge area.

The walls of this yacht are dark wood and polished brass, a little bit vintage like the Orient Express, except it’s a giant freaking boat. The carpet is green with a subtle leafy design. There are couches and furnishings in earth tones.

I look around for anything Bruno-ish, like I don’t know, watch magazines or a huge mural of watchmakers toiling in a watch factory or something, but there’s nothing, which I suppose is in itself Bruno-ish.

My stateroom is down a flight of stairs and through a hushed corridor. McGillicuddy opens the door and steps aside.

It’s gorgeous. King bed, white linens, more dark wood, three massive windows with a view of the water.

McGillicuddy strolls across the room and opens a door. “This is your bathroom. Rain shower. You’ll see the floor is heated.” She moves on to another door, which is my closet, already stocked with all of my dresses and clothes.

“That was fast!”

McGillicuddy nods once. It’s as if she’s going for the minimum possible words.

“How did they do that? They were heading for the helicopter when we left.”

“Efficiency.”

“Did they sprint? Was it like a relay-race situation?”

“The crew likes to be efficient.”

A glass of white wine sits on a coaster with a small arrangement of white flowers on the bedside table.

“Oh, wow.”

Ms. McGillicuddy points her pen at a diagram of the yacht on the inside of the door. “Mr. Blackwood’s workshop and private quarters are on the owner’s deck,” McGillicuddy says. “That entire deck is off-limits. Above it is the captain’s bridge. The bridge is off-limits. The helipad is not to be accessed without approval.”

“So the top three layers are no-go zones.”

“Exactly. You’ll have the run of the main deck, including the salon, dining room, and aft deck.”

“The aft deck is the one with the hot tub? Because that looks like the fun deck.”

“The aft deck is indeed the one with the hot tub. You must keep in mind, however, that this yacht is a quiet space. Mr. Blackwood expects an environment free of noise, disruption, and social interaction.”

I wait for her to smile or clarify or add a “within reason.” She does not.

“So... I shouldn’t let off the fireworks I brought? Or practice my kazoo?”

Her lips thin. “Not advisable.”

“And I guess my crash cymbal performance is right out.”

Ms. McGillicuddy continues. “I have taken the liberty to print you a map to carry with you. You’ll find the Wi-Fi password on the bottom, and there is my phone number. I’ll be your main point of contact. You may text me at any hour. Aside from Bruno, I am to be your central point of contact.”

“Okay.”

“Again, you are not to ascend to the owner’s deck or anything above it without express approval from Bruno. And you are particularly to stay out of the workshop.” She taps her pen on the workshop area with great force.

“Understood,” I say, wondering if Bruno texted ahead to tell them what a problem I might be. Was he shaken by the whole bent-gears-and-sand comment?

The door closes behind her with a soft click.

I sink onto the bed. I take a sip of wine and study the map. Ms. McGillicuddy has circled the top three decks of the yacht and put an X through them. I text an image of it to Francine.

I have the run of the yacht, except for those places marked with an X, which I am to avoid upon pain of death.

My phone buzzes.

#BlueBeardSituation

I rest a bit and then explore the yacht.

While elegant, it feels eerily un-lived-in, far more so than an Airbnb, which at least tries to put up human touches even if those touches are a bowl of weird wicker balls and life-affirming sayings on weathered planks decorating the walls, which, as far as I can see, would be ironic here. It’s like a boat that androids live on.

I shake the thought out of my head and pick up one of the books. A History of Maritime Navigation. I put it back, thankful that I have an ereader stuffed with fun and smutalicious books that have nothing to do with maritime history, though they do at times feature seamen.

I move through the dining room—a long table that seats twelve, set for two, Bond-villain-style—and out onto the back deck.

I go to the railing. The boat is moving now, the shore farther away than it was before. I suppose we’re going north.

I still feel weird that I knuckled under like I did, that a person can look at me and figure out the number that will make me do what they want. I feel weird and bad about it in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on, but I remind myself that the scholarship fund is getting a bunch of money. What’s more, the sky is a brilliant blue above me, like a dizzying upside-down bowl of blue that’s darker in the center, and the wind feels soft against my cheek, and the waves are lapping somewhere, and here I am on a forced vacation. And all I have to do is appear in a few pictures.

For a moment, my mind drifts back to the last three days of the wedding, all the strange, conflicting signs from my family members.

I tell myself not to worry about it. Our reconciliation will be a process, not a one-time event. The important thing is that there was progress.

I decide that I like the cozy intimacy of this back deck the best; it’s a smaller, more low-key version of the front deck, and it feels like the most remote spot on the ship, and the least visible from Bruno’s quarters.

This will be my hangout spot.

The loungers here are made of wood with huge marshmallow-y cushions, and they’re arranged in mathematically perfect rows beneath square canopies, and between each one is an empty table.

I angle it toward the sun and drag another closer so they’re side by side, the way a person might sit with a friend. I put my stuff there.

Excited, I go back to my stateroom and change into my suit and fun beachy cover-up and pack a little bag with my ereader and sunglasses and hat and lip balm and stuff and go back out to the back deck...

And the loungers are exactly where they were before. My bag has been moved to the small table between them, centered perfectly.

I look around. Nobody. Not a soul. It’s like the boat itself rearranged its own furniture the second I turned my back.

I move the loungers back to my preferred position and settle in with my stuff. I pull out my phone, find a playlist, and hit play. Dua Lipa fills the air—quietly, so that nobody will hear. I take a selfie and send it to my galpal loop, and then I just stare out at the sparkling waves.

A text on my phone.

Would you like a snack? A beverage?

Who is this?

This is McGillicuddy.

Thank you, but I’m fine.

We ask that guests use personal earbuds for audio.

I text back: People can hear this?

The standard aboard is for absolute quiet.

thanks for letting me know.

It’s ridiculous, there’s no reason to be a jerk about it; this “standard” is clearly coming directly from Bruno.

I turn off Dua Lipa and go in search of a bathroom—there’s a gorgeous one right inside on the way to the main interior living area, real spa stuff. Then I find a bottle of water in the mini fridge in the bar.

When I go back out, the loungers are back in formation. My ereader has a coaster under it, my towel is folded, and everything is at right angles.

I stand there for a moment. I pull out my phone to text McGillicuddy about it, but what would I say? Did somebody move the loungers back? Am I not supposed to move the loungers around?

Obviously the answer would be yes.

Chapter Twenty-Three

KELSEY

Imove into the interior lounge area a bit later, hoping to maybe catch up on my favorite reality show. I’d spotted a giant screen on the wall during my explorations. I grab the small remote from the table underneath the screen—set at a precise angle, naturally—and flip the thing on. It shows some kind of system dashboard like with navigation stuff and weather conditions. I click around, trying to find some kind of menu or search bar or something, but there is not one.

I text McGillicuddy.

Is there any way to get the TV to work? A password or any kind of streaming or cable or anything?

The screen displays vessel operations and weather conditions.

Can I transition it over to Netflix or anything like that? Is it hooked up to Wi-Fi?

Not at this time.

Are there any TVs that have streaming services or TV of any kind here?

Not at this time.

Okay, thank you.

I add a smiley face and sink into the couch. Well, there’s always my phone. I hop onto Netflix and watch it there—with earbuds.

I feel like I’m on a silent retreat I never signed up for. Who has a beautiful yacht where you can’t play music, can’t watch anything except on your phone, and can’t move a chair two inches without it snapping back the second you leave the room?

On the way back outside, I pass one of the crew members in the corridor—the dark-haired one who seemed to be having trouble keeping his contents under pressure.

He’s polishing a brass fitting on the wall, but when he hears me coming, he snaps into position, eyes forward, cloth dangling from his hand.

“Hey, you don’t have to do that.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Okay, well…” I don’t know what to say, so I just keep walking.

I settle back onto the back deck and grab my phone.

Hi! I would love a snack if that’s possible. Do you have tortilla chips? Anything is fine.

The chef has prepared a menu for your stay.

A PDF appears in my text stream. I tap it open, hoping for a sandwich or something. Maybe a fish sandwich.

I scan down. There are tortilla chips with mango salsa. I’ll definitely be having that! Puff pastry bites with fig and goat cheese, which is funny because they had those at the wedding and I kept going back for them; did the recipe get featured in a popular magazine or something? There’s a pretty comprehensive charcuterie board a lot like the one they had at the hotel, which really saved me when I was hungry and didn’t feel like going down for a full meal. There’s a teriyaki salmon dish, a nice-looking arugula salad, blueberry scones, which are hopefully as good as the ones at the breakfast this morning. There are even lemon bars. Strange. I never see lemon bars and suddenly there were some lemon bars at the rehearsal and now there are lemon bars of all things on the yacht.

Wait a minute.

I look back through all of the items. Every single one of those items is something I was scarfing down at the wedding weekend.

What the hell? Did Bruno catalog all the things I ate and direct his chef to make up a menu? True we weren’t exactly on speaking terms after he forced my hand but... Also, how did they even achieve it all this quickly?

It’s weird and bizarre, but I suppose it’s somewhat convenient, being that there are lots of things I like on the menu.

I order the chips and salsa and a lemon bar and some sparkling water.

A few minutes later, a young woman with her blonde hair pulled back, maybe twenty-five, appears with a tray bearing a glass of sparkling water with a slice of cucumber in it—just like at the hotel—and my chips and salsa and lemon bar.

The salsa is in a small ceramic bowl with a sprig of cilantro fanned across the top—not just dropped in, but fanned. The chips are in a spiral radiating outward. The lemon bar is placed at a jaunty angle on a folded napkin. Another napkin is folded origami-style like a bird.

“Hi! Wow, that was fast!” I’m thrilled to see the food, and I’m also thrilled to see a human being, honestly. She nods and starts to turn away.

“Wait—this is gorgeous. Did you do this?”

She turns, looking around. “I plated it, yes.”

“It’s very artful,” I say. “Something not at right angles!”

She nods and begins again to retreat.

“Hey—wait,” I say. “What’s your name?”

She stops in her tracks. “Annie.” This she says without even turning around.

“Annie! Hi. I’m Kelsey.”

She nods and begins again to walk.

“Wait! Can you come back here for a second? I just had a question.”

Annie turns, looking frightened, now. “What is it?”

“No, like come here for a second if you’re not too busy?”

She comes up to me, gripping her tray in two hands, her expression all concern. “Texting is truly the best mode of communication.”

“But you’re right here! So, Annie. How long have you worked on this yacht?”

“Five years, ma’am.”

“Five years! Wow. Do you like it?”

“I do. Will that be all?”

“Did you ever watch that reality show Below Deck? Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No,” she says with a nervous sideways glance. “Will that be all?”

“Well, it was okay. This yacht seems a lot more stringently run than the yachts on that show.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I narrow my eyes. “Are you not supposed to be talking to me?”

“This is a silent yacht. Will that be all?” Translation: Please let me escape.

“Yes, that will be all. Thank you.” Because what else am I going to say. I settle back with my snack, looking around. Are there cameras? She’s not being held here against her will, is she?

I’m feeling a little alarmed now.

I pick up my phone and text McGillicuddy.

I have a question. Can you come to the lounge area?

What is your question?

I’d like to ask in person.

This yacht runs on text-based communication. You may direct any requests to me here.

I stare at this for a while. This yacht runs on text-based communication.

My request is for you to come hear my request in person.

I wait.

McGillicuddy appears, walking my way, holding her clipboard against her chest like a shield.

“I just had an exchange with Annie,” I say. “When she brought the snack.”

“Is there an issue with the refreshment?”

“No, the refreshment is great. I’m just wondering, like, is there some kind of rule against having a conversation with a guest? Possibly under pain of death?”

“The standard for this yacht is minimal conversation, with the ideal being zero conversation.”

“But I’m going to be on this yacht for four days or so, and I might get lonely. Is there a way to instruct the crew that they can interact with me in a normal way? Like tell them it’s okay to even sit down next to me and have a conversation with me. And nobody needs to freeze when I walk by. Let it be known that this is a guest request.”

McGillicuddy sucks in her lips. “That won’t be possible. The crew is trained to provide seamless, unobtrusive, silent service. That is the standard Mr. Blackwood requires, and he would be the only one who could contravene that order.”

“It just seems outrageous! Annie seemed terrified when I asked her what her name was.”

“Naturally, a crew member would feel distraught, were a guest to attempt to engage them in a fireable offense.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, panicked. “I didn’t get her fired, did I?”

“She is still employed as of this moment.”

“Well, can you extend my apologies to Annie? Is that a possibility? I wasn’t trying to get her fired. I take full responsibility. I didn’t understand…” I look around. “I mean, it seems a bit Gulag-like.”

McGillicuddy takes a breath and fixes her gaze on mine for the first time. “Ms. Winters. Do you have any idea how competitive positions on this vessel are?”

“I—no.”

“For every open role, we receive approximately five hundred applications. The compensation is extraordinary. Mr. Blackwood expects the best—people who can rise to his exact level of precision and discretion. The people here are professionals.”

I open my mouth. Close it. “Do they get to talk to each other below deck?”

“The operation of this yacht is not your concern, is it?” Her gaze seems to be transforming into a glare.

“Right,” I say. “Okay. No.”

She nods once and leaves.

I sit there with my chips and salsa and the lemon bar. Bruno made them all an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Just like me.

We’re all parts of his big clock.

Chapter Twenty-Four

BRUNO

Something is off by eleven microns.

I’ve spent three weeks on this tourbillon, a rotating cage of springs and jewels designed to defeat the effect of gravity on the movement.

Four people on earth could build it.

I lift my loupe from my eye and stretch out my hands. How long was I working? Sometimes I lose time, which is ironic, considering I’m making watches. But the work requires total absorption. Concentration so keen I must narrate what I’m doing, whispering to the watch parts, putting everything into it.

To a fly on the wall, I’d look like a madman, whisper-raging at tiny bits of metal.

But no fly could ever get in here.

My workshop occupies the forward section of the ship: Engineered silence, climate-controlled air, regulated humidity, and dust minimized to the greatest extent possible.

Natural light enters through the forward windows, but only in the form of a diffuse northern glow that will illuminate metal without glare.

I stretch out my hands and settle my loupe over my left eye. It was made in Switzerland, and it magnifies the movement tenfold, rendering it the size of a dinner plate. The problem is plain. The pivot is off-center.

The solution is not so plain.

I reseat the component and check again.

Everything in this workshop is perfectly controlled: humidity, lighting, temperature, all calibrated to my specifications. Tools arranged in the order I use them. I know this room like I know my own hands.

It’s what I need.

I give everything that is in me to the work, and the work gives back.

I adjust the piece a third time.

Still off.

My phone is on the bench, face-down. I turn it over.

McGillicuddy’s report was timestamped two hours ago: Guest is settled in stateroom. Dietary requirements noted. No issues.

A second message, thirty minutes later: Update: Guest attempted to engage a crew member in personal conversation. I have reinforced the standard.

A third, nine minutes after that: Guest is requesting that crew be permitted to engage in conversation with her. I have declined per standard protocol. She was...persistent.

I put the phone face-down and pick up the tweezers.

It is just like Kelsey to attempt to engage the crew in conversation.

McGillicuddy handled it. The standard is the standard.

I rub my eyes. I should examine the problem under higher magnification. The issue might be the plate itself. I don’t get up.

Instead I sit here, hands flat on the bench, looking at a piece that should be perfect and isn’t, and the memory arrives.

The veranda. Her weight in my lap. She’s saying something, laughing about things being ill-advised, and her skin smells like lilacs, and I’m working her out, learning her.

Something shifted. I don’t know what triggered it—her laugh, or the way she moved against me—and suddenly I’m carrying her into the bedroom like something out of a fever dream, not a thought in my head.

It’s not that I was unaware of wanting her. I’d wanted her for days. But this was not wanting. This was my entire being going dark with hunger. This was me becoming the person I have spent my entire adult life engineering myself not to be, and I let it happen anyway.

I pick up the tweezers.

Eleven microns.

I will solve this tomorrow. The piece will run perfectly.

My phone buzzes. More dispatches from the front.

It wasn’t my plan to dine with her. It had been my plan to dine in my private dining area as I always do and then request her presence on the deck for a photograph or two, but I can see that this situation needs attending to. There are rules, and she needs to hear them from me.

I remove the loupe and set it on the bench, then I pick up my phone and instruct McGillicuddy that the passenger and I will dine in the main dining room at six. She can order what she wants. Today is Monday, which means I will be having roasted chicken with vegetables.

I work straight through until the last minute, and then it’s time to change for dinner. I put on my jacket, trying not to think about the weight of her in my arms when I stood—or the look she gave me afterward. As if, for a moment, she’d forgotten everything else and seen only me.

I arrive at 5:59. The table is set, water poured. There’s a charcuterie board right in the middle, based on the Hamptons Royale charcuterie board, minus the garlic sausage, which she wrapped in plastic and treated like nuclear waste.

She seemed so surprised by the appearance of sausage.

I notice a small vase of white flowers that I did not request. Annoyance bolts through me. Where did flowers come from? I did not request flowers.

Kelsey is an employee; best not blur those lines.

She strolls in six minutes late wearing an orangey-pink dress with a low back. Sunlight skims across the bare line of her spine, and my train of thought quietly derails.

“Mr. Bond, I presume.”

“Excuse me?”

She sits, or more precisely, she drops into the chair across from me in a pose of dramatic leisure. “Don’t you think this is peak James Bond? Or more like the perfect parody of a James Bond supervillain, and I’m sort of forced on this yacht and you got me pretty dresses to wear, and you’re making me dine with you while your plan is executed somewhere in the Pacific.”

“You don’t like the terms of our agreement now?”

“You know what I mean. God, there’s even a long table. You know who has those? Bond villains. On the upside...wow!” She inspects the charcuterie board. “This is a good one.”

She seems less angry, which pleases me perhaps a little too much. Her hair is loose and still damp at the ends, as if she’s just showered, and the dress...I think back to the instruction I gave Margot: vintage French Riviera, unexpected purple, that wallpaper, champagne bubbles, faded glamour, no structure. I decide that this is probably a vintage Riviera-inspired dress.

She makes a cracker tower from cheeses and a spicy jam, takes a bite, and dissolves into bliss.

I saw that expression last night. It seems like a year ago.

Her expression now is softer. Less desperate. But there’s the same lack of restraint to it, the same way she experiences things fully, as though she’s incapable of holding anything back. She’s like a watch without a casing—all movement and no protection.

I pour us wine. “So, a few things about how this yacht operates.”

“Oh, I have a few things too, like, what is up with the obsessive silence?”

“This is a quiet space. This yacht is my sanctuary.”

“Right, but I feel like I almost got poor Annie fired just from making her tell me her name.”

“You shouldn’t do that.”

“She’s serving me food. It’s customary to greet a person in that circumstance and thank them and have some little interaction.”

“Not on this boat. Your steward was simply following rules.”

“But you were nowhere within earshot. What does it matter?”

“That’s the nature of rules. You don’t ignore them whenever it suits you.”

“But it seems a bit extreme that an employee would be in mortal terror from a normal human question like that.”

“Now it’s mortal terror? Not only getting fired, but you also feel that she was in fear for her life?”

“You know what I mean. It’s so extreme.”

“Each and every one of my crew members knew the rules coming into their positions. Everybody who is here wants to be here.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about the amazing pay, but can’t you provide amazing pay while at the same time thinking about what would make their life a bit nicer? Why would you even want it like that? This gorgeous yacht and everybody has to act like they’re in a straitjacket?”

“This is the job. Everybody here is free to leave.”

“But not really, on an economic level. Also, why do you not want anyone to talk?”

“It’s called a preference. My boat, my rules.”

“I get it, but something McGillicuddy said seemed to imply that even socializing below deck is forbidden. Like everything has to be about the yacht. I don’t see why the concept of somebody talking and laughing somewhere where you wouldn’t even know about it would be so abhorrent. Do you know how not-normal that is?”

“Well, apparently I’m a supervillain who just does those things.”

The look she gives me now is a mixture of outrage and fascination, and it’s delicious. “Would it be possible to relax those rules for their interactions with me?”

“No.”

She stiffens. “Even if you were none the wiser?”

“My sanctuary, my rules.”

“Your sanctuary.” She narrows her eyes. “From what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Sanctuary implies you’re trying to escape something. Like something is threatening you or encroaching on you or whatever. My question is, what?”

“Sometimes a sanctuary is simply a place of peace.”

“Like it’s a noise issue?” She gives me her skeptical narrowed eyes, now with a head tilt.

“As I said, it’s a preference issue.”

“You have a watchmaking operation on a yacht. I don’t know much about watches, but I’m guessing it’s not easy to do all that tiny work when your entire home is being buffeted around by waves. Is it just all human interaction? I suppose that would make sense, considering the vow of silence your employees must make.”

“Since you’re so concerned about the crew, I would ask you to stop putting them in the difficult position of having to choose between their job security and being polite to you. And playing music? That needs to stop.”

“Aye aye, Captain Clockwork.”

“What was that?”

She’s building another of her creations, this one consisting of an apple slice, a bit of soft cheese, and three candied nuts pressed into it. “Oh, I think you heard me.”

“I don’t have anything against clocks, but I have nothing to do with clocks.”

“But aren’t watches just clocks that you wear?”

“Not on any level,” I say, perhaps too quickly.

I can feel her smile radiating across the table. “You hate clocks. Clocks and all their clock-ish clockiness. You so hate ‘em!”

“I don’t so hate clocks. It’s that clocks and watches are entirely different animals.”

She presses some candied nuts into the soft cheese.

“What the hell are you building?”

“An everything morsel.” She bites in. A fleck of something lands on her upper lip. She doesn’t notice, but it’s all I see, suddenly.

I want to brush it off.

Kiss it off, maybe.

She’s still talking—something about nuts—and I have no idea what she’s said because I’m watching her mouth. She licks her lip. The fleck disappears.

I pick up my wine. I need to get this back on track. What was my goal here?

The first course arrives. Two crew members, silent, synchronized. Plates set. Water refreshed. Flowers whisked away.

“Wait, why are they taking the flowers?”

“Flowers aren’t supposed to be here.”

Her lips part in surprise. “Are you being funny right now?”

“No.”

She watches them exit, as though affronted.

I say, “When you are a villain hosting a captive on your yacht, you can design the dinner however you please.”

She turns to me, eyes sparkling. “Are they going to be ripping them up in their monkishly silent kitchen area?”

“No. I’ll be making Annie walk the plank with them.”

Once again, her lips part in surprise—at the fact that I made a joke, maybe.

I take up my knife and fork. “Kelsey, are you embodying mystification?”

“Mister, if I was embodying mystification, you wouldn’t have to ask if I was embodying mystification.”

“Something to look forward to.”

She sniffs a little laugh, and something ripples in my chest.

God, what am I doing? I dig into my chicken.

“Hey, why do you have plain chicken and I have...” She gestures at the arrangement in front of her—seared scallops with a cherry glaze, microgreens, something with cheese and potatoes.

“I eat chicken on Monday.”

“Hold on. You had your chef prepare this amazing dish for me, and you’re just going with Monday chicken.”

“I suppose it would’ve been more efficient to have him prepare two of the scallops, but I prefer not to expend too much energy on the whole enterprise of eating.”

“The whole enterprise of eating? Maybe you should just get astronaut meal bars. Or like rabbit pellets.”

“Is that a menu request?”

“No way! I love this!” she says. “I’m sorry that you’re having something sad and thank you for taking such close notes at the wedding. I do appreciate the care with the menu, and I wish you were enjoying your meal as much as I am.”

“My meal is enjoyable in that I didn’t have to expend extra decision-making on it.”

“Captain,” she whispers, all wonder and smiles.

The sexy low register of her voice puts me back on the veranda, her weight shifting against me.

But none of that is on the table.

I focus on my chicken.

I don’t do entanglements. I’ve known since I was seven that love is the most convincing performance people stage. Her family is the most recent production, though they weren’t even trying.

But Kelsey ate it up. That’s how badly she wanted to believe it.

I need to tell her.

Dessert is served. To Kelsey, anyway. Some sort of torte, glossy with chocolate, topped by a single maraschino cherry and a swoosh of cream that looks like it was painted by a Renaissance artist.

She claps and beams at me. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t. The chef did.”

She frowns. “No dessert?”

“I don’t do dessert.”

“Of course you don’t,” she says, amusement dancing in her eyes.

“There’s no reason to.”

She lifts the cherry off the torte by its stem, studies it for a moment, then eats it with complete commitment.

“What about joy?”

“Eh,” I say, forcing my attention down to my phone. I notice a text there. It’s a text from Adrian:

I have a gift for you. I’m swinging by tomorrow night—just a quick in and out.

Just a quick in and out my ass.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“My brother is planning to stop by tomorrow night to give us an anniversary present.”

“Your brother that came with you to the wedding?”

“No, my other brother. Adrian.”

“You say that like it’s...ominous, somehow.”

“It is ominous. Adrian is serious. Deeply intelligent. Severe. Not at all easygoing like Russell.”

She blinks. “The man who runs a yacht like a military installation and banishes flowers from his sight is telling me his brother is the severe one?”

I glare at my phone. “Yes.”

“Are you worried he might try to eat your leftover Monday chicken?”

“I’m worried he’s going to see right through this charade. That’s why he’s coming. He doesn’t believe one bit of this anniversary-celebration cruise. He’s timed his arrival to swoop through just as we’d be sitting down for our celebratory anniversary dinner tomorrow night. That’s no coincidence.”

“What’s the problem? Set out a nice table, some candlelight, some flowers… Unless you had them all incinerated in a special flower incinerator.”

I scroll up and read my text to him to see what exactly I said.

I’ve set up an elaborate onboard celebration. I’ve pulled out all the stops.

Why did I say that? Since when would I arrange an elaborate celebration for anyone or anything?

“It needs to be elaborate. We’ll have to get supplies from shore.”

She smiles. “And you’ll need an awesome fake loving girlfriend for them to play the part.”

“I have an awesome fake loving girlfriend to play the part.”

She makes a big show of inspecting her nails. “I agreed to ride on your yacht and appear in pictures. I don’t recall agreeing to a live performance.”

“Change of plans,” I say.

She fixes me with a wide grin. “I suppose I could help you out, but we’ll need to change the terms of the deal.”

“Don’t tell me you want even more money.” Even as I say it, it sounds wrong for her.

She looks crestfallen. “No! I’m telling you that I will deliver on your anniversary dinner-slash-celebration atmosphere, which I am highly qualified to do, but I need to work with the crew directly—that’s what I’m asking for. Not through McGillicuddy, and not through a text chain. I need that talking ban fully relaxed. I need to collaborate with the chef about the menu, because we’re not going to have me with an anniversary dinner and you with whatever Tuesday robot food you eat.”

“Fine.”

“And I want to work with Annie on making things look festive. And maybe one of the guys can help...I just need full communication with the crew, and for them not to be looking over their shoulders.”

“For the event only.”

“For the duration of my stay.”

I frown, regretting anew that I said I’d put together an elaborate dinner. Of course Adrian’s suspicious. “Fine.”

“I feel like we need a cake. A really good cake.”

I shrug, angry about this whole situation.

The idea that my brothers think they can force my hand like this and implicitly threaten my company? To force me into this charade?

It is enraging because all I’m doing is protecting them from things they’re better off not knowing.

Kelsey continues, “...what’s my vibe here? Am I the girlfriend who’s fun—brings you out of your shell, makes things a little unexpected, maybe slightly out of control in a great way? Or more the quietly elegant type, tasteful, everything beautiful but understated?”

She’s asking for acting directions now? When we’ve been playing the part all weekend? She’s been doing it expertly all weekend.

I stand. “Figure it out.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

KELSEY

Iwake up bright and early, excited to work with the crew on a fun project and trying to not think about the fact that Bruno immediately thought I was holding him over a barrel for more money.

And he could not have been crabbier about my questions on what aesthetic he wanted for the celebration.

Figure it out!

Why was that such an obnoxious question? You have to know the personality of the girlfriend to know what kind of celebration she would create.

He and I are clearly an “opposites attract” couple, so I have decided to lean into that. I’m fun and unexpected and out of control in a good way.

And it has to be elaborate.

I throw on my favorite lounge pants and a tank top, a couple things that I had luckily brought from home. I grab sunglasses and my tablet and head out to the beautiful, sunny deck. Bruno is, naturally, nowhere to be seen. I settle myself down on my favorite lounge chair and there is Annie, strolling up with a glass of orange juice.

“For me?”

Annie sets the orange juice down. “Can I get you some coffee? There’s a full breakfast menu on there of course.”

I rub my hands. “I’d love some coffee with cream and sugar, and did Bruno inform you as to our project today?”

“He said that we have to help you set up your anniversary celebration?”

“Yes, and we can just talk normally because obviously we’ll be working together on this job.”

Annie nods. “McGillicuddy informed us that we were to consider you our manager today.”

“Awesome! So what I’m going to need from you is yes, all the coffee. If you have some sort of almond cherry scone⁠—”

“We have almond cherry.”

“Okay, lots of coffee, two scones, and come back prepared to brainstorm.”

“Me?” Annie squeaks.

“Bruno wants an elaborate anniversary celebration, and event planning is no fun as a solo activity.”

Annie gives me a pitying look. “Of course it’s not. I’ll do my best. You deserve a nice event. Congratulations, by the way.”

As I watch her leave, it comes to me that the crew thinks I’m his real girlfriend, and this really is our one-year anniversary. What else would they think? And he put me in a below-deck cabin, and he ignored me all of yesterday, and I couldn’t play my music, and now he’s apparently instructed me to arrange an elaborate anniversary celebration.

They must think I’m pretty desperate for a billionaire boyfriend, to put up with all of that!

But I can’t worry about that. There’s a job to do!

A few minutes later, Annie and I are thick into it over coffee and scones. Or at least I’m drinking the coffee. Apparently, Annie’s been up for hours.

“I guess I need to figure out what we have on board that can be used to create a celebration atmosphere. I suppose that’s our big limitation.”

“Not at all! We are passing near Portland, Maine around lunchtime, I think. We can take the tender boat over there.” She pulls a phone from her pocket. “Let me just connect with Fernando on that.”

Access to a midsize city! That expands the possibilities. I show her a picture from Pinterest, all hearts and garlands. “What do you think about garlands of hearts strung all over the aft deck?”

“And perhaps some fairy lights?”

“Love it. And maybe a big banner. Something like… ‘Our love is timeless.’ Because sometimes I kind of tease him about how serious he is about watches and the concept of time.”

“Or until the end of time,” she says.

“Or maybe we go with a simple, ‘Heart my Chumpywumpy’ or something.”

She blinks.

“Too much?” I decide on a simple “Happy Anniversary, My Sweet.”

The dark-haired guy who has trouble controlling his expressions wanders up and Annie introduces him as Fernando. Fernando informs us that we can definitely take the tender out to Portland and make it back without the ship having to weigh anchor.

Annie looks energized. Alive. She pulls her phone from her uniform pocket. “I found a party store! And a bakery.”

“Yes, a bakery! Obviously we need a cake. A really big cake,” I say.

“With tiers,” she says.

“Right.” I smile, imagining a giant cake. “Three. Minimum.”

Annie is typing into her tablet. From the way she’s mumbling, she seems to be making some sort of list, organized by store.

I tap my chin with my index finger. This has turned out to be kind of fun. “What else.”

“Music?”

“Yes! A celebration needs music. Is there a stereo system? I’m the kind of person who would put together a serious playlist if I was celebrating a one-year anniversary.”

“Not hooked up,” Annie says. “There’s a PA, like an announcement system. But playing music over that would sound terrible.”

“Terrible,” Fernando agrees.

“Other owners I worked for had us fly musicians in from the shore for things,” Annie says.

“What kind of musicians?”

“There’s a lot of variety up and down the coast, but wait...hold on...” She bites her lip as she checks her phone, looking excited. “There’s this amazing duo in the area.”

“I don’t think Bruno would want extra people on board,” I say.

“You could do a serenade boat,” Fernando says.

“Yes! These guys could come out in a boat and play from the water below! That’s romantic!” Annie is grinning ear to ear. “Do you have a budget?”

I text Bruno.

Do we have a budget for this?

No answer.

He’s probably in his workshop where he doesn’t want to be bothered, but I’m going to need an answer. He asked for elaborate, but I don’t want to go overboard. According to Fernando, we need to leave within forty-five minutes.

We go and talk to the chef, an English fellow named Phillip who studied in France and Japan and whose culinary talents are clearly going to waste here with the Monday chicken and all of that. Phillip has some very ambitious suggestions for the menu, including a seared salmon dish and “a charcuterie board that will put that Hamptons hotel charcuterie board to shame.” He, too, will be going to Portland.

The tender is ready to go, and we still haven’t heard from Bruno about the budget even though I’ve texted him several times, and McGillicuddy is no help at all.

“I guess I’ll go ask him,” I say.

“In his workshop?” Annie asks, surprised.

“I guess,” I say.

Fernando looks concerned. “He’s not to be bothered in his workshop.”

Annie links her arm in his. “But Kelsey is his girlfriend.”

I put on a brave smile.

Chapter Twenty-Six

KELSEY

There’s a narrow stairwell at the edge of the aft deck. I’ve walked past a few times, but I never go near it, because that’s the way to Bruno’s level. Bruno’s forbidden, mega off-limits level.

But what choice do I have? He’s not answering his texts. I need a number or some sort of a-okay. I’ll call through the door or something.

I climb the steps. It’s quieter up here than the main deck, which is already freakishly quiet. The corridor is short. If the yacht is like a shark, Bruno’s stateroom is the tail half, and his workshop is the nose part, secluded behind what looks to be a very heavy closed door.

I knock.

Nothing.

I knock again. “Bruno? I need to talk to you. Quick question.”

No response.

Is he even there? McGillicuddy said he was there.

“Just a quick question regarding budget.”

No response.

I flatten my hand on the door, and it moves. Opens silently.

The workshop is more intimate than I expected, with a low ceiling and drawers and cabinets all along the walls. Lights angled from several directions, like a strange photography studio. Even the air is different in here—drier, cooler, perfectly still, like stepping into a forbidden tomb.

Bruno is at the center of it, bent over a worktable, wearing some kind of headband, and it looks like there might be a lens attached to it. I mostly see his back, the curve of his shoulders, the tense stillness of him over the work. He seems so different from how he usually is, like the sense of contents under pressure or something.

He’s whispering, too—low, almost rhythmic words that I can’t quite make out, full of intensity, like he’s talking to himself in a dream, and he’s holding something so tiny I can’t see what it is. It makes his hands look large, like bear paws or something.

I should leave—I really should, but somehow, I can’t. I stand there, rooted to the ground.

“Bruno?”

He goes rigid. The whispering stops. Something small hits the mat.

He turns, and for just a second—before he fully registers me—the expression is still on his face. It’s an expression I can’t make sense of. The lens makes one eye enormous and strange, and he looks wild, like I walked in on something I’m not supposed to see.

But then he seems to come back to himself and he’s Bruno again.

“What are you doing up here?” he demands.

“The door was open—I’m so sorry⁠—”

“This level is off-limits. I told you that.”

“I know, but I’ve been texting you about the budget and⁠—”

“Did I not tell you to figure it out?”

“Yeah, but I thought that meant the aesthetic part, and I can’t just⁠—”

“The budget is whatever it takes.”

He’s already turning back to the bench.

“Out!”

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’m sorry I came in here.”

I pull the door shut behind me and move fast—down the stairs, across the deck and down some more stairs, all the way to where Annie and Phillip and Fernando are waiting for me with the boat at the ready.

“Did you get some guidance?” Annie asks, looking concerned.

“Whatever it takes,” I say, disturbed about whatever that interaction was just now. What a jerk!

The tender boat turns out to be like a boat version of a town car, all leather banquettes, tinted windows, and even a small refrigerator. There’s a driving compartment up front and a sheltered riding compartment in the back.

The three of us sit in the front, with Fernando driving.

I gaze out at the waves. I can’t stop thinking about his hands. The size of them over something that small—and then he barks, “Out!” Like I’m this naughty schoolgirl who got herself sent from the room before she could make heads or tails of anything.

I ask them about what made them join Bruno’s crew. Annie tells me that she originally got into yachting as a quick way to pay off her student loans, working her way up to a position on Bruno’s boat, and now she’s trying to earn enough money to invest and retire early. Fernando wants to buy a house in cash.

“Fernando hates all debt,” Annie informs me. “We argue about that. I believe in some debt.”

“I’m going to own my own house, free and clear by the time I’m thirty-five, and there’s emotional value to that,” Fernando says.

“At a cost,” Annie says.

I find out that Phillip lost his savings by opening a restaurant that collapsed, Captain Bane has been on Jeopardy and drills himself up in the captain’s bridge, and McGillicuddy is trying to put distance between her and a terrible family tragedy, but they don’t say what it is. And apparently nobody knows Gordon the engineer’s reason for being out at sea. Fernando thinks he’s on the run. Annie thinks he just doesn’t like people.

“How do you do it? Having to be quiet all the time?”

“Every job has its trade-offs,” Fernando says. “You get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t recommend this job to a boisterous person,” Annie says. “But we have quiet fun down there, like Scrabble.”

“A lot of Scrabble,” Fernando says.

Annie smiles. “And we sometimes take the boat to the shore and let our hair down.”

Annie has a whole itinerary for us in town and Ubers arranged. The cake is already in the works, and Phillip is going to check on that and then shop for his produce. Fernando and Annie and I are going to hit the party store for decorative items, and I’ll be at the office supply store for a banner, and I also have to figure out gifts for us to give each other.

Not thirty minutes later, the three of us are wandering the aisles of a party store. Annie shows me some garlands. Fernando, whose official title is deckhand, strategizes about how we can hang things.

I find a small “puppy and kitten in love” figurine thing and show it to them. “We have to put this on top of the cake! It’s so unbelievably cute!” I show how it sparkles in the light.

I look up and catch them both staring at me.

“What?”

Annie says, “You are just so different from what we would’ve thought a girlfriend of his would be like.”

“So different,” Fernando says.

“You seem fun,” Annie says. “Nothing against Mr. Blackwood, he’s just a very serious individual.”

“He’s totally serious. I guess that’s why we work. I’m the fun girlfriend. A lot of people think I’m too extra, and not in a good way, but Bruno likes it.”

I examine a giant teddy bear holding a fluffy heart, just listening to myself. I’ve wanted a guy to like my extra-ness my whole life, and now I’m play-acting it, making it part of the story in this totally fake relationship. It’s kind of sad and pathetic, really.

Most people think I’m too extra, but Bruno sure likes it!

Bruno. The man who dismissed me from his workshop this morning like I contaminated the place.

I pick up the giant teddy bear and stuff it into the cart.

We send Fernando to the print store to pick up the big banner. “What’s the name that it’s under?” he asks.

“It will be the giant banner that says heart you, Chumpywumpy,” I joke.

Fernando’s eyes widen.

“Yeah.” Annie laughs. “Chumpy Wumpy is two words, not one, or Mr. Blackwood will freak out!”

“She’s kidding,” I say. “The order should be ready and waiting under the name of Kelsey Winters.”

Fernando rushes off.

Annie and I duck into a little gift shop on the corner to get our presents. Annie tries to disguise her look of pity when she realizes I’m shopping for my own anniversary present.

“It’s fine. We’re a very practical couple,” I say.

“We had no idea. A year he was seeing somebody and we didn’t even know!” she says.

“We’re practical and private.”

I know exactly what I want the second I see it. It’s in a rack by the register, between a display of seashell magnets and a basket of saltwater taffy. A kids’ watch. Plastic band, bright red, and on the face is cartoon Roadrunner, and his legs are the arms of the watch, and his tongue is out in an absolutely unhinged way.

Six dollars.

At a nearby bakery, I find Bruno a fancy subscription to cookie of the month club. It comes with a starter box.

Phillip is waiting for us at the tender boat. We put our stuff in next to his groceries. Fernando arrives last with a rolled-up tube. He says something about them losing the order, but he got them to do it as a rush job, and Annie gets a text from the musicians saying they can do a last-minute gig.

“And what kind of music do they play?”

“It’s a fiddle and an oboe duo. Very Appalachian, but they can totally do melodic romantic music. They’re amazing! They’ll bring their own boat—a friend’s skiff—and motor out to the yacht. They might not be there right at five, but they’ll come, she’s sure.”

I smile. It sounds like Annie is a fan. “Let’s do it!”

We arrive back at the boat at four ten—Annie, Fernando, Phillip, and me, and a four-foot teddy bear, six shopping bags of hearts and fairy lights and flowers and streamers and things, plus a giant cake in a box. Fifty minutes. We can do this.

Phillip rushes down to get going on the charcuterie board he has planned; dinner will be much later.

Annie and Fernando string the fairy lights and garlands from every available protrusion, exactly like the wild spider’s web of love I’d imagined. I set the cake on a little side table and carefully press the “puppy and kitten in love” cake topper figurine atop it. Captain Bane wanders down and gives some ideas for more places for lights. Annie puts out candles in protective glass cases, and we put them everywhere, and she starts in scattering paper hearts and flowers all over.

I wish Bruno would come by and see...I think he’d be proud of what a nice celebration we pulled together in no time.

I wrap the presents. The Roadrunner watch goes in a small box with a ribbon—my gift from “Bruno.” I wrap the cookie subscription starter box and affix a card on top. Twelve months of joy delivered monthly, Happy Anniversary, Captain. —K

McGillicuddy really likes the giant teddy bear, and she thinks it should be affixed to the railing of the stairway that leads down from the helipad. “It’ll be watching over the romantic dinner! It’ll be perfect!”

It’s a really dorky idea, but she is so very adamant on it, I give it the green light. These people have had the most oppressive job in the world. If McGillicuddy has this vision, why not go with it?

“Okay,” I say, and she and Captain Bane collaborate on how to make it seem like it’s sitting on the railing. Somebody finds a large pole to mount it on.

I’m not so sure about that choice, but I can’t think about that, I need to get dressed. “Don’t forget the banner!” I call as I rush out.

“On it,” Fernando says.

I rush to my quarters and put on my favorite dress of the batch that Bruno got me, which is a lot of brocade and tulle in the faded glamour colors of pink and black, do a quick hair refresh, and I’m back out with five minutes to spare.

And nearly have a heart attack.

Strung between overhead beams so it spans the whole space is a giant banner that says HEART YOU, CHUMPYWUMPY! in cream and gold, and the script is truly elegant.

Annie rushes over. “I know, I know. They’d lost the order, so Fernando had them make it on the spot. When we were joking about Chumpywumpy, he thought we were serious.”

“I specifically said ‘just kidding.’ I remember saying that.”

“He thought you meant you were just kidding about Bruno freaking out if it was two words.” She looks up at the banner. “Should we take it down? It really is nice, and I thought...it sounded like it might be a nickname, so I thought you could make the call.”

A helicopter sounds in the distance. I squint and see it gliding in.

Where is Bruno? Is he going to make me receive his brother all alone? That would be pretty unconvincing, considering we’re on our one-year-anniversary cruise.

I smooth down my party dress. Just then, the double whistle sounds, the universal sign that Bruno is coming. A door at the forward edge of the aft deck opens—the interior companionway that leads down from his workshop above—and Bruno strolls through, all dressed up in a tux.

Bruno’s attention is on the helicopter overhead.

“Ready?”

“Of course.”

He scowls at the fairy lights, which are already lit, even though the sun hasn’t set yet.

And then his eyes track up, to the banner stretched overhead, spanning the whole aft deck.

HEART YOU, CHUMPYWUMPY.

His lips move as he reads it.

I wince. “Okay, so the banner was sort of a miscommunication, but I think the rest of it turned out amazing!”

He’s still fixating on the banner, seemingly unable to make sense of it. “I don’t understand...”

“This is the anniversary celebration you asked me to put together. You wanted it to look elaborate, like I put a lot of work into it. And the crew and I really pulled it off. They were amazing⁠—”

“No. No, no.”

“What? We’ll just say that’s a joke name that I gave you. And I know your feelings on flowers, but that is very standard anniversary fare.”

“Kelsey—I told him that I put a lot of work into it. That I arranged it all. Me.”

“Wait…you supposedly did all this?”

“I didn’t know it would be ‘all this.’”

“Oh my God, we have to take that banner down.”

Bruno looks up at the approaching helicopter. “It’s too late. He’ll have already seen it.”

“You would never put up a banner like that.” I clap my hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry!”

“There is no way this works.” He grabs my hand as if to pull me somewhere, but I stand stock-still.

“No, this can work. We can sell it.”

He squints at me. “There is no way.”

“We’re in love, Bruno, and people in love are silly. People in love transform. You were a lonely, mirthless hermit before I met you and I have opened up your world with joy.”

He lowers his voice. “You know my feelings on joy.”

I tug him toward the foot of the stairs that descend from the helipad and call to Annie to bring two half glasses of champagne.

The thing is now touching down. “My friend Mia always says, if you really commit, you can pull off anything.”

Bruno’s face has hardened, like he’s bracing for war.

“I am your Chumpywumpy. Say it.”

He just looks into the distance. The muscles in his jaw tighten.

Looking into his anguished, battle-ready face suddenly makes me feel a little bad for him. I remind myself that this is really important to Bruno. I turn his face and look him deep in the eyes, trying to infuse him with all the confidence I can muster. “We got this.”

He’s not convinced.

“We do. We can do this.” I link my arm in his, and we stand at the base of the stairs next to the giant teddy bear, which Bruno regards with a look of great pain.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Stop!” I scold.

The helicopter door opens and a man with Bruno’s same burnished-bronze hair and a slightly stockier build steps out onto the helipad above us. He’s wearing sunglasses and holding a wrapped gift the size of a shoebox. He crosses to the top of the stairs, registers the teddy bear waiting there with its plush heart, and visibly stops. Then he starts down.

“Why would you think you would be throwing a celebration on my yacht?” Bruno says to me.

“Because you hate fun? I would be the natural person to do it!”

Under his breath, Bruno says, “Adrian will ask you questions that sound casual but aren’t. He will be polite and he will be pleasant and none of it will be real. And if he determines this is a false front, every arrangement I have made to protect—” He stops himself. “Everything falls apart.”

I swallow. And he’ll have to let himself be red meat in the documentary. Or spill the horrible, life-altering secret he’s protecting his brothers from. Or maybe it’s himself he’s protecting. For all the time I’ve spent with him, and all of the secrets I’ve told him, he remains an enigma.

It’s here that I start worrying that maybe I can’t pull this off. He knows a lot about me, but what do I really know about him?

“All we can do is our best.” I squeeze his hand as Adrian reaches the bottom of the stairs.

Adrian regards our joined hands with some bemusement and then he looks up at his brother. “Bruno.”

“Adrian. I’d like you to meet Kelsey.”

“Yes, the secret, late-breaking girlfriend.”

I take his hand warmly. “I’m so glad you’re here. Bruno was a little grumpy about opening up our celebration cruise even a little bit.” I gaze up at Bruno. “But hey, he’s cute when he’s grumpy, so all is well.”

Bruno blinks, looking baffled. Is he even going to be able to do this?

Adrian is carefully taking in the scene. The hearts and fairy lights and flowers and the giant banner.

“Is that for us?” I chirp, hopefully derailing whatever thoughts he’s having about the banner.

He hands over the present with an amused look.

This is already not going well.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

BRUNO

Adrian makes a big show of removing his sunglasses. He scans the aft deck methodically, eyes moving from the garlands of hearts to the fairy lights to the teddy bear he passed on his way down, clutching its plush red heart. It’s mounted on a pole, or more like impaled on a pole. What was Kelsey thinking?

Adrian’s eyes twinkle. “A teddy bear, Bruno?”

“It’s an inside joke,” I say.

He squints at me. “You? An inside joke?”

Kelsey hands the gift off to a crew member and slides her arm through mine with a naturalness that almost startles me. I become acutely aware of the warmth of her skin, the brush of her body against my sleeve, the faint sage scent that always seems to cling to her. My arm wants to tighten around her waist. I keep it exactly where it is.

“Bruno is so hilarious. Most people don’t get to see that side of him.”

“Most people definitely don’t.” Adrian’s tone conveys he has not seen that side of me. Because it does not exist.

Kelsey says, “We were just sitting down to hors d’oeuvres. I hope you can join us for a toast.”

“I suppose I could stay a few minutes,” Adrian says coolly.

Of course he can.

Kelsey gives him a happy smile, and then she turns to me, and her smile changes to a look of such affection, I don’t know what to do with it. “And I plan to get at least one embarrassing childhood anecdote out of him, I hope you know.” She urges me toward the table at the back of the space, sheltered from the wind and sun but still out in the open air. She’s making it look so natural, setting a tempo, creating an atmosphere. It’s what she does. She’s choreographing this.

I sit at the end of the table. Adrian sits to my right, Kelsey to my left. He lifts his glass for a crew member to fill. “So I have to ask. Chumpywumpy?”

“That’s just a little thing we have,” Kelsey says.

“Another inside joke?” Adrian’s eyes are locked on to my face.

“Exactly,” Kelsey says, pretending to be oblivious to his skepticism. “I used to say that when he was a little bit in trouble like, did you stay in your workshop from sunup to sundown again, Chumpywumpy? And it annoyed him so much, I couldn’t stop saying it. He’s so adorable when he’s annoyed. Then he started saying it to me.”

“It’s only fair.”

Adrian lifts his glass. “Congratulations.”

I drink a generous gulp.

“So,” Adrian says, settling his napkin into his lap. “One year.”

Kelsey pops a candied nut into her mouth. “Time flies.”

“It does indeed,” Adrian says. “And nobody knew. Even your own brothers.”

There it is. The first probe, delivered with a half-smile.

I shrug, thinking what to say. Adrian is the one person on earth who can get past my stonewalling techniques.

Kelsey dives in. “We kept it quiet because Bruno wanted it that way. We didn’t want to do anything that would spur more publicity like that article did. And we just kind of got into flying under the radar. The secrecy kind of made it more fun, and you know how he is about privacy.”

“I do know how he is about privacy,” Adrian says. “And he’s usually quite the loner.”

“Oh, he still is,” Kelsey says. “We do aloning well together, don’t you think?”

Good God, did she just make alone into a verb? “Amazingly.”

Adrian sips his champagne. “And how did you meet?”

Of course he’s heard the story already, from Russell. I have no doubt they’ve discussed this extensively. Maybe Kelsey has figured this out, or maybe she hasn’t, but she’s laughing and launching into the version of the story we established at the wedding—me waiting at the back entrance of her Broadway show, desperate to meet her. She adds just enough new detail that it sounds natural. Me carrying her case. Something about me being abrupt to a waiter and her calling me out on it, and I find myself joining in, saying, “I wasn’t rude. I was specific.”

“You were rude,” she says. “You sent back a martini because the glass was the wrong shape.”

“It was the wrong shape.”

“It was a martini glass, Chumps.”

Ah. So we’re shortening it, now.

She turns to Adrian. “No comment.”

Adrian’s face is unreadable.

“What possessed you to go out to a Broadway show, Bruno? Did somebody tie you up and drag you there?”

I can’t think of anything that would induce me to go to a Broadway show.

Kelsey puts her hand over mine. “You don’t have to tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Adrian says.

Kelsey looks at me. Then at Adrian.

What? Does she expect me to work this out?

I look at the banner. Why did I think we could do this?

She takes a small breath, as though deciding how much to share. “He needed to get out of his head, that’s all,” she says quietly.

She says it like she’s protecting a secret. Like this is a private chapter of my life that she’s been entrusted with, and I suddenly grasp her vision—me as a man alone in his workshop, overwhelmed by silence, and I walk into a theater full of music and color and movement to get out of my head, “...and you said you didn’t know that this was what you were looking for.”

“I didn’t know.” My voice sounds bewildered to my ears. Well, it seems like that would be the right emotion; Kelsey certainly seems to like it. Her eyes sparkle. The dress turns when she moves, all soft lines and bare skin. I can barely take my eyes off of her.

Adrian is quiet for a moment. Then, “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, brother?”

Kelsey turns back to him with her bright, warm smile, and asks about the vineyard.

Suddenly, I think of a way to contribute something to the rather amazing fiction she’s creating. I take an apple slice and concentrate on building a Kelsey everything concoction, spreading a bit of goat cheese onto it and then pushing a couple candied nuts into the cheese, just to see if she notices. I press a few capers in and finally catch her eye. She looks down at what I’m holding in my fingers, then back up.

Does she think I’m going to eat it? I add another candied nut, keeping my eyes on her. My gaze is saying, how do you like that?

I set it on the little plate in front of her.

She widens her eyes at it. “A prince among men,” she whispers.

Adrian watches closely. Does he see what a good sense of humor she has? Who the hell ever told her that she’s too much? That she’s extra?

“And you’re a Broadway dancer full-time?” Adrian asks.

“And a dance teacher. That’s really my bread and butter. I run a studio in the city with a friend. And another studio with another friend that is more ballet, and we do some ensemble work.”

“A dance teacher.” Adrian glances at me with a curious tilt of his head.

“She’s great at it. Kids love her. She knows how to interact with them on their level. Absolutely compelling. On stage and off.” I take a sip of champagne. “She does these things she calls embodiments.” I don’t know why I’m starting here. “She’ll strike a pose and announce that she’s embodying the concept of ennui, or her feelings on artichokes. The first time she did it, I wasn’t sure what was happening.”

Kelsey laughs. “You did look genuinely concerned.”

“It took me several more before I understood that it’s—” I pause. “That it’s her way of being, of communicating. Of marking a moment.”

Kelsey looks surprised. “You never told me that’s how you see them.”

“You’ve never asked.”

“Would you have told me?”

“Probably not.”

She tilts her head. “Why not?”

“Because then I’d have had to admit...” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Since when do I start sentences that I don’t know how to finish?

“Admit what?”

We are close enough now that I can see the exact point where the brown in her eyes radiates out into greens and golds. Her lashes look impossibly thick. And she really is beautiful. I’ve spent this whole time cataloguing facts about Kelsey, but somehow this one is only now sinking in.

“Do one,” Adrian says, breaking into our corner of the table; we’d turned toward each other at some point without my noticing.

It’s not a warm request. It’s a test. The impulse to punch my brother in the face is nearly irresistible. My voice comes out sounding dangerous. “Adrian.”

Kelsey snorts. “I can’t just do one on demand. I have to feel it.” She eats the thing I just built for her. God, how much longer is Adrian going to stay?

“And what do you like about him?” Adrian asks her.

“What’s up with the interrogation?” I ask him. “I thought you were coming here to congratulate us. If you’re going to act like this, you can turn around and leave.”

“No, I’m happy to answer.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Let her answer,” Adrian says.

I’m about to say more…I don’t want her forced to answer a question like this, to make anything up—but she puts her hand on mine and squeezes.

“Bruno is absolutely the most singular, the most idiosyncratic, and honestly the most impossible man I’ve ever met. He’s rigid and he’s controlling and he eats the same chicken every Monday and he thinks joy is useless.”

Adrian’s gaze is assessing.

She couldn’t have invented something better than that?

She picks up a maraschino cherry, seems to contemplate it. “My sister and I used to collect these geodes as children. All of this gray rock on the outside, but if you manage to crack them open or if they crack open for you, there’s so much going on inside. That’s my favorite thing about Bruno. The hidden warmth and depth of passion that he doesn’t show to just anybody.”

I listen, stunned. She really is quite the storyteller. The inventor. The geodes feel almost real.

I take a sip of champagne, trying not to grip my glass too tightly.

“It’s everything that he picked me to show all that to. Well, you know. You’re his brother.”

The water laps against the hull. A seabird cries somewhere.

“Bruno has never been...well, let’s just say he’s never been a people person,” Adrian says, “but you⁠—”

“Enough,” I say.

Kelsey grins. “Uh-oh, I’ve hit Bruno’s sappiness limit.”

“We hit that long ago.”

“I want to propose a toast,” Kelsey says, raising her glass. “To our first year. And to finally meeting you, Adrian. I have heard quite a bit about you.”

I raise my glass.

“I can’t believe he’s been keeping you a secret all this time.” He turns to me. “Tell me that you’re not planning on bringing her out to Switzerland next.”

“Hell no,” I hear myself rumble.

Adrian raises his glass. “Here’s to our father in a golden cage. May he never escape it.”

“He’s not trapped,” I say. “He wants to be there.”

Kelsey looks confused. She doesn’t need to know.

Annie appears just then. “Would anybody like cake?”

“Not until later!” Kelsey says.

I give Kelsey a look. Something’s up with the cake. I don’t want to know.

Adrian stands. He goes and gets his present and puts it at the center of the table. “I don’t want to crash your party, but I got you this.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Is he buying all this? I can’t tell for sure, but something in the way he’s looking at me seems to have shifted. His gaze seems softer, almost. “I really am happy for you.” He shakes my hand and keeps it a beat too long. “I never thought...I’m just very happy for you.”

Kelsey, ever the operator, has us take pictures under the banner, and then herds the three of us to the stairs to pose with the bear, and the blonde crew woman takes our picture. Kelsey promises to send it along to Adrian so he can show Russell.

Adrian climbs back up to the helipad. The helicopter lifts off. We watch it shrink against the sky, growing smaller and smaller until it’s just a sound, and then nothing.

I look over the aft deck, really taking it all in for the first time—the jubilance of it. The enormity of the transformation. Hearts and fairy lights cover every surface. Garlands hang from protrusions I didn’t know existed. She didn’t do it alone; she pulled my crew along with her. I didn’t know they were capable of such things. The weird banner was a miscommunication, but she committed to it, and she even showed me how to commit to it.

I watch the wind shuffle her hair, and I imagine running my hands through it. And then I catch myself, because Adrian is gone. There’s no one to perform for.

“Do you think he bought it?” she asks finally.

“Shockingly, I think he did. He seemed surprised. Even a bit moved.”

“I think so, too.” Her voice contains just a hint of wonder.

Is it so shocking that we’d be together? Does Kelsey think it’s strange? Did she enjoy it as much as I did? But all I say is, “It all went so much better than I would’ve imagined. You really pulled it out.”

She smiles brightly. “We were a good team.”

“My brother’s face when he was looking at that banner?”

She turns to me, eyes soft in the late evening sun. “Forget about your brother’s face; you should have seen your face when you saw that banner.”

“I was pretty surprised.”

“Priceless!” She laughs and flops dramatically onto one of the loungers. “We deserve an award.”

Yes. A flawless performance. So why did it sting?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

KELSEY

There’s something in his voice. This vulnerability I’m not used to from him, but it’s nice. I told Adrian he’s like a geode, and it’s a little bit true. My mind goes back to when he pulled me into that waltz. Like maybe there are sparkly worlds inside of him.

He sits down next to me. “Dare I ask about the cake?”

“Nope.”

“Something to look forward to.” The way he looks at me now—his eye crinkle deepens, and I feel this warmth spread through my chest. “Thanks for helping make it work. It was nice, working as a team.”

I shift and plop my legs onto his lap, leaning back against the armrest. “You took it well. The initial shock.”

“I won’t lie. The initial shock was immense.”

“I’m sorry I disturbed you in your workshop today,” I say.

“It’s fine, Kelsey. I shouldn’t have...I’m not used to people going in there like that. Nobody goes in.”

“Nobody gets to go in there, even to clean?”

“Nobody. Ever.”

Out. I can’t stop thinking about him saying it like that.

“Why?” I ask. “Is it because they might make you drop things like I did?”

He slides a hand along my calf. The touch is casual, but it lands somewhere deep inside me anyway. Lately, every little thing seems to.

I feel closer to him than I did a week ago. Closer than I did when we were having sex.

Like somewhere along the way, without my permission, this stopped being physical.

“I just don’t want people in there.”

“Do you not like them to see your work in progress?”

“It’s a lot of things.”

I stare out at the fairy lights, wishing he would tell me...anything, really. I feel close to him, but it’s inside of the walls of a completely fake relationship. How sad is that? And what was that stuff about his father? In a golden cage or whatever? Is that what the secret’s about? Or is that just another thing I don’t know about him?

“I’ve been terrible to you,” he says suddenly. “I’ve treated you like someone who could be bought. I’m not good with people, but that’s no excuse.”

I press my hand to his cheek, and he goes still. His stubble is rough, but his cheek is warm, and nice. I slide my hand down to his jaw, just a little bit, just wanting to keep the touch going. “Thank you for saying that, but we’re good.”

“No. There’s something else. Something I should have told you days ago.”

My heart pounds. I have a sense that he’s gonna tell me that he’s falling for me. I might be falling for him, too. I just, just might be. I try not to smile like a maniac. “What?”

His brows are drawn together, serious over his soft gray eyes.

He says, “At the wedding. I learned something about your family.”

“Yeah? What?”

“It’s about your grandmother—Granny Ernie.”

“Oh no—what? Is she okay?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. She’s fine. It’s just that, she forced Danielle to invite you.”

“What? What are you talking about? No, that’s not true. Danielle wanted me there. She even asked me to help with the invitations. We did the calligraphy together.”

“Because she had to.”

I frown. “No.”

His hands are warm on my shin. He keeps them there, like an anchor. “Granny Ernie was using some sort of financial leverage with them. It sounded like a condition of paying for the wedding, but maybe it was more. She told your family that if they didn’t invite you to the wedding, if they didn’t make an effort to bring you back into the fold, she’d withhold some sort of financial help.”

A dark stone forms at the pit of my belly. “Granny Ernie does control a chunk of family money. But she was never one to throw her weight around. You must have misheard.”

He explains the conversation he overheard at the croquet match, and then his interaction with Uncle Jasper.

My pulse races. “But they wouldn’t pretend like that... I would know...” Even as I form my feeble protests, I’m replaying scenes from the weekend. The inexplicable coolness. People’s strained politeness. How I felt like I was having to prove myself the whole time. The couch pile of cousins seeming to go formal as I approached.

The horizon has gone the color of a bruise with the water and the sky merging into the same sad mélange.

“Oh my God.”

“I’m sorry.” He keeps his gentle hands on my calf, as if to ground me. It’s the only nice thing in the world right now.

“People seemed...not that warm, but I thought it was about the time apart. Like we’d become strangers and it would just take a while to get used to each other again or something. Or maybe they felt bad for how they had treated me, but I never thought the whole thing was a façade. How did I not see that?”

“You wanted to be back with your family.”

I shake my head, shocked at my unwillingness to see what was in front of my face. The whole weekend—every single moment I treasured—was a transaction. I was a condition. Not a daughter. Not a sister. A box to check off.

“It was a shit thing to do,” he says.

“That croquet match was days ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to, but there never seemed to be a right time.”

“Because I’d cry and freak out and make a scene in the middle of my sister’s wedding?” I say as the tears begin to fall. I turn and sit up, facing away from him. “God, maybe that was for the best. When’s the best time to tell a perfect stranger that their family is pretending to like them for money? And not even doing a very good job of it? I am such a fool.”

“You wanted it to be true.”

“I made myself stupid with hope.”

“Hope isn’t stupid. It’s brave.” He touches my shoulder.

I sniff derisively, head in hands, surrounded by confetti hearts, fairy lights, all of it. “Everything is fake. My family is fake. This—” I gesture at the yacht, the decorations, us. “This whole thing. So much for my big ideas that they would know my heart, huh? How delusional.”

“It’s not delusional.”

“Desperate, then? Will you accept desperate?”

“Kelsey.”

I glare at the Chumpywumpy banner. HEART YOU, CHUMPYWUMPY. I want to rip it down. “I’m just the hired help. With my family and here, too, on this boat. I mean, let’s face it.”

“You’re more than that,” he says.

A droning motorboat sound floats in on the breeze. “You’re just trying to make me feel better. It won’t work. We’re a good team with maybe some sexual chemistry and we’re good at pulling things off together.”

Bruno kneels in front of me. “Hey.”

“Go away. You don’t need to be acting like you care.”

“I’m not acting.”

“Well, maybe I want you to go away so I can sit here and cry in my party dress and then I’m going to eat that entire cake.”

“I’ll help you.”

“You don’t even like cake.”

“I would eat it for you.”

Soft waves lap at the hull of the boat. Moonlight glints off furniture arranged at perfect angles.

My mind keeps racing over the scenes of the weekend. “I thought they knew me. Yes, I’m the black sheep of the family, the dancer with her garish clothes and earrings too big and still living with roommates instead of getting a real life, but to think I’d steal from the family.”

He curls a bit of hair behind my ear, but no way will I look up and let him see my probably blotchy, swollen face, but what do I care? He’ll be done with me in a day or two. I’m just the hired help, even though I meant those things about him being like a geode.

Maybe that’s just my life. Doomed to want more from people than they’ll ever want to give me.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, some kind of music starts playing. It’s lively and bright and it feels like it’s mocking me. I lift my head. “What the hell?”

Bruno wears a murderous expression. “I’ll go see who’s doing that.” He stands.

“No, wait.” I reach up and catch his hand. “They’re here for the party. They’re late.”

“You ordered musicians?”

I’m a mess—I can feel it. There’s no way mascara isn’t running down my face; I’m just hoping I don’t look like a member of KISS. “Worst. Soundtrack. Ever,” I say.

He snorts softly. “Should I make them leave? Or we could dance.”

“Fuck off with the dance.”

He goes and leans over the side and says something. A motor starts up and they buzz back to shore, the sound of the outboard cutting the silence like a small buzz saw. I go to the railing next to Bruno, watching them head back to their families and lives or whatever. Back to the people who love them and believe in them.

The night goes silent. And I’m bereft.

I didn’t know the meaning of the word until now, but I’ve genuinely lost my family. I kept thinking that if only they would remember who I was. But maybe they looked into my heart and hated what was there. Why else would they be so willing to believe something that wasn’t true?

“I get why you waited to tell me,” I say to Bruno. “I get how much it probably sucks to have to tell this person you barely know that her whole family life is fake. That her whole existence is all mirror tricks and maraschino cherries with fake colors and fake chemicals. A lot of nothing.”

I can feel him looking at me in that intense way. “I should’ve told you sooner, and as for the rest of it? Me barely knowing you? This bullshit about your existence?”

“Don’t. You don’t have to⁠—”

He takes my hand and pulls me across the aft deck, away from the Chumpywumpy banner and the dorky cake and to the stairway to the owner’s deck.

“If you think I’m going to have sex with you now⁠—”

“I need to show you something.” He leads me up a hushed corridor I’ve only been in once before. I know where we’re going before we get there.

The workshop.

His no-go zone.

He doesn’t say anything ceremonial about it. He just opens the door and walks in, pulling me along.

The tools are still laid out with surgical precision. There’s a single lamp throwing warm light onto the workbench where he sat. It smells like metal and sandalwood, which I didn’t notice before.

Is he going to show me a watch?

He goes to a drawer and takes out a rock. It’s dark and heavy-looking, like a big, mottled egg.

“This is what I make the watch faces from,” he says. “Iron meteorite. This piece is around four and a half billion years old, and then it burst in through our atmosphere, flashing through the sky. Most of them burn up.”

“A meteor?”

“This is the part that lasted.” His voice is so full of awe.

It’s awesome being in his weird inner sanctum, like being in a monk’s cell or something, but I’m not in the mood for science talk. I’m thinking about eating the cake as he turns it over in his hand.

“When you cut them open, it’s pure black with an intrinsic crystalline pattern that forms over millions of years of cooling. It can’t be faked. It can’t be manufactured or replicated. Scientists have tried. It’s the one material that is only and exactly what it is. A true thing. One of the only real and true things on Earth. That’s why it’s breathtaking.”

“So... Are you trying to say that this proves not everything is fake? Is that what you’re saying?”

He looks up. “Oh, no. Most things are fake. Most people are fake. Most emotions are a total charade. But this is real.” He puts it in my hand.

It’s warm. I don’t know why that surprises me. This ancient, dense, impossible thing from outer space.

“And you’re showing me why?”

“Because it reminds me of you.”

Pulse pounding, I close my fingers around it. That was weirdly sweet. Nerdily sweet.

His hand comes up—slowly, like he’s not sure he’s allowed—and pushes a strand of hair off my face. His fingertips barely touch my temple.

“Thank you for saying that. It’s sweet.”

“It’s true.”

We stand there in his workroom in the middle of nowhere on the ocean.

“Bruno.” My voice comes out small.

“What is it?”

“Are we a couple who compares each other to rocks?”

His lip quirks. He takes the meteorite from my hand and sets it back carefully in its drawer.

“I like that.”

Just then, a whistle sounds out. “What is that?”

“Dinner in ten. Are you hungry?”

“Starving, but...” I don’t have it in me to go back up on deck and interact. Or even sit upright.

“What do you want?”

I wrap my arms around myself. “Whenever I’m upset about something, I put on my flannel PJs and get cozy in bed with a grilled cheese sandwich and a can of ginger ale with a straw and watch a reality show. I don’t have access to any of those things. I don’t even have the PJs.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

BRUNO

Inever told anybody about the meteorites. I never tell anybody anything, really. I like it that way. It’s not that I dislike people; it’s just that when it comes down to it, people are out for themselves. I count myself lucky that I learned about that early on.

But this beautiful castaway in a party dress with her mascara-smudged eyes is different from everyone else, and she’s making me wish I had people skills. Even just one or two.

Because I like being around her, and I want to keep that going. I like that she’s so expressive—I always know what I’m getting with her. I love how she always goes big. I love her quirky way of viewing the world, and her loyalty, and the fact that she doesn’t care about material things.

And now she wants grilled cheese and ginger ale with a straw in bed, and I want badly to give it to her. I can’t imagine we have any such thing on board, but I’ve got a good chef.

“Come.” I take her hand.

“We’re back to the one-word canine-type commands again?”

“Come on, then.” I pull her out of the workshop and across the way toward my stateroom, trying not to focus on the feeling of my skin on hers. I may not have relationship skills, but what kind of man ravishes a woman who just lost her family? Or at least the illusion she had one? Not this one.

“Are you finally going to walk me over the gang plank?”

“That doesn’t sound very cozy,” I say.

“We’re doing my cozy vision? The bed, the grilled cheese, the reality show and all that? You know the maritime weather report isn’t a reality show, right?”

I turn, walking backwards, enjoying the way her eyes sparkle in the moonlight. I’ll bundle her up and feed her the meal she wants and sleep in the chair if I have to. I push open the door and let her wander in ahead of me.

“This is your room?”

“Yes. My quarters.”

She turns and gives me a sly look. “You soooo want to get me in bed. You can’t resist me.” But it doesn’t have the vibrancy of her usual jokiness.

“We’re getting you a grilled cheese,” I say, pulling out my phone to text the chef.

“Oh no, wait—Phillip really worked hard on our anniversary meal.”

“It won’t go to waste. I’m sure the crew will be thrilled to eat it.”

She thinks about this a moment. “I have to admit, they probably will be. Especially Fernando.”

Of course she knows the names of my crew. I don’t even know the names of my crew. I lead her into the large walk-in closet and pull a robe off of the hook. “It’s not your pajamas, but it’s flannel. It’s cozy.”

“I can’t imagine you wearing this.”

I stroll back out into my quarters, leaving her to test out the robe, and grab my phone.

Me: Change of plans, we are going to have grilled cheese sandwiches in bed. Is there any way you can locate or create ginger ale? Ideally in a can with a straw?

Chef: Of course. I’ll do a ginger concentrate with a touch of sweetener and finish it with sparkling water. Do you want it sharp or mild?

Me: Whatever you need to do to make it taste like a commercial brand.

Chef: The can might be a problem.

Me: Whatever you can do.

Suddenly, she’s there, but she’s not in my robe. She’s dug up a flannel shirt, black and gray, a favorite from when I was studying watchmaking in Switzerland.

She’s rolled up the sleeves enough to hit just above her wrists; the top two buttons are open, half of her wavy hair is still underneath the collar and she’s washed her face.

My thumb stops on the phone.

My eyes travel down her long legs to the thick black socks she’s dug up somehow. It’s all wrong on her and so fucking hot.

“Is this okay? You said I could take anything I need and the robe was just miles and miles of fluffy cloth. It was too much.”

I have to clear my throat before I can speak. “It’s fine. Great.”

More than fine. I want her to keep it on. To eat in it. To sleep in it. To walk the streets of Manhattan in it. To have it on her always unless I myself unwrap her and devour her like a gorgeous, wrong confection.

“I can’t imagine you wearing this, either.”

“I wore it when I was apprenticing as a watchmaker in Switzerland.”

“You literally studied watchmaking in Switzerland?”

“In Le Locle. It’s one of the main centers of watchmaking. A gloomy little place where generations of watchmakers train each other in cold workshops tucked into the mountains.”

“Wow.” She makes herself at home in my bed. I turn my face away from her before my face does anything else. “I’ve ordered us grilled cheeses and ginger ale.”

“You have ginger ale on the yacht?”

“We will soon.”

She narrows her eyes. “You can’t make ginger ale.”

“Of course you can make it.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “It’s not something that grows in the wild. There are not ponds where you can scoop it up.”

She presses her finger into my chest. “You are a smart-ass.”

My gaze lowers to the pale “V” of skin above the last buttoned button.

“And thank you,” she says.

I nod, fighting not to think about what she’s wearing under there. I should put her back in her room, but Kelsey likes to be with people. She takes comfort from people, one of the really mystifying things about her.

She looks around my stateroom, gaze roving from the spartan oak bureau to the long low dresser which holds only a lamp to the bedside table which holds a book.

“Now, the entertainment.” I take out my phone. “What is the reality show you want to watch?”

“We don’t have to watch some stupid show.”

“We do have to watch some stupid show,” I say.

There’s a twinkle in her eye. “Fine. It’s called Small-Town Bake Sale Wars?”

I text Sadie the name of the show.

“We’re watching it on your phone?”

“You think that I would have us watch your show on my phone?”

I follow Sadie’s instruction to find the remote in a drawer of the console. I push a few buttons, and a screen slides up from the footboard.

Kelsey’s eyes go wide. “Batman!”

“It really doesn’t take much to please you, does it?” I say.

“Apparently not!” she says.

We start the show. A theme song plays over footage of everyday-looking people stirring things in bowls and pulling trays out of ovens.

A knock.

I open the door.

The blonde crew member comes in and sets the food tray on the sideboard. “Two grilled cheeses—aged cheddar and Gruyère on sourdough. Chef Phillip made the ginger ale to order. The straws are lemongrass. They soften in the drink after a minute or so, which is intended. And a selection of fermented pickles Phillip thought you might like alongside the cheese.”

“Thank you, Annie,” Kelsey says.

Annie retreats. We settle in, watching the show and eating our grilled cheese. The pickles are better than I expected.

Kelsey points out the different characters to me. There’s one woman who only makes one mincemeat pie every time. People are angry at her today.

“It is a little tone deaf,” she says. “The point of a bake sale is to earn money.”

“But the mincemeat is her thing,” I say.

“It’s diva-ish,” she says. “She’s not being a good citizen.”

“But I bet that pie is incredible.”

She touches her finger to my lips.

I let her keep it there. There’s a beat of stillness where neither of us moves.

She says, “I think you’re teasing me.”

I take hold of her finger and kiss the tip of it.

She comes to me. She sits on top of me, straddling my lap. “You so want to jump my bones right now.”

I set my plate on the bedside table and put my hand against her jaw, lightly, the way a man handles a thing he’s about to care for, and I kiss her. “I do want to. I’ve wanted to all night. Even while Adrian was here.”

“I don’t think I’d be into that kind of thing.”

“I wanted him to leave so that I could fuck you.” My hands are in her hair, on her jaw, everywhere at once.

“Mmmm,” she says in a tone of pleasant surprise.

“And then when you came out of my closet wearing this thing.” Her shoulder comes out of my collar, and I put my mouth on it. I drag my lips down her throat.

“Then why did we watch two episodes of bake sale?”

She’s already reading my face. She does it openly, without apology, the way she does everything.

“You’re trying to be decent,” she says.

“You just lost your family.”

“But what if I desperately needed you to take advantage of me?” She reaches down and grabs my cock.

I growl and flip her under me. The buttons don’t come undone. I pull. Something pops at the third button. I don’t care. I’ll buy another flannel.

The shirt opens and she’s bare under it, bare everywhere.

I go still.

She looks up at me and smiles. Slow. Dark.

I put my mouth on her breast. Not the way I did on the veranda, with perfectly calibrated pressure and a full sequence in mind. Right now, I’m not calibrating or thinking. I’m only going. She grabs my hair, eyes wild.

I go in for a kiss, then I kiss down her body, lingering over her stomach, her hip.

“Like where this is going,” she whispers.

Me too.

I put my mouth between her legs. She arches off the bed with a gasp. She tastes like everything I can never have, and I devour her. Teeth, tongue, fingers. There’s no rhythm. There’s only the next thing my mouth wants, and the next.

Her thighs close around my ears. Her fists knot in my hair. She comes fast and loud, something between a laugh and a curse; I feel her come apart against my tongue and I can’t get enough of her. I drag my tongue over her once more, twice more, and she shudders and laughs.

“Gah—stop!” she cries. “Come here.” She pulls at my hair. She’s grinning at me as I come up her body.

“Wait. My overnight bag.” I go to my bathroom and rifle through the overnight bag hoping there’s another condom in there. Bingo.

When I come back out, the flannel shirt is off completely. She’s naked in my bed.

I cross back to her and place a hand on her thigh, sliding it up to her hip, watching her eyes. “I love touching you.”

“You say that like it’s a shock.”

I don’t know what to say to that. It is a shock. It’s a shock that she’s in my bed, on my boat. A shock that I don’t want her off.

“Come here,” she says.

“You are so beautiful.” She begins to protest and I press my fingers to her lips. “You are. Just take it.”

“So come here.”

I smile and run the corner of the foil package up the inside of her thigh, light as a breath.

She draws up a little. “Bruno.”

“Yeah?”

“Just that,” she says.

I draw the packet back down toward her knee, pin-soft, holding her eyes. Something is happening that I can’t name or categorize. As though looking at each other has opened some kind of channel between us—as though we’re sharing sensations, linked by it.

It stuns me, that looking can be like this. And touching.

I don’t know what to do with all this human interaction. I make watches. My world is sequences and tolerances and tiny mechanical certainties.

She is laughter and movement and whimsy and endless enthusiasm, and she makes things better.

“You’re a little slow.” She snatches the condom from my fingers and tears it open, watching me with that playful look. “How about I do it?” She rolls it on, unhurried, then lifts her eyes to mine as her knuckles drift across my stomach.

I grab her hands and kiss them. Everything feels so new and uncharted. I usually wouldn’t like this.

She bends forward and kisses me on the belly. “You know what I love? That you knocked Cara’s and Madison’s croquet balls so viciously out of bounds.”

“That’s who that was?”

“Yes, and I love that you did that. I thought you were playing a little intensely, but you were being my knight in shining armor.”

I stroke her hair, happy I could do that for her.

She kisses, lower, below my belly button.

I half think she might take me in her mouth, but the condom would taste like latex and chemicals, and I don’t want that for her.

I move onto the bed, bracing myself over her, but not yet touching her.

The laughter in her eyes turns to heat as I push her legs apart and guide myself into her and press in.

Her eyes drift closed and she lets out a breath, like I’ve pushed the air from her lungs. Her heat grips me—I have a hundred similes ready and not one of them is adequate. She clings to me as I thrust into her.

I still. Kiss her lips. Her eyelids. “Open your eyes,” I say.

She opens them and I fuck her slow and sure, watching her, letting it build. She grabs my ass, trying to speed things up. I don’t let her. I want it to last. I want to make her feel better than anything I can put a number on.

“Pull my hair,” she says.

“This isn’t that kind of fuck.”

“I want you to, though.”

“Sorry.”

She sits up and kisses my chest. “Come on,” she whispers. “Please,” she breathes.

I grab her hair, wrap it around my fist, but don’t pull. “I think you’re just using me for my personality.”

“No,” she says. “Not just that.”

“Not just that?” I pull her hair then, lightly. “What else?”

She pants, right on the edge. She likes that. I like it too—more than I have any business liking anything.

The slow fuck is out the window.

I slide a hand around to her ass and grip her hard. “What?” I demand. Just to demand something.

“You’ll never know,” she pants.

My hunger isn’t something I can reason with. Being inside her only makes it worse—makes me want more, makes every careful measurement I’ve ever run on anything feel suddenly, completely beside the point. My strokes turn relentless.

“What else?” I pull her hair harder, tip her head back, drag my jaw across her throat.

I let my strokes go slow and commanding. She breaks apart under me. I suck in a breath—the way she feels as she comes, pulling at me. I try to hold on. The need has other plans. I thrust into her once, twice, and then come apart inside her, holding her. My orgasm spins out longer than I expected. When it’s over, I stay.

I can’t process it. Just the fact of her—inexplicably, unknowably right in the dim light of the place.

I ease out and drop onto my back beside her and stare at the ceiling of the room I’ve slept in alone for all these years as if I’ve never seen it.

“Wow,” she says. Quiet. For once, not a joke.

“Wow.”

She rolls her head to face me. My flannel is on the floor. Her hair is a wreck. Her eyes are shining.

“Captain Clockwork,” she whispers, “went off duty.”

I put my hand on her cheek. My fingers don’t know what they’re doing. For the first time in I don’t remember how long, I don’t want them to. I don’t want any of the slick polished moves I’ve done with women in my past. It’s as if I’m a different person around Kelsey. Or maybe I’m the same person without armor. Like her.

She traces the line of my cheekbone, sliding a finger over my lips.

When did I become somebody who let a woman touch me freely like this? When did I become somebody who let a woman onto my yacht?

“What would you be doing this week if you weren’t here?” I ask. “Besides your friend’s dinner.”

“Everyday things, I guess. Cleaning and hanging out. Teaching a few classes. Catch up on all the things I let slide when the show is going.”

She sits up, cross-legged on the bed, gazing down at me, breasts, small and pert, nipples like rosebuds. She has a long, graceful neck. Is that a dancer thing? I want to ask. I want to know everything about her.

A patch of pink on the side of her jaw must have come from my whiskers. Something like pleasure twists through me at the idea that I’ve somehow marked her. Possessed her.

Connections with people always seem like a way to be let down, but I like this. I like talking to her and fucking her and driving her enemies’ croquet balls off the field and buying things for her and feeding her.

And I can’t take my eyes off that mark on her jaw. I want to touch it, but I have half a thought that it might vanish if I do that. As though it’s maybe not real.

“That probably sounds boring to you,” she says. “You grew up on some fabulous estate. You went to boarding school and then moved to a yacht. You don’t even do your own laundry. Do you know how?”

I catch her hand in mine. “Of course I’ve done laundry. Our superiors were very strict about that sort of thing in military school.”

She looks serious suddenly. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“You could live anywhere in the world. Why live alone on a yacht?”

“Haven’t we already discussed this? I can be as much of an ogre as I want.”

“Plenty of people are ogres on land.”

“But at sea, there’s nobody to call you out on it. You can be as big of an ogre as you want.”

She searches my face. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“And I like the freedom.”

“That’s your generic magazine answer.”

“It happens to be true.”

“Freedom from what?”

I gaze out the window at the endless blue of the sky and water, but I don’t tell her how the endlessness of it is the only thing that feels right to me, or how being a true fucking island is the one thing I can trust.

“Freedom from everything,” I say.

“But you could have freedom anywhere. Why not a farmhouse in rural Vermont or something?”

“Can you drive the farmhouse away if you don’t like the weather? Or the neighbors?”

Chapter Thirty

KELSEY

Islide my hand over his chest, broad and strong and golden like him, thinking about his answer. It sounds reasonable, I suppose—he has mobility with a yacht, but that can’t really be it. Plenty of people who live on boats, but I don’t know… With him, it seems pretty obvious that there’s something more to it than just liking freedom and mobility, whatever that means.

“Being able to get away from other people is that important to you?” I ask.

“I live on a yacht where I can go anywhere I want. It’s fucking amazing.”

I smile, but I know he’s holding back. What is he running from? My thoughts go to his mother, drowning like she did. It hits me that he’s living in his mother’s graveyard.

“What is it?” he asks, because of course he has that way of seeing things.

“Nothing.”

He traps my hand onto his chest and gives me the eyebrow lift of scrutiny. “Tell me.”

I nestle back in beside him. “Fine. Okay. I was thinking about your mother. In this ocean. East Coast area of the Atlantic⁠—”

“You think that’s why I’m out here? Because my mother drowned in this ocean?”

“I just made the connection, that’s all.”

“It was a long time ago. It was another world.”

I gaze up at him. “So you just enjoy the ocean.”

“I enjoy the ocean.” He kisses the side of my neck, leaves his lips hovering there. “I enjoy the way you shiver when I put my face to the place where your pulse beats.” He takes my lips in his.

“I enjoy...” He kisses the place just under my jaw. “This spot. Where my whiskers marked you. I keep wanting to check if it’s still there.”

My hand goes up before I can stop it, fingers finding the patch of pink-hot skin, warm under my fingertips. “That’s a weird thing to like.”

“That little part of you is mine.”

The word has weight, ballast.

“You know what I like? The little tuft of hair behind your head that won’t behave. That part of you is mine.”

“Deal.” And then his mouth is moving along the line of my jaw, slow, unhurried, and up to a spot just behind my ear.

“I like this freckle.”

“I don’t have a freckle there.”

“You do.” He kisses it once, precise. “It’s very small. You’d need elaborately positioned mirrors to see it yourself.”

“I have a freckle there?”

“A secret freckle. The size of a pinhead. It was waiting for me.”

“Was it?”

He considers. “Yes.” He kisses it again and I shiver.

I love that he notices. That he catalogs. Bruno knows where my freckles are.

I open my mouth to redirect, to bring the question back to why a man builds his life on something he can steer away from everything and everyone, but he’s pressing his hand between my thighs and, suddenly, his warm, wicked mouth is tracking down my body, lips, soft against my skin. He presses a kiss to my mound and then he kisses between my legs. “You jumped when I touched you here before. I’ve thought about it since.”

“You’ve been thinking about it?”

“A lot.”

And suddenly my hand is in his hair, keeping him here.

“I like”—his breath is warm on my pussy, and my body has gone stupid with it—“the flush that climbs your chest when you’re about to come.”

I hiss out a breath.

“I like”—his hands spread my thighs wider, slow, deliberate—“the way you tremble when I hold you open.”

I’m not saying anything. I can’t let him stop now. “Keep going,” I gasp.

“Keep going...where?”

“My flower,” I say.

He lifts his head. “Did you just call it your flower?”

I groan in frustration, lifting my hips. “Kiss it.”

“I fucking love that that’s what you call it.”

“Are we going to talk about names?”

“Hell no,” Bruno says. “I just need you to know that I am going to lick your flower. I am going to explore every petal with my tongue and suck some of them in.”

The question about his mother is gone. It’s somewhere outside that window in the wind and clouds.

I tip back my head and just feel. And the man between my thighs is a man I am falling for. But that’s a problem for tomorrow’s Kelsey.

Chapter Thirty-One

KELSEY

Iwake up late and confused about which parts of me are mine and which parts are his. A leg here, a shoulder there. His hand cupped around my hip bone.

It’s nice.

“Good morning, Captain Clockwork.”

“You can’t call me that.”

I smile and kiss his nose. “Tell me again how you feel about clocks.”

“They’re not the same as watches. I’m telling you.”

“What if I strapped my little alarm clock to my wrist? That can’t be a watch?”

“Nope.”

I love how intense he is about this point.

We end up in the shower. The water is hot and there are tile patterns and skylights with plants up above, and we’re washing each other and I am laughing into his collarbone about something, and then he’s shutting me up with his mouth.

He growls and lifts me up. He sets me onto a mosaic ledge. I clasp my legs around his hips, enjoying the feel of his steely cock like a ridge against my sex.

My spine goes liquid.

“Making his tiny clocks in his clock shop,” I gasp.

He growls and suddenly he’s pressing my breasts together, enjoying them with both hands somehow getting his lips and tongue on both nipples at once which is a mind-blowing sensation. I really want to have sex again.

“You know how many people have wanted to get into that workshop?”

“Lots?”

“Lots. But none of them have gotten in. Not until you.”

It takes me by surprise, this admission.

He presses just the head of his cock into my sex. I buck my hips. “More.” I want more of him. Not just physically, but I want to know more. Why does he keep everybody out like he does?

“I’m out of condoms. I didn’t exactly expect this,” he says, slathering soap on my needy breasts.

“If it helps, I have a clean bill of health down there, including top-line birth control.”

“State of the art, huh.” He pulls back and looks in my eyes. “I’ve got a clean bill of health down there, too. And I haven’t been with anybody since… It’s been a while.”

“Sounds like a go.” I kiss his jaw and then his lips. “Requesting all hands on deck and please lower your tray tables and insert the cock firmly⁠—”

He shuts me up with a growly kiss.

Chapter Thirty-Two

BRUNO

Somehow, we’ve ended up on the small forward deck, where I rarely spend time, both in bathrobes. Hers is four sizes too big and she is swimming in it and it’s white and she keeps cinching the belt, and I want to carry her back to bed, but she’s intent on having breakfast out here. It’s her favorite deck.

I would’ve inspected it when I bought this yacht, but it’s possible I never returned.

Could that be right? But why would I have? It’s smaller than the aft deck on the other end of the yacht, with a small table and chairs setup and a few loungers. A little bit cozier; I suppose that’s the kind of thing that Kelsey likes.

She sips her coffee. “I can’t believe you don’t breakfast out here all the time. It’s unbelievably beautiful.”

“A ways up that way is a shipping lane.”

“Oh my God. Please. Is that the kind of thing you learn in military school?”

“Shipping lanes? No, that’s the kind of thing you learned from living on the ocean.”

She looks thoughtful. “What was it like growing up at a boarding school like that?”

“It was like being raised by wolves,” I say.

“In what way?”

“A lot of rules. A lot of drills. The coffee was terrible.”

Annie appears with a tray of fruit and pastries that turn out to be rosemary blueberry scones. She has folded the napkins into some kind of shape—a bird, I think. Kelsey makes a big fuss over them and the fact that the captain just found out he’s going to be a contestant on Jeopardy next November.

Kelsey is thrilled. “You have to watch him!” she says after Annie leaves. “You’re going to have to get Sadie to hook you up for it. You could watch it with the crew!”

“That’s not something I’ll be doing.”

“Okay, grump meister.”

It’s the kind of thing she would do; she’d watch it with the crew. There’d be popcorn and beer.

“After I leave, are you going to snap it all back?”

“Of course,” I joke.

“No!”

She throws a scone crumb at me, and I feel myself smile. Since when do I like having scone crumbs thrown at me?

I don’t care about what snaps back and what doesn’t. My mind is on Kelsey and how I don’t want this to end. I want her in my life even though I don’t do things like have women in my life. Or have people in my life really. I don’t even know how.

“How are you doing?” It’s such an insipid little question that people ask each other, but I find I want to know. “With the family thing, I mean. How are you doing with it?”

She sighs and looks out at the water. “It’s devastating. To be honest.”

“I can imagine.” This is a lie. I don’t have either of my parents in my life, and I like it that way, and I don’t care that my brothers think the worst of me.

“They don’t believe in me—that’s the part that keeps hitting me. Not that they were wrong about the tiara—I mean yes, that, but it’s bigger. They don’t know me. They’ve been looking at me for thirty-some-odd years, and they have no idea who I am.”

I say nothing. I’ve learned this week that if I say nothing, she keeps going.

“And then there’s this weird sense of relief underneath. Because so many things were wrong at that wedding, and I explained them all away, but it really didn’t add up. Nobody even expressed any regret for all the time we lost together. Well, nobody except me. I’m glad it all makes sense now because I felt a little bit like I was taking crazy pills.”

She’s looking at the horizon, hair shifting in the breeze.

“And Granny Ernie,” she says. “I think she really wanted me to be there, but to force everybody into a lie. What did she think was going to happen? I guess I’m glad that I know now, but it hurts to actually face the fact that they don’t love me or maybe even trust me, especially my mom and dad. These people who raised me, who I grew up with. At least I’m not sitting around waiting for them to invite me back for Christmas or for Danielle and me and our husbands to go on boat outings together, which was a sort of stupid dream of mine.”

“That was a dream of yours?”

“Yes. And then later on, we do boating things with our families. Specifically, a big catamaran. You know how you get those pictures of your future life?”

I give her a vague smile. I don’t have a lot of pictures like that. Other people do?

She says, “Having your family in smoldering ruins is a kind of freedom, I suppose. But it hurts.”

I’m amazed at how she can just say it and accept it. My family has been in smoldering ruins since I was seven, and I never told a soul. And I never will.

“What if they figured it out?” I ask. “Your innocence. Say they found proof it was somebody else, and they apologized. I know it’s too late, but would you like it just so they could see how wrong they are?”

She narrows her eyes. “Like would it feel good to have them come crawling to me apologizing and be vindicated?”

“Yeah.”

“No. I don’t want that family. I really meant what I said at the hotel—if they need proof to believe me after I told them over and over that I didn’t do it, and they were willing to playact to my face for money, making a fool out of me, I really have lost them. And so what if I show them some proof that it wasn’t me? And I get invited back to Christmas again and all. Is that what I want? These people who supposedly know me think I’m the kind of person who would rob the family and destroy a beautiful heirloom for money and then play me for a fool. And the sad thing is, I know I would be tempted to make myself believe it’s real. You saw me this weekend, how bad I wanted to believe. I don’t want to be somebody who makes herself believe in bullshit.”

I reach out and settle my hand over hers, admiring the hell out of her. I should tell her so, but I don’t know how. Maybe I’m not equipped for any of this. I spent a long time believing in bullshit myself. Specifically about my mother.

“What’s the opposite of a vote of confidence?” she asks. “A vote of inadequacy? That’s what needing the report would be for me. A vote of not believing in myself. A vote of not being worth anything.”

She goes back to her coffee and scones.

First chance I get, I wander casually to the railing. I pull out my phone and I text Laney Waller.

Kill the investigation. I’ll still pay the full amount.

It takes her less than ten seconds to reply.

Report filed this morning.

So Sadie has it. I don’t need it. I don’t want it.

I reach out to Sadie and tell her I don’t need the report. I instruct her to pay Laney the full amount and discard the thing.

I wanted to punish the family for not believing her, but I wasn’t thinking about Kelsey at all. How can her family not see her heart? I can see it loud and clear. I won’t be the one to give her the vote of not believing in her.

“Work fire?” she says when I come back.

“You’re worth it to me,” I say.

“What?”

“You’re worth it. To me. A lot. You’re worth everything. Anyone who can’t see that deserves whatever misery they’ve got coming.”

She climbs out of her chair and into my lap and arranges herself across my thighs.

“The misery of not having me in their lives?” she says. “Having to eat their scones without me there throwing the crumbs at them?”

“How can anyone endure it?”

She’s smiling, not quite a joke-smile. “So you don’t think I’m too much?”

“Too much of what?”

“You know like the phrase, ‘too much,’ as in, she’s a lot. She’s too much. Because I know I can be a lot. It’s kind of a growth area for me.”

“Who would think that?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. A lot of people think it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She smiles happily. “Believe it. A few of them have even told me that to my face.”

“Who the fuck would say that?”

“That’s not important. I’m just giving you an example for illustrative purposes.”

“Whoever said that,” I hear myself growl, “is a fucking idiot.”

She snickers. “That’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”

“I’m serious. If anything, I want double of you. Or triple.”

“I feel like we’re getting into dirty fantasy territory.”

I kiss her. It’s soft and brief, and her forehead stays on mine for a while after, and I can feel her breathing.

“Same,” she says, after a minute.

“Same what?”

“Can’t get enough of you,” she says. “I’ll take extras. When this is over, I want to see you again. But you live on a yacht.”

“You think I can’t figure that out? We’ll do dinner next week. What do you think?”

She’s into it. We’ll look at calendars.

“Is the water cold out here?” she asks apropos of nothing.

“It’s not freezing but it’s June. Not exactly tropical.”

“Is there a way to get our feet in it? Like drag our feet from the back or something?”

“You know this isn’t a rowboat, right?”

“But isn’t there a ladder or something? What good is the ocean if you can’t even touch it? It might as well be a movie screen.”

I look out over the water. It’s calm, with gentle swells, but it’s still the ocean.

I send the captain a text.

Chapter Thirty-Three

KELSEY

Here is a thing I didn’t know about the yacht: It has a whole back porch that folds down like a drawbridge, and when you’re sitting on it, your legs go right into the Atlantic.

Here is another thing I did not know: The Atlantic is cold.

“Oh holy⁠—”

“It’s not that cold!”

“My toes!” I lift them out. Bruno swishes his around like it’s bathwater.

“Are there sharks?”

“This is their home.”

I scan the horizon.

The yacht rises up like a cliff behind us. The water slaps gently against the platform.

I lean my head on his shoulder. He made the whole boat stop just so we can put our feet in the water. I didn’t realize he had to stop for us to do it.

“Are you looking forward to when your show resumes from hiatus?” he asks.

“Definitely. It’s a great cast and we’ve all gotten close. And it’s such a high to be out there.” I tell him about our little backstage routines, and how the show is different every night. He doesn’t get how it could be, and I explain the way the audience changes everything, and how the mood of the cast changes everything, so that it’s like a kind of alchemy, and some nights it’s this bright little golden machine and some nights it’s more like a lump, and you just have to ride it out and get to the end.

He thinks about this for a while, and I watch him think. This is a guy who thinks so much more than he says. He swishes his feet in the water. I swish alongside him, having gotten used to it, now. The water makes little trails. The yacht must be drifting. Or maybe it’s the current.

“Why do you love watches so much?” I ask.

He swishes his feet. Doesn’t answer right away.

“They’re incredibly complex,” he says. “Every watch has a personality. The metal itself carries a certain memory, so no two components behave quite the same. The engineering has to compensate for all of it. Either it keeps time or it’s a bracelet.”

The last line catches on something in my memory, and I realize I’ve heard it before, or rather, read it in the Sunday Ledger profile. “Either it keeps time or it’s a bracelet.” There was a pull-quote, blown up in gray next to his handsome, scowling face.

“So you like the challenge of watches?”

“I suppose.”

“What made you first get into them?”

He looks out over the water. “I took a pocket watch apart when I was seven or so, and I couldn’t get it back together. Eventually I got it back running, and I liked the feeling of that, and I wanted to do it again.”

“What did it feel like?”

He looks surprised by the question. “Just good.”

“I love that.”

His thumb is on my cheekbone. “Why can’t I get enough of you?”

“Because you can’t get me running perfect?”

“I like how you run just fine.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

BRUNO

We soak our feet in the hot tub after the yacht starts going again.

Nobody ever asked me how it feels to work on watches. Nobody ever really cared about that part of it.

Good, I told her. But it’s more. It feels like peace. Just for a little while.

She has brought down the presents from last night and set them on the decking between us alongside a cheese plate and a glass of something with a cherry in it and plain water for me.

“Adrian’s first,” she says. “That’s the only one I don’t know what it is.”

She hands me the card.

Prove me wrong. —A.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a dig,” I say. “And also a command. Obviously, he thinks this relationship is a performance I staged to get him off my back about the documentary. But ‘Prove me wrong’ is his way of saying ‘Be in a real one.’”

“That’s...sweet, maybe?”

“It’s insufferable.”

“What will you do if they extend shooting some more?”

“When is your show back in session?” I ask.

“Very funny.”

“They won’t extend it. The crew is due overseas.”

She starts unwrapping the gift Adrian brought. “A box.”

I take it from her. “It’s a puzzle box. He loves these.” I work out how to open it and show her.

She tries it for herself. She likes it. “Do you ever think they sense something more is going on with your refusal to appear in that thing than just you being mega-private?”

That’s not really her question. She’s curious about the family secret I’m trying to protect.

I grab another present, look at the tag. “For me?” I shake it. Something’s rattling around in there.

“Don’t shake it too hard!”

I unwrap it. “Cookies?”

“It’s a cookie-of-the-month club. Twelve months of cookies, delivered to an address of my choosing, starting in July,” she says.

“Is this some sort of commentary on my dining habits?”

“It’s one hundred percent commentary on your dining habits!”

“And do they deliver by helicopter?”

“Don’t worry about it. The cookies will find you.” She takes one and eats it. Then she opens up her present, which of course she got for herself. It turns out to be a Roadrunner watch.

“What is that?” I close my eyes. “I can’t even look at that.”

“Bruno! This is the most thoughtful gift anybody’s ever given me!”

“You can’t wear it.”

“Put it on me. Please?” She gives me her wrist.

“I hope you know, this is against everything I stand for. It’s a symbol of disorder, a disregard for precision and exactitude and time itself...”

“But he’s so cute with his little legs!”

I take her hand and I turn it. Her pulse is right there under my thumb, steady, a little faster than resting. I set the watch on her wrist. I buckle it. I thread the strap. I want her already. What is this woman doing to me?

We barely make it to the stateroom. She buries her hands into my hair against the wall in the entrance of the stateroom. Then we’re a few feet in and she’s trying to pull off her shirt while I unbuckle my pants.

“Hurry,” she says.

She’s so open with what she wants. What she needs, never worrying that people will say no. It makes her so vulnerable because they could say no. They have said no to her—in the most hurtful of ways.

I pick her up, half undressed, and bring her to the bed.

“Oh, it’s going to be that kind of fucking, is it?”

I run fingers along the edge of her lacy bra. “What kind is that?”

“Nice. Polite. Where I don’t have to hang on to anything.”

I gaze down at her. I want to tell her she can hang onto me as long as she wants, and she’ll never be too much. I want to tell her that I’m falling for her, but the falling part is easy. What do I do after that? I’m not that man and I don’t even know how to play the part. I’m not even qualified for the part. I live on a fucking yacht that I ran like the inside of a watch until a couple days ago.

I told her I’d see her again and I want to.

But what does that even look like?

“Turn over,” I say. Her eyes sparkle as she complies with my command. I kiss her beautiful ass and then I give it a little slap. “Higher.”

“Bossy!” she says, wiggling her ass a little bit for me.

“You’re so wet for me.” I press into her warm, wet pussy, like a piece of fucking heaven. I grab her hand and put her fingers to her clit. “I want to feel you do yourself while I fuck you like this.”

“That’s funny,” she hisses, panting, “because that’s the only thing in the world that I want to do right now.”

I drive into her, losing myself, losing my mind, losing time. At some point I detect the telltale sign of her rising pleasure. I keep everything going, focused on making this good for her. I can’t do much for her, but I can do this.

Afterward, she settles back against my chest. I put my hand in her hair, smoothing it, and her breathing slows.

The light shifts. A gull calls again, far off.

I lie there with her on my chest, and I think about the cookie certificate folded in my robe pocket, and about the PI file sitting in a secure inbox I am never going to open, and about the bus in New Mexico, and about my brother’s card that said prove me wrong.

The sea moves under us, quiet and dark.

Her phone buzzes once on the table.

She grabs it and snorts. “My friend Francine. Alive Y/N—that’s her text.”

“Very direct.”

“I’m texting back ‘very.’”

I feel inordinately happy about this.

She takes a bite of the halibut and makes a face of bliss. “This fish. And the butter. Wow.”

She’s in one of the dresses Margot chose for her based on the “Kelsey mood board” I put together, as Margot called it. This dress is a shimmery violet that goes with the streak in her hair and really shows off her body. She wore the Roadrunner watch, of course, and now with the sex face. Goddamn.

She finally opens her eyes. “Is there a name for this butter?”

“We’ll ask.”

She eats some more. And the way that she’s eyeing the fish on my plate, I wouldn’t be surprised if she has designs on that, too, and I’ll give it to her. What is it about this woman that has me so swept up in her pleasure?

“The asparagus?” She points to my plate with her fork. “Have you tried it?”

I spear a tip and put it in my mouth. “Delicious.”

She’s grinning. “Right?”

The apparently very-exclusive Bailey Cliffside dining room is at the base of a functioning lighthouse. There are only six tables on this floor, but tonight it’s just us. Out the window, clouds linger over the Atlantic in hues of pale rose and ash, and the lantern above us sweeps its cold white beam across the darkening water at timed intervals.

“So is this what you would do with a girl on your real anniversary?”

“No, this was for Adrian.”

“What would you do for your real anniversary?”

“It depends on the woman.” A cop-out. It seems to be beyond my powers of imagination to envision myself in such a situation.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

She sets her fork down and looks at me across the candlelit table. “What’s up with Adrian’s whole golden-cage thing? Is that really how he views your father living in Switzerland? Like it’s a cage?”

“Our father isn’t worth talking about. He’s a terrible person who shipped us off to military boarding school and now he’s in a home across the ocean.”

“Do you think he misses your mom?”

“No,” I say.

She watches my face, waiting for more. “I’m so sorry,” she says finally.

“They’re not important,” I say, in perhaps too much of a clipped tone. But I’m not in the mood for this conversation.

“I bet she loved you a lot.”

That would be a no, I think. The boy I was back then thought his mother loved him.

The man I am knows I got scammed.

I motion for the waiter to refill my glass and then tell her a fact I dug up about lighthouses, how they decided how fast to rotate the light.

She goes along with the change of subject. For a while, anyway.

“Can I ask you another thing?”

“Mm.”

“I totally respect that you don’t want to divulge this family secret. I totally get it, considering the cannibalism and all.”

“Of course,” I say, not loving this subject.

She taps her fork on her plate. “But don’t your brothers have a right to know?”

“It would change everything about what they understand about themselves.”

“A lot of things change what we understand about ourselves. Isn’t that kind of the point of life?”

“The point of life?”

“It can’t be ignorant bliss,” she says. “That can’t be the point. You told me a really hard thing about my family being fake to me. It was a horrible thing to learn, but I’m really grateful to know it. I would rather go through life knowing awful things that make me unhappy than believing in bullshit like an idiot. Going around in ignorant bliss.”

“I see where this is going, but it’s different.”

“Is it? You think that your brothers would take ignorant bliss instead of the truth?”

“I think they would.”

“Would you?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

KELSEY

He looks shockingly handsome in his tuxedo, and the candlelight makes his whisker stubble shine, and I want so badly for him to hear me, to get what I’m saying, I think I might burst.

I don’t need his secret. I don’t need him to come clean with his brothers. I don’t know what I need. Something more.

He watches my eyes. “It’s impossible to say if I’d prefer ignorant bliss, considering that I can’t un-know what I know.”

I say, “You don’t seem like the type to want ignorant bliss.”

“I suppose I’ll take that as a compliment.” He spears another asparagus tip a little bit harder than he needs to.

A waiter refills our waters, then recedes.

“It’s just that, today on the boat, when we were talking about watches, you gave me the same answer you gave that magazine.”

He looks up. Bruno can be scowly, but now his gaze is stony. “You want to know why I love watches, now? A better answer? Is that it?”

“You know that’s not what I want. You told me a hard, true thing about my family. You knew I deserved to know it. I’m asking for one true thing about you. Not the secret. Just—anything real. You’re great at being interested in me and asking questions and listening. And that’s wonderful. But I feel like you use all of that to not reveal anything about yourself. I mean, everybody likes to have attention on them, but I feel like sometimes you deploy that to keep attention off of you.”

The lighthouse sweeps again.

Does he know what I mean? Am I explaining myself well enough?

“When I asked about military school, you told me it was like being raised by wolves. When I asked why you live on a yacht, you acted like it’s because you enjoy the mobility to get away from annoying neighbors. You live on a yacht, Bruno. In the middle of the ocean. A man doesn’t do that for mobility. I feel like you’re deciding what I get to know about you and what conversations we have, just like you are doing with your brothers.”

“It’s different.”

“Not to me. My family decided something about me and cut me out of all further conversation. They shut the door and managed what I knew in terms of the wedding. I just need you to understand that I’m pretty sensitive right now about all that. I need you to tell me true things and to just let the chips fall where they may. Even a little bit.”

“That’s not who I am.”

“I don’t buy that.”

The look he gives me now—it’s hard. And not in a fun way.

He knows the worst things about me. The tiara. The wedding. The thing I said on the deck about not being worth anything. I handed those over because I trusted him with them. I let him in like I’ve never let in anybody. Certainly no man.

“I don’t need your entire secret world. I need to know you want me close.”

“I do want you close, Kelsey. Obviously, I do.”

But not enough, I think.

There’s a hard limit with him, and it breaks my heart a little bit.

The tender ride back to the yacht is quiet and a little awkward.

Fernando is up front by himself, and I’m riding in the dim back compartment with Bruno. The black of his jacket makes him look like he belongs to the night outside. He seems so far away from me now, full of secret compartments.

Am I being stupid? We click in a way I’ve never experienced.

I look back at the lighthouse, which is a perfect metaphor for Bruno, the way its flashing light can illuminate everything far and wide, but you can’t see in. It’s a one-way relationship. And I think that’s it. That’s what I’ve been feeling. The one-way-ness. I won’t do it. I can’t do it.

Fernando eases the throttle. The yacht fills the forward window.

“I really should get back to my life,” I say, trying to sound cool and easy.

Bruno doesn’t answer right away. His eyes find my face in the dark, bright and inscrutable.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to go,” I say. “But maybe I have to.”

Tell me anything, I think. Give me anything.

I don’t require much.

“Okay,” he says, looking away.

The engine hums. The yacht’s lights slide across his face and away. Two syllables containing everything.

“Okay?”

I look down at my shoes. I shouldn’t be upset. The man lives alone on a yacht. I’ve asked him to be a little more forthcoming, and he won’t. Or can’t.

“Okay,” I say.

Bruno is already reaching for his phone.

He makes the call in a flat, controlled voice—prepare the helicopter, file a flight plan to Manhattan, she’ll be ready within the hour.

Chapter Thirty-Six

BRUNO

The bed is turned down.

Annie has folded my robe into a swan. I stand in the doorway of my own stateroom and look at a bird made of terrycloth while I listen to the sound of the helicopter fade away, and I can’t make myself walk into the room.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

KELSEY

New York

One day later

It’s already four o’clock—a few more minutes and class is over, thank goodness, because I’m running on empty. I taught five full classes today—two of my own and three I took over from a teacher who took mine while I was on the yacht.

My peeps swore I didn’t need to, but if I sit still for more than twenty minutes, I start second-guessing myself about my decision with Bruno.

A little voice asks me what the hell I was thinking. The little voice starts asking me if it’s really that big of a deal that he won’t open up. The little voice suggests that maybe he just needs more time to open up. But then I remind the little voice that the man lives on a yacht and has secrets the size of Texas that he keeps, even from the people closest to him and that he never has real relationships, and up until a few days ago, he made the human crew on his yacht behave like machines who never spoke to him...and it all just seems like starting behind the eight ball.

But do those reminders work?

No.

Because I’m missing his smile. And his touch. And the resting scrutiny face that is really the resting intense interest face. I miss our little jokes, and the feeling of being on a team with him, and how fiercely angry he was about the fuckery of my family, and how he went after their croquet balls for me. Bruno would never pretend emotions he doesn’t feel. He makes me feel safe, and cared for, like somebody out there gets me. And the sex is unbelievable. I pull out my phone, itching to text him.

And then I put it back.

I’ve thought about him so often. Yesterday I even spotted some version of him on Forty-Ninth: broad shoulders under a coat, a flash of dark bronze hair, and my heart lifted.

I need to build my immunity to him somehow. Maybe a twelve-step group or something. “I’ll-take-crumbs-from-a-guy Anonymous.” Because that’s definitely what I would be doing.

It’s also good that it wasn’t him because my galpals, specifically Mia and Francine and Antonio, my ex turned honorary galpal, would have my head, because I told them the whole story this morning, and they feel pretty strongly that I deserve better, and that he’s all kinds of red flags.

“He’s a hermit!” Mia pointed out. “He lives in a Venn diagram with Gollum and the Unabomber. And the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Grizzly Adams!”

“I think Grizzly Adams might have been hot,” Francine said. “Grizzly Adams tamed animals and went into town. I’m guessing he was fuckable in a mountain-man way.”

Antonio had shuddered. “In Italy we have Peter of Morrone. They dragged him out of a cave, made him pope, and he fled back to the mountains to be with his rocks and spiders. That is the level of man you are dealing with.”

Francine snorted. “A pope is definitely not fuckable.”

“Oh, some of the early ones were,” Antonio said.

“She’s not looking for fuckable!” Mia said. “She’s looking for human connection. I mean if fuckable is the bar...”

“Fuckable isn’t the bar,” I assured them.

Maybe before last month it would have been good enough. Hell, before last month it was good enough, but this situation with my family made me see how important chosen family is. I don’t want to be with people who don’t let me in. I’m off of it.

I grab my hoodie off the hook and wave at Sienna, who is standing in the doorway with a few of her competition girls. She widens her eyes at me—emphatically, like she’s trying to send a transmission.

I’m two minutes from done. Whatever it is can wait.

“Circle up!” I clap twice. Some of the kids drift over; the rest need to see my stern embodiment face before they settle. Soon sixteen pairs of little ballet feet are all pointing inward and sixteen little faces have their lips zipped.

“You guys killed that routine,” I say. “And I mean that in the good, non-ballet-injury way.” They giggle. “Mila, your chassé finally stopped looking like you were trying to catch the bus. Proud of you.”

We break circle and kids scatter. I’m already thinking about dinner—healthy versus popcorn, and popcorn is pulling ahead. The only question is the butter situation. To stop at the bodega for butter or not to stop at the bodega for butter....

I drift toward Sienna. Behind her, the competition girls are in a cluster with their heads tilted in, all whispering, now. One of them has her phone half raised.

“It’s all yours, dude.” I hand over the space key.

Sienna grabs my arm and pulls me in close, voice low. “There is a man waiting out in the hall for you. I think a couple of my girls need pulmonary resuscitation.”

“What do you mean? He scared them?”

“With his trance-inducing male energy and perfect tailoring.”

Bruno.

I go out there to find him leaning on the wall at the end of the hall in a beautiful black suit, a still point in the chaos of mothers and backpacks. His jaw is rough with stubble, and he has some sort of satchel.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, heart racing. It’s all I can do not to touch him.

“You left all the dresses.”

“That’s why you’re here?”

He looks up and down the busy hallway. “I need to talk to you.”

“About the dresses?”

“I don’t give a fuck about the dresses.”

Half the lobby is watching us. “Come on.” I grab my bag from the hook and lead him down the hallway and down the polished stone stairwell, acutely aware that I’m wearing my friend Tabitha’s Hello Kitty leggings and a studio hoodie with a bleach stain on the sleeve, and my hair is half falling out of a bun.

We come out into the evening. It’s late June, the light still warm and amber. I turn us west through a scaffolding tunnel—half the block wrapped in plywood and green netting.

Hudson River Park is twelve minutes away and there’s always a bench.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

I don’t know if he’s going to answer. We hit the corner, waiting for the light.

“My mom didn’t really drown.”

“What?”

“I thought she drowned. Everybody thought she did. But it was all fake.”

Blood racing, I pull him away from the mob of pedestrians and into the shade of an empty storefront. “What are you talking about?”

“I told you that she drowned when I was seven. They never recovered the body. That wasn’t unusual given the tides that night. Everyone accepted it.”

His jaw is set, and his brows are drawn in. Intent.

“But she didn’t really drown?”

“When I was seventeen, my class took a trip out west to the Grand Canyon. The bus stopped for gas in a small town in New Mexico. Cerro Miel. We all got off to use a bathroom around the back of a dusty little gas station there. I saw her inside, working the counter. Alive.”

I blink. “Your mother was in that gas station?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure it was her?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What...why...” I barely know what to ask. None of it makes sense. “What did you do?”

“I went behind the bus and threw up. And then I got back on the bus.”

“You didn’t go in there?”

“No. I hired a PI to confirm it. The PI even got DNA.”

“So she faked her death.”

“Yes. My PI and I went back to one of the witnesses from the night my mother died—the night she had supposedly drowned. I made him tell. She’d paid him.”

“Did the witness say why she’d do such a thing?”

He just shakes his head.

I set my hand flat against his chest, aware of how huge it is that he’s telling me this, aware that this might be the first time he’s ever told anybody this.

His heart beats like a drum. Bruno, so calm and cool from the outside, but there’s so much more going on under the surface.

“Is that why you don’t want the documentary to be widely seen? Because you think people will recognize her from the gas station?”

“Well, it is an essential part of the tragedy of us three brothers. Losing their beautiful mother as young boys and all that. There’d be a trip through photo albums and video footage. Somebody would recognize her, and it would be a story.”

“I see.”

He takes my hand and we walk. I don’t know what to do with this information. It’s huge. “You never wanted to confront her or ask for answers?”

“I don’t need answers; I already know what happened. She had three babies and she decided to take off, and she left us with a monster. You don’t know what our father was like. Even holidays with him were hell. Why would I want to hear anything she had to say? And why would I tell my brothers that their mother decided they weren’t worth the effort to save? She saved herself but she couldn’t be bothered with us?”

It’s my impulse to make him stop walking, to hug him, but I know he needs space to get it out, to not be pitied. “That’s so messed up,” I say.

“Do my brothers deserve to know? You asked me that at dinner the other night. I don’t know, Kelsey. Up until that bus ride, I had a mother who loved me desperately and would never have wanted to leave us. But that wasn’t true, was it? And it’s a mindfuck, because I can look back and feel her love clear as sunshine. But if she really loved us, why leave us in the care of a cold-hearted monster who wanted nothing to do with us? So I made the call to spare my brothers from feeling the way I did.”

We’re at another light. I turn to him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you had to carry that.”

Gentle fingertips rest on either side of my jaw. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I just need you back.”

“I’m here. A hundred percent.” I hug him, pressing into him, relaxing into him. “I missed you.”

“God, Kelsey.” He pulls back to look at me. “I know why you had your doubts. I know what I’m like. I was raised by wolves, and the only love I knew turned out to be fake. But I would like—” He pauses, and I can hear him choose the word. “...I want to be close with you. I’m not good at this.”

“You’re doing it.”

“When I first met you, I couldn’t believe that you were such an open book. I was thinking, does this woman just say what she thinks? Show everything she feels? It seemed foolish to me at first.”

“Excuse me?” I protest. “Have we moved into the insult portion of the reunion?”

“But now it seems brave. You show the world what’s true, everything be damned.”

I can barely keep the smile off my face. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

“Fuck, Kelsey.” He kisses me with all of the intensity that’s in him, big hands gripping my hair.

I snake my hands under his suit coat, pulling myself flush to his body. My whole body says yessss. There you are.

“I want to do normal things. I want to take you on a date. A real one. I want to go to a movie. Have dinner somewhere that isn’t on a yacht. Stay over in the city and do this thing. Not that I know how.”

“You totally know how to do it. We’re good, Bruno.” I want to kiss him all over his face because I think he doesn’t even know what regular-people things are.

We keep walking west, past a dog walker, past two women sharing a cigarette outside a bar, all of it so normal, and I am walking through it with Bruno Blackwood’s hand in mine. I feel like I’ve been let out of jail.

“I’d be happy to have you come to my place, but if you recall, I have two roommates.”

“I’d love to see your place.”

“It’s the opposite of the visual order and monkish silence of your yacht.”

“I’ll survive.”

“And I have lots of friends in the building, and we say hi to each other.”

“Are you trying to talk me out of going to your place?”

“No way.” We walk down past the piers, and I steer us toward the ice cream cart. I get a soft serve with sprinkles and Bruno gets chocolate, and we find a bench facing the water.

But I’m thinking about that gas station.

A woman doesn’t just leave three sons out of the blue, does she? Just to work at a dusty gas station? I lick the last of my sprinkles.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

KELSEY

Istop at the apartment door.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I bite my lip, unsure how he’ll like my starving-artist-esque apartment, where there is a good chance of discovering everything from bras hanging from lamps to the remnants of major snacking explosions.

“Keep in mind we didn’t expect visitors.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

I brace myself and swing open the door.

My eyes rove over the small dining table we found on the street and painted a sort of burnt orange; the couch that came with Lola and that we’ve since buried under a collection of throw pillows from various stages of everyone’s aesthetic lives; the bookcase that holds actual books plus Sienna’s ceramic cat collection and a hedgehog that Noelle gave us. Sienna’s collection of vintage recipe tins lines the top of the refrigerator and Lola’s hats are all over the couch.

Some of Mia’s cross-stitch art hangs by the door—beautiful, meticulous stitchwork in a hoop; this one reads, in perfect sampler font, I will absofuckinglutely make this weird. Surrounded by tulips and a mouse.

“My friend Mia made that. She’s a bit of a joker.”

“She’s your friend who’s the lead in your Broadway show?”

“Yes! Mia is an amazing singer and, as you can see, very crafty. Sienna’s at rehearsal until ten and Lola has book club.”

I give him the tour of the common area, which takes about forty-five seconds and then lead him into my bedroom. “Best view in Manhattan! Of a brick wall!”

Bruno trails his fingers over my Japanese flower wallpaper, studies my various framed vintage Broadway posters—Chicago, A Chorus Line, Rent, a slightly warped Hamilton that got water-damaged. There’s a long string of lights along the ceiling, three Persian rugs layered on the floor, and a collection of paintings of video game scenes from my friend Dara hung in a grid above the dresser, which is strewn with makeup and pens and mail and candles.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’re not into the minimalist look,” Bruno says.

“You could say that!” I feel so self-conscious now. Bruno is all clean lines. Clean severe lines.

He picks up a small disco ball from my nightstand. Where did it even come from? I go over and take it from him. “You’re appalled; I can tell. Fess up.”

He looks around the room. Then back at me. “I love it. It’s all very you.”

“Meaning too much?”

“You could never be too much for me.” He picks up the small, framed photo on my dresser—me and Francine at what I think was a New Year’s party, both of us in sequins, mid-laugh.

“That’s Francine. We run a ballet school out of her home studio two days a week.”

He sets the photo back down.

“Time for some ginger ale.” I take his hand and drag him out.

“I’m drinking ginger ale now, too?”

“It’s that or water.” I fling open the refrigerator. “Or Sienna’s oat milk, but...”

“I’ll take the ginger ale.”

“With or without a cherry?”

“No comment.”

I fix us ginger ales, mine with a cherry, his without.

“Who’s Roger?”

I follow his gaze to the baseball bat with Roger’s name scrawled on it by Sienna. Somewhere along the line somebody put a ribbon around it like it’s a present.

“Right. That.” I hand him his drink. “Roger is Lola’s total scumbag stalker ex. That’s him.” I point to the flyer on the wall where Roger Bancroft Junior stares back at us, twenty arrows pointed at his face. “I made that when Lola first moved in. We distributed them everywhere around here. This jackass broke into not one but two of her past apartments, scaring the shit out of her roommates and making it so she had to move out.”

“Excuse me?” His voice sounds unusually menacing. “This guy broke into her home?”

“Twice. Nobody was there either time, luckily, but still! One of the times it was night and this guy is a big, scary cromag.” It’s here I catch sight of Bruno’s stormy expression. “Don’t worry, this is a really secure building, and Roger is currently under the impression that Lola is dating her super terrifying boss. But the bat—well, it’s always good to have one around.”

He narrows his eyes at the poster. “I wouldn’t mind meeting this guy.”

I go to him and grab his shirt. “Would you bash him over the head for us?”

Bruno tucks a stray curl behind my ear. “Something in that general neighborhood.”

“And you would go feral and beat him to a bloody pulp?”

“If you want me to, baby.”

I grin, gazing into his eyes. “And then you would throw the bat aside, chest heaving with brutal, monstrous passion⁠—”

“Brutal, monstrous passion?”

“Go with me here! And you put me over your shoulder and carry me into the bedroom.”

“I see.” He sets down his ginger ale and unzips my hoodie.

Just the sound of the zipper in the quiet apartment turns me on. He pushes the hoodie off my shoulders, not rough, but definitely decisive. “It makes sense,” he says, voice low. “Why would I beat a man and not claim my prize?” He pulls the hoodie off of me and tosses it on the couch.

“You wouldn’t be able to resist, what with the monstrous beastliness coursing through your veins!”

He raises one eyebrow, and with one smooth, strong motion, he hauls me over his shoulder.

I make a full squeal, and I’m bouncing against his back as he walks down the hall, and suddenly I’m plunked onto my bed, ass first.

He grabs my sweatpants by the hem and pulls them clean off and climbs over me, bracing his weight on his forearms.

He swipes aside a strap of my undershirt and kisses my shoulder. “I haven’t had these tits in my mouth for days. I need to make them remember who they belong to.” He pulls down the shirt and my bra all as one unit. My breasts bounce up, ready for him. Begging for him.

“They totally don’t remember! They think they belong to the Empire State Building right now!”

His mouth closes over my nipple.

I gasp and shove my fingers into his hair.

He lifts his head. The wild expression has settled into something more deliberate.

“You better get those panties off,” he says, voice rough and low, “because I am going to put my mouth all over that flower of yours. And when I have you good and wet” —his eyes find mine— “I am going to make you come all over this nice bed. And then I am going to fuck you so hard you’re going to forget everything.”

“I am currently removing my panties,” I inform him.

“Good.” His palm comes down on my inner thigh. “Wider.”

I follow instructions.

He settles between my thighs and for a moment he just looks at me—and the caveman-claiming-his-prize drops away and it’s just Bruno, all hot and stern and a little bit undone.

He kisses my mound, watching my eyes. “I should have never let you get on that helicopter.”

“Bruno—”

“I was a fucking idiot.” He presses a kiss to the inside of my thigh. Then the other side.

“You weren’t an idiot. I asked you for something that was⁠—”

My words die as he licks me, slow and hard.

He does it again. His mouth is on me, and everything goes fuzzy.

His hands are heavy on my thighs, keeping me exactly where he wants me. He is thorough the way he is thorough about everything—precise, patient, brutally unhurried, and I don’t stand a chance. Or at least the usual composure of my flower doesn’t stand a chance.

My hips roll toward him. He makes a sound against me—low, approving—and that vibration alone almost does it. I tighten my fist in his hair, and he grips my thighs harder and works me with his tongue.

My eyes might be rolling back in my head and I don’t even care.

My orgasm rolls through me in waves, and he stays with me through all of it, slowing when I shudder, feeling the moment I need him to full-on cease and desist. My fingers loosen in his hair. He presses one more kiss to the inside of my thigh and then pulls back and looks at me.

“Come here.” I reach for him.

Getting him out of his shirt takes collaborative effort and one muffled curse on his part when the second button resists. Then the thing is on the floor and he’s over me.

I run my hands up the warm plane of his chest—solid, real, here. He’s here.

Here.

I glance up at my wild wallpaper. The seam in the corner has come up again.

“This is not exactly a million-dollar yacht,” I say.

“I like it.”

“Bruno—”

“Your beastly protector is going to enjoy fucking you amid all of your things and it’s going to be mind-blowing.”

He pushes a little ways in, stretching me. I gasp.

“It already is mind-blowing.” I move with him, holding him, rocking with him.

His gaze falls to my lips. He leans in, nips my lower lip, just softly.

I suck in a shaky little breath, trying to be cool about it all.

“One of my favorite things about you is how bad you are at hiding your emotions. You have to know that seeing you so into this turns me on like you can’t believe.”

“So you think I’m into it? That’s what you’re saying?”

He growls and rocks into me.

I move with him, and we find the rhythm easily, as though we’ve been doing this for years, like our bodies already know. I look down at where we are joined and my whole chest goes warm. He rocks deeper.

“More,” I say.

He moves faster. My hands are in his hair, on his back, everywhere, and he’s saying my name against my neck in a low, rough way. I pull him closer. He goes deeper.

When I go over, he’s right behind me—I feel it in the way he grips me, in the low sound that comes out of him.

After, he stays in me, forehead pressed to mine. Our breath evens out together. Outside, a bus goes by. The upstairs neighbor’s floor creaks.

“You can hear everything in this building,” he says.

“Just wait until my upstairs neighbor starts in with the flute.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

BRUNO

Ilie beside her staring up at the tiny lights draped across the ceiling. I’ve never paid much attention to my physical environment. It’s utilitarian: a chair to sit in, a table to eat at, and an expanse of water to keep the world away. Clearly for Kelsey, her environment is a source of pleasure and identity, and I love it.

“Your place is so you, overflowing with life and fun. It even smells like you.”

“Are you trying to say it smells like maraschino cherries?”

I kiss her ear and then her cheek.

What would I put in my environment if I was trying to make it mine? I can’t think of anything. It’s never occurred to me before, but my environment is essentially about avoidance and escape.

“So I suppose you think you’re going to sleep over.”

“I do have my overnight bag.”

“That’s pretty confident, mister. What were you going to do if I said no?”

“It wouldn’t take much to go back to the yacht. Or I’d take a room somewhere. I used to do that when I had late functions.”

She gives me the evil eye. “With a robot-dress girlfriend?”

“How can you blame me? I didn’t know that there were wallpaper-and-champagne-bubble-dress girlfriends to be had.”

“Once you’ve had a wallpaper-and-champagne-bubble-dress girlfriend, you can’t go back. It’s a known thing.”

“Is that a yes, then? Do you and your roommates have rules about guests?”

She props her head up on her elbow. “We’re fine as long as you don’t drink Sienna’s oat milk or run around in your underwear or start thinking you live here. Or leave bodies lying around of guys you’ve bashed with baseball bats or whatnot.”

I kiss the top of her head.

She grins. “So we’re doing this.”

I say, “We are.”

She plops her head down and stares at the ceiling happily. “Yay. And I don’t mean that sarcastically.”

She really is a fucking marvel. We are doing this. Right here, it comes to me that I don’t really know what exactly this is, or more like I don’t know how to do it. I’m not relationship material. My interior design scheme for my home is a giant moat.

“Hey.” She turns back to me. “Is something wrong?”

“What?”

Kelsey traces my lower lip with the warm pad of her finger. “You’re not the only one who can observe others. You look like you just had a tragic thought. Like maybe you’re realizing that time is in fact an artificial construct.”

She’s propped on her elbow, reading me with those hazel eyes that contain so many potential colors.

“I’ve never had a template for what this is supposed to look like. My mother was gone so early. My father was a piece of shit. Most of my relationship guidance came from teachers and drill sergeants whose main goal was to get us to behave. And make us sorry when we didn’t. The main lesson there was to hide as much as you could. It’s not natural for me to be open.”

“You are being open right now.”

“Just telling you I’m not good at being open counts as being open?”

“Of course it does.”

“That seems like a bit of a cheat,” I say.

“Not to me. And anyway, do you think I’m a model of mental health and sanity?” She reaches up and puts two fingers gently over my mouth. “Here’s the thing—nobody’s a model of mental health and sanity. I think the point is hanging in there and trying your best. We’ll figure it out, right?”

I grab her finger and kiss it. We’ll figure it out.

“I had decent enough role models,” she adds. “My parents are still pretty much in love. Well, as far as I know. When I knew them.”

I slide a strand of hair between two fingers. There’s nothing to say. Her family is a warm circle she’s standing on the outside of, face pressed to the glass.

“But hey, I’ve got my problem areas, don’t you worry. I promise to trot them out and you’ll be like, what am I doing with this crazy person? Is it too late for a refund?”

“I’d never say that.”

“Just wait until I show you my Smurf doll collection or introduce you to my scary karaoke persona.”

I wrestle her over so that I’m on top and I kiss her. “Bring it on.”

Kelsey’s roommates are both on the couch when we come out, a bowl of popcorn between them, some show frozen mid-frame.

Kelsey points at each of us in succession. “Bruno, Sienna, Lola.”

Sienna’s lips part. “The robot-dress guy appears!”

“The robot-dress guy?” I turn to Kelsey.

Her face is beet red. “I sent pictures.”

“I can’t believe I ever put you in that dress,” I say.

“Bruno, it’s nice to meet you,” Lola says.

Sienna points at me. “You’re going to be good to our girl? Because she’s been through a shit-ton.”

“Working on it,” I say.

Kelsey plops down on the couch and grabs the bowl of popcorn, and I sit down next to her and nod at the TV. “Is that mincemeat pie lady?”

“Yeah!” Sienna holds up her hands. “It’s a bake sale! Quantity over quality!”

“Raisins for the win!” Lola says.

We eat the popcorn and argue about mincemeat pie lady and then watch the rest of the episode like we’ve done it hundreds of times.

Chapter Forty

KELSEY

Somewhere in the next few weeks, Bruno and I become one of those walking couples, as in, a couple that walks all over the place, endlessly, for no particular reason.

I’ve always been a walker; it’s part movement fix, part people study—I’ll clock someone’s posture crossing Fifty-Seventh, file it away, and find it six months later when I want a certain attitude onstage.

And as for Bruno, he may have everything he wants flown onto his yacht, but you can’t import a nice long walk onto a boat. And along with walking comes talking. Things we hope to do someday, things we regret. Everyday dramas, like my difficulties with certain moves and friction with certain people in the show, and Bruno’s clients who he may or may not make watches for—he really thinks about it, whether they’re worthy of a watch.

Listening to him, I get the feeling that when he makes a watch for somebody, it’s almost like they’re connected for life. Sometimes he’ll update me on his ongoing battle with some tiny component that I can never retain the name of. He has very massive opinions about some very tiny bits of metal, that’s for sure.

I adore it.

I don’t think I could be with somebody who wasn’t intense and passionate about something. I love it so much in him that sometimes I drag him to a jewelry store window where there are fine watches just to get him going on how badly certain popular watch brands are made. I’ve also become fascinated by his time at the military boarding school, Fenmore Academy, where he and his brothers were sent along with kids from all over the world. They had room inspections and bugle calls instead of alarm bells and they learned things like Latin and how to twirl a gun—which he demonstrated one night in the apartment with the bat, to the immense delight of Lola, Sienna, and me.

I haven’t stopped thinking about his mother, though, this woman out there in Cerro Miel, New Mexico, working behind a gas station counter. What the hell is going on with that whole thing?

He thinks his PI told him everything he needs to know about her. I can’t help thinking he’s wrong. One afternoon when we’re waiting for our order at Greta’s cheese counter, I bring it up again. “Is it possible there’s another side to the story?”

“Sometimes people’s actions speak louder than their words ever could,” he says.

I leave it alone.

Chapter Forty-One

KELSEY

When Bruno’s in town, he stays at the Lowell on the Upper East Side. The Lowell is the kind of hotel where your room has a terrace and a working fireplace, and it has a street-level restaurant called the Majorelle that’s known for its floral arrangements and, more importantly, for afternoon tea, which involves a little something called Happiness Pink Cake.

Left to his own devices, Bruno would eat his grim daily rotation forever, but he takes me to tea at the Majorelle when possible. I always go for the cake, and he goes for scones with marmalade and Devonshire cream, grumbling all the way about nutritional frivolity, and when he’s especially grumbalicious, I kiss him.

It took me a while to get used to someone doing things just for me. It’s so much easier to do things for other people than to let them do things for you, at least for me it is, but Bruno is into it. We’re both going a little outside our comfort zones. Sometimes when we’re sitting there in his elegant hotel room or my own bedroom, I sneak a look at him—impeccable clothes, that intensity, those expressive eyebrows—and I cannot believe he’s mine.

It’s there at the Majorelle, when I’m just finishing up the last bite of my cake, that the text comes.

From my sister.

I set my fork down and read it twice.

“What is it?” Bruno asks.

I turn my phone and show him.

An invitation. From Danielle—to a boating weekend, her and Tyler and us.

He reads it and looks up at me. “What the hell?”

I turn the phone face-down. “They’re only inviting us because of you. That’s what this is. Tyler wants to get to know Bruno Blackwood on a boat.” I look out at the room—the flowers everywhere, the little tea plates, the other people just having their totally normal afternoon.

“Screw them.”

I sigh. “I talk such a good game, you know? Found family is all I need. Danielle and I are just two people who happen to share DNA. If they think I’m that awful person, it’s their loss, but I still want them to want me.”

He comes behind me and wraps his arms around me. “I get it.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll go if you want. If that’s what you decide.”

“What I want is not to want to go. I want to be super evolved Kelsey who declines the invitation and never thinks about it again.”

“It’s one of the pictures you’ve always had.”

“I don’t know how to not want it.”

I text back that we can’t. I leave it at that.

He stays there with me, and I rest my head back against his shoulder and stare at the cream peonies in a giant vase. Someone has done something extraordinary with those peonies.

“Time might help, but you probably won’t ever stop wanting it. You’ve had a loss.”

“I guess,” I say. “People fall away and others show up. I can feel happy about the ones that show up.”

I crane my head up to smile at him.

He gives me an upside-down kiss.

Chapter Forty-Two

BRUNO

The Wilder Club is all dark wood and low brass lamps, heavily air-conditioned against the late August heat.

A long bar stretches across one side of the room, scarred by years of use, while the little tables glow with dim shaded lamps. Old playbills paper the walls, and somewhere across the room an argument seems to be breaking out over the jukebox.

Kelsey and I sit with her friends in a large booth in the corner. We’ve come from a show that one of their friends appeared in, the kind of thing I would never have imagined myself attending. It was riveting, as it turned out. Kelsey had been vibrating in the seat beside me.

Over the past months, I’ve gotten to know most of Kelsey’s friends. There’s Lizzie, who owns a chain of cookie stores, and her husband, Theo, a chemist and entrepreneur. Mia, one of Kelsey’s oldest friends, has a big Jersey accent, big hair, and big opinions on the show. Her boyfriend, the notorious Max Hilton, seems to know everybody, including a few of my more illustrious clients. Kelsey’s roommates, Lola and Sienna, are wedged in together at the end next to an Italian male model with a dramatic streak. A woman named Vicky has smuggled in a small white dog wearing a bow tie. The dog is named Smuckers and is apparently everyone’s favorite being on the planet.

I’m not much for social situations, but these people are easy to be with. I get into an interesting discussion with Theo on movement mechanics before we’ve finished our first round. When was the last time I had a substantive exchange with somebody who is like a peer? I’ve heard of his medical breakthroughs, and he’s heard of the thermal hardening process I developed for my watches; it’s been used on surgical instruments for some years. I make a mental note to ask Kelsey about him later. Maybe some of these people can join us for a yacht weekend.

What I’m doing most of all is watching Kelsey. I’m falling for her on every level. The ten days I spent in Switzerland dealing with my alloy people felt like a month.

Tonight she’s wearing a short red sundress with silver sneakers. It’s hot and muggy, as summer in New York often is, and a lot of days she goes for a less-is-more style. Which is definitely more for the way it shows off her body. All of her clothes are so bright and expressive. Like her room. Like her.

I can’t believe I ever dressed her in that ice-blue straitjacket. How did I not see her? Kelsey is a free spirit who would never have chosen such a thing, but she wore it because she was trying so hard to blend in at that wedding.

And she never had a chance.

I grit my teeth, thinking about what those people did to her. But she came through with her head held high.

People are talking about the show. A lot of them are performers or performance-adjacent, and it’s interesting to hear what they noticed—tightness of the choreography, how the ensemble was “breathing together,” or who they thought was “pushing for the back of the house” or “playing too small.” Kelsey translates now and then, but I’ve been to quite a few shows by now.

“The short one on the right—I couldn’t stop watching her,” Kelsey says.

“Charisma,” Max says.

“She’ll be front and center someday,” says the Italian model.

The men want to talk about watches, eventually, but it doesn’t bother me like it did at the wedding. It starts with Theo, and then Max is in, and then it’s most of the table. And suddenly there’s a question everybody asks me all the time. Why watches?

“I love watches because they’re true. Constant. Dependable. They won’t let you down if you take proper care. If you can get the balance right—the rate to within a fraction of a second, the pivot centered enough—it will run true for all of time.”

Kelsey’s hand finds my forearm.

“And you’re able to get that balance?” Mia asks.

“Not yet,” I say. “It’s my North Star. But every time I finish a watch, every time I get it as right as I can make it, it’s this feeling of peace.”

I’ve never said that out loud before. It’s always been my instinct to hide what’s important, especially in front of my father. But it feels natural to say it to these people. It came up like something rising from deep water and I let it.

Later that night, the subset of us not yet ready to be done end up on the rooftop of Kelsey’s apartment building. The city at this hour is magical with lights from so many different sources, and its own ocean of noise, swelling and receding.

Kelsey has her forearms on the railing and is looking out. She’s holding still, like she does when there’s something on her mind.

I go over and stand next to her, arm against arm.

She says, “What you said about the watches. True. Constant. Won’t let you down.”

“Yes?”

She turns to look at me. “It made me think about your mother.”

“Fair,” I say, watching the lights of a plane rise up from the Jersey side.

She waits. She knows how to leave room for people.

“I took apart my first pocket watch the day after she died,” I say. “An old silver one that had been a great-uncle’s. I can’t remember what was going on inside me. All I remember is being fixated on that watch, like I was in some kind of trance. And it was a bitch to put it back together. I got tools, I found tutorials, I worked at it incessantly, as if putting it back together would put the world back together, too.”

“Did you get it back together, eventually?”

“I did.”

“Did it make you feel better?”

“It didn’t make me miss her any less. I guess it made me feel like I could master one small corner of my world. I could make one thing right, even though I was the one who broke it. I suppose it was nice to lose myself in making something perfect.”

The city keeps going below us.

“What was she like?”

My heart pounds. I don’t love answering this question, but I want Kelsey to know.

“She had the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, and a big laugh, and blonde hair in a high ponytail. She loved board games and swimming, and she had this way of finding humor no matter what the situation, definitely a skill that came in handy with my father around. She made giant sugar cookies.”

“Mmm,” she says.

“And she seemed to love me to the stars and back—all three of us—but it turned out to be fake.” This last I say maybe too harshly.

People are leaving. One of the women reminds Kelsey to turn out the lights when she goes in.

And it’s just us.

Kelsey turns so that her back is to the railing, never taking her eyes from me, so bright and serious in the moonlight. “Is that a little bit why you live on the yacht, do you think? Because of, you know...”

She can’t find the word. Or maybe she can find it, and she doesn’t want to say it.

“The utter betrayal of that?” I suggest.

She waits, patient as a Sphinx.

“Even a month ago, I would’ve told you no way.”

“But now?”

“I’d have to be a fool to not recognize that yacht is a little bit of a fortress. With a pretty big moat.”

She takes my arm. “Biggest moat ever.”

“I don’t want to be that person, but sometimes I don’t know if it’s too late, though. Maybe the mold is set.”

“It’s not too late at all! You’re breaking the mold. Look at you right now. What are you doing this exact moment?”

“I’m assessing a situation accurately. I don’t think I deserve a prize for that.”

“You are so full of shit. Are you in a fortress right now? No. You’re calling things out. You thought love was a scam. Of course you’d want to live on a yacht. But you’re rethinking it.”

“Maybe I am.”

“You are.”

I sigh. I want her to be right.

“Though I better warn you—if love is a scam, I’m scamming all over you right now.”

My heart skips a beat. “What?”

She grins. “Soooo scamming your ass.” She’s very pleased with herself.

I replay her words to make sure I heard that all right.

But I did.

I settle my hands onto her shoulders. “I’ve been scamming on you, too.”

She grins. It’s enormous, all dimples. “Good.”

“God, Kelsey.” I pull her to me and kiss her. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m a meteorite and you’re a fucking geode.”

We laugh about that, but there’s something else. I see it in her eyes, now.

“What?” she says.

“What are you thinking?”

She looks away. “Maybe now’s not the time.”

“Now you have to tell me.”

She turns back to the railing. You can see cleaning people in the building across the way. “Nobody ever talked to your mother.”

“Why does that matter?”

“If love was a scam for her, what did she get out of it? She went from the lap of luxury and three beautiful boys to a gas station in the middle of nowhere? What’s the point?”

“If she had loved us, she wouldn’t have left us alone,” I say.

She sets a hand on my arm. We watch the street below in silence.

Chapter Forty-Three

KELSEY

Francine and I get to the apartment building late for reality TV Tuesday, because our twirlers class went over, but they absolutely killed it. We gushed about them all the way in the back of the Uber.

Lizzie is popping a second batch of popcorn by the time we get there, and Noelle is updating people on Jimmy, the guy on her route who is always out on a stoop wearing a bathrobe and a fishing hat full of lures and fanning his face with a tiny fan. She’s trying to figure out if he’s fabulously wealthy or doing performance art or what.

Lola is in crisis over the Roger situation. She’s petrified that her boss, Wulfric, is going to find out she’s been going around town pretending they’re engaged.

“You are playing with fire,” Vicky says.

“But it’s been working!” Lola says. “Roger is a bully, but he’s also a coward and he’s frightened of Wulfric… Well, he’s at least frightened of Wulfric’s reputation. Wulfric’s not all that scary.”

Noelle is on the floor against the couch, her fave place because she likes to stretch out her legs and sometimes lie on the floor. “Well, Wulfric’s a little bit scary,” she puts in.

“Okay. A little bit scary,” Lola agrees. “I am playing with fire, though. Mostly I think he would be ragey on behalf of his mother. I’m literally wearing his beloved adoptive mother’s jewelry and furs out to scuzzy bars when I was supposed to put them into his safety deposit box. He’ll be mad about that too, but mostly it’s the mother thing. He’s very protective of her. So loyal. He’s liable to...I don’t even know.”

“Especially if someone stole them from you,” Sienna says.

“Well, that wouldn’t happen considering Wulfric’s bodyguard is always with me,” Lola says.

“The bodyguard is in on it,” I explain to Sienna. “The message to Roger is that Lola is being protected by both of them.”

“We’d both be fired. If not jailed.”

“It’s kind of sweet that a scary man like Wulfric is so fiercely loyal to his mother,” Mia says. “I mean, it sucks for you if he ever found out, but a man like that, it says something. It says he’ll be protective of his significant others someday.”

“Yeah. The way a man is with his mother is a total template,” Vicky says, petting Smuckers. “Whatever his mother taught him love looks like, that’s what he’s going to try to hand you—unless he does some real work around it.”

“The mother thing is a biggie!” Francine agrees.

Lola snorts. “Wulfric in a romantic relationship? Any woman who links up with him will need a PhD in psychology and a degree in taming apex predators. And the patience of a saint.”

Sienna raises her glass. “Here’s hoping he never finds out.”

“He won’t,” Mia assures her. “Roger keeps to a world of bad lighting and sticky floors. Wulfric moves in a world of mood lighting and invisible power. Never shall the two intersect.”

They keep talking about Wulfric, but I can’t stop thinking about this mother-relationship template thing. I know it’s true. I’ve seen it play out over and over.

So what does that say about Bruno?

“Earth to Kelsey!” Noelle is poking my leg. “We heard you finally met Bruno’s mysterious assistant. His Miss Moneypenny.”

“Sadie.” I smile. “Yeah. I think she was pretty shocked that I actually exist.” I tell them about our meeting at that cute restaurant at the hotel. Sadie turned out to be a super high-functioning fifty-something woman with really thick red hair and bright purple glasses, an attitude like a really powerful diesel train mowing through every task. “She’s like a machine. I loved her. I can see why Bruno relies on her so completely.”

“She could be a CEO with chops like that,” Mia says.

“I’m sure Bruno pays her like one.”

“So,” she says. “Meeting the assistant! Things are really getting serious!”

“Well, they are...”

“But?”

“I am so into that man, seriously. I never thought I’d meet someone so incredible. I never get sick of talking to him. We can walk and talk for hours.”

“I know!” Vicky says. “Remember when I saw you guys all the way up at Ninetieth or something and you had walked there?”

I smile, remembering that day. “Things are good.”

Mia fires up the next episode of Small-Town Bake Sale Wars, but are things good?

Bruno believes something terrible and damning about his mother, and he doesn’t want to investigate it. He doesn’t want to know about her side. He doesn’t want to think about it at all. He took one piece of information and drew his own worst-case conclusions.

Sure, maybe they are true. But the more I think about it, the more questions I have. What makes a woman trade her three sweet sons for a life of isolation in the middle of nowhere?

And why isn’t Bruno more curious about what happened? Why is he so intent on believing the worst?

Chapter Forty-Four

BRUNO

I’d know her knock anywhere—three quick, two slow. The puzzle is that she’s here at my hotel room when she’s supposed to be at practice. I go and fling the door open.

She smiles uncertainly at me. “Hi!”

“Did they cancel practice or something?”

“I left early. I needed to talk to you.”

She seems serious. I don’t like it. “Is something wrong?”

She gives me a quick kiss. “You going to let me in?”

I step back. She comes in and drops her bag on the chair by the window, and for a moment, she just stands there and looks at the view.

My blood races. Something is definitely wrong. My mind keeps going back to our joke about my being raised by wolves. It doesn’t seem so funny suddenly.

She turns around. “I’ve been hinting at you,” she says. “About your mother. About looking harder at what you think you know.”

I fold my arms. “What I think I know?”

“Yes, what you think you know. Because you’ve never heard her side of it.”

I shake my head. “This is not up for discussion.”

“That is the problem. Why isn’t it up for discussion? Why don’t you want to find out what happened?”

“I know what happened.”

“Well, from where I’m standing, you loved your mother completely. You felt that love. And then something shook your picture of her, and you closed the file. You accepted a version and stopped.” A beat. “I need to know you won’t do that to me.”

“I would never do that to you.”

“You did it to her.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“She did something obviously horrendous.”

“But you don’t know why. You filled in a story for her that makes her a monster.”

“It’s not a story, it’s a conclusion drawn from the facts. And why does it matter? It’s the past. I care about the future.”

“I do, too.” She holds my gaze.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Because she’s your mother, the most important, most formative female relationship you ever had or ever will have, and I need to know that this isn’t what you do. You presumed total betrayal without having the facts. Without even wanting to know the facts. That can’t be what you do.”

“Is this a pop psychology thing? Because that’s what it’s sounding like to me.”

She lifts her chin. “Maybe it is,” she says. “But it’s important to me. It’s important to me that you’re curious to know her side.”

I suck in a deep breath. “There is almost nothing I want to do less than reach out to that woman.”

“I know.”

“She might not even be alive.”

“I know.”

I gaze out at the row of pale stone townhouses across the street, standing shoulder to shoulder, their windows dark and self-contained.

Everything inside me recoils at the idea of speaking to my mother. It’s so much easier to keep that file shut.

Of all things to ask me for, why this?

But it’s important to her. She’s not asking me to exonerate my mother. She’s asking me to prove I can look harder.

There’s a long silence. I lock every muscle in place, willing myself into stillness so she won’t see the war raging underneath—a war I don’t even understand. So much of my life is built on what my mother did. If I start pulling at those threads, I don’t know what comes apart.

So I’m shocked by the words that come out of my own mouth. “I’ll call Sadie.”

Chapter Forty-Five

BRUNO

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are behind us by the time the highway drops into the valley where the town of Cerro Miel sits. It’s barely even a town, nothing but a few blocks of commercial strip, a water tower, a chain pharmacy, and a shabby little school. The kind of town that has everything a town needs and nothing else. The air feels dry and it smells like sage and diesel.

I haven’t said much since Albuquerque. Kelsey, to her credit, has been filling the silence cheerfully, carefully. She read me a Wikipedia entry about the Jornada del Muerto desert, gave me her opinions on gas station burritos versus restaurant burritos, and created a retro bubblegum pop playlist.

I’ve been watching the road.

I made the call myself from Sadie’s office. It was a bad connection. My mother was silent for a long time when I said who I was. For a moment, I thought she’d hung up. And then, in a voice different than when she said hello—lower, quieter, more serious—she simply said, “Yes. Okay.”

The phone call was three minutes, maybe four.

We’re to meet her at her house.

We pass the gas station on the way there. I remember it like it was yesterday, just a small white building with two pumps. There are new signs on the exterior of the building advertising soda and lottery, but the windows are the same, including the one I peered through on that school trip twenty-one years ago.

Midmorning on a Thursday. One car at the pumps.

“Is that it?” Kelsey asks.

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t say anything else. She reaches over and puts her hand on my leg.

Our GPS leads us to a small white stucco house with a gravel yard and a porch.

I turn off the engine and we sit there. A clay pot on the step overflows with something orange and sprawling. The clay pot matches the roof tiles.

“You okay?” Kelsey asks.

“Fine.”

She waits. As usual.

“I’ll go knock,” I say.

“You still want me to come with?”

“I would.”

The woman who opens the door is smaller than I remember, though I suppose I’m taller now. Her blonde hair has gone mostly silver, and it’s short, cut close to her face. Her eyes are the same shade as mine, the unusual gray that Russell got and Adrian didn’t.

“Bruno,” she says.

I don’t trust my voice. I nod once.

She steps back from the door, holding it open.

“I’m Kelsey. Thank you so much for agreeing to this.”

“Of course,” Loretta says, and then she says it again, more emphatically. “Of course.”

Beside me, Kelsey takes my hand.

The house is lived in. She keeps her books in low stacks on bookshelves rather than displaying them spine out. There is a blanket over the back of the couch with an Apache design, and a braided rug covers the cheap tile floor. Small clay figurines are lined up on the long windowsill, like she’s been collecting them for years, or maybe making them. I know nothing about this woman.

“Sit, please.” She disappears and comes back with a tray that she probably put together while she was waiting. There’s a plate of cookies and a teapot with three mugs. She sets it down on the table.

“There’s a selection of tea bags in this basket.” She hands it first to Kelsey. Some of it’s herbal tea. “I know I can’t drink anything caffeinated after lunch.” She tries for a smile.

Kelsey smiles back. “I’m the same!” She takes a tea bag. “Your place is so cute. It’s so peaceful. So different than New York.” She asks about the figurines, and it turns out that Loretta did indeed make them.

She pours the water in all of our mugs. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she says.

“I wasn’t sure either.”

“I’m glad you did.” She wraps her hands around her cup. I used to hold those hands. Those hands used to hold me.

I had a speech prepared—something that established I wasn’t here to be managed, that I wanted the truth, no matter what. I can’t remember it, though. “I want to hear your side. I want to know why.”

A lie. I don’t want to hear any of it. I don’t want to be here. I look over at Kelsey. I’ll hear her out and get back to Albuquerque by nightfall, that’s what I’m focusing on.

Loretta—I won’t ever think of her as my mother—sets down her cup and folds her hands on the table. “I didn’t know your father well when I agreed to marry him. I was young, I was poor, and I was dazzled by the name, the estate, all of it. He didn’t seem cruel at first. He wasn’t cruel to me until I got pregnant with you. Then came the names, the cutting remarks. I told myself it was stress. But it didn’t stop.”

A pause. That much is believable, I suppose.

“Once Russell came, and there were three little boys, everything would set him off. Any tears. Even the smallest of quarrels between you and Adrian. Any expression of joy or feeling...even your laughter set him on edge. You could feel the whole house change when he came in the door. Whatever lightness just gone. He believed the world should run exactly to his specifications, and if he could just get it tight enough, quiet enough, orderly enough, then everything would be all right.” She looks at the table. “I tried to compensate. We spent a lot of time in the local park when school wasn’t in session. I would pack food and we’d stay there so the three of you could play and be yourselves.”

I look away, remembering the park. That feeling of being bandits, hiding from the law.

“But I could see what he was doing to you. Especially you, Bruno. You were a joyful boy, but you were shutting down.”

There’s a noise in my ears. It feels like static. He believed the world should run exactly to his specifications, and if he could just get it tight enough, quiet enough, orderly enough, then everything would be all right.

“Adrian had constant stomach pains. Russell would cry all the time, which made things worse. And you were turning into a serious old man. You were seven. That’s the year the physical violence started. It was small things at first. Holding my arm tightly enough that it would bruise, that sort of thing. But he graduated to worse things, and once he started turning it on you boys, I was frightened for your safety. I had to face that he was abusive, and abusers always escalate. It’s like a law of physics.”

The refrigerator hums somewhere in the kitchen. It’s a wonder I can hear it over the racing of my blood.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Good,” she says. “I went to see a lawyer at that point. I had no money, but I knew you’d be better off poor with me than rich with him around. The lawyer I hired went straight to your grandparents.”

“That’s so illegal,” Kelsey says.

“It didn’t matter. They owned that town. The police, the judges. They told me if I went to a lawyer again or even whispered the word divorce, they’d have me jailed on whatever charge they liked, and pack you boys away to military boarding school.” She takes a deep breath. “They guaranteed I would never see you boys again.”

A beat of silence.

On the windowsill, among the row of clay figures, there’s a small bird. Someone has pressed a thumb into its breast, leaving a hollow. I can feel Kelsey watching me, but I can’t look at her. I just study that bird. She wanted to get us away, so why did she leave us?

“I felt trapped. And your father was always around, quieter and scarier all the time, enforcing his impossible order.” She turns her cup slowly on the table. “But I kept coming back to what they said about the military school. That they’d send you to that military school if I was out of the picture. I knew which one they meant—your cousin had gone there. He’d come home for Christmas and a short summer break, and he’d seemed excited about the horses there. He lived at that school three hundred and fifty-five days a year.” She looks up, meets my eyes. “It came to me that you boys would be better off being sent there. You’d only see your father for ten days out of the year. I realized that going to that school could protect you from him better than I ever could.”

“So you made the call,” Kelsey says.

Loretta searches my face. “For me to stay meant you boys being trapped with that monster, raised by that monster. The only way to get you away from him was the military school. And to do that, I had to disappear. I had to trade never seeing you again in order to get you away from an increasingly dangerous man.”

I can’t look at her. I can’t look at Kelsey, either. Everything feels crazy and confusing in my head.

“Should I have stayed and fought? Would it have been better for you to have a mother in jail, convicted of a crime, than a dead mother? I don’t know. I made the decision that I did.” She reaches over and picks up the clay bird from the windowsill, turns it slowly in her hands, the hollow facing up. “I’ve rethought it ten thousand times.”

“So you burned your life down,” Kelsey says. “To get them out.”

“And myself in the process,” Loretta says.

“Why let us think you were dead?” My voice sounds surprisingly level. “Why not reach out and let us know you were alive?”

“I wanted to, but while you were young, I was afraid it might be too upsetting. You were getting over the loss of your mother. How would you handle it?” She looks at her hands. “As you got older, I kept asking myself whether reaching out was for you or for me. It was always for me. Wanting to hear your voices. I didn’t think that was a good enough reason to turn your lives upside down. And your father, well, you know how he is. He’d go after me, somehow.”

I nod.

She looks up. Meets my eyes. “But you figured it out.”

“By chance.” I tell her about the bus ride. Seeing her through the window.

She presses her fingers to her mouth. “I can only imagine the pain and confusion.”

I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t know how to do any of this. I set my mug on the table and look over at Kelsey.

“You can’t know how I missed you boys,” Loretta says. “I followed everything. There is nothing you could tell me about your lives that I don’t already know. But I wasn’t there. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“He’s a monster,” Kelsey says. “You did the only thing you could.”

The gratitude that moves across my mother’s face twists something in me.

She goes to the windowsill then and lifts something from a small blue glass tray half hidden behind the clay figures. A stone. She brings it over and sets it on the table between us.

It’s an agate. Gray, with a faint translucency where the light catches it.

“I planned my death out right down to the minute. That morning you and I were upstairs. You had this little car track, a toy your father had smashed once before, but you loved it, so I got a new one, and we’d made a game of keeping it in the upstairs closet, and you’d play with it in secret up there. I sat with you and you played and played with it, just letting the little car slide down the ramp. I knew it might be the last time I’d be near you, and I tried to hug you, but you just wanted to do the car.” Something shifts in her face. “And then you stopped and reached into your pocket and gave that stone to me. You said—” Her voice catches, just slightly. “You told me not to be sad. You saw my heart breaking. You always were so observant.”

The afternoon light falls across the grain of the table, catches the agate’s edge.

“I almost couldn’t go through with it. I loved you so much—all three of you boys.”

“I loved you, too.” I say it without looking at her. I’m looking at the stone, unsure what to do with the emotions flowing through me. Everything I knew has been turned on its head. There’s a silence at that table that feels like it goes on for a year.

Kelsey leans forward. “He’s going to need some time with all of this.”

“I know,” Loretta says.

I stand. Loretta puts her hand on my arm, briefly, and I let her.

“I’ll be in touch,” I say. “I’m going to tell Russell and Adrian. They’ll want to reach out.”

Some mixture of relief and grief shows in her face as she nods.

Kelsey hugs her. “It was so nice to meet you.”

They’re saying something else, but I’m not listening.

I’m seven years old, checking the house before my father comes home, making sure the shoes are lined up.

I’m running a yacht with rules about silence and the perpendicularity of furniture. The crew members frightened to make the smallest sound. Frightened, even, to reveal their name.

The gravel sounds loud on the way back to the car. I get in and shut my door.

“Bruno.” She can barely contain it. “You have a mother.”

I look back at the house.

“She loves you,” Kelsey says. “She loves you so much she made the worst decision of her life trying to protect you.” She tugs my arm. “Bruno.”

“I know.”

She studies my face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m glad we came,” I say.

Whatever she reads in my face, she gives me the space. I pull out onto the dirt road.

“You have a mother,” she says.

I do have a mother. I’m reeling inside with emotions I can’t begin to name; it’s all way too big to process. But also, my mind keeps going back to what she said about my father.

The silence. The order. How he quashed joy.

That’s how it started, and that was bad enough, but then it got more severe and turned into violence.

He and I are so alike.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

I mustn’t stop thinking about it.

Chapter Forty-Six

KELSEY

Itell myself the quiet is okay.

On the plane from Albuquerque, he sits beside me and I keep glancing at him the way you check a storm on the horizon—not alarmed really, just tracking. His jaw is set. His gaze is on the white nothingness outside the window.

I’ve told myself he needs to be in his head. That’s fair, right? He’s just met his mother who faked her death. He had an entire story about her, and that story just got turned inside out. And it’s not just any story; that story made him who he is in some ways. Of course he’s rattled. Distant. Processing.

I can give him time.

I give him the whole flight.

And then we’re back at the Lowell, back where we started, except everything is different.

I drop my bag and go to the window, looking out at the stately buildings across the street. One of them is flying a flag. I don’t even know what country it’s from. He’s puttering around unpacking.

Should I give him space? I’ve always known what to do with Bruno, but suddenly it’s like he’s so far away. It seems like I should give him some space and let him come back to himself, but something inside me says not to. Things aren’t okay with him right now.

I turn around. “Do you want to take a walk? I bet that fancy taco truck is up by the fountain.”

“Not really.”

“Or I could just leave you be. It’s been a day.” I try for a smile. Something is going on with him, and it’s making me nervous. “Maybe we could reconnect tomorrow. I don’t have to be at the theater until six.”

“Look—”

“Yeah?” I wait, pulse racing.

“I can’t do this,” he says.

“What do you mean? You did it. The hard part is over.” I go to him, but he puts up his hands, stopping me in my tracks.

I feel cold. “Whatever it is, Bruno...”

The planes of his face look hard, gray eyes gone cold. “I can’t do this. Us.”

The breath goes out of me. “Bruno. What? No.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve just had a massive shock. There’s no reason to make a sweeping decision⁠—”

“I won’t change my mind. I’m going to check out. I’m heading back to the yacht tonight.”

My mouth goes dry. “Are you breaking up with me right now?”

“I don’t think we should continue.”

“That sounds like a yes.”

“Okay. Yes. I’m breaking up with you.”

Tears heat my eyes. “What are you doing, Bruno?”

“I’m breaking up with you. I’m telling you I’m done. I’m telling you I can’t do this.”

“Bruno.” I step closer.

“I’m sorry. I know you hoped for more.”

“Hoped for more? Yeah, you could say that. I fucking love you.”

“I just don’t return those feelings.”

“You are so full of shit! You are clearly not okay right now. Whatever you’re processing about your mother and your brothers and father and all of it—you don’t have to make any decisions tonight. That’s all I’m saying⁠—”

“I’ve made my decision.”

“—this isn’t the time to make permanent decisions⁠—”

He looks at me for a moment, steady and unreadable, and then he grabs his suitcase and turns toward the door.

I move past him and put my back against it. “You can’t just leave!”

“The room is paid up through tomorrow noon. You can stay here if you want.”

“Are you kidding me right now? You’re just going to decide we’re done and leave? After today? After everything?”

He looks at the middle distance, just past my shoulder. “You’re making more of this than is warranted.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“This was never supposed to be anything more than a temporary arrangement.”

“You are so full of shit right now! This is me!” I try to keep the panic out of my voice, but it’s like he’s gone, somehow, there’s a robot in his place. “This is me, Bruno. I love you, and you love me—I know you do, so don’t stand there and tell me this was nothing, don’t you dare stand there and act like it’s some arrangement.”

“That’s exactly what it was. It was good, and now it’s over.”

“Well, I won’t let it be over. Take some time to chill out, and later I’ll call and we’ll talk about this like actual people. Nice, normal, sane people. And if you don’t pick up, I’ll-I’ll get a boat to the yacht. Or I’ll swim out there. I’m not going to let you throw this away because you had a hard day and you’re scared⁠—”

Something shifts in him. Hardens. “One of the things about you is that you always think things are more than they really are. You make everything bigger than it really is.”

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. Is he saying I’m extra?

No. No way. “Just for the record, I’m not buying this,” I say, trying to muster all the conviction into my voice that I can.

“By the way,” he says. “It was Meredith.”

I blink. “What?”

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out his phone. His movements are unhurried. He looks at the screen, does something, and then looks up at me.

“The tiara. I had someone look into it.” A pause, level. “It was your cousin Meredith.”

I feel cold. “You looked into it?”

“Yes, and I just forwarded you the report.”

“After I told you not to? I specifically told you⁠—”

“I don’t know how much plainer I can make it, Kelsey.”

“Make what?”

“You’d rather have the feeling than the facts. That’s fine. It’s not how I operate.”

My heart is beating wrong in my chest. Maybe it’s the tidal wave of blood pumping through my veins, making a washing sound in my ears. Did he not trust me this whole time?

“Are you telling me you investigated me to ensure I really didn’t take the tiara?”

“I’m sorry.” He moves toward the door. I step aside, feeling like this is all a bad dream.

His hand finds the handle.

“Bruno.”

“I’ll have someone come for my things tomorrow,” he says. “Don’t be here.”

He walks out.

The door clicks shut behind him.

Chapter Forty-Seven

BRUNO

The estate appears at the end of the long drive, dark stone with deep-set windows and gloomy elms pressing close on either side; the spire with its one pale eye winks in the September light. I’ve always dreaded coming back here. It used to be because of my father. Today it’s about what I have to tell my brothers when I get inside.

I’ve kept it from them for so long. What was I thinking? Kelsey wasn’t wrong about me—I shut things down. I don’t let things get air and light. I try to regiment everything down to the smallest tick.

Just like my father.

Images of me as my father and my father as me keep playing in my head since the meeting with my mother. Me doing to Kelsey what he did to me and my mom and my brothers.

That will not happen to Kelsey. I will not do that to Kelsey, ever.

Now I’ve made sure of it.

He believed the world should run exactly to his specifications, and if he could just get it tight enough, quiet enough, orderly enough, then everything would be all right.

My mother got Russell and Adrian out before he finished making them. She didn’t get me in time. Standing there, listening to her, she may as well have been describing me.

I’ve turned out just like our father.

And it just got worse.

It got violent.

As it turns out, my brothers aren’t at the house. A staff member I don’t recognize directs me out to the vineyard. She offers to drive me, but I prefer to take the walk.

The path out back is beautifully cared for; that’s certainly a change. My brothers have replaced the pavers. I have this thought that I should spend more time here, support them in other ways. Do something more than just throwing money at them.

I had this thought that Kelsey would love it here, but I push it out of my mind.

It was good Sadie still had the PI report. She really does hate to throw files away.

I reached out to her on the plane flight home from Albuquerque while Kelsey was snoozing in the seat next to me. I’d never thought to look at the report until that day with Loretta.

I knew I might need it; Kelsey isn’t one to give up without a fight.

Well, it was some ammunition. The look of betrayal in her eyes flashes into my mind, nauseating me.

The grapevines are heavy with late-summer fruit. The rows run long and thick, and I can hear voices before I see them—workers moving between rows. A crate thuds down somewhere to the left. I go to the corner and find Russell crouched at the base of a vine. I hang back and watch him pull a grape off a cluster and pop it into his mouth, tilting his head, evaluating the ripeness, maybe. Adrian is standing in the shade of a trailer, squinting at a printed sheet.

“Hey,” I say.

Russell looks up. “Bruno.” He straightens, handing off the cluster to the worker beside him. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” I say.

Adrian strolls over, looking wary. “What are you doing here?”

“We three need to talk.”

Adrian and Russell exchange glances. Adrian folds the sheet and tucks it under his arm. “What about?”

“Something important. A family thing.”

Adrian goes over and talks to one of the guys out there, and the three of us walk out of the rows of vines to a small picnic table off to the side of the trailer. It’s just before dinner, but the September heat is still blazing. You can see the back of the main house from here. And beyond that, the ocean. To the other side is more vineyard area disappearing into the rolling hills.

I trace the grain on the top of it with my finger, then look up, meeting their eyes—Russell’s, then Adrian’s. “Mom is alive.”

Russell’s eyes widen. “What?”

Adrian scowls, suspicious.

“She didn’t die,” I say. “The drowning was staged. She’s been living in a dusty little village in New Mexico ever since. I don’t have every detail of how she managed it, but I do know why she did it.”

Russell blinks. “Staged. You’re telling us her death was staged.”

“Come on,” Adrian says.

“It was a scheme to get us away from our father. She was watching us become—well, you know how Dad is. She explained it. I saw her this week. You can hear it from her yourself.”

“So you saw her.” Adrian sounds angry. “You were with her.”

I tell them about our grandparents’ threats and her reasoning about military school.

“She let us think she was dead?” Russell says. “No. That is bullshit.”

Adrian scowls at him. “Have you met our father? We hated spending even a week here for Christmas and summer. Could you imagine living here full-time?”

“I don’t care. I would’ve liked to know my mother.”

“That’s because you don’t remember living with him full-time,” Adrian growls. “It sucked.”

“Russell, you’re going to have to make your own peace with her,” I say. “She did the best that she could.”

Russell looks at me, wild-eyed. “So you think it’s cool that she let us think she was dead?”

“I think a man like that is toxic and destructive to everyone around him. I think a man like that kills joy and life. And I know a man like that has no business having a family. He should’ve gone out and lived by himself in a hut somewhere so as not to inflict himself on the world. I think our mother did the best she could.”

My brothers look surprised by the vehemence of my words.

“Wait.” Adrian blinks at me. “Did she reach out to you?”

“No, I reached out to her.”

“How did you find out she was alive?”

“I knew for a while.”

“For a while?” Russell gusts out.

I explain about the school trip and seeing her through the window at the gas station. And how I set a PI on it a little while later.

“What the fuck?” Adrian says. “So all this time you knew.”

I trace a grain in the table. “The way I saw it all these years was that she didn’t want us. She didn’t seem to think we were worth saving from him, and it really messed me up, thinking all that. My reasoning was that I didn’t want that for you two. I wanted you to have the memory of a mother who loved you and wanted you.”

Russell just stares at the vines, a muscle in his neck tightening and releasing over and over again. “That wasn’t your call.”

“I know.”

“You could’ve told us,” Adrian says. “We could’ve figured it out.”

“That was the call that I made,” I say.

“Not much of an answer,” Adrian snaps.

“That’s the answer that I have. I’m still just figuring it all out myself.”

Russell rubs a callus on his palm. “So one day you just up and decide to pay her a visit?”

“It was Kelsey’s idea. She wanted me to get our mother’s side of the story. I wasn’t interested. I wanted to keep that box shut. I didn’t think anything could come of it, but Kelsey felt strongly that there was more to the story.”

“You told Kelsey and not us?”

“There’s something else that I should confess to you as long as I’m doing this. It was because of Mom that I didn’t want to do the documentary. I didn’t want her face plastered over national TV.”

“But you also had to go to Kelsey’s sister’s wedding,” Russell says.

“I didn’t have to go. It was bullshit, actually.”

“I don’t understand,” Adrian says.

“It was a farce. Just like the anniversary celebration.”

Adrian studies my face. “That was no farce. I had dinner with you two.”

“It was fake at first, then it was real for a little while, so I can see how you might think it was real, but we were just helping each other out.”

Russell hits Adrian in the arm. “I told you it was bullshit.”

“No, it was real,” Adrian says. “I know what I saw. You guys were good together—really good. You better not have dumped her.”

“I’m not relationship material. If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty much just like our dear old dad.”

Russell looks at me like I sprouted another head. “What? You dumped her because you think you’re like Dad? You’re not like Dad.”

“You are so full of shit,” Adrian says.

“You don’t know,” I say.

“What the fuck do you mean I don’t know?” Adrian says. “Who the fuck else would know besides us? We know you. We sure know Dad.”

“Unfortunately,” Russell says. “God, you think you’re like him?”

Adrian says, “You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re nothing like him. For one thing, Dad didn’t care about us.”

“You don’t get it,” I say.

“Fuck right off with that,” Russell says.

“You’re not him,” Adrian says. “You stood between him and us. When he was in a mood, it went through you first. You took the heat, and you made it so we could hang back. You always stepped between us.”

“That’s not character,” I say. “That’s birth order.”

“You funded this vineyard,” Russell says, “and you never once tried to run it. Dad would’ve wanted to call the shots.”

“Agree to disagree,” I say. “I’ll email you Mom’s contact information. She knows you might be reaching out.”

Russell stands. “You’re not Dad.”

Adrian says, “Remember how it would feel just for him to look at us? I’d feel queasy. That is not you.”

I stare at the horizon, remembering his cold glare.

Russell says, “Do you remember the Christmas Dad sent all our Christmas presents home with the servants and made us go up to our rooms?”

Adrian exhales. “Father of the year.”

I point at Russell. “You knocked over your root beer, and he thought it was part of a diabolical plan.”

Russell holds up his hands. “Excuse me, I was six.”

Adrian turns to me. “And as soon as everybody went to sleep, you smuggled us out of our rooms, having somehow nabbed all the carrots from the kitchen without anybody noticing, and we went over to the Carringtons’ farm and fed them to the horses.”

“I think that’s still my favorite Christmas,” Russell says.

I roll my eyes. “You need some better Christmases.”

“No, it was my favorite Christmas too,” Adrian says. “Out in the dark with you two feeding those horses. And it was that kind of snowy where it makes everything bright even in the middle of the night. And all the steam from the horses’ nostrils. And you had our back, Bruno. You made a container so we could be free and safe.”

I look down at my hands, feeling overwhelmed with the memory of that night. I’d gotten in so much trouble. “It doesn’t mean I’m not capable of the same damage,” I say after a while. “In different ways.”

“Please.” Adrian gives me his famous withering glance. “We’re all capable of a little damage. The point is, you’re not him. It’s idiotic to think you are.”

“Have you been to my yacht?” I say. “The strict severe silence? Everything running meticulously? The crew terrified of me? I run it like a prison camp, and that type of behavior only escalates.”

“That’s funny, it didn’t seem to me like you were running your yacht like a prison camp when I was there.”

“Well, I ran it like one before Kelsey came.”

“So you were a grumpy motherfucker, and then you got a girlfriend, and you got less grumpy and antisocial.”

“Your girlfriend helped you saw off some of your rough edges and helped you evolve a little.” Russell looks nearly disgusted. “Yeah, that really sounds like Dad. In FUCKING OPPOSITE WORLD.”

“And coming to us with this confession?” Adrian says. “Being open to the possibility that maybe it was a messed-up decision not to confide in us? Bro, do you know what Dad would do with it?”

We all know what Dad would do with it. Use it like a club with barbed wire wrapped around it.

“You seriously broke up with her to protect her from yourself?” Adrian says. “Is this actually what you’re telling us here?” I’ve never heard him sound so incredulous.

“Maybe,” I say.

Russell groans. “For fuck’s sake.”

Adrian gives me a hard look. “One question. Do you still have the yacht working like a prison camp? Now that she’s gone?”

I think about the conversation I had with Annie today about investing. And working with Phillip on a new menu for the week. Saying good night to Fernando when he’s on watch. The new paid-time-off plan. “I guess not.”

“You fucked up with that girl,” Russell says. “You need to undo that shit.”

The vineyard stretches out long in the late light. Workers move between rows. I think about the way I handed her the PI report.

I let her think I conducted that investigation in order to be sure about her, rather than an impulsive decision before I really knew her.

My pulse bangs in my ears. I let her think that I didn’t believe in her. I let her think that I didn’t know her beautiful heart.

“It might be too late.”

“Fuck off,” Adrian says. It’s a profound communication, and it hits deep.

Chapter Forty-Eight

KELSEY

The ensemble dressing room is three flights below the stage. It’s got a low ceiling, white-painted cinderblock, and vanity bulbs blazing around mirror after mirror.

The PA box on the wall has just crackled the one-hour call. I’m in my favorite costume of the show—full-on fringe and sequins. A dresser works on my hair. Francine is eating chips and trying to convince me not to hire a boat after the show to drive out to his yacht and throw stones at the thing.

“It will just make matters worse,” she says.

“So what? How could it be worse? Fuck him!”

“I get it. You need to express that to him,” Francine says. “But there’s a little thing called property damage. Also a thing called police.”

Mia comes barreling down the row in her first-act costume. “I have five minutes until they pull me away from here. What’s the emergency?”

“Did you know about this plan of Kelsey’s?” Francine demands.

“Know about it?! I wholeheartedly approve! You don’t get to dump a person after telling them that you love them for no apparent reason.” She turns to me. “I saw a nice little collection of rubble in a recess next to a stoop on West Forty-Sixth. Perfect projectile size. I say we nab a heavy-duty garbage bag from utility and gather it up.”

“Perfect,” I say.

“Are you two listening to yourselves?” Francine says. “He’s not worth it. He was raised by wolves and lives on a yacht that he runs like a prison camp. Magic eight ball says you dodged a bullet.”

The dresser moves to the other side of my head.

“I just need to see his face and for him to know how I feel.” I glare at the counter in front of us, strewn with makeup and to-go coffee cups. “To have me investigated! What is that?”

“He had you investigated?” Mia says.

“After you asked him not to,” Francine points out. “You’re better off without him.”

I catch the dresser’s eye in the mirror. Clearly, she agrees.

“He had the tiara thing investigated. He gave me the report on his way out.”

“What did it say?” Mia asks.

“What do I care? I didn’t take that thing and anybody who doesn’t believe in me can fuck off.”

Francine grins. “That’s why we love you, kid.”

“What did it say?” Mia presses.

“It was my cousin Meredith.”

“Where does she live? We should take some of the rubble to her.”

“One crime at a time,” Francine says. “So you go out there in your boat and break a few yacht windows or whatever. He comes out. What do you say?”

Even imagining him coming onto deck, my heart skips. But what would I say?

Francine sets a hand on my shoulder. “He had you investigated, and he dumped you. He’s not worth it.”

“Yeah, but...”

Three pairs of mournful eyes look at me in the mirror.

My mind goes back to us being a team at the wedding. With Adrian. Everything we told each other over long summer nights. Every magical afternoon taking tea at the Lowell hotel. That visit to his mother, finding out the truth. My mind is a fool. Fuck him.

“Yeah, forget about the rocks and the boat. He’s not worth it.”

“There’s my girl.” Mia grabs my arm. “Listen, we’re going to go out for drinks after this, and we’ll read the PI report and plot creative vengeance on Meredith. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Francine brightens. “I’m in!”

The PA crackles: Places.

I’m not the kind to do vengeance, but I do love plotting creative vengeance over drinks with friends. Though even that doesn’t hold the sparkle it once did.

“I’ll think about it.” I stand up and straighten the fringe on my costume. The heels of my tap shoes are solid under me. That’s enough to start with.

I go do the show.

Chapter Forty-Nine

KELSEY

The stage door is a fire exit that opens onto a narrow strip of sidewalk between two buildings.

I push the door open with my hip because my bag is on one shoulder and my tap shoes are slung over the other. There are sometimes people out there wanting autographs on their playbills, but tonight it’s raining. Not a dramatic rain, just the steady low-key kind that makes everything smell like wet concrete and exhaust.

Francine and Mia come after me. Mia pops open her umbrella. “Wait here!” She goes out to check the street for our Uber while Francine and I wait under the overhang, out of the rain.

And suddenly Bruno’s standing there, and my heart leaps.

He’s soaked through. His hair is dark in the rain, barely a hint of the golden brown. The wild little cowlick is probably flat. An unopened umbrella dangles from his wrist.

“Bruno, what are you doing?”

“I need to talk with you.”

Mia’s back, and she and Francine watch me, waiting, ready to drag me off or flip their bitch switches or whatever else.

“Uber’s out there,” Mia says.

I try not to look directly into his eyes, because I might not have strength then. He had me investigated. He dumped me without explanation. He’s not worth it! “We’ve got nothing to say, Bruno.”

I head for the waiting car. Mia and Francine follow. We pile in the back and shut the door. The rain drums hard on the top of the car.

“We’ll drop you first,” Mia says. She leans up and gives the grizzled old Uber driver the address.

“Yeah, just as soon as this lunatic gets out of here.” He honks his horn a few times.

“It’s Bruno!” Francine says. “What’s he doing?”

“You know this guy? Is he dangerous?”

“No,” I say.

“But she doesn’t want to talk to him,” Mia says. “He was a jerk to her.”

“Can’t you back out?” I ask. “Or just go around him?”

“No room.” He rolls down his window. “Hey, you! Get the hell out of there!”

“I need to talk to her,” Bruno yells.

“Why does he want to talk to me so badly?” I say, feeling like maybe I want to hear what he has to say. “Bruno usually isn’t impulsive like this.”

“Can’t you go up on the sidewalk?” Mia says.

“Two minutes,” Bruno says. “Please. It’s important.”

My pulse races. “He’s just out there getting drenched.”

“Good,” Francine says. “Builds character.”

“Look, this guy needs to move out of the way, or you ladies need to get out,” the driver says.

“Maybe I should hear him out,” I say.

Mia turns to me. “Do you feel like you should hear him out, or do you actually want to hear him out? Because if it’s just that you should, we’re not letting you out of the car.”

Francine leans forward. “Driver, do you have a child-lock thing up there?”

“Not doin’ that,” the driver growls.

“I want to hear him out.”

Mia and Francine look at each other.

“We’ll wait.”

The driver grumbles as I pull up the hood of my poncho and get out onto the sidewalk. “What the hell, Bruno!”

Not worth it, not worth it, I remind myself.

My blood races. “Come under here.” I pull him under the overhang. I’m not ready for the feel of him near me again. How natural and good it feels.

“I am so sorry, Kelsey. I panicked. I panicked and I couldn’t think of anything else...” His voice breaks slightly. “I… I thought you were in danger.”

I’ve never heard Bruno stammer before. “In danger of what?”

“Me! In danger of me!”

“Bruno—why?”

“You were there, didn’t you hear how my mother described my father? The strict, obsessive silence he demanded? The fanatical control because he needed everything perfect? How he suppressed life around him—doesn’t that remind you of somebody?”

“I see where you’re going, but that’s so simplistic.”

“It felt like she was telling me the future. It felt like she was telling me your future if you stayed with me. And I love you, and I couldn’t bear the thought, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

The ground beneath me seems to tilt. “So you dumped me?”

“I know. I was panicking. I told myself to end it in one clean move. And then the report...listen, whether you ever take me back or not, I need you to know that using that report to make you think I didn’t trust you was a terrible thing. I never ordered it because I didn’t trust you. I ordered it because I did trust you.”

“I don’t get it.”

He fixes his gray gaze on me, brows perfectly level with concentration. “I ordered it that day in the hotel bar, right after you told me about the tiara. I wanted to punish your family for what they were doing to you.”

“That’s why you ordered it?”

“Yes. Later I understood why you wouldn’t care about an investigation or ever even want one. I reached out to nix it, but as it turned out, the thing was already complete. I told Sadie to trash it. But she’s a digital hoarder. So I reached out after New Mexico. I convinced myself that it was the kindest thing. A totally clean break. So you’d have no doubt of the monster I am.”

“It wasn’t kind at all! How could you do that?”

“I wasn’t thinking. Whatever happens, know that I see you. I see your beautiful heart and your wild embrace of life and your… Just everything. I even love your embodiments. I look at that picture sometimes. Remember the picture I took on the veranda? At the hotel?”

My heart skips a beat. He sits around looking at that picture? “Bruno. I mean, of all the pictures...”

“I love that one.”

The rain splashes down around us, catching the streetlights, bright against the gloom. “You’re not like your father. You know that’s ridiculous, right?”

“You’ll be happy to know that my brothers agree with you one hundred percent on the ridiculous part. Though their words were less kind.”

“You went and talked to your brothers? Did you tell them about your mother?”

“Of course I did. They deserve to know. You were right about that.”

The Uber horn honks.

I hold up a finger. “How’d they take it?”

He gives me the outlines of their meeting.

“Wow,” I say. “Good for you.”

“Good for me? No. That was you.”

“Was it hard?”

“It was. They were pissed. But I needed to do it. You showed me how to move through life with trust instead of armor and control. You showed me that love is real and not a scam or a performance. You changed my entire world.” He gazes into my eyes, his face wet from the rain. “You are the love of my life.”

You’re mine, too, I think.

I hug my arms around myself.

“I would do anything to have another chance,” he says. “I don’t want to be without you.”

I look up at him. I want to jump into his arms and kiss the rain off his face and walk everywhere together like old times and then snuggle into bed together.

“You didn’t communicate with me. You just made this decision for us. I can’t have that.”

“I know. I heard you, and the last thing I wanted to do is put pressure on you with your friends there...glaring out the window. I want you to know that I will be waiting for you. I will always wait for you.”

Is it too impulsive to say, “fuck it” and take him back, just like that? As if everything can repair? This is a man who spent his whole life locking things down, controlling his world down to the millisecond. He wants to change, but will he?

I look over at the Uber. The rain is coming down in sheets, now. “I need to think about this.”

“Of course. Here—this rain is crazy.” He pulls at his umbrella and opens it above me.

That’s when I see the flash of red. It’s a watchband. A red watchband on his wrist.

“What the hell is that on your wrist?” I grab his coat sleeve, and there it is. The Roadrunner watch. “What are you doing wearing this?”

He seems unhappy that I noticed it. “I don’t know. I just...wanted to.”

“The overlord of time and all watches? Wants to wear the abomination that...what did you say? It’s against everything you stand for? A symbol of disorder, a disregard for time itself? What happened to your North Star? Your life’s goal of making the perfect watch keep exact time forever and ever?”

“That was a goal I created to survive childhood, to give me the illusion that I could impose order on an unpredictable world. That’s not my goal anymore.”

My pulse races. I touch the side of his face, stopping the roll of a rain drip. “What’s your goal now?”

“It’s all a work in progress.”

I look at the poor Roadrunner, frozen in mid-sprint, running after something he’ll never quite catch. “It must plague you to wear that thing.”

His eyes meet mine. “Every time I check it.”

I feel a smile split my face.

“But I like how it reminds me to let go of everything I was trying to lock down. I like how it reminds me to be okay with a little bit of disorder. I don’t have to control time. I have two brothers and a mother, and people who have my back, and for a while I had you, and I know now that that’s what’s valuable.” He pauses. Takes a breath. Then, more quietly, “And obviously it reminds me of you. How I felt when I still had you.”

“Had me? No.” I pull him to me. “You still have me,” I say into a kiss.

“Kelsey,” he says in a great gust of emotion. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you so much.” He tips his forehead against mine.

I say, “You are such a geode, so surprising inside.”

He cradles my face like it’s the most precious thing on the planet. “You fucking light my world.”

Epilogue

BRUNO

Theo stands across the bench from me, and his sister, Willow, stands at the second bench, running the spectrograph data on her laptop. They came into my life through Kelsey, the way so many things have, lately.

“Second-pass surface density is up four points,” she says, not looking up. “You two are about to argue about the microns.”

“We already did,” Theo says.

She grins. “And?”

“Bruno’s updating his priors,” Theo says.

“I’m updating your priors,” I say.

“Hah,” Theo says. “Look, if we bring the temperature down two degrees on the second pass, we get better surface density without compromising the flex.”

“We lose three microns,” I say.

“We can afford three microns, now,” Theo says.

I take a look. “This is great news. We could have it on the next pass.”

Theo rubs his hands.

The thing I like about working with Theo and Willow is that they operate like scientists, changing their minds when the evidence changes, and we learn things from each other when we argue. I never saw the downside of working alone all these years. Of being alone.

But here I am, in my workshop with two other people who belong here.

“Hey!” Kelsey leans in the doorway. She’s wearing a crushed velvet minidress—deep orange—with her favorite boots. Big silver earrings set off her dark curls. Behind her, Mia has both hands braced on the doorframe overhead, doing a casual hang as if waiting for a bus. Antonio is behind her, holding two glasses of champagne, apparently one of which is for himself.

“Nerds of the world,” Kelsey says. “I regret to inform you that you’re about to miss the cake.”

“Phillip made it,” Mia adds.

I can hear it now—the deck above us, voices, laughter. Annie’s voice carrying over someone else’s. I’ve had this yacht for eleven years. I can count on one hand the number of times the deck has sounded like that.

The three of us had come down here after a discussion over an hour ago. Our idea was just to test out a theory, but things evolved.

“Five minutes,” I say.

“You’ve been saying five minutes for forty minutes,” Kelsey says. She looks at Willow. “He doesn’t own a clock, which is ironic.”

“He owns hundreds of clocks,” Theo says. “Tiny clocks.”

“Ask him the difference between clocks and watches but wait until you’re both back down on deck eating cake.”

She gives me her best innocent face. I give her nothing back, which she’s long since learned to read as I see what you’re doing. 

Her dimples deepen.

“Five minutes,” I say again. “Actually this time.”

The three of us make a plan to resume the project in the upcoming week. That sort of thing is possible these days because my yacht is docked at Chelsea Piers Marina. I spent eleven years as an island, but now I’m more like a peninsula jutting off the west side, being tied up here. You can walk from the boat straight onto the street, and the view is great. When I look east, there’s Manhattan rising up, all glass and steel. On the other side is the Hudson River, with its expanse of water and sky, and New Jersey on the other side.

“They made it!” Kelsey jumps up from a lounger and comes to me as we step onto the brightly lit aft deck, where a full two-dozen friends are gathered across the seating areas that are in no way perpendicular to each other. People have been laughing and talking and hanging out on this warm October night. Even my brothers have shown up. There’s a whole spread of finger foods on the bar. Phillip has absolutely outdone himself in terms of creativity.

It’s Kelsey’s and my four-month anniversary, “which is as good a reason as any for a party,” she said.

She sets me up with a cocktail, and suddenly McGillicuddy is coming out with a large rectangular cake.

“Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting,” McGillicuddy announces as she sets it down on the bar. Annie sets out plates and napkins.

People gather around. What’s remarkable about the cake is not the fact that it’s carrot cake, it’s the recreation—in frosting—of the HEART YOU, CHUMPYWUMPY banner, done in intricate detail.

“Phillip!” Kelsey screams. “What have you done?”

Phillip comes out looking sheepish and proud. “I took some creative liberties.”

I say, “Just so everyone knows, that isn’t what we call each other.”

“It’s not,” Kelsey says.

Not everybody knows the story behind it. It’s my brother Adrian’s favorite story to tell. He’s so deadpan and serious about it. He has everybody laughing. “My serious, lone-wolf brother suddenly decorating his yacht with banners and teddy bears,” he grumbles.

“I was like, mistakes were made, but we can sell this to Adrian,” Kelsey says.

I wrap an arm over her shoulder. “That was the first time I really understood how strong you are. What a warrior you are. And what it is like to have a partner to rely on.”

Annie and Phillip cut the cake. Kelsey eats her slice with the focused pleasure she brings to all food. I stand next to her and think, I would have missed this. Not the party. This whole new life. I was entirely prepared to miss all of it if I could just get the watches more accurate. As if that would be worth it.

I’ve never had so many people on the yacht. And that they are all more or less people that I could count on in a pinch. Kelsey’s world has a quality of abundance that still sometimes startles me.

Max, ever the entertainment entrepreneur, has been talking to my brothers about events out at the vineyard. Some of the guys have been wondering if we can fish from the boat. Lizzie has brought frosted yacht cookies.

At some point, Mia and Kelsey and Antonio hop up onto the bar and begin singing something from the show, Antonio doing something theatrical with his champagne glass as a prop. People clap along.

The festivities are winding down later. Kelsey’s friend Vicky with the dog named Smuckers asks if her family’s come to see the show yet.

“They came.” Kelsey settles back against the railing. “I saw them at intermission. It was—” A small pause. “It was...fine.”

The tiara secret unraveled a few weeks back, the way these things do when a private investigator has been asking questions. Secrets began to slip out; time tends to loosen people’s lips far more than anything else. Somebody mentioned something to the wrong person and the secret traveled the gossip chain to Kelsey’s mother.

Meredith had stripped the stones and sold them separately.

Her mother called a few weeks back. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it afterward, and I know what it costs a woman like Gabrielle Winters to make a call like that, and I know what it cost Kelsey to receive it with the grace she did. It was more than that woman deserved.

“They want me to come for Christmas.”

Vicky hands the little dog to her man, Henry. “And?”

Kelsey turns her champagne glass slowly. The maraschino cherry rolls around at the bottom. “Honestly, I’m not interested—not this year, at least. We’re going to Newport.” Her eyes find mine. “Bruno’s mother, Loretta, is moving out there; she’s going to help Russell with the winery and the events. First Christmas all together in forever.”

“That’s the one you want to be at,” Vicky says simply.

People leave in groups.

Eventually the deck is quiet, the glasses cleared.

“Helipad?” Kelsey says.

I grab a blanket. I hand it to her when she reaches the top. We bundle up together.

The sun is setting over New Jersey, going orange and then red and then a dusky salmon gray. We huddle together watching. She leans back against me. I put my arm around her. I can feel her fingers on my forearm. They stop at the Roadrunner watch. “You don’t have to keep wearing this,” she says.

“Why not? I love how it baffles people. Especially in the watch world.”

She laughs and tips her head back. “You put it on as a reminder, but now we’re creating this life. I feel like the life all around us is the reminder, now. Plus, it’s mine, if you recall. I picked it out for myself. I mean, with this outfit?”

“I don’t want to ever forget to be like this, though,” I say.

“That’s what we have each other for.” She works at the buckle. “How wrong is this watch at this point?”

“So wrong.”

She puts it on her own wrist and holds it out. “Perfect.”

Heart-eyes ahoy! Thank you for reading!! I hope you enjoyed Bruno and Kelsey as much as I did.

But wait…what about Wulfric and Lola? Will Lola be safe from her awful ex? Will Wulfric find out about her engagement cosplay?

That book is coming this fall…preorder now!!

Don’t miss Lola and Wulfric: Out in October!!

All the Annika deets!

Annika Martin is a New York Times bestselling author who lives in Minneapolis with her husband; in her spare time she enjoys taking pictures of her cats, consuming boatloads of chocolate suckers, and tending her wild, bee-friendly garden.

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