13. Caleb Is Getting Married

13. Caleb Is Getting Married

“He was never serious about you,” Cecile said one evening, curled up on Tania’s new couch with a glass of wine. “He told me himself. It was never anything real, Tania. You don’t have to worry.”

Tania nodded along, not quite convinced, but she didn’t push it. Cecile’s smile was too bright to argue with.

As it turned out, Cecile had her own contract with the store, a modeling deal that paired her with the season’s new collection.

“Design something for me,” Cecile said, grinning. “Something that’ll make Norman fall over.”

Tania laughed despite herself and got to work, sketching late into the night, something delicate and gold that she thought might actually suit her best friend perfectly.

 

• • •

 

The manager loved the design the moment he saw it. “This is exactly what we need for the gala piece,” he said. “Actually, I have another assignment for you. A private client wants something custom for a showcase this weekend.”

He didn’t give her a name. Tania didn’t ask.

She spent three days perfecting the piece, and on the night of the showcase, watched from the side of the rooftop venue as Norman fastened the necklace around Cecile’s neck for the reveal, cameras flashing around them.

Across the rooftop, Tania spotted two women arriving together. Model friends, judging by the way they moved through the crowd.

One of them was Monica. Norman’s wife.

The other was Sophia.

Monica froze mid-step, staring at Norman’s hands still resting on Cecile’s bare shoulders. Whatever calm she’d carried in stripped away in an instant.

She crossed the room and grabbed a fistful of Cecile’s hair before anyone could stop her, and the two women went down together in a tangle of designer fabric and shattered composure.

“She seduced me!” Norman shouted over the chaos, pointing at Cecile. “I didn’t do anything!”

 

• • •

 

Cecile cried into Tania’s shoulder for a long time afterward, her makeup ruined, her voice thick.

“He was my first love, Tania. My actual first love. How could he say that about me?”

Tania held her without saying much. There wasn’t much to say that would help.

The door opened without a knock. Sophia let herself in, looking entirely too pleased for someone crashing a private moment.

“What do you want,” Tania said flatly.

“Just checking on you.” Sophia’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Caleb’s finally moved on, you know. Took him long enough.”

“Get out.”

Sophia was already halfway to the door when she paused, delivering her last line like a gift she’d been saving.

“He’s getting married. Did you not hear?”

 

• • •

 

The airport was too crowded that afternoon, every flight delayed, every gate packed shoulder to shoulder. Tania gave up and sat down on a bench at the train station instead, her small bag at her feet.

Married. Caleb was getting married.

She turned the word over and over, waiting for it to hurt the way she expected. It did, more than she wanted to admit, and she couldn’t explain why a man who’d threatened her life more than once still had this much power over her chest.

Miles away, Caleb sat in the back of a car, his arm finally out of its sling, healed enough that the ache had faded to a dull memory. He was heading to open a new branch office in the very city Tania had run to.

His assistant handed him a file with her new address already inside.

Caleb closed the file without reading past the first line.

“Bring her,” he said.

Tania didn’t fight when his men found her at the station. Part of her, quietly, wondered if this was it. If he’d finally come to sign whatever papers would set them both free.

 

• • •

 

“A divorce?” Caleb pulled her against him the moment they were alone, his voice low in her ear. “I’m not here for that. I’m here to punish you, Tania. You don’t just run from me and disappear.”

“You hid your own phone. You could have found me in an hour if you wanted to.” She searched his face, genuinely confused. “Why didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer that.

“Leave me alone, Caleb.”

“Or what?” He tightened his grip. “I could throw you out of this plane right now and no one would ever know.”

He meant it as a threat. It came out sounding like something closer to grief.

Tania’s eyes burned, but she held his gaze anyway. “You’d celebrate it, wouldn’t you? If I just suddenly died. Wouldn’t that solve everything for you?”

Something in his face went very still.

He let her go without another word.

Tania didn’t see him again for the rest of the flight. She sat alone in the private cabin, watching the clouds pass beneath the window, until the plane finally touched down in a city she’d never been to before.