Page 18 of Waiting for You

Standing near the edge of the hall, nursing a drink I hadn't tasted, I watched her across the room. Her head was bowed over her screen, and she was smiling. It wasn't the brittle mask she'd flashed at me earlier. This smile was radiant, reaching all the way to her eyes. Her thumb flew across the screen, her mouth curving into a grin as she shook her head.

Who the hell was she texting?

I glared at the far wall, then the exit, then the sweat on my crystal glass.

I looked back at her anyway.

She was still smiling.

Was there someone else, a man she went home to, someone who called her name in the morning and got to see her sleep-mussed before she put the armor on? Was she texting him right now? Had she spent eight years in the dark tangled up in another man's arms while I burned mine building a medical empire, hauling around a worn velvet ring box, and telling myself I was moving on?

Whoever he was, he wasn't the best she'd ever had.

I turned away with my jaw set. The jealousy spiking in my chest had nowhere useful to go.

Simon appeared at my shoulder and held out a fresh flute of champagne.

"How was the flight in?"

"Smooth enough." I took the glass.

He nodded. Simon asked questions because he valued the connection, not to fill dead air. He was going to make a hell of a husband for Violet, which was the only metric I cared about.

"Have your parents been in touch?" he ventured. "Have they reached out to Violet about the ceremony?"

I shot him a look.

He was marrying my little sister, wanted her family there to celebrate, and still didn't fully grasp why a reunion was off the table. Violet hadn't burdened him with the details. She'd built a new life elsewhere and deadbolted the door to our childhood home.

"Simon," I started, keeping my tone even. "How long have you known Violet?"

He ran the timeline and confirmed it had been a few solid years.

"And in all that time, has she brought up our parents much?"

He chewed on it. "Honestly? Not often."

"That's a choice." I set my champagne on a passing tray. "They weren't kind to her. They held impossible standards for what a daughter should be, and because she never fit the mold, they broke her down without a shred of remorse. She knows what they are, and she's made peace with the estrangement."

He took the hard truth in silence, a muscle ticking along his jaw.

"I just figured weddings had a way of…" He trailed off, hunting for the word.

"A wedding invitation won't rewrite their personalities," I said. "If they came, they'd pick apart the flowers, the catering, her dress. They'd sit front row and measure her joy against some twisted standard of perfection. Violet knows this. She's known it her whole life." I picked my drink back up. "Your one job is to protect her happiness. And her happiness doesn't live anywhere near our parents."

He gave a solemn nod, the tension finally draining from his shoulders.

"Message received," he said. "Understood."

We let an easy silence settle. After a while Simon shifted to my clinic's expansion, the Columbus launch specifically, and I gave him the top-line numbers. He updated me on the publishing firm, the explosive app growth, their aggressive hiring, the digital infrastructure he was engineering for creatives. He was brilliant at his job.

Then Simon rocked back on his heels, his own future already settled, and asked, "You ever think about starting a family?"

I went still.

I'd never mapped out how many kids I wanted, or whether I wanted the responsibility at all. But the second Simon asked, my brain didn't hand me an abstract, philosophical answer. It handed me a crystal-clear picture of Sloane. The whole architecture of my future had organized itself around her without my permission, bypassing the woman I was dating.

Eliza had no maternal pull, and I had no urge to build a family with her. After our disastrous first night, we'd shelved the physical side for good. I was fairly sure she outsourced her romance elsewhere, and I didn't care. Our corporate dynamic was settled: mutual respect, no romantic love, no emotional entanglement.