AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And keep them coming.
He takes the glass gingerly from my fingers, which are cramped around the thin stem. “I’ll be back,” he says. “Then, we’ll do another round at the blind auction.”
“Yippie,” I whisper. He rewards me with a smile, just the slighest curve to his lips. It feels like a victory. All of his expressions do.
I watch his retreating back through the crowd and wonder why I don’t remember seeing him at events like this before. I can’t imagine laying eyes on Isaac Winter and not having the memory burned into my mind.
I catch Maud standing next to Celine, one of the many rapt listeners to one of my former mother-in-law’s embroidered tales. Probably about the one time she dined in the same restaurant as JFK.
I look away. And that’s when I see him.
Standing right next toher.
Together.
9
SOPHIA
Percy is wearing his wedding tux.
I recognize it immediately because I was the one who picked it out and suggested alterations to the tailor. His reddish-blond hair is cut shorter than it was the last time I saw him. His skin is deeply tanned from the summer. I imagine he’s spent most of it at his parents’ house in the Hamptons.
My stomach feels like it’s at sea, with a storm whipping up mile-high waves. The winds pick up when I focus on the woman beside him.
Shorter than him by a solid head, dainty in frame and face. Her strawberry-blonde hair is in a classic updo.
He’s here with Scarlett.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been naked and wrapped around my husband.
I can’t tear my eyes away. I’m locked in place, an animal torn between fight and flight.
Percy nods at something Scarlett says, his mouth in a wide smile. Enjoying himself and enjoying her. And then, he looks up.
Our eyes meet across the room.
The floor sinks beneath my feet. It’s like the century-old marble has suddenly become unstable, fractured at the seams, and sent me into the deep.
He says something to Scarlett and leaves her with their friends. I watch from somewhere out of my body as he walks through the crowd to me.
At our wedding, he’d worn a white pocket square. It’s not there now. I stare at the pocket on his breast and avoid the familiar eyes coming closer.
“Sophia,” he says. “I didn’t think I’d see you here.”
I’ve always been half an inch taller than him in heels. It had bothered him, I know, even if he pretended it didn’t. Now, I revel in it.
I’d hate to ever look up at him again. “How could I miss it?” I say. “You know how passionate I am about protecting the arts.”
He looks over his shoulder. Not at Scarlett, but at his mother, still with her court of followers. “Right. It’s been a long time, Soph. I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Well, I think we said everything we needed with our lawyers present.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t want it to end like that.”
No, of course not. He’d wanted to keep his marriage and his unblemished reputation intact.
Only I suspected he wanted to keep his mistress, too.
