The Key to His Penthouse

I used to run my thumb along the silver edge of my mother's locket until it ached.

That was before I let Ethan take it.

Her small painted face sat beneath the oval of glass, as if she were watching every compromise I made.

For three years, I made them for Ethan.

I told myself patience would be rewarded. That one day he'd unlock the penthouse door and ask me to stay.

I didn't know yet how easily glass breaks.

Or that once it does, no apology, no key, and no amount of money can put it back together.

The elevator doors had barely closed behind me when my phone started ringing.

“Claire.” Ethan's voice came through quiet and warm, the way it always did when he wanted something smoothed over. “Ignore Vanessa. She says things without thinking.”

I stopped just inside the lobby's glass entrance.

“How long has she been staying with you?”

Silence.

“They're redoing her apartment. It's a few days, that's all.”

“Hotels exist.”

“I've got three guest rooms sitting empty. Why would I send her to a hotel?” An edge crept into his tone. Then he sighed. “Okay. That came out wrong, sweetheart. Come back up. We'll eat.”

In three years, none of those empty rooms had ever been offered to me.

“You always said your home was off-limits,” I said. “I just didn't realize it was only off-limits to me.”

“That's not what I said.”

“Then you should have said it better.”

“Claire, it's one picture and a spare key. You're blowing this up.”

The picture sat on his nightstand: Vanessa laughing, wearing one of his shirts. Her key hung on the hook beside his door.

In the background, Vanessa murmured something I couldn't catch.

His voice went flat. “I'm not doing this on the phone. Come up when you're ready to talk.”

He hung up.

I caught my reflection in the black screen. My eyes were glassy, but my expression didn't move.

“Claire?”

Daniel Whitmore was crossing the lobby with a bottle of wine in each hand. Vanessa's older brother had grown up alongside Ethan. These days he held his family's seat on the Hale Group board.

“Where are you off to? We're about to eat.”

“Something came up.”

“Okay. Take this.” He juggled the bottles and offered me a key. “So you can let yourself back in.”

I looked down at it.

Ethan's friends had keys. Vanessa had one.

Only I had to phone from the lobby and wait for someone to fetch me.

Ethan called that privacy. Boundaries. Respect.

Funny how those rules only ever seemed to apply to me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I won't be needing it.”

I was out the door before Daniel could ask why.

Outside, the wind made my eyes sting. I'd only just slid into a cab when my phone buzzed again.

Vanessa had sent me a video.

Ethan's coffee table was crowded with takeout—steak frites, a platter of oysters on ice, champagne already half gone. His friends were sprawled across the couches and the rug. Ethan sat in the center, tie loose, more at ease than he ever looked across a restaurant table from me.

Vanessa was curled into his side.

She ate an oyster he'd just loosened from its shell for her, then tipped her champagne flute toward his lips.

Off camera, someone laughed.

“Come on, man. You and Nessa already act like a married couple. Just put a ring on it.”

The smile slid off Ethan's face. He sat up straighter and started to say something—

The clip cut off.

I stared at the frozen screen, then swiped it away.

Whatever he'd answered, Vanessa had made sure I'd never know.

When the cab pulled up outside my building, the driver passed a tissue over the seat.

“Bad night?”

Only then did I notice my cheeks were wet.

“Kind of.”

“No rush.”

I thanked him, dried my face, and got out.

On the sidewalk, I sent Ethan a single text.

It's over, Ethan. I'm ending things.

Then I opened the email I'd been ignoring for two weeks.

Margaret Lowell, the architect who'd supervised my master's thesis, had offered me a place at her Edinburgh practice, on a team restoring buildings in the Old Town. I had almost said no.

I wrote back without second-guessing a single word.

If the offer still stands, I'll take it. I can start right away.

She answered within minutes.

The job is yours, Claire. Our office manager will sort out your flight and housing.

For the first time all night, I could actually breathe.