Chapter 8
"Clara," Julian said, his hand lightly touching the air behind my back, guiding me away from the draft of the side exit. "Stay close."
"I told you not to tell me what to do," I muttered under my breath, though my voice lacked teeth. My throat was raw. My pulse was still hammering an erratic rhythm against my ribs.
We passed an ornate, gilded pier mirror mounted against one of the tent’s decorative support pillars. Instinctively, I glanced sideways to check my makeup, expecting to see the frantic, twenty-six-year-old girl who had spent forty minutes in a fourth-floor walk-up bathroom frantically blotting tears before putting on liquid liner.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
The woman in the glass wasn't twenty-six.
I stepped closer to the gilded frame, my breath hitching in my chest. The emerald dress fit, but it didn't drape the way it used to; my collarbones were sharper, my posture carrying a weary, grounded gravity that hadn't existed when Derek and I shared an apartment. But it was my face that made the blood run cold in my veins.
There were faint, silver-threaded laugh lines fanning out from the outer corners of my eyes. A subtle, permanent crease sat between my brows, the kind carved by years of squinting through high-powered archival lenses and reading cataloging sheets late into the night. My mouth had lost the soft, indecisive pout of my mid-twenties; it was set in a firm, elegant line that looked weathered, tempered, mature.
I lifted a trembling hand to my cheekbone. The skin was supple, but it wasn't the skin of a recent graduate.
*What is wrong with this glass?* I thought frantically. *It’s an antique mirror. The silvering must be oxidized. It’s distorting the reflection.*
"Clara," Julian’s voice rumbled beside me, soft and urgent. He stepped in front of the mirror, cutting off my view of the glass with his broad shoulder. "Don't stare at the reflection. It’s just old mercury glass. Let’s find our table."
"I look..." My voice trailed off. I stared at the lapel of his jacket. "I look tired, Julian. I look like ten years passed while I wasn't looking."
"You look breathtaking," he said, and the conviction in his voice was so absolute, so stripped of flattery or pretense, that it felt like an ache. "You look like someone who survived a storm."
Before I could unpack the strange, heavy sorrow in his words, a waiter brushed past our elbow carrying an open silver wine cooler toward Table Four. I glanced down, desperate for any distraction to anchor my unraveling thoughts.
The bottle in the ice was a vintage Napa Cabernet.
The label was embossed in deep maroon and gold leaf: *Stag’s Leap Estate, Reserve Cask, 2023.*
My vision blurred. A sickening, icy spike drove straight through the center of my forehead.
*2023?*
I blinked hard, rubbing my temple. Derek and I had broken up six months ago. It was late autumn. The year was supposed to be twenty-seventeen. How could a bottle of wine be dated nearly seven years into the future? Was it a misprint? A promotional label for an unreleased vintage? Corporate parties did absurd things with custom merchandise all the time...
*Yes. Of course. A custom promotional bottling.*
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, forcing the thought down into the dark, silent cellar of my mind where all the other impossible anomalies had been accumulating all night. The scratch on Julian’s watch. The gardenias. The Gaelic lullaby. The calcium phytate treatment.
*Don't think about it,* I ordered myself, digging my fingernails into the leather of my clutch until the seams strained. *Get through the toast. Prove to Derek that you didn't break. Then you can figure out why the world feels tilted.*
"Table Two," I whispered, pointing toward the elevated platform where Derek was currently standing with his corporate partners. "Derek put me at Table Two. Right under the speakers, where I couldn't escape seeing him."
Julian didn't argue. He fell into step beside me as we navigated the crowded aisles between the banquet rounds.
I braced myself for the whispers. I expected Derek’s circle to look at Julian with smug, mocking amusement—to whisper about the desperate archivist who had dragged an expensive arm-candy date to her ex-fiancé’s victory lap.
But as we moved through the room, the whispering was different.
It wasn't mocking.
It was hushed, reverent, and heavy with an unbearable, suffocating pity.
An older gentleman with a silver mane and a trustee ribbon pinned to his lapel stopped in mid-sentence as we passed. His eyes didn't fix on my dress; they locked directly onto Julian. His face softened into an expression of profound, solemn sympathy. He placed a hand over his own heart and gave Julian a slow, respectful nod.
Julian returned the nod with a tight, microscopic dip of his chin.
Two tables further, a woman in navy silk—someone I recognized vaguely as a senior administrator from the university medical center—clutched her companion’s arm, whispering in a low, trembling voice that cut straight through the ambient hum:
*"Is that him? My God... he brought her out tonight? After what happened last autumn?"*
*"Hush, Elena,"* the companion murmured, casting a sorrowful, guarded glance in my direction. *"He never leaves her side. You know how devoted he is."*
My breath hitched. My ears rang with a high-pitched, metallic whine.
*Devoted?*
They weren't talking about Derek. They were looking at Julian. They looked at Julian the way people look at a saint carrying an unbearable cross, or a soldier who has returned from a war that nobody else can see.
"Julian," I hissed, leaning toward him, my knuckles white against my side. "Who are those people? Why are they looking at you like that?"
Julian kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, his jaw locked like granite. "They’re nobody, Clara. Keep walking."
"They know you!" Panic clawed at the lining of my throat, hot and sharp. "They used your name! The woman in navy—she called you devoted! Why would anyone call a hired escort devoted?"
"Clara, please," he pleaded, the calm veneer of his voice finally beginning to crack, revealing the raw, jagged strain beneath. "Not here. Let’s sit down."
We reached Table Two.
The seats were empty except for two place cards. One read *Clara Albright*. The other, placed directly beside mine, had no printed name—only a handwritten index card that read *Guest*.
On the stage, fifteen feet away, the spotlight shifted.
Derek stepped up to the central mahogany podium. The background waltz faded into silence. The servers stopped moving between the tables, tucking their silver trays under their arms. A hush settled over the room, the thick, expectant silence of a captive audience waiting for the main event.
Derek tapped the microphone with his index finger.
*Thump. Thump.*
The low bass reverberated through the marquee speakers, rattling the silverware on our table.
Derek adjusted his cuffs, flashed his trademark, charismatic smile, and looked out over the sea of three hundred wealthy benefactors, colleagues, and corporate sponsors.
A red-hot wave of humiliation and defiance surged through my veins, incinerating the lingering fog in my brain.
There he was. The man who had looked at me across our breakfast table and told me I was an emotional liability. The man who had packed his leather duffel bags while I sat on the floor of our hallway, begging him to explain what I had done wrong. The man who had invited me here tonight just to display his triumphant, shiny new life like a hunting trophy.
