He'd been lying to himself. He rolled over and made himself stop thinking about it because nothing good could come from it. And Lily needed breakfast in a few hours and the whole thing would surely evaporate with the sunrise. Victoria Harrington would wake up, put on her dry dress, remember who she was and who he was, and walk back out of his life through the same door she'd come in. That was how these things went.
The rich went back to being rich. The invisible went back to being invisible. He fell asleep, telling himself that he woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of his daughter's voice. For one confused second, he lay there because Lily didn't make coffee. Lily couldn't reach the machine.
Then he remembered and he was up and moving before he'd finished the thought. He came into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Victoria Harrington, CEO of Harrington Global, worth 11 billion, feared across two continents, was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor in his old gray t-shirt, hair a mess, holding a purple crayon hunched in fierce concentration over a piece of construction paper. And across from her equally serious tongue, poking out of the corner of her mouth, sat Lily. No.
See, you have to press harder. Lily was instructing her. Or it comes out too light and it doesn't count like this. Better. You're getting better.
There was fresh coffee in the pot. Someone had figured out his ancient machine. There were two mugs out, one already poured and waiting on the counter still steaming exactly the way he took it. He had no idea how she knew. Maybe she'd just guessed.
Maybe she'd looked. Victoria glanced up and saw him in the doorway. And for just a second, the old mask flickered up, caught exposed, defenseless, a powerful woman found sitting on a stranger's floor coloring with a child. Then Lily looked up too and said, "Daddy, your friend is really bad at coloring, but she's trying really hard, so I'm teaching her. " And Victoria Harrington laughed. Not the broken laugh from the restaurant, not the tired one from the truck.
A real helpless, surprised, unguarded laugh. Head tipped back and it changed her whole face. And Nathan stood in the doorway of his own kitchen holding on to the frame because for the first time in three years he was looking at the woman behind the woman and she was sitting on his floor in his shirt laughing with his daughter and he understood with a sudden terrifying clarity that his careful small safe life had just ended and that some part of him was glad. Morning, he managed. Morning, Victoria said still smiling, and she held up her drawing a lopsided orange cat or possibly a dog.
It was genuinely impossible to tell. Your daughter says it's a masterpiece. I said it's okay. Lily corrected for a beginner. And then on the counter beside Nathan Victoria's phone lit up.
It buzzed against the tile loud in the small kitchen. The screen glowed. Adrien mobile. Everything stopped. Lily kept coloring, but Victoria went still on the floor.
The smile drained off her face. Her eyes went to the phone and Nathan watched two years of a hundred small cuts rise up in her all at once. The pull of it, the habit, the old worn groove of just answer, just apologize, just make it stop. The phone buzzed again. Victoria didn't move.