The opposite. She kept it as a reminder. A reminder of what happened when you let your guard down. When you trusted warmth that was actually strategy. When you confused someone's investment in your future with genuine love for who you actually were.
Reev had been good-looking and well-connected, and she'd married him at 25, certain that she was being pragmatic and romantic in equal measure. She discovered at 27 that pragmatic had been the whole point, that he'd been watching her career trajectory and calculating, and that the man she'd thought understood her had been managing her the way you manage an asset. The ring stayed in the drawer. Reminder, object lesson. This is what trust costs.
But Marcus Webb's voice was in her head now over the wine in the Friday skyline. I just try not to let things convince me that they're bigger than they are. And Lily's voice, the old compass knows where home is. And the way Marcus had looked at his daughter, not like she was a responsibility he was managing, like she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, which was something you couldn't fake at the end of a long work week in a cold parking deck with a flat tire and no audience. Viv sat with the wine and the silence and let herself feel just for a moment the full weight of the loneliness she'd been calling peace.
It was heavy. She was surprised by how heavy it was now that she stopped bracing against it. Over the following 3 weeks, Viv manufactured four separate reasons to interact with Marcus. She knew she was doing it. She wasn't proud of it exactly, but she wasn't going to pretend it wasn't happening.
She submitted a noise complaint about the fourth floor climate system that was functioning perfectly. She flagged a lighting issue in the east conference room corridor that had resolved itself by the time he arrived. She requested a second opinion on a leak report that turned out to be condensation from a cold drink cart. Marcus handled each request with professional courtesy and an expression of mild benevolent skepticism that he was too polite to name out loud. The fourth time the lobby lighting flicker that had resolved before he checked the panels.
He looked at her with that careful steadiness that she was coming to understand was just how he looked at things he was trying to figure out. The lighting's fine, he said. I know, she said. A beat. Okay, he said and made a note in his log.
I wanted to ask you something, she said before she could stop herself. About your daughter, you mentioned she's interested in science. How do you encourage that? I'm starting a STEM initiative through the company foundation and I could use a practical perspective. That was real.
Actually, the foundation initiative was real. Marcus leaned against the lobby wall, tool bag at his feet. With Lily. I just let her break things and put them back together. Don't tell her something's too complicated before she tries it.
He paused. She's building a model of the water cycle right now for school. She flooded the kitchen sink twice before she got the drainage right. I just handed her paper towels. Viv smiled.
You have a very high tolerance for mess. You kind of have to with kids. The mess is the learning. There was a pause that lasted longer than she intended to let it last. "You mentioned she likes milkshakes," Viv said slowly.