Page 34 of Suite 7

Just my name. Acknowledgement and dismissal wrapped in two syllables.

The same way he always uses it.

Except now I know what his voice sounds like when it isn’t doing that.

“Sinclair,” I say.

The café recalibrates around his absence.

Sloane watches him go. Her eyes stay on the door. Hold there, and then she turns back to me.

“Huh,” she says.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

She picks up her mimosa and takes a long, thoughtful sip. “I was going to say he’s never that interested in your dating life.” A pause. “Or anyone’s, really.”

“He was being Kane.”

“He was,” she agrees. “Just a different frequency of it.”

She lets it settle there, then her phone explodes. A cascade of notifications, then a call, then another. She glances at the screen and shifts entirely, crisis mode engaging like a switch being thrown.

“Shit — the Carrington campaign—” She stands. “I have to⁠⁠—”

“Go. Do your thing.”

“Rain check.” She asks with the phone to her ear, moving. “No. Twenty minutes⁠⁠—”

Gone.

The booth feels enormous without her.

I wrap both hands around my drink, and sit with a heavy silence, the kind that comes from doing something you knew was a mistake while you were doing it anyway

Some things you just have to feel.

I said it to get a reaction. To crack the composure. To find the Kane who was in Suite 7 underneath the Kane who sat across from me being unreadable, because I couldn’t stand not being able to read him.

And I found him. For about four seconds, I found him.

That’s not self-protection.

That’s something considerably more dangerous.

My phone rings.

LUMA BEAUTY. CEO.

The work ringtone, the one I’ve assigned to clients who call on weekends, the one that bypasses Do Not Disturb because some crises don’t respect Sunday brunch. I’m already sliding out of the booth.

“Vivienne,” I answer, and my voice settles into the register I use for clients, smooth and three steps ahead. “I’m listening.”

“You haven’t seen it yet.”