Four days hiding feels like cowardice, but I have nothing else.
Day one: I email HR—food poisoning. Lie on my back for twelve hours while Aria watches cartoons and asks why I’m sad.
“Just tired,” I say. She doesn’t buy it.
Day two: “Migraines.” My assistant runs interference while I sit in the dark, trying to hold two truths at once: Caspian Rothwell is Aria’s father, and telling him could detonate the distance that’s kept us safe.
Day three: his emails.
C. A. Rothwell: Serena, hope you’re better. The Henderson report needs your review.
Simple and professional. But next:
C. A. Rothwell: Did I offend you the other night? If the medallion crossed a line, I’m sorry.
I stare until the words smear. He thinks I ran because of a joke about trophies. He has no idea he just joked about the night that made him a father.
Day four dawns with dread. I can’t avoid him without risking my job, and my people. I go in early, hoping to bury myself in work before he appears.
There's a box on my desk. Plain white, no logo.
Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, is a vintage Columbia women's debate team championship jacket. 2016. Pristine condition, the deep blue wool still rich, the gold lettering sharp and perfect.
The jacket I never received because the debate program ran out of funding my senior year. The jacket I mentioned once—once—in passing during junior year when Caspian asked why I never wore team gear.
I didn't think he was listening. Didn't think he remembered.
The note underneath is in his handwriting:
Serena,
Since you apparently kept MY medallion all these years as some kind of trophy (still confused about that, siren), figured you deserved the championship jacket you actually earned. You were robbed in that final debate. We both know it.
—Cas
My hands shake holding it.
He remembered. Worse—he agrees I was robbed. The admission costs him nothing now, but it would have meant everything then. Still means something now, in a way that makes my chest ache.
"Ms. Vale?" My assistant, Katie, appears in the doorway, startling me. "You're here early. Are you feeling better?"
I shove the jacket back in the box like it might burn me. "Yes. Much better."
"Good. Mr. Rothwell called three times yesterday asking if you'd received a package." She pauses, something careful in her expression. "He sounded... nervous? If that's possible. Kept asking me to let him know the second you came in."
Nervous. Caspian Rothwell, nervous about whether I received his apology gift.
The thought does something dangerous to my resolve. I text Maya with shaking fingers.
Me: He gave me a gift. Need backup.
Her response is immediate:
Maya: what kind of gift?
Me: The kind that means he remembers things I didn't think he noticed.
Maya: shit okay drinks after work. don't do anything stupid before then
Me: Define stupid.
Maya: anything involving his mouth???
I almost laughed. Almost.
The transition meeting is at two. I spend the morning rehearsing what I'll say, how I'll act, but when I walk into that conference room and see him, everything I've prepared evaporates.
He looks up immediately, and the relief that crosses his face is so naked it stops my breath. Then he catches himself, smoothing it into something more controlled, but I saw it.
Saw the moment he thought I might not come at all.
"Ms. Vale." Professional. Measured. But his eyes search my face like he's looking for damage. "You got the package?"
Everyone's watching us. The other department heads, the integration team, all of them sensing something beneath the surface without understanding what.
"Yes." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Thank you. You didn't have to—"
"I did." He cuts me off, and there's something raw in his tone. Something that makes the room feel too small. "Anyway." He looks away first, breaking the moment. "Consider it an apology. We're even."
We're not even.
We'll never be even.
Not when he's Aria's father and doesn't know it. Not when that jacket sitting in my office means he's been carrying pieces of me for years. The same way I've been carrying pieces of him. But I nod. "Even."
The meeting proceeds. We fall into our old rhythm—verbal sparring, challenging each other's assumptions. But something underneath has shifted. Softened, maybe.
When I point out a flaw in his restructuring plan, instead of getting defensive, he grins.
It's a real smile. Not the CEO mask he wears for board meetings. The smile from Columbia, when a good argument made him look alive. His eyes hold mine a beat too long.
Long enough for me to see something I don't want to name flickering there.
Long enough for me to feel it echo in my own chest.
* * *
Maya chooses a bar in Brooklyn, far enough from Midtown that we won't run into anyone from work. She's already there when I arrive. Two martinis waiting, and the look on her face says she knows this is bad.
"Okay." She pushes a glass toward me. "Talk."
So I do. All of it. The medallion, the realization, the jacket that means he's been paying attention in ways I didn't let myself notice. By the time I'm done, both martinis are gone and Maya is staring at me like I've just confessed to murder.
"You have to tell him." Her voice is flat. Certain.
"No."
"Serena—"
"I can't." The words crack in my throat. "You don't understand. He's Caspian fucking Rothwell. He'll want custody. He'll have lawyers and money and every advantage, and I'll lose her. Or worse… I'll have to share her with someone whose sight I can’t stand."
Maya's expression shifts to something gentler. More dangerous. "Do you? Can’t stand the sight of him?"
"Yes."
"Liar."
The word hits like a slap. "I'm not—"
"You've been talking about him for twenty minutes, and you sound like someone trying to convince herself of something she doesn't believe."
Maya leans forward, her voice dropping.
"That jacket? The fact that he remembered you never got yours? That's not hatred, babe.” I really hope she doesn’t finish. But of course she does. “That's someone who's been carrying you around the same way you've been carrying him."
"That's not—"
"And it's not fair to Aria." She says it quietly, but it lands like a bomb. "You know it's not. She asks about her father. She deserves to know him."
"She deserves better than him."
"Does she? Or do you just need her to?"
I can't say anything. Can't think past the way Maya's words are peeling back layers I've spent seven years constructing.
The carefully built narrative that Caspian is the enemy. That keeping this secret protects Aria. That I'm doing the right thing.
"I can't coparent with someone whose guts I hate," I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know they're a lie.
Maya knows too. I watch her see through me with the precision of someone who's known me since we were eighteen and stupid.
"Then maybe," she says carefully, "you should figure out if you actually hate him, or if that's just easier than admitting what you really feel. What you’ve always felt since college."
I drain my glass. Order another. Try to ignore the way my hands shake.
Try to ignore the jacket sitting in my office, proof that Caspian Rothwell has been paying attention to me for seven years.
Try to ignore what that means.