The studio was too quiet for the time of year.
That was the first thing Claire noticed.
Between Christmas and New Year’s, most places drifted—skeleton crews, half-days, polite absences. This room didn’t. The lights were already on. A piano lid stood open. A microphone waited like it had been told to expect something.
She hadn’t finished the song.
Not really.
The pages in her notebook were marked, crossed through, rewritten in the margins. A verse that stopped short. A bridge that existed only as an idea. Enough structure to be dangerous.
Enough promise to pull people back to work.
The room looked the same.
That was the lie.
The mirrors were clean. The floor freshly marked. Bottles lined up where they always were. Music cued and waiting, patient as a held breath. On paper, it was just another rehearsal—first day back, post-holiday, nothing ceremonial about it.
Claire felt the difference the moment she stepped inside.
It wasn’t nerves. It was density.
People arrived early. Not eager—alert. Conversations stayed practical, clipped. Hugs happened, but quickly, like punctuation rather than sentiment. No one asked how Christmas was. Everyone already knew the answer was fine and that fine meant contained.
Lou wasn’t in the room.
That was intentional.
Claire clocked the exits instead, the way she now always did without meaning to. The habit had settled during the break and refused to leave. She caught Evan doing the same thing from the opposite side of the space and let her gaze soften in acknowledgment. No need to discuss it.
They took their places.
Music started.
The first run-through was clean. Technically excellent. Too careful.
Claire stopped it herself.
“Again,” she said. “Less polite.”
A few smiles flickered. Someone exhaled. They reset.
The second run had bite. Not aggression—commitment. Bodies remembered what rest had given them: weight, breath, balance. The floor took sound differently when you trusted it again.
Halfway through, Claire noticed Kayla.
She wasn’t off. She was present—fully in step, fully aligned—but she kept her focus narrow, like someone protecting a perimeter. Claire didn’t call it out. She didn’t need to. This wasn’t correction territory. This was awareness.
They finished the sequence.
Silence followed—not awkward, just evaluative.
Jaylen rolled his shoulders. “We’re early.”
“Yes,” Claire said. “And that’s good.”
Someone laughed quietly at that. It broke the tension just enough.
They moved on.
By the third section, sweat had replaced stiffness. The room warmed. Rhythm returned. The music stopped feeling like instruction and started feeling like something they were inside of again.
That was when the door opened.
Not dramatically. No announcement. Just a quiet interruption at the edge of the room.
Clancy stepped in, phone still in hand. She didn’t speak. She waited for the break.
Claire caught her eye and nodded once.
They finished the count. Music faded.
Clancy approached, voice low. “We’ve got movement.”
Claire wiped her hands on a towel. “From where?”
“Multiple,” Clancy said. “But the immediate one—he’s ready.”
Claire didn’t ask who.
Between Christmas and New Year’s, ready only meant one thing.
The half-written song.
The dormant contract that wasn’t dormant anymore.
The exile that had done its job.
“How fast?” Claire asked.
Clancy glanced at the room—at bodies cooling, conversations restarting, the normalcy rebuilding itself. “If we say yes? Immediately.”
Claire looked back at the mirror. At herself. At the version of her that had written something unfinished on purpose because she hadn’t known yet what it needed to become.
“Book the piano room,” she said. “Late.”
Clancy nodded. “I’ll handle the rest.”
As Clancy stepped back out, Claire turned to the group.
“Ten minutes,” she said. “Then we run it once more.”
No explanation. No dramatics.
The room accepted it.
As they reset, Claire felt it clearly now—the shift from holiday to velocity, from rest to intention. Not a snap. A glide.
Between the years, the story had already started moving again.
And this time, it wasn’t going to wait for permission.
busy.
Claire — Between the Tears
It wasn’t resentment.
Claire was careful about that distinction, even in her own head.
Resentment implied blame, and there was none to assign. This wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was simply how the timeline had chosen to arrange itself—one thing leaning into another until the space she’d imagined for quiet had filled without asking.
She’d known it the moment Clancy said immediately.
The song hadn’t waited for January. It had arrived in the narrow window between holidays, when everything was supposed to be held together by courtesy and slowed schedules. Instead, it pounced—fully formed enough to demand attention, unfinished enough to require her.
She watched Jalen and Evan from the edge of the room as they worked through their own set, separate from the main rehearsal. Not casually. Intently. They’d brought something with them from the break—muscle memory sharpened in private, ideas tested without audience. There was no chatter between them, just timing and adjustment, the quiet language of people who’d already decided the work mattered.
Evan caught her eye briefly, question there without pressure.
She shook her head once. Not now.
He nodded and went back to it.
The thought came anyway, uninvited: this was the last stretch before he’d leave again. Tour schedules already sketched in pencil, dates that would harden into ink soon enough. She’d imagined the break differently—longer mornings, fewer rooms, time that wasn’t parceled out by purpose.
Instead, purpose had found her.
She didn’t dramatize it. That wasn’t her way. There was a job to do, and she would do it properly. The song needed finishing. The recording needed to be clean. No hesitation, no indulgence, no letting the moment feel heavier than it was.
Professional meant present.
She folded the thought away and focused on the room, on the way everything was already moving again—Jalen’s count under his breath, Evan resetting his stance, the quiet intensity spreading like heat.
This wasn’t loss. It was overlap.
The break had given them enough to carry forward. Now the work was asking for its share.
Claire stepped back into position as the music started again, letting the rhythm take hold, letting the timeline do what it always did.
Move on.
The Conditions of Return
His name came back to Claire midway through the second meeting, the way inconvenient things always did—late, and with weight.
Rafe Calder.
He said it like it still carried authority. Like the syllables alone explained everything that had happened since.
He listened to the song once.
Didn’t interrupt.
Didn’t comment on the half-finished bridge.
When it ended, he nodded, slow and thoughtful, as if the room had been waiting for his approval.
“It needs to be live,” he said. “One take. No edits. Cabaret rules.”
Claire had expected that.
He talked about atmosphere. About audience proximity. About how the song wouldn’t survive repetition, how it had to feel like a confession overheard rather than a product delivered. He spoke as if time were elastic, as if schedules bent around intent.
That was when Lou stepped in.
Not abruptly. Precisely.
“We can do one live performance,” Lou said, already flipping a page in her notebook. “It will be filmed once. Clean audio. Fixed angles. No reshoots.”
Rafe smiled. “Once isn’t enough.”
“It is,” Lou replied evenly. “Because that’s what exists.”
She didn’t argue his artistic logic. She never did. She simply outlined reality.
“Claire has a locked return to set,” Lou continued. “Location-dense snow shoots. Weather-dependent. Non-movable. This contract”—she tapped the page—“doesn’t flex.”
Claire didn’t look up. She didn’t need to. Lou was doing exactly what she’d asked.
“And Max,” Lou added, “is mid-cycle on multiple promotions. Styling, launches, press commitments already contracted. There’s no spare bandwidth to extend this beyond a single performance.”
Rafe leaned back, assessing. “You’re boxing it in.”
“I’m preserving it,” Lou said. “You get something intact. Or you get nothing.”
Silence followed—not tense, just recalculating.
Rafe finally nodded. “One performance,” he said. “But it has to matter.”
“It will,” Lou replied. “Because it won’t repeat.”
That settled it.
The acceleration didn’t stop there.
By the time Claire left the meeting, Clancy was already waiting with the next complication—Lucid’s calendar tightening, overseas interest spiking again. The group had agreed to one song, deliberately limited, targeted outward rather than domestic.
Lucas would be the center.
Not by ego. By gravity.
His overseas numbers had climbed quietly while no one was looking, old fans resurfacing, new ones finding him without prompting. A return without spectacle. A curve, not a spike.
One song. One push. Clean timing.
Claire approved it without debate.
Someone had to keep the machine moving while she disappeared back into snow and night shoots and long hours that didn’t belong to her anymore.
By the end of the day, Lou’s desk was layered with timelines that overlapped more than they should have. Lucid’s overseas release. The single live performance. Claire’s filming schedule. Max’s obligations. Rafe’s carefully contained return.
Lou didn’t sigh. She never did.
She simply aligned the edges and kept going.
Because this was the season now—not collapse, not rest, but orchestration.
And everything that survived it would do so
because someone had insisted on limits.
New Year's industry party next scene as we wrote it. You have to be there if you're not. It's kind of, yeah. Write the New Year's industry party for Lucid and go from now.
New Year’s Eve — If You’re Not There, You’re Discussed
The party wasn’t loud.
That was the first tell.
It occupied three connected rooms of a private venue that pretended it wasn’t private—industrial bones softened with lighting, drinks poured too carefully to be generous, music calibrated to be present without competing with conversation. This wasn’t celebration. It was attendance.
If you weren’t there, you were a question mark.
Lucid arrived together, not posed, not late enough to be read as dismissive, not early enough to look eager. The balance mattered. It always did.
Claire felt it immediately—the way eyes adjusted, conversations recalibrated, names being mentally ticked off lists. She stayed close to Evan at first, hand briefly at his elbow, grounding herself before letting go. He gave her a look that said I’ll be where you expect me to be, then peeled off toward a cluster already waiting for him.
Lucas was intercepted within seconds.
Not aggressively. Admiringly.
Overseas interest had a different texture—less entitlement, more curiosity. People who hadn’t been in the room for his earlier rise, who weren’t burdened by old narratives. They spoke to him like something unfolding, not something returning.
He handled it well. Calm. Open. No defensive edge.
Jaylen hovered near the bar, scanning, cataloguing. He didn’t drink much tonight. He never did at these things. Too many variables. He caught Claire’s eye once and lifted his glass slightly—acknowledgment, not invitation.
Kayla stayed just behind the main flow, exactly where she’d chosen. Visible, but not exposed. A few people tried to draw her forward
All right, the next scene with Kayla not being drawn forward as she stands beside Max's side as his head stylist or assistant and industry focusing on Lucas at the moment, as the whispers of how things are going ahead for Lucid, as Kayla tries to stay invisible, but Circulatory rumours are already there, as obvious that it may not be in Lucas's best interest at the moment to acknowledge her.
New Year’s Eve — Peripheral Vision
Kayla didn’t move forward.
That was deliberate.
She stayed beside Max, half a step back and to his left, where assistants and stylists were meant to exist—close enough to be useful, distant enough to be overlooked. Max was already in motion, fielding compliments, absorbing industry energy the way he always did, effortless and unbothered by the attention he drew simply by standing still.
Kayla kept her posture neutral. Hands busy. Eyes up, then away.
Lucas was the focus tonight.
It wasn’t subtle. It never was when momentum shifted. Conversations angled toward him without appearing to. Introductions bent in his direction. People spoke around him just loudly enough for him to hear, praise disguised as logistics.
“Overseas is heating up again.”
“Timing’s good.”
“Feels clean this time.”
Kayla caught fragments as they passed like current. Lucid was being discussed in the careful language of people who wanted in without appearing desperate. Futures were being mapped aloud, softly, like if they whispered them they’d come true faster.
She stayed where she was.
A few people noticed her anyway. They always did. A glance that lingered too long. A question half-formed and then swallowed. Rumours had a way of circulating whether or not you participated. Proximity bred speculation. Absence bred it too.
Kayla felt the familiar tightening—the instinct to correct, to clarify, to smooth the narrative before it sharpened.
She didn’t.
Tonight wasn’t hers to manage.
More importantly, it wasn’t in Lucas’s interest for her to be acknowledged right now. Not publicly. Not when his trajectory was finally being read without footnotes. Not when any association could be misinterpreted as complication rather than support.
She knew that. Lucas knew it too.
Their eyes met briefly across the room—no signal, no question. Just understanding. He gave a faint nod and turned back to the conversation he was in, letting the moment pass without naming it.
Kayla exhaled slowly.
Max leaned toward her, voice low. “You good?”
“Yes,” she said. And she meant it.
Invisibility, used correctly, was a skill.
She adjusted a cuff. Passed Max a note about a fabric pull she’d spotted earlier. Stayed exactly where she was meant to be while the room continued to orbit someone else.
Rumours would do what rumours did.
Momentum would carry who it chose.
Kayla didn’t fight it.
She let the night move past her, intact and unclaimed, knowing that sometimes the smartest way through a room like this was not to enter it at all.
Lou — Reading the Room
Lou arrived the way she always did: already there, already working.
She didn’t need a drink to justify her presence, didn’t need to cluster or circulate. She stood where sightlines crossed naturally, where entrances reflected in glass and conversations revealed themselves without invitation.
Rafe Coulter was impossible to miss.
Not because he was loud—he wasn’t—but because the room adjusted around him. Industry had long since agreed on how to treat Wrath: with tolerance edged by expectation. He belonged here. If he hadn’t shown up, people would have noticed. Worse, they would have speculated.
His priorities tonight were obvious.
Impress.
Reassert.
Remind.
He moved with intent, laughter pitched just low enough to feel private, charm deployed like currency he knew still spent. He wasn’t excluded. He never was. He was simply kept on a different ledger.
Lou clocked him the moment she entered.
Claire had done her part—everything she could have, everything she should have. The song was finished. Recorded. Shaped exactly once, with no excess left to carve away. All that remained was the live performance. One night. One take. One document.
Rafe knew it too.
Lou watched the way his attention tracked conversations about timing, about filming, about rooms with the right acoustics and no margin for error. He didn’t ask questions outright. He let people offer information instead.
That was when she felt it.
Not alarm.
Recognition.
Mara entered the room like she belonged to it—not dramatic, not deferential. She moved on the diagonal, intersecting without colliding, her presence calibrated to suggest inevitability rather than ambition.
Lou didn’t move. She didn’t need to.
She watched Mara’s eyes land on Rafe,
Of course.
Mara was always looking for leverage that arrived pre-loaded with access. Wrath fit the profile perfectly: history-rich, boundary-light, connected to private lives that were never fully private. He knew things. He remembered things. He could imply without ever stating.
Lou’s instincts sharpened—not panic, not irritation. Assessment.
Mara approached Wrath with a smile that carried just enough warmth to feel familiar. Their greeting was unremarkable. That was the danger of it.
Lou noted distance. Angle. Duration.
This wasn’t alliance.
This was reconnaissance.
Mara didn’t need Wrath loyal. She needed him adjacent. A reminder to the room that narratives could still be nudged, that nothing stayed sealed forever.
Lou exhaled once, slow.
She didn’t interrupt. Not yet.
Instead, she adjusted the flow around them—redirected a producer’s attention, anchored a conversation near the bar, subtly altered the geometry so that what looked private became observable.
Wrath laughed at something Mara said. Too easily.
Lou filed it away.
Claire had already given everything required. The song existed. The performance would happen. Nothing tonight would be allowed to interfere with that.
Mara could circle.
Wrath could posture.
The room could speculate.
Lou stayed exactly where she was, watching the currents shift.
Allies revealed themselves eventually—not by what they said, but by where they chose to stand.
And Lou never missed that.
End of Night — What Carries Home
They left before midnight.
Not dramatically. Not pointedly. Just early enough that no one could pretend it meant anything more than preference.
Evan held Claire’s coat while she slipped her arms into it, the movement automatic, practiced from years of exits like this. The venue behind them still hummed—music tightening, voices loosving, the industry settling into its second, louder skin.
“I hate those rooms,” Evan said as they stepped out into the cold.
Claire exhaled, the air fogging briefly between them. “I don’t hate them. I just don’t like who they’re for.”
He smiled at that. “That’s worse.”
They walked without rushing, hands brushing, then linking. No security drama, no posturing. Just the quiet relief of distance.
“Lucas handled it well,” Evan added after a moment. “They’re circling him hard.”
“They always do when they sense lift,” Claire said. “It’s clean right now. I want it to stay that way.”
“And Rafe?” Evan asked.
Claire considered. “He’s… contained. Subsidiary, stylistically. Useful in a very narrow window.”
Evan nodded. He understood what she meant: someone you didn’t invite closer, but couldn’t pretend didn’t exist. Someone who required handling, not engagement.
They reached the car. Evan opened the door for her, then paused, leaning in before she sat.
“I’m glad we left together,” he said quietly.
Claire looked up at him, softened. “Me too.”
Inside, the city blurred past, the night folding in on itself. Whatever the party had wanted from them, it didn’t get it.
They didn’t see the afterparty.
They didn’t need to.
Mara did.
She stayed long enough for the room to loosen, for the drinks to tilt conversations into carelessness. She moved the way she always did at this hour—lighter, warmer, just removed enough to feel like a reward when she focused on someone.
Rafe Caulder noticed.
He always did.
She didn’t corner him. She passed. Brushed his arm lightly as she moved by. Looked back once, smile small, deliberate.
As she stepped away, she mouthed it—not exaggerated, not theatrical.
Call me.
Rafe laughed to himself, indulgent, pleased. Of course he would. There was time. There was always time after.
They ended up seated together later, drinks untouched between them, conversation drifting the way it did when two people believed they were trading anecdotes rather than information.
Mara listened.
She always listened.
Rafe talked about the song. About Claire’s precision. About how much she’d changed. He talked about Lucid, about how focused they seemed, how aligned.
Then, casually—carelessly—he mentioned Lucas.
“Different energy now,” Rafe said, swirling his glass. “He’s back in it. You can feel it.”
Mara tilted her head. “Can you?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “And close with Kayla. Very close. Keeps things tight. Smart.”
Mara smiled into her drink.
There it was.
Not scandal. Not mess. Momentum.
Lucas rising. Kayla adjacent. A narrative not yet shaped.
Delight flickered—brief, controlled, unmistakable. Not because she planned to destroy it. Because she now knew where to press.
She leaned back, satisfied, already mapping how this would surface later—not loudly, not immediately.
Just enough.
The night wound down around them, the afterparty thinning into fragments. Rafe stayed, charmed by the attention, unaware of what he’d handed over.
Mara left exactly when she meant to.
Somewhere else, Lucid slept.
And the story, quietly, kept moving.
Mara — Threads She Doesn’t Touch Herself
Mara didn’t rush it.
She never contacted people when they were angry.
Anger burned fast, left residue, made stories sloppy.
She waited for entitlement.
That was different. Entitlement lingered. It justified itself. It believed it was owed a second act.
Kayla’s past sat neatly in that category.
The ex wasn’t hard to find. He never was. Men like him stayed visible because they mistook presence for relevance. He had already tried to orbit once on his own and failed—not loudly, just enough to learn he needed backing.
Mara didn’t introduce herself as Mara.
She didn’t need to.
She came through a mutual, someone who framed the contact as concern rather than opportunity. A quiet message. A coffee offered. A suggestion that people were finally listening again.
She let him talk first.
He always did.
He spoke about Kayla the way men like him always did—half grievance, half nostalgia, as if proximity in the past granted commentary forever. He talked about how she’d changed, how she’d become managed, how people around her decided things now.
Mara listened.
Then she tilted the conversation.
“Lucas,” she said lightly, like it was an aside. “He’s doing well.”
That landed.
The ex’s posture shifted. Interest sharpened. The word well did the work for her.
“People are watching him in the West again,” Mara continued. “Momentum like that… it doesn’t love complications.”
She didn’t say Kayla’s name.
She didn’t have to.
The ex filled in the gap himself.
“You think there’s a story there,” he said.
Mara smiled, gentle. “I think there’s history. And history has a way of surfacing when people pretend it doesn’t exist.”
She framed it carefully.
Not revenge.
Not exposure.
Clarification.
“There are narratives being written without you,” she said. “That’s usually when people start remembering things differently.”
He leaned forward. “What would you want?”
Mara met his gaze, steady. “Nothing illegal. Nothing dramatic. Just… timing. And truth, as you remember it.”
She let the implication breathe.
Lucas’s track was already rising overseas. That was the key. The higher it climbed, the more fragile the surface became. Western press loved context. Loved backstory. Loved tension framed as intimacy.
And Kayla—quiet, adjacent, deliberately unseen—was the perfect pressure point.
The ex nodded slowly, already convinced this was his moment to be heard again. To matter again.
Mara didn’t promise protection. She never did.
She promised relevance.
When they parted, she didn’t follow up. Didn’t check in. Didn’t manage him.
That wasn’t her role.
Her role was to loosen the seal and let gravity do the rest.
As she walked away, phone slipping back into her bag, Mara allowed herself one small satisfaction—not triumph, not glee.
Precision.
Lucas didn’t know it yet. Kayla didn’t either.
But the story had just gained a second narrator.
And Mara had made sure it wouldn’t sound accidental.
The Live Performance — One Take That Wasn’t
It was meant to be simple.
One room.
One camera setup.
One live performance, filmed clean, archived, finished.
Claire knew better the moment the director started talking.
Not loudly. Not badly. Just with the confidence of someone who believed reinterpretation was improvement.
“Cabaret,” he said, hands moving. “But… elevated. Kinetic. A little danger.”
Claire closed her eyes for half a second.
“No choreography,” Lou had approved.
No embellishment.
No spectacle.
None of those approvals were on-site.
What was on-site was momentum.
The director had already reblocked the space, already brought in dancers under the phrase movement consultants, already shifted lighting cues to favor silhouettes and skin and motion. Burlesque-adjacent. Cabaret-adjacent. All technically defensible. All slightly wrong.
Claire sang anyway.
Because once the cameras rolled, stopping only made things worse.
By the second take, her dress caught.
A sharp sound—too small to register in the room, too loud to ignore when she moved. Beading from Matta’s original piece split along the seam, scattering onto the floor like punctuation.
They stopped.
Someone swore under their breath.
Taylor was called immediately—pulled from another floor, another problem. She arrived calm, assessed the damage, shook her head once.
“I can fix it,” she said. “But not fast.”
The director seized the gap.
“Let’s extend,” he suggested. “Lean into the movement. Make it intentional.”
Claire stared at him.
This was not the agreement.
But the agreement wasn’t here.
So they extended.
Burlesque elements threaded in—controlled, stylized, never explicit, but undeniably more. Cabaret turns sharpened. Bodies crossed her eyeline. The song bent around it, survived it.
By the final take, she was exhausted in a way that felt earned and stolen at the same time.
They wrapped late.
No applause. Just relief.
Kayla found her afterward, perched on a crate with a bottle of water, heels off, dress finally repaired enough to hang again.
“That was… a day,” Kayla said.
Claire laughed weakly. “That’s generous.”
Kayla handed her the bottle. “You survived Rafe Caulder’s gravitational pull. That’s a skill.”
“Barely,” Claire said. “He’s important in a way that requires three people to manage.”
Kayla smiled. “He always is.”
They sat for a moment, the noise of teardown filling the space where adrenaline had been.
“I’ve got another shoot lined up,” Kayla added. “Neon Pulse. New label—Sarang Labs. Tech-lifestyle crossover. Very them.”
Claire groaned lightly. “Of course you do.”
“Of course I do,” Kayla agreed. “No rest. Only sequencing.”
Claire leaned her head back against the wall. “Tell them I’m happy for them.”
“I will,” Kayla said. “After I sleep for a week.”
They shared a look—tired, amused, aligned.
Another release waiting.
Another demand answered.
And one live performance finally, mercifully, done.
Residuals and Replicas
Serang Labs dropped eight designs quietly.
No announcement. No fallout. Just a line moved into a calendar, a conversation rerouted. By the time Kayla mentioned it again, it was already a sure thing her first brand collaboration to honour for NP
Rafe Caulder, to her mild surprise, knew exactly which label she meant.
“Timing shifted,” he’d said, like that explained everything. “It always does.”
Which was true enough.
What Kayla didn’t know yet—what she would only piece together later—was how fast information traveled once it was no longer protected by intent.
Caullder was the first vector.
He didn’t bring it to Mara as a plan. He brought it as a curiosity. A mention. A passing observation about jackets, about a shoot, about how distinctive the art direction had been.
Mara listened.
She always did.
The Koi jackets had been Kayla’s original art design work—eight designs in total, after spending time at the Aurion Heights pond, each one part of a closed visual cycle. She’d chosen five for the upcoming shoot, each marked by its own balance of motion and stillness. The others were held back, not rejected, just waiting.
Mara didn’t have access to the originals.
So she did what she did best.
She researched.
She dug through old archives, old lookbooks, old conversations. She reached out to people she hadn’t spoken to in years costume assistants, stylists, department heads who’d once passed through the Apex Prism clothing floor before moving on. She didn’t ask directly. She let memory do the work for her.
Enough fragments surfaced from Kayla’s previous work at Apex Prism to piece together her collaboration and inspiration that held close to Serang Labs signature pieces mainly custom varsity jackets and timeless pieces.
Enough angles.
Enough to reconstruct.
When she finally chose, she went for the most symbolically loaded of the eight—the one with the sun and the two koi, circling in opposition. Yin and yang. Dusk and dawn. Eclipse rendered as harmony.
Perfect.
Her costume department moved fast. They always did. The replica wasn’t exact—it never was—but it was close enough to pass at a glance, especially once neon lighting and sponsorship overlays softened the lines.
Gifted posts followed. Tagged images. Strategic timing.
Mara watched it roll out with a quiet sense of satisfaction.
Not because she’d stolen it.
Because she’d matched it just enough to muddy authorship.
Leftovers always ended up at Max’s warehouse.
That was the rule.
Anything gifted, anything overstocked, anything that couldn’t be placed cleanly in a campaign found its way there eventually. Max hated waste. He redistributed what he could—assistants, stylists, friends. No hierarchy. Just utility.
Claire spotted the jacket immediately.
The original.
The koi and the sun. The balance intact. The stitching precise in a way copies never quite managed.
She lifted it from the rack, turning it in her hands. It was heavier than it looked. Thoughtful. Intentional.
She smiled.
This, she decided, would fix the Christmas misfire.
Evan had loved the sweater she’d borrowed months ago and never returned—loved it in theory, at least. In practice, he rarely wore it anymore. Too recognizable. Too easily spotted in public. It had migrated to the back of his cupboard, then slowly into her rotation instead.
This jacket felt different.
Something he would like.
Something he might not wear often.
Something she would probably end up borrowing anyway.
She brought it home folded over her arm, already imagining his reaction—mild surprise, careful approval, the way he’d pretend not to be pleased before wearing it once and then guarding it like a secret.
If he didn’t wear it, she would.
That, too, felt right.
Outside, the industry kept moving—replicas circulating, narratives blurring, designs echoing where they didn’t belong.
Inside their space, the original waited quietly.
And for once, that was enough.
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