She pivots on her Louboutins and starts toward the door with a smile on her face. I turn to discover she’s headed for an old friend. I’m ten steps closer and a foot taller. I catch Cyrus Eaton before she can reach him. Now she has a real choice to make. Fight or flight. Maybe she’s finally shed her skin to become the woman she wears like a glove. Adair hesitates before backing away and disappearing into the crowd.
Maybe not.
I’m not surprised. Cyrus, on the other hand, is. He takes a second to process me before his hand claps on my shoulder, dragging me into a hug. “Sterling Ford. What the fuck?”
Trust him to get straight to the point.
“How long has it been? Five years?” he continues as we break apart. “I didn’t know you were back in Valmont.”
“Nashville, actually,” I tell him.
“Visiting?” Cyrus can mine someone for information more efficiently than a computer virus. It’s his particular talent and one he’s put to good use on the stock market. Unlike most men I’d met who’d made their name in day trading, Cyrus shows no signs of stress or premature aging. Likely because he would never need the money he made there. Playing the market is exactly that for him: a game. Not a high stakes one like poker or black jack. Investing millions was no more than Monopoly to him. His mess of blond hair is closely cropped now, stubble dusts his jaw, but his smile is feline and familiar.
“I have a place off Broadway.” He didn’t need to know more than that. Cyrus isn’t on my list, but that doesn’t mean I trust him.
“We should do dinner. Poppy should be home from Paris later this week. She went to the spring shows with her mother.” He shrugs as though this is a perfectly normal thing for a grown woman to do. For people here, it is. I have nothing against Cyrus or his girlfriend. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the closest thing to decent humans this town has ever produced. That doesn’t mean they’re in touch with reality.
That’s the real problem with Valmont: it exists within its own bubble of exclusivity. Close enough to Nashville to commute but with enough space to spread, it attracts the rich, the refined, and the renowned. It also has the real estate market to match. The average home price is well over the million-dollar mark. In my time here, I’d seen the elitism first hand. They passed off the snobbery as high society, and even the kindest among them, like Cyrus and Poppy, had no perception of reality. When you’re born with a trust fund, vacation homes, and household staff, how could you?
There are two tricks for surviving the Valmont enclave. The first is to understand them—what drives them, what scares them, what informs them. The second is to never become them.
I might have made a fortune since my time here, but I will never be one of them. Not that they would ever let me.
“This is terrible, isn’t it?” Cyrus lowers his voice, watching someone over my shoulder. I know exactly who has his attention without having to turn. He always watched over Adair. There was a time when I appreciated that. Now I want to shake some goddamn sense into him. “Losing her dad after…”
I mutter a half-hearted agreement. Part of me agrees with him. The rest of me is over it. Lots of people lose their fathers. Lots of people have sad stories. Why does hers matter more than the rest?
“At least she had time to prepare,” he says.
“Was he sick for long?” I ask, pretending like I don’t already know. When I had heard the MacLaine family patriarch was ill, I’d celebrated at a two-star Michelin restaurant and ordered champagne for the house.
“A few years. It was good of you to come, especially after you left things with her.” He claps a hand on my shoulder, its weight heavy with implication. He knows more than most about how my relationship with Adair ended, but he doesn’t know everything.
“The past is exactly that.” I mean it. I have no interest in the boy I used to be or the girl she was. But I’m invested in what happens next. Too many people think revenge is about the past. It’s not. It’s about the future. You can’t destroy the past. All you can do is ruin what’s to come.
“I should…” He trails off, leaving an invitation hanging in the air.
“I came to pay my respects,” I tell him. “Adair doesn’t even remember me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Then she doesn’t want to see me,” I say. Cyrus looks like he wants to contradict this but can’t. We both know it’s true. She had her chance five years ago. She knows I’m here. I caught her looking at me. Maybe she’s trying to place me. Women like her throw away men as though we’re disposable. “Is she seeing someone?”
“Many a man has tried.” Cyrus grins conspiratorially. “Money’s tried a couple of times.”
I smother a growl. There are things I missed about Tennessee— hot chicken, good music, and muggy, summer nights—but I have never once missed Montgomery West.
“Still no love lost there, I see,” Cyrus murmurs.
“Bygones,” I force out. I have reasons to hate “Money” West that would sway even his oldest friend. I keep them to myself. Information is only currency when it’s in one man’s pocket.
“I should check on Adair. I promised Poppy,” Cyrus reiterates his mission. “We should get together, though. I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to the last few years.”
Translation: he
