A Kiss For Three

chapter 17

I didn’t tell them about Steve. They had their own fires—Nico’s palace show suddenly “indecorous,” or, as Adrian translated, “noncompliant with rich-people taste.” He was the sponsor, which made him diplomat by default. The jokes were gone; that’s how I knew it was bad.

We learned the mess at dawn, the three of us slouched in a bar that forgot to close. Nico vented in spirals—light, scale, a donor who treated bodies like currency. Adrian said almost nothing. When he’s quiet, his brain is bleeding.

So I stayed out of their way and out of my own—walking, not working. Sunday put on its movie-version of Manhattan: milk-crate Motown, a kid in a cape, couples arguing tenderly about cilantro. Nostalgia punched without consent. I was still inside an old dark apartment when I ran into a very current problem.

“Watch it—” I started, then saw his face. Of course.

“Great,” I said. “Just what I needed.”

“Ah,” Steve said, pleased, squeezing the hand of the woman beside him. “It’s you. Meet Jennifer—my fiancée.”

She was sun-cast to my city-pale, with a glossy-ad smile. I angled to pass. She stepped in front.

“Iris, right? Steve’s ex.”

“Apparently that’s my full legal name,” I said. “Enjoy your day.”

“Don’t be jealous,” Steve called, velvet-hook voice. “It’s okay to be alone.”

The old wound opened its eye—then a hand closed around mine. Warm. Sure.

“Who says she’s alone?” Nico, smiling like he’d been there all along.

Steve’s smirk flickered, then reassembled. “Have a good day,” he said, tugging Jennifer along like a bag. He didn’t look back. I exhaled.

Nico kept my hand until the street made space. “I was looking for you,” he said. “Your assistant said you were walking. Lucky guess.” His eyes tipped toward Steve’s retreat. “That the ex you screamed about on the roof?”

“Yep.”

He dipped a hand into his coat, produced a slim envelope. “For you.”

A heavy, embossed ticket: Moreau: A Body of Light. One week. The palace that didn’t love him back.

“I want you there,” he said.

“That might be… complicated.”

“With Camille and Serena,” he said, naming the teeth. “I know.”

“And cameras. Enemies in windows.”

“Private entrances. And Adrian’s already threatening to pull funding if they don’t grow a spine.”

“Which part?”

“All the parts.” His mouth lifted. “Say you’ll come.”

I should’ve recited a ruin chart. Instead I pictured standing in a room of his work while he watched my face change. “Okay,” I heard myself say.

He set down an invisible weight. “Good.”

We walked two blocks in companionable silence. “You okay?” he asked.

“Mostly. That was… inconvenient.”

“Want to tell me about him?”

“No. Yes. Not today.”

He nodded like that was the only right answer. “Adrian’s in meetings. He thinks you’re hiding.”

“I’ve been… taking smaller breaths.”

“Take a bigger one,” he murmured.

A storefront threw us back: painter and spy, cosplaying civilians. It almost made me laugh. Almost made me cry.

“Coffee?” he asked.

We drank standing, paper cups warming our fingers. He sketched the gallery battle: a heritage board suddenly binding a nonbinding clause; a donor wanting a painting’s soul since he couldn’t afford its skin.

“You’ll win,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“You’re too stubborn to lose.”

He grinned, briefly boyish. “I like your data.”

“You wouldn’t. It’s all feeling.”

He walked me to my building like he was humoring my independence, touched my wrist—light as a footnote. “Text me when you’re in.”

“I’m not twelve.”

“Then do it for me.” He left me on the sidewalk with my heartbeat recommitting to itself.

Upstairs smelled like paper and stubbornness. My hand was still curled as if it remembered being held. I set the ticket on my desk and tried to work. I failed in competent ways: read dossiers about men whose betrayals were comfortingly predictable; finished the bones of a baron’s ruin; texted Serena: Still working, almost there; and Camille: progress steady; Nico is careful.

Lies that fit like clothes I should’ve burned.

Evening leaned in.

Adrian: We may have a path with the venue. Can you talk? I typed: Later. Stared at the word as if it would confess.

A knock derailed the pep talk. Instinct spiked. Peephole. Adrian.

He looked like a man who’d solved one problem and wanted to celebrate before the next one woke up. Casual jacket, loosened tie, eyes bright.

“I texted later,” I said, opening the door halfway.

“I got impatient.” He read my face. “You okay?”

“I ran into a ghost,” I said, hating it immediately.

He studied me with a long breath. “Want to tell me about it?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay. Then take a small victory.” He toed the door shut, stepped in. “Venue might be good. I called in a favor from someone who hates me in public and owes me in private. Papers clean by Tuesday.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I did, because I like watching Nico win.” His gaze slid to the ticket between my fingers. “And I like watching you watch him win.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I’m observant.” He took the ticket, read it, handed it back like a vow. “You’ll be there.”

“Apparently.”

“Good.” He leaned on my desk—impolitely, familiarly. The fire-escape memory hummed between us, the wire we kept not crossing.

“Adrian,” I said—warning or plea, unclear.

He straightened, pockets swallowing his hands. “Breathe,” he said, almost teasing. “Take the bigger one, like he told you.”

“Are you two coordinating your scripts now?”

“We’re improvising. Badly.”

We ended up on the couch with bad tea, talking about nothing, tomorrow, nothing again. My phone kept buzzing; I kept ignoring. Eventually he stood, reluctant, like a gentleman in an old movie who didn’t want to say goodnight.

“At the opening,” he said at the door, “if it gets loud, I’ll find you.” He tapped the ticket. “Promise.”

“Promises are expensive.”

“Good thing I’m a sponsor.” He left me smiling against my will.

Alone, I watched the city blink. I should’ve told him about Steve. I didn’t. I should’ve told Nico the same. I didn’t. Instead I held on to the only clean thing left: the idea of a night where art won and the board blinked first.

The ticket waited like a dare. I laid it across two files—COLE and MOREAU—and slid both aside, a ceremonial five minutes of choosing life.

The phone lit again: Serena—polite pressure; Camille—surgical urgency. I typed nothing. I turned off the lamp. In the dark, I could almost hear the café lights on the roof humming their domestic hymn.

Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll be braver. I’ll pry at the seam in this mess, find the hand that stitched it. Tomorrow I’ll tell the truth or weaponize it.

Tonight I let the promise sit warm in my palm: art, a clean entrance, a private corridor, and a field of eyes that wouldn’t see what mattered. Tonight I chose the bigger breath.