Page 18 of The Silver Fox Brother

"You didn't have to. Your face just did."

"My face did not—"

"It absolutely did. You got this little expression. This thoughtful, distant thing, like you're remembering something specific."

"I'm remembering that he exists and showed up to his parents' party for approximately twenty minutes before leaving."

"Twenty minutes?" Kate asks.

"If that. He came in, said hello to his parents, nodded at Rowan from across the room, and then left."

"Did they talk? Knox and Rowan?"

"No. Just the nod. Very formal, very distant. Someone at theparty told me they can barely be in the same room without the temperature dropping."

Amy whistles low. "Family dynamics. Got to love them."

"Rowan was pretty bitter about it," I say, remembering the edge in his voice.

"He made some comment about Knox thinking he's too good for the family, for the business, for all of it."

"Is he?" Kate asks. "Too good for it?"

I consider the question. "I don't know if it's about being too good. It seemed more like... he needed to build something that was his. Not inherited, not expected. His own."

"That's actually kind of admirable," Kate says.

"It is. But it also makes Rowan crazy because Rowan wants the inheritance, the legacy, the approval. And Knox walked away from all of it like it meant nothing."

"Which probably makes Conrad crazy too," Amy adds.

"Imagine grooming your oldest son to take over the empire and he just... leaves. Starts competing with you instead."

"I can't even imagine. The whole family is—" I stop, searching for the right word.

"Complicated doesn't even cover it."

"And you're dating into the middle of all that complication," Kate points out.

"I'm dating Rowan. Not his family."

"Are you though? Because from where I'm sitting, the family comes with the territory. You can't separate them."

She's right, of course. The Sterlings are a package deal. Dating Rowan means navigating Diane's expectations, Conrad's assessments, the ghost of Knox's rejection hanging over everything. It means performing at garden parties and charity galas, means being measured against standards I'll never fully understand because I wasn't born into them.

"Can we talk about something else?" I ask. "Anything else?"

"Your project," Kate says immediately.

"Tell us about the Chen penthouse. Real details, not the sanitized version."

I grab onto the subject change like a lifeline. For the next twenty minutes, I tell them about the Chen project—the scope, the budget, the design direction. Amy asks about color palettes and Kate wants to know about timeline and logistics. They're genuinely interested, asking follow-up questions, celebrating the details that Rowan would dismiss as boring.

This is what I needed. Not judgment about Rowan, not analysis of my relationship, just my two best friends being excited about my work because they understand it matters.

"Three and a half million," Amy says when I finish.

"Win, that's incredible. That's career-defining."