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Callie would call it billionaire arrogance mask.

But it’s not that. It’s something deeper. My first thought is sinister. Except that isn’t quite right either. My intuition is telling me Callie really is okay and that I should talk to them. My intuition has been telling me a lot of things tonight and I have been calling it nerves.

“Then what?” I look at both of them. “What is this?”

“Come on.” Enzo tries again but I pull away.

“You have to give me something or I’m going to freak out.” Mostly true. I’m already freaking out.

Again Enzo and Leif share a look.

“It’s about your blood,” Leif finally says.

“And now if you would, welcome to the stage Hadley Astaroth. Without her none of this would have been possible tonight.” I hear my name called, and it feels like someone else is calling my name, from a different body. A different time even.

“We will take you to Callie after your speech,” Leif says, softer this time.

“Don’t lie to me about Callie.” My mouth opens before I tell it to. But I can’t stop she’s the only good thing I have left in this world. “Anything else, fine. But not her.” I look over my shoulder at the crowd clapping and waiting for me, and when I look back at Leif— “I’m adopted.”

It comes out flat. It comes out like I’m trying to prove they have the wrong person. It comes out like the thing I have spent thirty-two years not putting on the table because the table never asked.

“We know,” Enzo says.

And there is the table asking.

Somewhere behind me a man with a microphone is still saying my name. I can hear the donors clapping. I can hear my own pulse in the satin at my collarbone. I can hear, also, my body, which is the loudest of the three and which knows something my mind doesn’t.

Telling me that the man on my left is the realest thing that has ever happened to me, and the man on my right is the consequence, and the door I walked through tonight closed behind me a long time ago.

So I do the only thing I can in that moment, I walk to the stage wearing guilt as a cape because I’m not running after Callie.

Chapter Five

“…Andso it is my honor to present to you our annual fundraiser in Angela’s name, to see that her work continues on, that her legacy lives through each and every one of us…” I pause as I raise my glass full of bubbling apple juice. Sober from here on out. “To Angela Sanguine. A pioneer in the preservation of history.”

A round of applause rises through the hall. Glasses clink and guests clap.

But I’m pretending. Smiling for the crowd. Raising my glass and sipping the sweet liquid. It rolls through me cooling me from the inside out. I can feel it hit the back of my tongue and glide down my throat.

At least the juice goes down. The champagne earlier didn’t. The champagne earlier I spit back into the glass like a woman who’d seen a ghost.

And all through it? Callie remains quiet.

Callie. My favorite person. The one who should be up here with her doctorate. With her knowledge and pride and ability to connect dots I could only dream of.

And she’s quiet in my ear.

No jokes about how the museum comes alive at night like the movies. How all lore stems from truth. Or how I should get laid.

Just the static that crackles in my ear every so often reminding me how alone I am up here on stage. I know I should slip back into myself, be present in my body. Aware.

I can’t.

The moment I allow reality to crash back on my shoulders is the moment I demand to see my girl. And I need to keep my shit together, at least until I see her breathing.

Holding onto my flute, I step back from the podium. The lights are too much, hot and insufferable.

Through it all, Enzo and Leif remain at the entrance as though I’m going to take off.