Page 31 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

The cologne. Citrus and something warmer under it, soap or skin. He'd presumably worn cologne for five years. I'd simply never been in the state of attention I was in tonight.

Evelyn lifted her flute. "To another good year at Centennial."

Glasses clinked. As I set mine down, Derek's eyes lingered past the end of the toast. Steady. I held it for a count and looked at my plate.

The dress. A man in black tie at the same table. That was all.

Allie leaned in. "Mr. Harrington, we're hoping to expand pediatric imaging. A cardiac MRI suite. Lacey's leading the charge."

I picked up the cue. "With Jessica in mind. Better resolution. Fewer invasive tests. Earlier interventions."

Derek carefully arranged his silverware. Then picked up a fork and aimed at the walnut on his salad plate. He took his time with it.

"Eight figures for marginal gains," he said. The dry low tone from board rounds.

I straightened. The strap of my dress slid half an inch with the motion and I felt every millimeter of it.

"MRI gets tissue characterization that ultrasound can't. Fibrosis. Earlier and safer means earlier soccer."

Jonah chuckled. "She's a negotiator, Derek."

Derek's mouth twitched. His eyes came back to mine and stayed a few moments, then went back to his plate, and I couldn't have told you his reaction. That was the trouble with the state I was in. It kept editorializing.

He picked a roll out of the basket and set it on my bread plate without asking. "Try it. Better than it looks."

I took a bite.

"You're right."

His eyes crinkled. The not-quite-smile. "Not everything I say is wrong."

The dinner happened around me. I traded a few sentences with Evelyn about the new dean, answered Elena about her son's college list, and spent most of my attention on the job of staying inside my own skin, which had picked tonight to keep announcing itself. The dress wasn't helping. I kept feeling the strap shift and reset.

Derek didn't dance. He didn't work the room. He answered the board members who came to him in short, flat sentences and sent them off, and every so often, without turning his head, his eyes found mine and held a second and let go. Each time a small nod, like we were two people sharing the private joke of having to be here. Each time the hum answered, low, and I told it again to quiet down.

Sometime after the plates were cleared, Jonah, two glasses in and feeling expansive, leaned down the table toward Derek.

"I have to ask." He waved his glass at the room, the banners, the foundation's name on the program. "All this. Does it make you happy? Giving it away like this. It must."

Derek turned his wine glass a quarter turn on the cloth and didn't answer right away.

"You can't control joy," he said. "Sometimes you have it and then it's gone."

The table didn't catch it. Jonah was already nodding like he thought he'd heard something profound. But I caught the pause that came after, the half second where Derek wasn't at the table at all, somewhere back behind his own eyes. Then he looked up and blinked, and came back into the room, and the reserve closed over it like water.

"Anyway, you don't have to be happy to accomplish important things."

And there it was, the line Jonah would remember, the grim and faintly superior thing that fit everything I already believed about this man. Duty over feeling, joy beside the point. I'd known men like that. I was raised by one.

Except.

The first thing he'd said. You can't control joy. Sometimes you have it and then it's gone, like a fact about the weather.

Around ten, the program started. Speeches. A video montage. Jessica's crayon heart with wings on the screen and Derek's small exhale beside me, just audible. I didn't look at him. I felt him not looking back.

Then the auction. Napa weekend for six figures. Chef's dinner for more. When Allie thanked the leadership donors from the podium with a nod to Mr. Harrington, Derek lifted his glass in a half-toast and his face did nothing else.

I leaned over during the applause, close enough that I had to think about the distance. "You could've at least smiled for the camera."