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Her fingers gently twist a lock of my hair.

“Got caught up,” I grumble, which is not a lie.

“Clearly.” She signals at the empty tumbler in front of me. “Why don’t you get another drink then?”

“No.” It’s immediate. “I’m done here.”

I can’t sit in here for another second with the thoughts of Ellise on my mind. I need the distraction of Nancy, and I need it right now.

Nancy blinks, surprised for a second before her expression darkens. She reads the raw edge in my voice perfectly.

“Well.” She pulls back enough to look at me, as she stands and slides out of the booth and tugs gently on my collar. “Let’s go. You look like you desperately need to work off some of that tension.”

Yes. I think as I reach into my pocket and throw a few hundred-dollar bills onto the dark quartz table without counting them—cutting out whatever dramatic commentary Theo is about to chime in with.

Yes. That is exactly what I need.

The walk back to my Manhattan townhouse is a blur of cold October wind and Nancy’s mindless chatter. Her voice fills the air with a light, surface-level commentary. Usually, her voice is a welcome relief from the suffocating pressure of the Academy, but tonight it is white noise.

I am aware of how rude I must seem, but I don’t even give a shit.

She knows what she’s getting herself into. She knows exactly what I’m like.

“You were practically snarling at Theo when I walked in,” she notes, her voice light and teasing as she hooks her arm tightly through mine to shield herself from the wind. “Seriously, Julian, what’s the matter with you tonight? It’s clearly something.”

“Long day,” I grumble, reaching up with my free hand to pull my collar up higher against the damp chill. “Mathias has been on my case about the showcase. The usual academic bullshit.”

She accepts it. She has learned that I give exactly as much information as I want to give and precisely none beyond that. She has never actively tried to change this, which is one of the things that has made his arrangement function so well.

“Mmm.” She leans the weight of her head against my shoulder as we walk, her perfume filling my senses. “Well, I think I have a much better way for you to spend the rest of your night,” she whispers, looking up at me through a curtain of blonde bangs, her hazel eyes bright with a blatant invitation I would normally jump at without a second thought.

“Sounds like a plan.” The words feel heavy and strained. As we approach the townhouse steps, I am already beginning to question bringing her back with me.

The townhouse itself is everything Belrose is not. It’s private and entirely my own—when my father isn’t around, that is—which is most of the time. I suppose my father’s pathological habit of acquiring real estate has paid off for me in one way. I don’t know how the hell I would have survived in the residence halls. The suffocating intimacy of being that close to others. Shared walls. People at all hours in the corridors outside your door. Zero privacy. I needed space from all the noise. I always have needed the space.

Mum understood that need. She was exactly the same way. She needed a room with a piano and a door that locked from the inside, and she never once apologised for it. My father viewed it as a character flaw.

They were so different that sometimes I wonder how they were together at all. They argued about money. Not because we didn’t have enough—because we had too much—we didn’t need anymore. Mum told my father that she wanted him at home with us—that time was more precious than the endless money. He never saw it that way. Apparently he was ‘providing’ for his family.

But oddly, despite the fractures, they loved each other. They had since they were eighteen. Mum told me the story once.

They’d met in London when she was doing her undergraduate music course at the Royal College of Music.

Mum had come all the way from Scottsdale, Arizona. Her family belonged to that staggering tier of American wealth, owning a sprawling gated luxury ranch nestled against the desert mountains.

Alistair, my father—a Londoner himself—had been captivated by her, over a drunken performance of an Elton John song in some dive in Camden town. They fell in love and she never left. She never returned home, only for visits. I remember it vaguely when I was younger.

Everyone thought they were crazy, and that it wouldn’t last, but they proved them all wrong.

London was home, until I turned three.

That was the year everything started to change.

The year that Thorne & Bell really started to take off globally. We moved to New York, and straight into the high-stakes world of corporate real estate—when Carmela joined the family as my nanny.

Carmela originally came from a small town outside Naples. Apparently with nothing but a single battered suitcase, and what I expect was an extremely optimistic assessment of the Thorne family. Somehow, miraculously, she stayed. She stayed through the horror of my mum’s illness, and the dark years after, watching while Alistair became the cold version of himself that arrived after the funeral and never entirely left. I don’t quite know what I’d do without her.

I look up at the towering façade of the townhouse as I guide Nancy toward the steps.