He cared. She believed that. He was attentive in the specific way of someone who pays close attention to everything, and he paid close attention to her: remembered what she'd said three conversations ago, noticed when she'd changed her hair by half an inch, sent her articles about illustrators she'd mentioned once in passing. He was generous without being showy about it. He showed up when he said he would.

But love was a different question. And she was twenty-six years old and not naive, and she was aware - had been aware since approximately the third week - that there was a part of Ethan Cole that was not accessible to her. A room with the door locked. She could feel the shape of it. She could not get inside.

By ten o'clock she'd run out of things to look interested in and had accepted a second glass of champagne from a passing waiter simply to have something to do with her hands.

A man came to stand beside her at the window. Mid-forties, well-dressed, with the look of someone who sold things for a living and was very good at it.

"You must be Sophia," he said. "I'm David Hargrove. I sit on the board with Ethan."

"Sophia Hayes. Nice to meet you."

He nodded at the room. "First Christmas Eve party?"

"That obvious?"

"Not at all. I only noticed because Ethan pointed you out earlier." He glanced at her sideways. "He doesn't usually point people out."

She didn't know what to do with that information. She filed it away.

"How long have you two been together?" Hargrove asked.

"Ten months."

"And the engagement?"

"About eight." She smiled. "We moved quickly."

Hargrove looked at her with an expression she recognized: the assessment of a person deciding how seriously to take you. He must have decided she passed, because his expression settled into something warmer.

"He's a good man," Hargrove said. "Not easy. But good."

"I know," she said.

"The not-easy part or the good part?"

"Both," she said.

He laughed, surprised. Then he drifted away to refill his own drink, and Sophia was alone at the window again, and she looked across the room to where Ethan was still talking to the same three men, and one of the men was laughing at something Ethan had said, and Ethan was not quite laughing but his mouth was doing the thing it did - the small contained amusement that was his version of laughing - and she felt the love hit her again, sudden and particular and a little bit painful.

Not easy. But good.

She thought: Yes. That's exactly right.

She thought: The question is whether I am enough of something for him to want to keep.

A woman crossed the room toward him.

Tall. Red dress, no jewelry. The kind of beautiful that doesn't need to announce itself. She moved through the party the way Ethan did - not performing it, just occupying it. She touched his arm when she reached him.

He looked at her.

Sophia couldn't see his face from here - she could only see his profile, and then he shifted slightly and she lost even that. But she could see the woman's face. She was smiling at him, and the smile was the particular smile of someone who knew a person well enough not to need to perform for them.

Sophia's stomach did something specific and unpleasant.

She looked away. She drank some champagne. She told herself she was imagining things, that beautiful women touched the arms of powerful men at parties every night of the week, that she had absolutely no reason to feel what she was feeling.

The feeling did not go away.

She looked back. The woman was still there. She was saying something and Ethan was listening with that total attention, and there was something about how close they were standing - not inappropriately close, just the close of people who have stood at that distance many times before and stopped noticing it.

Sophia looked away again.

You don't know who she is, she told herself. Ask him. Just ask him later. You're allowed to ask questions.

She thought: Except that I haven't asked any questions yet, in ten months, because asking questions means accepting the answers.

She thought: I have been half-knowing something for weeks now. I have been choosing not to look directly at it.

Kevin Porter was going to tell her she was catastrophizing. Kevin always told her she was catastrophizing, and he was usually right. She made a mental note to text him after the party.

She did not text him after the party because the party consumed the rest of the night, and by the time the last guest left it was past midnight and she had drunk enough champagne to make the feeling blurry at the edges, and Ethan was crossing the room to her with that focused expression and his party-host composure loosening into something more real.

"You've been by the window all night," he said.

"I like the view."