Chapter 11
Serena
The knocking started soft—three polite taps that dissolved into my dreams like sugar in water. Then came the second round, louder, more insistent. By the third assault on my door, Chloe's voice cut through the fog of sleep like a knife.
"Serena! I swear to God, if you're dead in there, I'm going to kill you!"
I jolted upright, heart hammering. The alarm clock on the nightstand screamed 9:00 AM in angry red digits. Nine o'clock. Nine fucking o'clock.
My body moved on autopilot—feet hitting the floor, hands scrambling for yesterday's clothes crumpled on the chair. The panic was Pavlovian. Mechanical. Fifteen years of conditioning compressed into three seconds of pure terror.
The door flew open. Chloe stood there in silk pajamas and a face mask, holding a spatula like a weapon. "What the hell—"
"I'm late!" The words came out strangled as I wrestled with my jeans. One leg in, hopping, nearly face-planting into the dresser. "I'm so late, oh my God, I'm so—"
"Late for what?" Chloe's voice climbed an octave. "Serena, it's Sunday. You don't have—"
I froze mid-hop, one leg still suspended in denim purgatory. Sunday. Right. And I wasn't at home. I wasn't at the Vance brownstone where breakfast was served at precisely 7:30 AM and lateness was a cardinal sin.
"Fuck." I dropped onto the bed, letting my head fall into my hands. "Fuck. I thought I was home."
Chloe lowered the spatula slowly, her expression shifting from alarm to something softer. Sadder. "Oh, honey."
"Six-thirty," I said to the floor. "I had to be dressed and downstairs by six-thirty every morning. Hair brushed exactly one hundred strokes. Outfit pre-approved the night before. If I was late, if I looked wrong, if I—" The laugh that escaped me was ugly. Brittle. "If I existed incorrectly, basically, my mother would spend breakfast listing everything wrong with me while my father read the financial section and pretended I wasn't disappointing them just by breathing."
The mattress dipped as Chloe sat beside me. She didn't touch me—she knew better by now—but her presence alone was enough.
"Well," she said after a beat, "this is my apartment. You can sleep until noon if you want. Hell, you can sleep until Tuesday. But I was worried you might be hungry, considering you forgot something pretty important last night."
I looked up. "What?"
"That you're human and humans occasionally need food?" She stood, tugging me up with her. "You talked for six straight hours. Cried, laughed, cried again. By the time you passed out, you'd gone through three boxes of tissues and zero calories. So I made breakfast. The expensive kind that says 'I love you but also please eat something before you faint.'"
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The kitchen smelled like heaven had hired a French pastry chef. Chloe's marble countertop—which usually held nothing but coffee pods and takeout containers—had been transformed into a spread that belonged in a Condé Nast feature.
Croissants from Balthazar, still warm, flaking gold onto the white plates. Smoked salmon from Russ & Daughters, arranged in perfect rose spirals. A cheese selection that probably cost more than my last utility bill. Fresh berries that gleamed like jewels. And in the center of it all, a bottle of Laurent-Perrier champagne chilling in a silver bucket, two crystal flutes waiting beside it.
I grabbed a croissant and bit into it without ceremony, butter exploding across my tongue in a way that made my eyes actually water. "Jesus Christ."
"Right?" Chloe settled across from me, pouring champagne with the ease of someone who did this every Sunday. Which, knowing her, she probably did. "Consider this an investment in your mental health. And before you even start—" She held up one manicured finger. "—if you say the words 'I'll pay you back,' I'm kicking you out right now."
I swallowed my bite. "But—"
"We've been friends since what, junior year of high school? You crashed on my dorm room floor for three weeks when Elena convinced your parents you were 'too social' and needed to focus on your art. You held my hair back when I had food poisoning from that disgusting food truck on Madison. We're past the transactional friendship phase, babe."
Something warm and painful twisted in my chest. The croissant suddenly felt harder to swallow.
"Besides," Chloe continued, spearing a strawberry with her fork, "you'll be making six figures within a year anyway, once you stop letting your family treat you like their personal ATM." She chewed thoughtfully, then her eyes glittered with mischief. "Speaking of which. Let's talk about your late-night activities. Because I need details about this Lance Lawson situation. Explicit details."
Heat crept up my neck. God. What had I been thinking last night? Climbing into that bathtub like some kind of—what had Lance called it? A problem. His problem.
"It was..." I reached for my own champagne, buying time. "It was an accident?"
"An accident." Chloe's tone suggested she found this explanation fascinating. "You accidentally removed your dress and accidentally got into a bathtub with Manhattan's most terrifying billionaire. These things happen."
"When you put it that way—"
"It sounds insane?" She grinned. "Because it is. The Serena I knew six months ago would've rather died than make eye contact with a man like Lance Lawson. Now you're staging full-scale seductions in presidential suites?"
I took a long drink. The champagne was perfect—dry, cold, expensive enough to make me wince. Just like everything in Lance's world.
"I wasn't seducing him," I said, which was technically true. Sort of. "I was just... existing. In his vicinity. While wet."
Chloe choked on her salmon.
"But," I continued, because apparently morning champagne made me honest, "I can guarantee you one thing. You spend one hour with that man—one hour—and you'll forget every other man on the planet exists."