The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together Chapter 09

The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together Chapter 09: The Room Goes Quiet When She Walks In

The Driskill was the kind of old Austin hotel where the marble had been polished by a hundred years of important shoes.

Ryker held the lobby door for me. He didn’t comment on the dress. He didn’t have to. The way the doormen straightened up when I walked past told me enough.

At the registration table, Marcus the event coordinator looked up, did a small double-take, and almost dropped his iPad.

“Sienna. You’re here tonight?”

“I am.”

“Give me one second. I don’t see you under the Lawson tables.” He swiped, frowning. “Wait. The backend still has you as Event Consultant.”

“Because I added that title six months ago, and nobody knows how to access the backend.”

“Nobody knows how to access the backend but you,” Marcus admitted in a low voice. “I assumed you were running the floor tonight.”

Ryker stepped forward. “She’s my guest. Plus-one. Put her under my name.”

Marcus handed us two VIP lanyards. As we walked away, he caught my eye and mouthed, *Thank god.*

We did not make it ten steps into the ballroom.

*Sienna!*

Greg, Cade’s PR consultant, intercepted us with a sweating highball.

“You look incredible. Where have you been? The Q3 merger release is stalled. Cade keeps sending me vague bullet points. I need the actual timeline you drafted.”

Before I could answer, Sarah, the marketing director, materialized at his elbow.

*Sienna.* Thank god. The new guy Cade hired doesn’t even know the caterer’s phone number. Are you still tracking the Austin expansion vendors?

“I’m off that project, Sarah.”

“Since *when?*”

“Since I stopped being married to your boss.”

A board member’s wife, Mrs. Gable, stepped out of the crowd and kissed my cheek without acknowledging Ryker at all. “We missed you at the charity lunch on Tuesday. Cade sent an intern in your place. An *intern,* Sienna. Fix your schedule. This firm falls apart without you.”

I stood in the center of a small huddle of people who needed me, answering questions, listing vendor names from memory, deflecting complaints about flowers and tablecloths and seating that I had not arranged.

Ryker stood beside me with his hands in his pockets and watched, silent, like a man at a trial who already knew the verdict.

These people, in this firm Cade had told the world he built, did not turn to my husband when something broke. They turned to me. I had spent six years thinking I worked in the shadows. I had been the entire foundation, in the light, and no one had ever said the word out loud.

“Excuse us,” Ryker finally said. “We have a meeting.”

He guided me by the small of my back — not possessive, just present — toward an alcove of arched windows. A tall silver-haired man in a beautifully cut suit was already there, nursing a scotch.

“Julian,” Ryker said. “Meet Sienna. She built the operational infrastructure for Lawson & Associates.”

Julian extended his hand. “I’ve heard impressive things. Your firm’s growth rate is aggressive. How are you handling the overhead on downtown leases?”

“You’re not handling them,” I said. “Your runway is too short for downtown. Move to the Domain. Tax incentives offset your build-out costs, and your retention rate jumps because nobody’s fighting I-35.”

Julian raised an eyebrow.

“Cade Lawson pitched me a downtown headquarters yesterday.”

“Cade likes the zip code. Zip codes don’t pay dividends. Move north.”

Julian laughed, loud and clean. “Ryker, I like her. She doesn’t waste time.”

“She never has.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose.

I turned my head.

Cade was standing ten feet away. He had a small velvet box in one hand — I clocked it immediately, the kind of box a man buys when he wants to upgrade — and the face of a man who had just discovered his house was on fire.

He was staring at me.

He looked confused. Then he looked angry. Then he looked, just for a second, like he was going to be sick.

His gaze dragged down the emerald dress. Up to my bare shoulders. Back to my face.

I didn’t look away. I didn’t shrink. I held his stare and let him see it. Let him see that the woman he had stripped off the school forms was standing in *his* ballroom in a dress he had never seen, doing the job he had refused to pay her for, on the arm of the partner he had spent six years quietly resenting.

He started walking toward us.

Ryker leaned down, his voice low against my ear.

“He’s just now realizing it, isn’t he.”

It wasn’t a question.

The string quartet on stage struck their first unified chord, and Cade pushed past a waiter and cut a path straight at me.