Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Penny (Penelope Mirren Taft Sinclair) moved through the world as if it had been a room designed especially for her—dimly lit, velvet-lined, and hushed.

She was not loud beauty, not a shout in a crowded room, but a scent that lingered—expensive, imperious, and cold.

Her name itself had been a whisper of old money, a rustle of silk, the clink of ice in a crystal glass. It tasted of polished silver and the crisp, almost antiseptic air of inherited wealth.

People had always wanted to touch her. Not out of affection, but because she gave the impression of having been carved rather than born. She was the kind of beautiful people protected, even when they knew she wouldn’t do the same for them.

She never tried to be liked. That would have been too human. Instead, she moved with the unbothered grace of someone who had never had to earn approval—it simply arrived. When she was a child, they had called her the crown jewel of the Sinclair line, though the jewels were long gone and the line itself thinning. Still, Penny had carried the illusion like a scent in the air.

And then came Cadence. Her only child. Her project. Her future. The eldest Sinclair grandchild.

Cady was brilliant—overachieving, impossible, the kind of girl who scored perfectly and still asked what more could be done. The heiress to the island, the name, the weight.

Penny had shaped her like porcelain—high heat, fine glaze. Out of love, not cruelty. Fierce, focused love.

She made her dazzling. Made her sharp. Made her right..

Penny hated disruption. She hated mess, hated feeling things that didn’t have a clear edge. "Just be normal," she would say when anyone around her started to fracture. Normal meant silence. Normal meant smooth. Her version of peace was stillness so absolute it felt like mourning. 

She was the kind of woman who would rather leave the room than lose composure. If you asked about her feelings, she changed the subject. If you asked again, she left.

She didn’t cry. She unraveled, privately, like thread pulled loose from an expensive hem. Then she resewed herself, tighter each time. Quieter. Colder. People thought she was poised. What they didn’t see was how hard she was pressing her hands together under the table.

Beneath the surface, a hollow hum. A low, insistent vibration, like a distant, forgotten bell. Her life, a polished track, predetermined, laid out before her birth with the precision of a surveyor's line. 

She walked it, yes, with an elegant stride, but each step echoed with a faint, unsettling emptiness. A gilded cage, perhaps. Beautifully wrought, adorned with every luxury, but a cage nonetheless. The air within, though perfumed with success, felt thin, lacking oxygen.

She met Sam at a benefit lecture on post-war reconstruction—her mother had dragged her there to be seen. He was speaking on stage, lean and severe in his tweed, quoting obscure treaties and half-forgotten conflicts with an almost romantic reverence. She didn’t care much for war, but she watched the way he held the lectern. As if he’d built it himself and trusted it to stand.

Later, she found him by the coffee urn, alone. They spoke briefly—about European borders, about inheritance law. He asked thoughtful questions, and listened like each answer might revise the world. He wasn’t dazzling. He was stillness. Clean lines. A man who folded his coat before sitting down. She thought: I could build something with him.

There were dinners. A cautious courtship. Long walks on the island trails, where he admired the layout of the land like a tactician—measuring sea walls, commenting on soil drainage. Her parents approved quickly. He was respectable, intellectual, a touch severe but thoroughly correct. He gave the Sinclair name a quiet kind of legitimacy, the sort earned in faculty lounges and museum donor lists.

By the time they married, their union felt less like a romance and more like the final act of a well-reasoned argument. He handled the estate's finances with clinical precision. She curated the social fabric. Together, they kept the legacy airtight.

Cady came soon after. And something in her—wild, brilliant, sharp—made her mother fall hard and fast. She saw herself in her daughter, and made it her mission to mold her into something gleaming, something invincible. Cady would be the heiress not just to the island, but to the family myth itself. The best of both of them, she thought. But mostly, the best of her. Sam taught Cady to kayak. She taught her to win.

Their marriage held. No scandals. No screaming. Just two people, aligned in ambition, diverging in temperature. He was the quiet tide. She, the island resisting it. It worked. And that, in the Sinclair world, was love enough.

But harmony at home did little to quell the restlessness that stirred beneath the surface. Her formative years had been a landscape of whispers, of desires ruthlessly suppressed. In high school, she collected boyfriends like ribbons, a new one every week, it seemed. She was always the prettiest girl in every room, a star in a constellation of lesser lights, and the boys orbited her, drawn by an invisible, powerful gravity. 

None of them stuck, of course. They were fleeting. Almost abstract figures.

Like characters in a story she was merely observing, good for gossip fodder, for the polite, detached amusement of her peers. Their touch, a fleeting warmth, quickly forgotten. 

She never truly cared for them, not in the way the romance novels whispered, but she tried. She forced herself to, a performance for an unseen audience, a dutiful daughter playing her part. The endless parade of eager faces, the empty promises of forever, the forced smiles and feigned interest – it all became a suffocating costume she longed to shed.

A quiet desperation began to bloom, a yearning for a space where the performance was unnecessary, where the air felt less thick with expectation. It was this unspoken longing that guided her next step, a subtle rebellion, a quiet harbor before the storm of adult expectations: Bryn Mawr, an all-women's college.

There, in the hushed, academic halls, away from the demanding gaze of male expectation, her true nature began to stir. A quiet, insistent hum. A melody played on a string deep within her, always drawn to the feminine. A whisper of fulfillment. A secret garden she tended only in the deepest hours of the night. She knew it was anathema. A poison to the purity of the Sinclair bloodline, to the flawless façade her parents had so painstakingly constructed.

For Harris and Tipper, her parents, the very notion of anything outside their rigid definition of 'normal' was a shadow, a thing they tensed around like it was dirty, something they didn't want to know existed. "Live and let live," they'd say, a phrase that tasted of unspoken judgment, a polite dismissal of anything that dared to stray from the narrow path of their perfect world. 

And Penny, she couldn't deal with all of it. The thought of their disappointment, a crushing weight, pressed down on her like the granite cliffs of Beechwood Island. 

She yearned for the easy path, to simply like a guy, to make everything simple, to make the messy, beautiful truth of her heart disappear, as if it had never counted at all. To be the straight girl. To be wanted. To be the prettiest girl in the room. To make the world, and her parents, believe the lie. 

This desperate craving for acceptance, for the effortless ease of conformity, was a siren song, pulling her away from the dangerous currents of her own desire. It was a constant battle, a silent war waged within her own soul. And Bryn Mawr, for a brief, fragile moment, felt like a neutral territory, a place where the rules might bend, or at least, where the performance might not be so utterly exhausting. 

Here, the air was different. Thinner, perhaps, but cleaner. The suffocating weight of male expectation lifted, replaced by a quiet hum of female energy. It wasn't freedom, not yet, but it was a reprieve. A space where the whispers of her true nature could grow a little louder, a little bolder, without the immediate threat of being silenced. It was a temporary sanctuary, a place where she could, for the first time, begin to explore the contours of her own heart without the constant, crushing pressure of the Sinclair name.

Penny became a dog breeder the way some women become poets — not for profit, but as a way to survive her own softness.

No one saw it coming. Not the other girls from her year at Bryn Mawr, with their dual-degrees and speeches about climate tech. Not the board members on her trust, who assumed she'd eventually invest in some clean skincare brand with serif fonts and pastel jars. Not even her husband, who thought the whole thing — the kennels, the grounds, the studbook she kept like scripture — was just another hobby for her to perfect into performance.

But the dogs were not a performance. They were her only mirror.

She’d always loved them, since she was a child slinking away from marble halls and whispered disappointment. They were the first creatures who ever saw her cry — really cry — not the silent, artful weeping she'd mastered for funerals and fundraisers, but full, uncontained sobs that wracked her body like weather. The dogs never judged her for it. They leaned into it. One golden would always crawl into her lap, even when she was no longer a girl small enough to warrant such closeness.

It started with Tipper. Her mother never said I love you , never kissed her daughters goodnight, never once folded Penny into her arms. Affection came sideways, in pie crusts rolled with ruthless precision, in approval doled out when one of them outshone the others. Bess tried to win it with sweetness, Carrie with brilliance. Penny tried with rebellion. She was the first to say the cruel thing aloud, the sarcastic thing sharp enough to cut — because silence felt like losing. But when Tipper turned to the dogs, Penny saw a different woman. In the kitchen she was rigid, but with Eleanor and Franklin, the family goldens, she softened. She let them climb into her lap, muss her perfect skirts, lick her face until she laughed. Penny loved them too, fiercely, and in that shared softness found the only version of her mother’s love she could touch.

Cooking she abandoned — why try at something she would never master under Tipper’s exacting eye? But the dogs, she stayed with. She learned their rhythms, their gentleness, their loyalty. As Cadence grew, Penny watched her daughter love them in the same way she once had, a lineage not of recipes but of devotion.

When Tipper dabbled in breeding, Penny took it further, reshaping it into something respectable enough to pass Sinclair scrutiny and personal enough to be hers alone. 

She ran the estate like a chapel. Not a single dog went without raw food, filtered water, or weighted blankets in the winter. She ground chamomile into their biscuits, kept calming vests in every size, and had a bottle of canine anxiety medication tucked beside her own in the second drawer of the vanity. When she was agitated, they got skittish — their coats dulled, their paws restless. She learned to still herself for them, to soothe her heart so their tails could wag again. It was the closest thing she knew to prayer.

Her breeding program was tight as a sonnet. No overbreeding, no cosmetic surgeries, no early separations. She interviewed every family like she was marrying into them. If you called them hounds, she would correct you: “They’re dogs.” If you asked how many she had, she’d say, “Enough to love. Not enough to ruin.”

She never let people see her emotions — not truly. Her face was glass, her voice always the perfect blend of amused and clinical. But around the dogs, she uncurled. She sat on floors in cashmere, let them lick her hands raw, whispered secrets into velvet ears. She let them need her. She let herself need them back.

She was hard on Cady. Not cruel, never cruel — but calibrated. Stern where it counted. Not because she didn’t love her daughter, but because she couldn’t imagine giving her the same permission to be soft that she gave the hounds. Not in this world. Not under the shadow of the Sinclair name and the Burlington estate, which was beautiful in that brutal New England way — all clapboard and cold air, where vulnerability felt like weakness and good breeding meant knowing when to shut up and smile.

The dogs were the only thing Penny ever allowed herself to mother without guilt. They were the children she could love without pressure. They were the version of Cady she could nurture without ruining.

And every time one of them gave birth, and she knelt beside them — no makeup, hands steady — she felt, for a moment, like the kind of woman she might have been if the world had let her be anything other than a Sinclair.

Chapter Text

Then came Vivian Dubois—not all at once, but like a slow change in season, like the shift in air before a thunderstorm, quiet but unmistakable. She didn’t arrive with a bang or a fuss, but somehow, from the very beginning, Penny felt the ground tilt just slightly under her feet. 

Cady was still young then, not older than five or six. The years with Sam had subsided into a comfortable hum, a lull of familiar rhythm that Penny had mastered. 

She was from here—Vermont, born and buttered. Not the marble-pillared, equestrian-booted Vermont of Penny’s world, but the other one—the muddy, woodsmoke-scented kind, where people said “ayuh” unironically and called goats their coworkers. Vivian Dubois wasn’t some outsider parachuting in with a clipboard and theories. No—she was local legend. Raised on a family farm just a few counties over, the kind with a red barn and goat cheese sold on the honor system.

Everyone knew her. Or said they did. “Oh, Vivian? Her grandmother taught Sunday school.” “Vivian makes the best honey lavender shortbread.” “Vivian helped deliver a neighbor’s calf in the middle of a blizzard once.”

She was sweet tea in a mason jar. Home-baked, hand-stitched, and hideously beloved.

Penny hated her on sight.

Vivian wasn’t a breeder—of course not. She “fostered.” “Socialized.” “Helped dogs find their forever homes.” Her business was soft-sounding, vague, and perfectly unthreatening on paper. But she was everywhere Penny turned—at the town council meetings about kennel ordinances, at the vet's office talking enrichment theory like she'd invented it, at the farmer’s market with trays of her smug little beet-and-bone broth biscuits, tied with twine and sealed with a handwritten “love, V.”

She smiled too much. She laughed too easily. She made people feel good just by standing near them, like warmth came off her in waves.

And Penny—Penny, with her clean kennels and purebreds and years of bloodline records—was suddenly the cold one. The businesswoman. The one people looked at like maybe she cared a little too much about litters and not enough about “love.”

Vivian didn’t need to be flashy. She just needed to be there. Sweet, effortless, and infuriatingly good.

She had that kind of red hair that turned heads even when people tried not to look. It wasn’t the polished auburn of actresses or magazine spreads—it was softer, deeper, the color of pressed leaves and flickering candlelight. She wore florals like second skin, even in the colder months, and her beauty wasn’t dramatic or icy, just warm and natural, as if she’d been born under good lighting. 

Unlike Penny’s porcelain sharpness, all clean lines and careful symmetry, Vivian’s beauty felt reachable, familiar—like the kind of girl someone might actually take to the school dance and still think about years later. It wasn’t glamorous. It was worse. It was likable.

And Penny hated likable. Worse, Penny hated the way people looked at her. Like she had ethics. Like she was the second coming of Temple Grandin with better skincare.

She’d built her reputation on being untouchable. Crisp. Impeccable. The sort of woman who ran every committee and controlled every conversation with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. But Vivian didn’t play by those rules. She wore lipstick and pearls but still felt informal, as if all the things Penny had worked for could be earned just by being charming. Or worse—just by being real. Pearl studs—never quite matching. Eyeliner, just slightly smudged. Hair loose more often than not, and somehow still more elegant than Penny’s updo sculpted by professionals. Vivian didn’t try to look effortless. She was effortless. And that felt like a threat.

She didn’t come from the same world. There was no marble in her childhood, no family crest etched in stone. Her past didn’t glitter.

But she carried herself like someone who didn’t need to be handle anything. Someone who could walk into a room full of women raised on legacy and lunch parties, and make them forget, if only briefly, what legacy was supposed to mean.

Penny had spent years building herself into someone important in those rooms. Vivian walked in and made the whole performance feel like theater.

That was the worst part. Because it wasn’t that Vivian tried to upstage her. It was that she didn’t have to.

Their rivalry sharpened when Vivian entered the dog breeding scene, showing up at AKC events with sleek bloodlines and clever marketing, smiling that sweet, infuriating smile that made people trust her even when she was pulling the rug out from under them. She was smart, strategic, disarming—and most of all, unbothered by Penny’s carefully cultivated dominance.

They met on preservation boards, volunteer drives, fundraiser committees— places where Penny was used to winning. But Vivian didn’t flatter. Didn’t yield. She questioned things no one questioned, tilting her head, as if she were watching Penny closely, measuring what she was made of.

It wasn’t hostile. It wasn’t friendly either. It was curious. Which was somehow worse. Because it made Penny want to answer.

It was the kind of crisp New England autumn day that made tourists lose their minds—red leaves curling like flames, the air sharp with woodsmoke and apple skins, and the dogs practically vibrating with energy. Penny stood outside her stall at the annual Fall Harvest Fair.

It was her first year at the fair, and she looked it—too hopeful, too wholesome, too green. Like she didn’t yet know how these things worked.

Penny had watched her set up that morning, all sunshine and sincerity, as if good intentions alone could carry her through a crowd of breeders, brokers, and big-name pet food reps. It was almost cute.

But Penny hadn’t come here to be charmed.

She’d paid extra this year—just enough to sponsor the dog pavilion and the Rescue Round-Up, which gave her the power to shift a few things around. Booth placements. Vendor slots. A little nudge here, a subtle reshuffle there. Nothing illegal. Nothing even explicitly personal. Just strategy.

Vivian’s first-year table wound up near the edge of the fairgrounds, backed up against a chain-link fence and a clattering popcorn machine that gave off the faint scent of scorched oil. Close enough to the port-a-potties to catch the occasional breeze.

It wasn’t malicious. It was just...business. Penny had worked too hard to let some floral-dressed farm girl with a foster roster and an “organic soul” walk in and start rewriting the rules.

And Vivian didn’t say a word. No complaint. No snide remark. Not even a polite protest. She simply unpacked her baskets, arranged her homemade flyers, and went about her day like nothing had changed.

It made Penny itch.

Because Penny had expected a reaction. A crack in the porcelain. A flash of something—disappointment, irritation, even a sharp word said too loud. But instead, she got that infuriating calm. Vivian still talked to everyone who wandered past. Still remembered their dogs' names. Still looked like sunshine in the shade.

Penny couldn’t stop glancing over.

She told herself it was because she needed to monitor the competition. Because she needed to know how far her move had set Vivian back. But something about that quiet grace—about not even trying to fight—unnerved her. It made Penny feel like she’d punched a pillow expecting a wall.

And somehow—that was worse. Penny would’ve preferred a fight. A flinch. Something real she could grab onto and use to justify how satisfied she’d felt signing that contract.

But Vivian just let it happen. Like she’d already accepted the loss and moved on, like it wasn’t a loss at all.

And for the first time, Penny felt something uncomfortably close to doubt.

Vivian saw her, and a light of genuine, unvarnished cheer bloomed on her face. A retriever seeing a snack bag, indeed.

“You must be Penny Sinclair,” she said, her voice a warm bell in the cool air, a sound utterly out of place.

Penny didn’t slow her pace. “Depends,” she said, her words as sharp and cold as the first frost. She sipped her lukewarm cider. “Are you the health inspector or just another woman trying to sell me oat-based guilt?”

Vivian’s laugh was a surprise—a cascade of sound, clear and true, without the brittle, nervous edge Penny was so used to. It softened the lines around her eyes and for a single, disorienting moment, Penny felt a flicker of something she couldn’t name.

“Neither,” Vivian replied, utterly unbowed. “Vivian Dubois. I run the foster table.”

Penny’s brow arched in a silent question. “You—well, you sort of bought the rest of the fairground,” Vivian added, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips.

“It’s called sponsorship,” Penny said, a feline smirk curling her mouth. “Or capitalism. Same difference.”

Vivian gestured toward the colossal pavilion with a hint of irony. “You shifted half the booths and renamed the dog arena.”

“‘Sinclair Pavilion’ has a real ring to it,” Penny agreed, her sincerity as thin as spun glass. “I tried ‘Puppy Place Presented by Penny’ but the banner people revolted.”

Vivian’s smile tightened, a small crack in her composure. A victory, Penny noted. A tiny, perfect pleasure.

“You had my table moved,” Vivian said, the warmth in her voice now edged with steel.

“I had a lot of tables moved,” Penny said, a shrug in her voice. “Don’t flatter yourself.” She let her gaze sweep over Vivian's position, a place of humble exile by the popcorn machine and the all-too-near port-a-potties. “Besides,” she added, a wicked sweetness in her tone, “you’ve got shade here. And popcorn fumes. Very… atmospheric.”

“And the ambiance of raw sewage,” Vivian countered, her voice a low, dry whisper.

A genuine smirk, unbidden and sharp, touched Penny’s lips. “Hey, some of us worked for this spot,” she said. “Years of pedigree, paperwork, perfect temperaments. Not just… knitted leashes and good intentions.”

Vivian flinched, a subtle tightening of her jaw. The smallest of pleasures, but a pleasure nonetheless.

“They’re rescues, not centerpieces,” Vivian said, her hands curling on the edge of her table as if to steady herself against a sudden gust of wind. “And some of us work for this too. Just differently.”

Penny stepped slightly closer, tilting her head as if to better examine this curious creature. “Sure. It’s cute. All this homemade, homespun, Vermont-farm-girl energy. Makes people feel good.” She let her eyes drift to the little dogs. “Until one of those untrained mutts takes out a toddler over a juice box.”

Vivian's hands tightened, the knuckles white. “They’re not mutts,” she said, her voice a low, dangerous note. “They’re trained. And they’re not here to compete with you.”

Penny’s tone dropped, a shadow falling over her words. “Aren’t they?”

Vivian’s smile shattered. Her eyes, which had held so much light, narrowed into a sudden, furious darkness.

“You don’t even know me,” she said.

“No,” Penny agreed, the word a blade. “But I’ve got a talent for judgment. Some call it instinct. Like dogs have.” The barb landed, a perfect hit. Vivian’s breath hitched, barely audible beneath the hiss of the popcorn machine.

“Well maybe yours is off today,” Vivian said, her words a defiant shield. “Mine says you’re not half as unbothered as you pretend to be.”

That one struck a different chord. It was too sharp, too close, a truth thrown at her like a stone. Penny’s carefully constructed cool façade wavered for a half-second, a hairline crack. She covered it quickly, the mask of indifference sliding back into place. “Maybe,” she said, the word a sliver of ice. “Or maybe you’re just projecting in that vintage cardigan.”

Vivian looked as though she’d just tasted something bitter. A fine line was crossed, or maybe a chasm had just opened between them.

“You know,” Vivian said, her gaze steady, “for someone who clearly loves animals…” she met Penny’s eyes. “You don’t seem to like people very much.”

Penny didn’t blink. “People disappoint me. Dogs don’t.”

Vivian smiled then, a strange, soft, almost sorrowful twist of her lips. “Right. Because dogs don’t talk back.”

Penny’s smirk returned, crooked and sharp, a perfect counter. “You’d be surprised.”

Vivian leaned back slightly, a subtle surrender, but not a defeat. “You really don’t want anyone near your throne, do you?”

“Do you want me to lie and say it’s not personal?”

A beat of quiet fell between them, thick and heavy. The wind lifted a dry leaf and sent it scuttling across the asphalt, a lone traveler between two worlds. Vivian’s voice came low and clear, a promise and a threat all at once. “No. I think I’d hate you more if you pretended to be nice.”

That, finally, made Penny nod. It was an understanding. A recognition of a worthy opponent.

“Good,” she said. “Then we understand each other.”

They stared at each other for a beat that stretched into an eternity. The world, with all its fairground noise and fading light, receded. Penny's cider was empty. Her dogs watched, patient and still, waiting for their master’s command. She flicked the cup into a bin, the small sound loud in the sudden silence, whistled to her hounds, and turned to walk away.

“See you around, Sunshine,” she called over her shoulder, the words a playful, predatory challenge.

“Can’t wait,” Vivian muttered behind her, the last words of a soldier before the battle begins.

Penny didn’t smile. But somewhere, deep inside her, something had shifted. A thread had been tied tight at her ribs, a small, persistent tug that wasn't pain, but a prickle of anticipation. She knew, with the same certainty she had for a judge’s preference or a bitch’s whelping date, that this was going to be a war. 

And she was going to enjoy every goddamn second of it.

Chapter Text

The truth was, perfection had never protected her. Not from heartbreak, not from betrayal. The cracks in Penny's carefully constructed world had been forming for a long time, subtle at first, like hairline fractures in porcelain. Sam's late nights grew more frequent, his explanations thinner, the scent of unfamiliar perfume clinging to his tweed jackets. 

Penny, ever the master of performance, had learned to ignore the quiet discord, to smooth over the rough edges with practiced ease. But even her carefully cultivated detachment couldn't entirely mask the growing chill between them, a cold draft seeping into the grand, empty rooms of their marriage. 

That very evening, at the annual Sinclair Charity Gala, a glittering, suffocating affair beneath a canopy of strung lights, Penny moved through the crowd like a ghost, her smile fixed, her eyes scanning for Harris and Tipper, for any sign of impending disaster. 

The air was thick with the scent of lilies and expensive champagne, and the low murmur of polite conversation was a constant, buzzing threat. She saw Vivian across the ballroom, a flash of copper hair, a silent acknowledgment of their shared, complicated world. 

Penny's gaze, however, was fixed on something else: the empty space beside her, where Sam should have been. He was absent, as he had been so often lately, leaving her exposed, a lone figure on a stage where she was always expected to have a partner.

She had made her fifth round of pleasantries, each word a polished stone in a carefully constructed wall, donated triple what she intended to, a tithe to the gods of appearances, and performed a smile so fixed it was practically lacquered on, a brittle mask that threatened to crack with every forced curve of her lips.

She excused herself to the powder room — not for decorum, not for a touch-up of the flawless facade, but because her hands were shaking, a tremor deep within her bones that no amount of practiced stillness could quell.

Once inside, the opulent powder room she locked the door to the farthest stall. The click of the latch was a small, desperate prayer for solitude. She pressed her forehead to the cool, unforgiving marble of the wall, seeking an anchor against the swirling chaos within. Her fingers were clenched around her phone, the cold metal biting into her palm. A message still open, a digital serpent uncoiling in her hand. Short. Blunt. A poisoned arrow.

Your husband has been seen with her again.

Attached: a photo. A single, damning image, a shard of shattered glass reflecting her meticulously crafted world.

Her throat burned, a raw, acrid taste of betrayal and humiliation. She had done everything right. Played the perfect role, a lifetime performance on a stage of inherited expectations. Carried the Sinclair name like a banner and a burden, a heavy cloak woven from threads of duty and deceit. And still — still — there was rot beneath the velvet, an insidious decay at the very heart of her pristine existence. The unspoken truth of her own heart, her deepest, most guarded secret, now mirrored by the infidelity of the man she had married to hide it.

The stall walls seemed to inch closer, the ornate patterns on the wallpaper blurring into a suffocating embrace. Her breath caught somewhere between a sob and a gasp, a ragged sound trapped in her chest. She was spiraling, silently, a descent into a private abyss. No witnesses. That was the first, unbreakable rule. Never break down where anyone can see. Her tears, hot and stinging, threatened to spill, but she held them back with a fierce, almost violent will, forcing them to recede like a tide against an unyielding shore.

But when she emerged minutes later, red-eyed but composed, her face a pale, strained masterpiece of self-control, someone was already waiting.

Vivian.

She pressed her palm hard against the marble counter, trying to remember how to breathe like a Sinclair.

Then—

“I’d ask if you were okay,” came a voice from behind, “but I feel like you’d lie.”

Penny didn’t jump. She was too practiced for that. Instead, she glanced sideways—and froze for half a beat.

Vivian Dubois was leaning against the opposite counter like she had every right to be there, arms folded, eyes watchful. The gown she wore—charcoal silk, elegantly cut, with a plunging neckline and subtle shimmer—should not have looked that good on someone who kept mason jars of rainwater. And yet here they were. Radiant. Regal. Ridiculous.

Of course she looks like that, Penny thought bitterly. Like a Jane Austen fever dream wandered into a Vogue editorial.

“Oh good,” Penny said dryly, straightening. “The rescue patrol’s here.”

Vivian raised an eyebrow. “Is this a hostile territory thing, or are you just allergic to kindness?”

“Depends,” Penny said, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Are you about to offer me a gluten-free dog biscuit and an emotional pamphlet?”

Vivian smiled, faintly. “No pamphlets tonight. Just noticed you looked… rattled.”

Penny scoffed. “I’m not rattled. I’m simply practicing my thousand-yard stare for the donor wall unveiling.”

Vivian didn’t move, but her gaze dipped—just for a second. Down to Penny’s chest, then back up. The glance was subtle, almost imperceptible, but Penny caught it.

Her posture stiffened. Of course. The dress. Too tight, too low, too… attention-seeking. And here came the judgment, silently delivered by a woman who probably ironed her ethics. The air, thick with the scent of expensive perfume and unspoken tension, seemed to crackle between them.

Vivian’s eyes, the deep, unsettling green of an ancient forest, flickered to Penny's hand. "You’re bleeding."

Penny blinked, a slow, disbelieving flutter of her lashes. Then looked down. Her palm had a crescent-shaped cut from her own fingernail, a raw, red mark against the pale skin. She hadn't even noticed, so consumed had she been by the internal maelstrom. It was a physical manifestation of the self-inflicted wounds she carried, the quiet violence of her own repression.

"God," she muttered, irritated at herself, at this visible flaw in her perfect presentation, at the undeniable evidence of her unraveling.

“Do you always draw blood when your mask slips?” Vivian asked, already digging through her clutch.

“Only when I’m having fun,” Penny shot back, but her voice lacked bite.

"Sit." It wasn’t a suggestion, but a quiet, unyielding command, spoken with an authority that Penny, against all instinct, found herself obeying, lowering herself onto the velvet bench in the corner of the lounge, the plush fabric a surprising softness against her rigid frame. V

Vivian knelt — actually knelt — in front of her, a gesture of unexpected humility and care. Her auburn hair fell forward as she began dabbing antiseptic onto the cut with a folded tissue, her touch surprisingly gentle, almost reverent. Of course she carried a first-aid kit.

“Don’t get used to this,” Penny said, eyeing her. “I’m still trying to have you evicted.”

“Noted,” Vivian said, dabbing gently at the cut. “Try not to flinch. It’s just tea tree oil. Organic. Obviously.”

“Oh, I assumed it was imported guilt.”

Vivian actually laughed, soft and sudden. “You’re exhausting.”

“And you’re persistent,” Penny murmured. “Unclear which is worse.”

They sat like that for a beat. Vivian’s hands were steady, gentle, a stark contrast to Penny's own trembling fingers. There was something disarming about it, something profoundly unsettling and yet undeniably comforting. Penny watched her, transfixed, her gaze caught by the unexpected tenderness, by the sheer, unbidden kindness from a woman she had only ever known as an adversary. The air between them thrummed with a fragile, nascent intimacy.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Penny said finally.

“I know.” Vivian didn’t look up. “But you clearly weren’t going to.”

Penny’s throat tightened. She hated that it felt… nice. Being seen. Being tended to. Even if it was by someone who wore hand-sewn floral skirts and probably named her chickens.

"I thought you hated me," she said, quieter than intended, the words escaping her lips like a long-held secret, raw and vulnerable.

Vivian paused, then looked up. “I think you’re mean.”

Penny blinked. “That’s not a no.”

“But I don’t hate you,” Vivian continued, calm. “I think you’re scared. Of something. Of a lot of things, maybe.”

“I’m not scared,” Penny said, too fast.

Vivian smiled faintly. “Liar.”

Silence settled between them, but it didn’t feel empty. It was full—of tension, yes, but something else too. Something unspoken.

“You think you’ve got me figured out?” Penny asked, trying for sarcastic but landing somewhere nearer to hollow.

“I think you’re lonelier than you let on,” Vivian said quietly. “And I think dogs aren’t the only ones you take care of when no one’s looking.”

That got her. Penny blinked. Once. Twice.

The tin clicked shut. Vivian sat back on her heels.

“There. All patched up.” Her voice was lighter now, but the softness lingered.

Penny looked at her hand, clean and bandaged. Then at Vivian.

“You didn’t have to be nice,” she said, more quietly this time. “Most people aren’t.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No,” Penny murmured, before she could stop herself. “You’re not.”

Vivian stood and smoothed her dress, a return to her usual elegant composure. "Try not to pass out on the ballroom floor. I’d hate to upstage you." The words were a playful jab, a return to their familiar dance, but the underlying current was different now, laced with a warmth that was both unsettling and intoxicating.

Penny let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, a fragile, trembling sound that held a hint of genuine amusement. "Don’t flatter yourself, Sunshine."

But it was weak. Grateful. Almost warm. A concession, a surrender to the impossible, to the terrifying beauty of this unexpected moment.

Vivian’s smirk softened into something else, something unreadable, a fleeting glimpse of a vulnerability that mirrored Penny's own. Then she left, melting back into the glittering chaos of the fundraiser, the scent of amber and something darker—something wild, untamed, utterly Vivian—trailing behind her like a promise and a memory.

And Penny — poised, untouchable Penny — stayed seated on that velvet bench far longer than necessary, the cool marble against her back, the faint scent of antiseptic and amber clinging to her.

Goddamn her. Goddamn those eyes. That voice. That maddening calm.

And that dress, cut at the chest like it knew it had no business looking that good at a community fundraiser.

And goddamn how right she was.

A month later one late afternoon in Penny’s converted carriage house office, tucked behind the main estate, she was leaning against the counter, flipping through vendor permits like they were trashy tabloids. She’d already told three food trucks they couldn’t use extension cords and shut down a pyramid-scheme candle stall. She was in a mood. .

The inside smelled faintly of eucalyptus polish and whatever expensive candle Penny had burning in the corner—something with a name like Black Moss & Smoke . Leather armchairs flanked a vintage desk too large for the room, its surface stacked with color-coded folders and a brass pen holder shaped like a greyhound. One wall was entirely covered with an antique map of the county. The other held portraits of dogs—serious, oil-painted ones, more dignified than most local officials.

Her assistant poked her head in. “Uh—Vivian Dubois is still waitlisted for the local outreach panel. You want me to tell her no?”

Penny paused mid-flip.

The outreach panel was being moderated by the town councilwoman, covered by the regional paper, and broadcast on the local station. Full visibility. And Vivian—the first-year do-gooder with the soft voice and prettier-than-it-should-be mission—had applied late. She wasn’t supposed to get in.

Penny’s voice was casual. “Waitlist?”

“Number four.”

Penny licked her thumb, flipped another paper. “Bump her to the main lineup.”

“But—”

“She can take Amy Powell’s slot. Powell dropped out this morning.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“She will.” Penny smiled without looking up. “Call her. Tell her the panel’s not a fit this year. Blame me.”

A beat. Her assistant blinked, then ducked out, muttering something about “ice queen philanthropy.”

Penny waited until she was alone, then glanced at the whiteboard where all the panel names were scrawled. She grabbed the dry-erase marker, added:

V. Dubois – Local Rescue Initiative

— with a little star, almost as an afterthought.

Then she tossed the marker down, muttering under her breath.

“Don’t say I never did anything for you, Sunshine.”

She didn’t know why she said it. Or why she smiled when she did.

Penny found herself seeking Vivian out in the crowded, competitive arenas, her gaze lingering a moment too long, a silent question in her eyes. 

Vivian, in turn, would meet her glance, a flicker of something unreadable, a shared secret in a world of open displays. This subtle shift in their dynamic, this new, quiet awareness, hummed between them, an electric current beneath the surface of their polite interactions. Fate, or perhaps the subtle machinations of their own burgeoning desires, conspired to force them together.

Chapter Text

Then came the town council’s charity auction which was the kind of event Penny usually managed to dodge. It had the trappings of her upbringing—crystal platters, whispered gossip, and wine donations from the vineyard one town over—but none of the novelty. In past years, she would’ve sent Carrie in her place. 

Their older sister had never been good at many things, but she’d always had a kind of manic charisma, the glassy-eyed enthusiasm of someone trying to stay sober and failing with elegance. But Carrie was somewhere in New York now, nesting with a second baby and a new sobriety sponsor. Bess might’ve stepped in, had she not just given birth to a third child and taken up earnest philanthropy as a full-time job. That left Penny, the reliable one. The one who always looked the part. Hair smooth, posture upright, smile gracious but unrevealing—perfect, even when it bored her to death. This year, Harris had barely needed to ask. She’d already ironed the dress and RSVP’d yes.

So here she was, perched on a wrought-iron chair outside the vineyard’s main hall, nursing a sweating glass of lemonade and waiting for the man who had apparently charmed half the organizing committee.

He arrived ten minutes late. Of course.

“Penelope Sinclair?” he asked, striding toward her with a lopsided grin that had probably been melting the spines of women since prep school.

She rose politely, offering a faint smile and her hand. “Just Penny.”

“Adam Bell,” he said, grasping her hand with a practiced, firm shake. “It’s a pleasure. I’ve heard more about you than anyone should be legally allowed to.”

“Oh?” she said, arching a brow. “I hope most of it’s false.”

He laughed. It was the kind of laugh meant to put people at ease—open, self-deprecating, warm. She’d seen it used at fundraisers and yacht club brunches, usually by men who wore salmon-colored pants without irony.

“I was hoping to speak with you about the Sinclair family estate. There’s talk of you donating a few antique pieces for the auction?”

Ah. There it was. The pitch. The softening up.

Penny gestured for him to sit. “I imagine there’s talk of a lot of things.”

He eased into the chair beside her, his linen shirt rolled at the sleeves, his hair charmingly windblown like it had been tousled by fate itself. It was all a little too... composed.

“Only good things, I promise,” he said. “That you’re sharp, generous, terrifying when crossed. I like a woman with an edge.”

She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Careful. That sounds dangerously like flattery.”

“I never flatter,” he said, grinning. “I observe.”

Penny let out a soft hum, sipping her lemonade. She wasn’t immune to charisma—she’d just built up an immunity to this kind: the Ivy-League chivalry, the clean-shaven earnestness, the way he sat like he’d never had to earn a single thing in his life. It reminded her too much of debutante balls and her mother’s warnings to always smile, always cross her ankles, always entertain the boys who were “nice” even if they were dull as dirt.

She gave him a small, polite smile. “And what is it you’ve observed, Mr. Bell?”

“That you seem entirely unimpressed by me,” he said, easy as anything. “Which is—honestly—a first.”

That did earn a real smile. “Well. You’ve still got half the town fawning over you. I think you’ll survive.”

He chuckled again, leaning back like they were already old friends. “I’m genuinely here for the auction, you know. Not just to butter you up.”

“Of course,” she said sweetly. “And I’m genuinely considering which silver candelabra would best support a dying non-profit.”

The truth was, she’d already picked out what she was going to donate. Her father had taught her early—charity was about appearances, and appearances were everything. But she wasn’t going to give this man the satisfaction of thinking he’d convinced her.

Adam went on, talking about the charity, the logistics, the committee’s hopes. Penny nodded in the right places, even asked a question or two. But her mind drifted, as it often did when a man assumed his charm was enough to earn her focus.

She noticed the way he angled his body toward her, the little pauses he left for her to laugh, the brightness in his eyes whenever she spoke. He was, by all accounts, lovely. But she’d grown up surrounded by men who smiled like that—boys with good hair and empty ambition. She’d watched her mother entertain dozens of them over afternoon teas, always with that flawless, chilling composure.

Penny had learned to do the same. But she’d also learned not to mistake attention for significance.

When he finally stood to leave, she rose with him, shaking his hand again.

“You really don’t have to donate anything, of course,” Adam said. “But if you do, it would mean a lot to the community.”

She smiled. “Then I suppose I will.”

His smile widened. “Really? Just like that?”

She tilted her head, gracious and cool. “You asked nicely.”

He walked away with a satisfied spring in his step.

Penny sat back down, folding her hands neatly in her lap, and sighed through her nose.

Nice smile. Good manners. Clean fingernails. Utterly, catastrophically boring.

Chapter Text

Penny and Vivian had both been “strongly encouraged” to co-lead a new Community Canine Wellness Initiative — a glossy public campaign pairing rescue adoptions with educational seminars on responsible breeding. A PR move. A compromise. An excuse, Penny was certain, to trap her in a room with the kind of wide-eyed idealism that smelled like kibble and chaos.

Penny arrived ten minutes late, carrying a stainless steel thermos and an expression of curated indifference into a borrowed corner office inside the local humane society headquarters, which smelled faintly of dog shampoo and bureaucracy.

Vivian was already inside, her boots kicked off, legs curled under her like a cat on the faded loveseat, surrounded by messy stacks of flyers, dog pamphlets, and highlighters with chewed caps.

“I was starting to think you got lost in the gated wilds of your ancestral estate,” Vivian said without looking up.

Penny raised an eyebrow as she closed the door behind her. “I had to stop by the clinic. One of my poodles is pregnant with a litter and acting like she invented childbirth.”

Vivian gave a low, delighted laugh. “Sounds familiar.”

Penny shot her a look, but her mouth twitched. “If that was an attempt at a jab, it was clumsy. You’re out of practice.”

Vivian smirked. “I’ve been saving my best material. Didn’t think you’d show.”

“I made a commitment,” Penny said, lowering herself delicately into the cracked leather chair. “Unlike you, I don’t back out when something becomes inconvenient.”

Vivian leaned forward, eyes bright. “Oh, you think I’m inconvenient?”

“I think you’re a walking logistical nightmare with a God complex,” Penny replied calmly. “But you do seem to care about the dogs, so I’ll allow it.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Vivian said, mock-swooning. “Should I record it? Frame it? Embroider it on a pillow?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t own a sewing kit.”

Vivian tossed a crumpled post-it at her. “I hand-sewed a sling for a Chihuahua last week. Her leg was broken. Ask the vet.”

Penny looked mildly impressed. “Functional craft. I didn’t think it was in your skill set.”

“Oh honey,” Vivian said, standing to grab a marker off the whiteboard. “There’s a lot in my skill set you wouldn’t expect.”

She turned her back to write, but not before Penny caught the flicker of something else in her smile — amusement, maybe. Or something warmer.

“What are you doing?” Penny asked, watching the shaky diagram of booths and tents taking shape on the board.

“Planning the event layout,” Vivian said. “I figured we’d put the rescues near the entrance. People fall in love faster when they don’t know how much poop they’re about to step in.”

“That’s manipulative,” Penny said approvingly. “I like it.”

Vivian looked over her shoulder. “I was going to put the purebreds near the food trucks, but I worried they’d get judgmental about the gluten.”

Penny didn’t smile — not really — but the corners of her mouth relaxed. “If one of my dogs develops an allergy to faux meat sliders, I’ll send you the vet bill.”

“Great,” Vivian said, tossing her the marker. “Your turn.”

Penny caught it without thinking and walked up to the board, heels clicking against the tile. She stood close — too close — and added a few precise lines next to Vivian’s scribbles.

“You have terrible penmanship,” she said quietly.

Vivian didn’t move. “And you smell like bergamot and condescension.”

“You noticed,” Penny murmured, not quite looking at her.

Vivian shrugged, leaning back in her chair, casual and maddeningly at ease. “Hard not to, with you strutting around like a dissertation on posture and suppressed judgment.”

Penny arched an eyebrow. “You think I strut?”

Vivian tilted her head, smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I think if intimidation were a perfume, you’d bottle it and charge extra for the limited edition.”

Penny looked up then, finally, and her gaze did that thing — slow, deliberate — pausing just long enough at Vivian’s neckline to betray itself. “And you’d still buy it.”

Vivian laughed, easy and low, her smile curling like smoke. “Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”

Penny made a show of ignoring her. “It wasn’t.” Then, quieter, almost as if the words slipped past her defenses: “Maybe a little.”

Vivian stilled. Just a breath. Then leaned forward, her forearms resting on the table. She watched Penny the way someone watches a door that’s never been opened—curious, but too smart to push. "Well. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever almost said to me."

"It’s early," Penny muttered, flipping a page with precise fingers. "We’ve got years of bickering ahead. I might accidentally say something kind again by 2040."

Vivian chuckled. "I’ll alert the press. Historic thaw in Sinclair relations."

The silence that followed wasn’t exactly comfortable—but it wasn’t brittle either. It held, like a tightrope stretched between them, swaying gently. Papers rustled. Pens clicked. Somewhere in the building, an old vent coughed awake.

Vivian’s voice dropped, thoughtful now. "You know what the real problem is?" she said, not looking at her this time. "You’re terrified of what you can’t control. Anything messy. Anything real. You shut it down before it gets close enough to leave fingerprints."

Penny’s pen stopped mid-sentence.

She turned a fraction, expression unreadable. "Please. Coming from someone who treats rules like pirate folklore."

Vivian grinned, leaning back in her chair again, her hair spilling like firelight down her shoulder. "Touché. But you like rules because they keep you from having to feel anything unexpected. They’re armor. They keep the noise out."

"Vivian, I run a breeding program, not a monastery," Penny said coolly. "I feel things."

"Oh, absolutely. Like rage when someone double-parks. Or crushing disappointment when the napkins at a gala aren’t starched correctly."

Penny exhaled a sharp laugh through her nose. "You wore a sundress covered in bees to a board meeting."

"They were daisies ."

"Same thing."

"It was April , Penny."

"I rest my case."

Vivian laughed again, more amused by Penny’s stubbornness than wounded by it. But she didn’t let go of the thread, didn’t let it dissolve into nothing. Instead, she let her gaze linger.

"You act like you’ve got it all under control, but I’ve seen how hard you work to keep it that way. You're not cold, Penny. You're just…" she paused, like choosing a wine, "very well-refrigerated."

Penny blinked.

The image bloomed in her mind with comedic clarity—her, preserved like leftovers in some pristine emotional freezer—and it broke through her composure like a crack in glass.

The laugh that escaped her was real. Sharp. Unprepared. It rose up from somewhere behind all the armor and spilled into the room before she could stop it. 

She clapped a hand to her mouth, as if she could shove it back in. Her shoulders sagged slightly. Just slightly. The tension leaked from her body in small, humanizing doses.

Vivian’s eyes sparkled, triumphant but gentle. "There it is," she said softly, almost reverent. "I knew you were hiding it in there."

Penny shook her head, but the smile stuck around. It tugged at the corners of her mouth like it wasn’t used to being there. "You’re insufferable."

Vivian beamed. "And yet… here we are. Trapped in the fluorescent glow of bureaucracy. I like to think of it as fate."

"For the record," Penny said, composing herself, voice dipped back in ice but with an unmistakable glint, "your sundress was wrinkled."

Vivian clutched her chest like she’d been wounded. "It had character ."

"You’re impossible."

"You’re rigid."

"Unprofessional."

"Unflappable."

"Delusional."

Vivian leaned in, chin propped on her hand. "Still laughing, though."

Penny gave her a side glance, brow raised. "Don’t flatter yourself. It was... an allergic reaction."

"To charm?" Vivian asked sweetly.

"To mildew. These old offices are full of it."

Their pens resumed their quiet scratching, but something had shifted. Not a truce. Not yet. But an awareness. A thread that now tethered them—gossamer-thin and stretched taut, but real.

They’d say it was a debate. They’d insist it was work. But somewhere beneath all that paper and policy, they had begun to see each other.

Chapter Text

The Sinclair sisters didn’t gather unless something was being pried from someone’s cold hands—will, property, legacy. Penny had learned that early. So when all three ended up in the Boston townhouse that morning, it was less reunion, more ritual.

The house hadn’t changed. Not in the ways that mattered. The same mahogany paneling, the same sun-dulled oil portraits watching from the walls, the same scent of lemon polish and pound cake settling deep into the upholstery. Time didn’t pass here; it just layered itself quietly. The air felt thinner in Boston—crisper, more judgmental. Here, everything was well-behaved: the china, the books, the children who once whispered secrets under tables. And they had all tried to behave, hadn’t they? At least until they couldn’t. 

For Penny, the room was a time capsule of constraints—stockings rolled up her thighs, elbows off tables, a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She could still hear Tipper’s voice in the back of her head: A Sinclair girl never fidgets. A Sinclair girl never says the word ‘hate.’ A Sinclair girl knows better than to embarrass herself.

She arrived last, sunglasses perched on her head and a bag of pre-cut fruit in hand. “I picked this up for Mother,” she said, arranging it neatly on the table. “Tipper believes buying melon someone else sliced is a moral failing.”

"You’re late," Bess said lightly, her posture rigid in that too-perfect way she always was when she knew she was right. “Dad said noon.”

Penny peeled off her sunglasses and flashed a diplomatic smile. "It’s twelve-oh-four. I stopped to get fruit for Mother. You stopped to get Botox, so let’s not throw stones."

“I was reviewing Dad’s proposal,” Bess replied, voice cool, spine straighter than the high-backed chair beneath her. “Some of us came prepared.”

“Didn’t realize we were expected to bring our resumes,” Penny said, picking imaginary lint off her sleeve. “I left mine in the Bentley.”

Carrie snorted from her corner of the wicker couch, wrapped in a knit shawl that made her look like she’d recently emerged from a wellness retreat or a rehab facility. Which, in her case, was true. “Please tell me you’re not fighting already.”

“Not fighting,” Penny said. “Just traditional sisterly foreplay.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bess murmured. “Some of us don’t get off on drama.”

Carrie stirred her coffee with theatrical calm. “You act like you don’t love it, Bess. You’d be bored out of your mind if we all got along.”

Penny didn't look up from her glass, but she knew what was coming. Of course Bess couldn’t leave things alone.

“Someone has to make sure the house doesn’t fall apart when you and Penny go up in flames,” Bess said, her voice all silk stretched over wire.

Without missing a beat, Penny sipped from her glass, the image of easy elegance. “If I go up in flames, I assure you it’ll be in Chanel tweed and holding a Negroni.”

It was flippant, performative. Perfect. That was the goal—always: make yourself untouchable.

But then Bess smiled. That awful, weaponized smile. “You’d probably forget to eat the canapé tray on the way out.”

Penny’s body responded before her mind could catch up. A subtle freeze. A fractional pause. Her hand clenched around the champagne flute just slightly—just enough to anchor her to something physical while the room spun off its axis. Her face didn’t crack, not visibly. But inside, something buckled.

How dare she.

She said it.

A thousand thoughts lashed across Penny’s mind—shards of fury, shame, the acid taste of being known. She hadn’t even let herself name it. The way she avoided mirrors in the mornings. The frozen spoons to press under her eyes before dinners. The way she let herself feel powerful by denying something as basic as hunger. She wasn’t ready to look that thing in the face, let alone let her sisters say it aloud. Not like this. Not like it was something obvious.

She didn’t flinch. Instead, she smiled—a little too wide, a little too quick. The kind of smile that carried teeth and knives and careful, desperate pride.

“God, Bess,” she said brightly, “if you’re jealous I can still fit into my Cotillion dress, just say that.”

Deflect. Glamour. Win. That was the only way forward.

Carrie’s voice floated in from the couch like a dagger wrapped in a throw blanket. “Okay, psycho Barbie, maybe try not weaponizing caloric intake today?”

Penny didn’t turn to look at her. She couldn’t. It was too much—too many eyes on her, too many reflections at once.

Bess was already scrambling to protect herself. “I didn’t say anything she doesn’t already say to herself in the mirror.”

And maybe that was the worst part—that it was true. That Bess did see her. That they all did.

Penny didn’t let her voice shake. “And I didn’t say anything you haven’t thought about me since we were twelve and Dad gave me the bigger Christmas bonus.”

The old wounds—always a reliable fallback. Drag someone else into the mud with you. Get dirty together.

Carrie laughed again, almost affectionately. “You mean his ‘you’re prettier so here’s five hundred dollars’ speech?”

The pivot worked. A ripple of shared history spread through the room. Familiar. Safer. Until Bess’s voice cut in, sharp as the edge of a broken glass.

“I’m the only one who actually does anything for this family. I’m the one who stayed. I’m the one who shows up.”

And there it was—Bess’s favorite martyrdom monologue. Penny leaned back slightly, schooling her tone into something breezy and insincere.

“Oh, Bess. No one’s mad that you stayed. We’re just... deeply confused by the enthusiasm.”

But she was already recovering from the earlier blow, recalibrating. Her skin still itched with the feeling of being seen too clearly, like someone had yanked open the curtains of a locked room. She wasn’t ready to name the thing. She never had been. Not when she was sixteen and counting every bite on a napkin. Not when Mom asked why her dress hung off her like that.

Bess’s voice was flat. “It’s not enthusiasm. It’s commitment. Something you and Carrie treat like a skin rash.”

Penny gave her best smirk, trying to slip back into her armor. “Commitment to what? The family? The property line? Harris’s version of legacy?”

But inside, her thoughts were still scraping at the earlier comment. She wanted to rewind time and bite back her own reaction. She wanted to scream. She wanted to drink something stronger. She wanted to laugh too loudly so they’d forget. She wanted to make them feel seen, raw, undone. Because the only way to survive being exposed was to strike first.

The silence that stretched between them was heavy and gleaming, like something metallic left out in the sun too long. It radiated heat—simmering, brittle heat—until Bess snapped the thread with a thin-lipped, “You always manage to make survival sound smug.”

Penny barely turned her head. “And you always make competence sound like martyrdom.”

But something in her stiffened. That pause before Bess spoke had already started to unnerve her—it was always a sign that her sister was choosing the next blow with care. And when it came, it landed too close to bone. Survival. Smug. The insinuation that Penny hadn’t suffered enough, hadn’t earned her anxiety or her absences. The way Bess said it, it made her feel like her whole life was just an aesthetic. A curated mess. An Instagram filter over a breakdown.

Bess straightened in her chair like a flagpole raising its own white cloth. Defensive, composed, falsely casual. “I clean my own house, you know. I wash everything. Because no one else will.”

The subtext hung there like a stain. Because you won’t. Because you never do.

Carrie raised a sardonic eyebrow, swaddled in her blanket like a half-drunk oracle. “Including your hands. Twelve times a day.”

“At least I’m consistent,” Bess muttered.

The tone was smug, and Penny felt a flicker of something reptilian coil in her gut. She hated the way Bess acted like her compulsions were virtues. Like her neuroses had been filed neatly into checklists and rebranded as work ethic. She felt her jaw set.

“At least I’m here,” Penny said smoothly, brushing invisible lint off her skirt. The motion gave her something to do with her hands, something that looked dismissive, offhanded—even if her pulse had begun to drum beneath her skin. “Which, frankly, is more than anyone expected of any of us.”

Her voice didn’t crack, but her breath had shortened. The room had taken on that brittle, overbright feeling—like everything was too loud and too sharp. She could feel the air vibrating, like something about to shatter.

Then Carrie laughed. One sharp bark of it, teeth bared.

“God,” she said. “We have no friends. You know that, right?”

Penny blinked. There it was. The throat of the truth. But she didn’t flinch.

Bess, however, didn’t laugh. “Speak for yourself.”

“No,” Penny said, latching onto the sarcasm like a lifeline. She needed to keep the mood quick, cruel, jokey—anything but sincere. “She’s right. You’ve got a book club that hates you, Carrie’s got a sponsor she lies to, and I’ve got a dog walker I overpay so she doesn’t judge me.”

Carrie wiped her eyes, grinning now. “You’re such a bitch.”

“Thank you,” Penny said automatically, though her smile felt brittle. It was the easiest role to play. Bitch. Cynic. The one who stayed sharp enough to never be caught crying.

“You’re not mysterious, Penny,” Bess muttered, like she couldn’t help herself. “You’re just vague with good lighting.”

The insult was a needle. Tiny, precise. It lodged itself under Penny’s ribs with surgical cruelty.

She tilted her head, lips twisting. “And you’re not helpful. You’re just overachieving with a label maker.”

Don’t let it stick , she told herself. Don’t let her see it landed. But it had. Of course it had. The lighting comment stung more than it should have—not because it was cruel, but because it was accurate. Because it meant Bess saw right through her. Through the eyeliner and the carefully chosen shadows and the way Penny never showed up without control sculpted across her face like armor.

“Say what you want,” Bess snapped. “I’m still the only one Mom calls first.”

Penny rolled her eyes so hard she felt the movement in her neck. “Because you pick up. That’s not a compliment. That’s an unpaid job.”

That was the problem with Bess. She mistook proximity for value. She thought being tethered to the family like a watchdog was noble. Penny had spent her whole life trying to sever that leash.

“I’m the one who does the work,” Bess hissed. “I go to every meeting. I mediate every phone call.”

“You perform responsibility like it’s your one-woman show,” Penny shot back. “Bravo. Standing ovation.”

But beneath the venom, her heart was hammering. That rising tide in her chest—that tight, prickling panic—wasn’t about the argument itself. It was what had come earlier. Bess’s low jab about the canapé tray. About her eating. Her body. The easy cruelty of it. The casual precision. Bess had always known how to aim for the places Penny wasn’t ready to name out loud.

She wasn’t ready to talk about how food still felt like a transaction. About how “forgetting” to eat sometimes wasn’t a forget at all. About how she calculated bites like decimals, like currency. She wasn’t ready for any of it, and certainly not in front of Carrie, or in this kitchen with its espresso machine and lacquered chairs and ancestral portraits glaring down from the walls.

She needed to pivot. She needed to stay on the offense.

So she smirked. She insulted. She joked. Because if she paused for even a second, if she let the silence return, she might actually hear her own thoughts. And Penny Sinclair was not in the business of being vulnerable. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

“Oh, screw you,” Bess muttered, flopping back against the wingback chair like a sulking teenager, despite being nearly thirty.

“Don’t be mad just because I have better reviews,” Penny said smoothly, tilting her glass and letting the light catch on the rim. She kept her voice light, almost careless. It was easy to perform when your lines were polished by years of being the clever one.

Bess laughed, but it had an edge. “Your reviews were always rigged. Harris thought your silent brooding was intellectual.”

“And he thought your spreadsheets were cute,” Penny returned. “Honestly, we should’ve unionized.”

“We did. You just bailed halfway through the strike to go get stoned with the pool boy.”

Penny let herself smirk. “He had a Vespa. And cheekbones.”

God, she could still see him. That glint of olive skin and overconfident bone structure. But even then—even then—it had felt like a game. Like she was trying to convince herself she wanted what she was supposed to want.

Bess rolled her eyes. “What was his name again?”

“No idea,” Penny said. “I called him summer .”

They both laughed at that, and for a brief, thin moment, the room felt lighter. The tension leaked out through the cracks like steam, and Carrie, always the watchful one, took her cue.

“So I met someone.”

Bess blinked, wary. “Christ. How many days sober is it?”

“Thirty-four,” Carrie replied, unbothered. “And no, he’s not a bartender or a bass player. He works at a gallery in New York. His name is Ed.”

Penny made a face, almost involuntarily. “Ed? You’re dating a man named Ed?”

Carrie grinned. “He’s British, wears linen unironically, and has this quiet voice like he’s always about to read you a poem. You’d hate him.”

Penny smiled, sharp and amused, but her mind was already pulling away. A gallery in New York. Linen. Poetry. A man. The boxes were all checked, weren’t they? Clean. Straight. Culturally palatable.

“So… you’re in love?” Bess asked, her tone falsely casual.

“I’m in lust ,” Carrie corrected. “I said he reads poetry, not that he writes it. There’s a difference.”

Penny took a sip of wine that tasted like paste and said, too quickly, “God, I miss that feeling.”

The words slipped out before she could smooth them. Immediately, she regretted it. Carrie and Bess exchanged a look. One of those sisterly, unspoken things. It tightened around Penny’s chest like a too-small blouse.

“What feeling?” Bess asked. “Wanting someone? Or being wanted?”

“Either. Both. Who cares,” Penny replied, brushing it off. Casual. Untouched. Her pulse began to climb, but her face stayed still, practiced. She had years of Catholic school to thank for that: the ability to burn with shame and look bored doing it.

Carrie laughed. “Jesus, Penny, try sounding less dead inside.”

“I’m married,” Penny said. “I’m allowed to be emotionally beige.”

It was a joke, technically. But it landed heavy. And for Penny, it wasn’t beige—it was safe. Sam was safe. Sam was expected. Sam was the correct answer circled in pencil, then traced over in pen. There was comfort in being what people wanted her to be. A respectable woman with a respectable marriage and a well-cut coat.

“You’re not beige,” Bess said thoughtfully. “You’re frosty. You’re like—white marble. Cold and vaguely expensive.”

Penny felt her jaw twitch, but didn’t move. Cold. Expensive. She could live with that. Cold was safe. Cold was survival.

“Do you even like Sam?” Carrie asked, her tone suddenly more pointed. “Like, like like him?”

“Of course I do.” It came out flat. Too flat. Like reciting Scripture you didn’t believe in. Penny heard it, and so did they.

Carrie snorted. “Oh wow, you even said that like a hostage.”

Bess chimed in, half-teasing: “Maybe she’s just jealous she didn’t get the Ed treatment. Or the bartender treatment. Or the guy-in-a-band phase.”

Carrie lit up. “Remember that summer in Nantucket? That bartender with the cigarette behind his ear—”

“God,” Bess said, “what was his name? Leo?”

“No, Liam,” Carrie corrected. “Penny practically vaporized when he looked at her.”

Penny smiled tightly. “He smelled like coconut sunscreen and Red Bull. I was eighteen.”

That summer had been a performance. All of it. The flirtation, the hand-holding, the too-long kisses that made her feel hollow afterward. She remembered trying so hard to believe the butterflies were real. To convince herself that the mild interest in his jawline could bloom into something natural. Something she wouldn’t have to lie about in confession.

“You always had one foot out the door,” Carrie said. “Even when you liked someone.”

“Or maybe she just didn’t like men all that much,” Bess added lightly.

The room tilted. Penny went still.

It wasn’t a loud reaction. Just enough to be felt, like a tremor before an earthquake. Her body stilled, but her thoughts surged: Say something. Say anything. Deflect. Deny. Laugh.

“Don’t be gross,” she said, finally. Low. Careful.

“I'm not judging,” Carrie said, holding up her hands. “I’m admiring. It’s a gift, really. You can turn it on and off like a faucet.”

No, it wasn’t a gift. It was conditioning. It was training. Years of keeping her true self locked away where no one could reach it, not even herself.

“Honestly,” Bess said, “I wish I had your capacity for detachment. My problem was I always felt too much. Yours is you don’t feel anything.”

“That’s rich,” Penny snapped. “Coming from the one who cried when her intern didn’t like her Instagram post.”

Carrie held up her hands. “Okay, okay, ladies, let’s not spiral. It’s wine night, not group therapy.”

Bess sighed, long and theatrical. “All I’m saying is, it must be nice. Being so… empty. Like a very well-decorated shell.”

Penny lifted her glass. “And yet you all seem obsessed with picking at it.”

The silence rippled again. Carrie, undeterred, grinned and raised her glass. “To Ed. May he be completely mediocre and emotionally safe.”

Penny didn’t smile. She stared into her glass like it held something deeper than wine.

“That’d be a nice change,” she murmured.

They clinked glasses. The laughter that followed was thin and reflexive, like muscle memory. It covered everything unsaid. And Penny? She let it. She let the sound wash over her like a hymn she no longer believed in.

Bess leaned back in her chair, the ice in her glass clinking lazily as she laughed. “Do you remember Marnie Blake? From the boat club? She lives with a woman now. Calls her her partner , like it’s a law firm.”

Penny’s stomach tensed at the word, but she didn’t say anything. She reached for the corner of her napkin and began folding it into smaller and smaller squares, watching her fingers instead of her sisters.

Carrie snorted. “Oh God, Marnie. She always wore those beige linen vests and Birkenstocks. Like a tax accountant who got lost on the way to Burning Man.”

Bess smirked. “She probably brings homemade hummus to dinner parties and lectures you if you say girlfriend instead of spouse. It's all so serious now, isn’t it? Like sexuality is some kind of thesis.”

Penny could feel the heat rising in her neck. Not enough to flush, not enough to show. Just a quiet burn. The kind she was good at hiding.

Carrie shrugged, her voice turning thoughtful. “I mean… people do live their lives like that. It’s not the end of the world. New York’s full of Marnies. Most of them are pretty nice, honestly.”

“Nice until they start crying about being ‘erased’ because someone says the wrong pronouns,” Bess said with a practiced sort of flippancy. The kind she wore like perfume—heavy, obvious, and meant to linger.

Carrie gave her a pointed look. “Alright, Bess.”

Bess raised her hands in mock innocence. “What? I’m just saying—there’s a way to be that way without being so… loud about it.”

And then Carrie turned to Penny, a teasing lilt in her voice that landed just a little too close to bone. “Didn’t you two used to share a bunk at sailing camp? She probably had a crush on you.”

“She didn’t,” Penny said, far too quickly.

A beat passed. Just long enough. Bess tilted her head, amusement flickering in her eyes. Carrie’s brow rose, barely perceptible—but Penny saw it. She always saw it.

“She was obsessed with the sailing instructor, remember?” Penny said, forcing a laugh that felt like splinters in her throat. “That creepy guy with the mole. I was just her second choice when he wasn’t looking.”

Her voice was light, practiced, a trick of breath and rhythm. She'd learned how to sound untouchable.

Bess laughed. “Ew, yes. Captain Skin Tag.”

Carrie smiled faintly. “You always did manage to dodge that kind of attention.”

Penny tightened. “Some of us were too busy actually learning how to sail,” she said. Her tone came out sharper than she’d meant. Not angry—just raw.

She reached for her glass, misjudging the distance by an inch. It wobbled on the table before she caught it, her fingers just barely steady. Trembling. She curled them tighter around the stem.

They didn’t notice.

Bess kept talking. “I just think it’s weird how everyone suddenly thinks it’s brave to be... whatever.”

Penny stared at her reflection in the wine. The rim of the glass cut her face in half.

Carrie didn’t look at her, but her voice softened. “Maybe it is.”

Penny spoke before she could stop herself. “Can we talk about something else?” Her voice came out low, urgent, almost childlike.

The air shifted. Not dramatically—but enough. A quiet tightening of the room. A silence with sharp corners.

Bess blinked, then launched into a story about some neighbor’s divorce, already laughing, already moving on.

Penny didn’t say another word for the next five minutes.

She just kept folding the napkin in her lap, over and over, until it was too small to hold.

After that, she barely spoke. The rest of the evening passed in a blur of secondhand wine breath and laughter that didn’t quite reach the corners of anyone’s eyes. They played at being a family for a little while longer—refilling glasses, trading tired stories—but Penny’s gaze kept drifting, unfocused, to the far end of the table. Even when they said goodnight, even when Bess hugged her a little too hard, Penny was already somewhere else.

It was easier to slip into silence than argue. Easier to let the evening end.

Chapter Text

The next day, she got a reminder about the promotional partnership she'd agreed to—a half-baked collaboration between her kennel and Vivian’s, meant to boost the foundation’s PR. Penny had signed on reluctantly, mostly to keep the board happy. And maybe, just maybe, because she’d been thinking about Vivian more than she liked. Not in any specific way. Just… in the space between thoughts. Like a hangnail she kept touching.

Outside, the sky had torn open—grey, breathless, expectant, promising a deluge. It was after one such grueling session, the weight of their meticulous notes, of countless genetic markers and meticulous breeding strategies, pressing down on them, that the true tempest broke. The dim light from a single battery-powered lantern cast long, dancing shadows, making the canvas walls feel closer, the air thicker, heavy with unspoken things.

Inside, the air between them felt even heavier, a palpable weight that pressed down on Penny’s chest, making each breath shallow.

Vivian moved with a casual elegance that always grated on Penny, barefoot on the worn linoleum, the hem of her jeans damp and frayed from an earlier dash to the main house. She placed a steaming mug, smelling faintly of herbal tea, near Penny’s elbow, her hand brushing the edge of a paper-clipped pedigree, a touch light as a feather, yet Penny felt it like a jolt.

The scent of wet grass seeped through the seams of the tent, mingling with something sharper—cedar and smoke. She crouched near a row of crates stacked with towels and trembling fur, lighting a stub of incense with a practiced hand.

"You know," Vivian said, watching the smoke coil upward, "most people find the scent of cedar calming."

Penny didn’t look up from where she sat, arms crossed, skirts barely brushing the floor. “Most people don’t have seven unwashed terriers circling their ankles like it’s a séance.”

Vivian’s mouth twitched. “They’re fosters. Not savages. You’d know that if you ever worked with dogs that weren’t groomed for ribbon pageants and crystal bowls.”

"And you’d know about grooming," Penny said, voice clipped, "if you ever ran a bloodline that didn’t involve a Craigslist rescue and a prayer."

A familiar rhythm. This was how they always fell into conversation—like sparring with words sharpened over years of mutual distaste. Or something adjacent to distaste. At least, that’s what she still told herself.

Vivian glanced over her shoulder with a flash of teeth. “Do all your flirtations start with condescension, or am I just lucky?”

Penny flushed—too quick, too visible—and smoothed her hand over her skirt. An unguarded reaction. Idiotic. "You wish. This is how I talk to raccoons."

Vivian let out a low laugh. “Raccoons have more social intelligence.”

“And less to say about ‘gut feelings’ like it’s an actual methodology.”

“Well,” Vivian said, rising and brushing straw off her knees, “not all of us can afford a genetics lab in the east wing. Some of us have to rely on instinct. Experience.”

It was maddening, the way she said things like that—earnest and smug all at once. Penny could feel her teeth press together.

“Instinct doesn’t explain the Doberman you matched with a family of guinea pigs.”

“That was one time,” Vivian said, holding up a finger. “And the guinea pigs lived. Mostly.”

“God bless your standards.”

Vivian leaned against a folding table, arms crossed, gaze sharp. “Speaking of standards—your golden brindle pup, the one with the off-kilter gait? He’s promising.”

“He’s not off-kilter,” Penny said, chin lifting. “He’s thoughtful.”

There was a beat.

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“At least I don’t parade him around for donor sympathy. You’d cry on camera if it meant getting another check.”

Vivian gasped, clearly offended but not really. “That’s rich, coming from someone who gives her dogs names like Baron Fitzwilliam.”

“Baron is a family name.”

“Of course it is.”

They were smiling now—barely, but genuinely. The tension hadn’t disappeared; it had only shifted, softened at the edges. Penny didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust how her shoulders dropped when Vivian looked at her like that, or how the scent of cedar wasn’t quite so irritating anymore.

Vivian tilted her head, eyes sharper than her voice let on. “Anyway, he said the same thing last night—about the red brindle coat coming through stronger in second-gen crosses.”

Penny didn’t look up. Her pen froze mid-notation, ink bleeding slightly where it paused too long, a dark bloom on the precise lineage chart. The mention of "he" was a dull ache, immediate and corrosive. A new name. A new person. 

"He?"

The word came out flat. Crisp. Like glass ground beneath a heel. It was a cutting sound, meant to draw blood, to mask the sickening lurch in her gut. Who was he? Why did she care? The questions clawed at the inside of her skull, fierce and unbidden.

Vivian, oblivious, blew gently into her cup, her voice floating lightly, maddeningly innocent. "Mm. The guy from the foundation, the one doing the genetic study. We were talking pedigrees over dinner. He’s—"

She looked up, and something in Penny’s face—the sudden stillness, the faint tremor around her mouth—made her stop. Her brows, dark and expressive, furrowed.

"What?"

Penny’s eyes hadn’t moved from the page, but her jaw was tight, the kind of tight that could crack stone. A muscle jumped in her cheek. Every nerve ending felt raw, exposed. The thought of Vivian, relaxed, laughing, sharing dinner and industry secrets with some nameless man who saw her as something other than a rival, made a cold fury bloom in Penny’s gut. She hated it. Hated the feeling. Hated that she felt it.

"Nothing," she said, voice all sugarless ease, sweet as poison. "I’m just fascinated you’ve finally found someone who wants to talk about dogs as much as you do while trying to get in your pants. Efficient." The words were deliberate, each one a tiny barb, aimed to pierce. She wanted to see a reaction, anything but that infuriating calm. Let me wound you.

Vivian blinked. Her eyes widened, a flicker of something raw in their depths. "Jesus, Penny." The name was a low breath, laced with disbelief, a hint of genuine hurt.

But Penny wasn’t done. The pen dropped, noiseless, forgotten, rolling off the table to land softly on the damp linoleum. She turned to face her fully now, that cool academic mask cracking at the corners, revealing something ugly and desperate beneath. The air was thick with the scent of ozone now, pressing down on them.

"I mean, it must be such a relief—for both of you. Trading coat markers between courses. Do you bark when you come?" The words spilled out, hot and venomous, a torrent she couldn't stop. They were meant to shock, to disgust, to push Vivian away. Because the alternative—the frightening, consuming pull towards her—was too much to bear.

Vivian recoiled. Physically. Like the words had struck skin, leaving a livid mark. Her body shifted back, shoulders tensing, as if struck by an invisible whip. Her eyes, usually so sharp, dulled with something like profound disappointment.

"You’re being cruel." Her voice was flat, hollowed out, stripped of its usual vibrant edge. It was a statement, not a question, and it hung in the air between them, heavy and accusatory.

Penny shrugged, a theatrical gesture of indifference, but her pulse had gone wild, thrumming against her temples, a frantic drumbeat matching the gathering storm outside. Something in her was unspooling, gnarled and furious and terrified all at once. She couldn’t name it. Wouldn’t. So she aimed to wound instead, to deflect the terrifying truth that her cruelty was born of a jealousy she refused to acknowledge. The silence felt enormous, charged with unspoken accusations.

"I didn’t realize he liked them needy." The words were a soft, almost casual blow, delivered with a detached air that belied the roaring tempest inside her.

Vivian’s mouth opened, then shut, a silent gasp. A flare of color rose in her cheeks, two spots blooming high like shame or rage or both, staining her skin. Her jaw tightened, a tremor running through her.

Vivian stepped back like she'd been slapped. The mug on the table teetered, then settled, its warmth radiating futilely into the rapidly chilling air. The rain outside thundered now, wild and chaotic as breath beneath skin, matching the frantic rhythm of Penny’s pulse. The tent seemed to shrink, its canvas walls pressing in, making the air feel scarce.

"You know what?" Vivian’s voice was a low, deliberate current, shaking just enough to betray the raw vulnerability beneath. Her shoulders, previously braced, slumped infinitesimally. "If this is about the donor protocol again, say it. Don’t twist it into whatever the hell this is." Her gaze, though weary, held Penny’s, a desperate plea for clarity amidst the venom.

Penny’s arms crossed without thinking, a visceral response, her body cinching shut like a fortress against the truth bubbling up inside her. She took a half-step back, then a half-step forward, a restless, caged animal. Her creamy blond hair, like spun moonlight, brushed her shoulder as she moved, a stark contrast to the elegant, clean lines of her satin dress. 

"You’re the one bending it. Throwing names around, calling in favors. It’s not a playground, Vivian. These lines matter." The words were ostensibly about their professional world, but the underlying current was a desperate plea for control, for boundaries in a relationship that felt dangerously out of her grasp.

Vivian let out a short, humorless laugh, sharp as a bark, a sound of bitter amusement. Her head tilted, a subtle challenge. The soft floral pattern of her blouse seemed to ripple with her suppressed anger, clinging slightly to her frame. 

"Jesus. Of course. There it is. You think I’m sloppy." Her eyes, the rich, warm hazel of a forest floor, met Penny’s, holding a deep, frustrated weariness, a knowing resignation.

"I didn’t say—" Penny started, her hand lifting, a futile gesture to interrupt, to deny.

"You didn’t have to. You never do." Vivian’s voice rose, bright and cutting now, shedding its earlier restraint, each word a lash. She took a deliberate step forward, closing the scant distance between them, her body a lean, natural line, her hands, usually so expressive, clenched at her sides. "You just... raise an eyebrow. Make a note. Act like you’re the only one in this whole operation who gives a damn about integrity." The accusation hung in the air, a truth that stung because it was so often how Penny presented herself, how she was.

Penny’s fingernails dug into her arms, small, crescent-shaped pains, a desperate anchor. Her jaw clenched, a muscle jumping in her sculpted cheek. She wanted to scream. Her tall, athletic frame, usually so effortlessly poised, felt rigid, a statue of defiance, every line of her body screaming control. "You act like being liked is the same as being respected. They’ll eat you alive." The words were a warning, yes, but also a desperate reflection of her own fears, her own battles in the polished halls of the Sinclair empire, where respect was a currency hard-won and easily lost, and being liked was a dangerous, fleeting thing.

"They already have," Vivian snapped back, the vulnerability in her voice replaced by a sudden, fierce anger that vibrated through the small space. She took another step, her presence filling the air with a raw, untamed energy, the soft fabric of her blouse straining faintly across her chest. "But at least I didn’t choke it down with a silver spoon and call it discipline." The words landed—sharper than either expected, a direct hit to Penny's carefully constructed world, to the very foundation of her inherited life, echoing with the bitter taste of truth.

Penny’s mouth opened, a silent O of shock, but nothing came out. Her breath caught, a ragged sound. The air felt thin, impossible to breathe. The hit was too direct, too accurate, shattering her composure. Her shoulders sagged, then straightened with a jolt of desperate defiance.

Vivian pressed on, breath quick, fueled by the sudden release of her own buried frustrations, her gaze burning into Penny’s, a fiery intensity in her hazel eyes. "You think I don't know what you see when you look at me? Frivolous. Unqualified. Emotional. Just because I didn't claw my way through a legacy name doesn't mean I haven't bled for this." Her voice cracked on the last word, raw and exposed, a tremor running through her.

She stepped closer, another inch, another breath. The distance was shrinking, second by second, like a noose tightening around Penny's throat, pulling them inexorably into each other's orbit. The air crackled, a palpable static, raising the fine hairs on Penny's arms. Their gazes locked, a furious, aching battle of wills, each trying to dominate, to understand, to break the other. 

Every breath felt like a shared gasp, every beat of their hearts a synchronized drum. The space between them throbbed, a living thing, bruised and electric, vibrating with a desperate, unspoken language, a tension that pulled taut as a bowstring. Their bodies, so different in their presentation—Penny in her sharp, tailored lines, Vivian in her soft, flowing fabrics—were acutely aware of one another, every subtle shift, every minute tremor.

Penny tried to find air but only managed noise, a choked gasp, a desperate sound. She took a half-step back, her hands rising slightly, a futile gesture to push Vivian away, to regain control, to silence the voice that saw too much, felt too much. "You’re too loud."

"What?" Vivian’s voice was a sharp demand, unwavering, refusing to be dismissed, her body holding its ground.

"You’re everywhere," Penny said, teeth gritted, the words tearing from her throat, a desperate, uncontrolled torrent. Her finger, trembling slightly, pointed, then dropped. "Every gala, every meeting, every magazine spread like it’s all perfume and puppy kisses—" The vitriol was a shield, a desperate deflection from the true, terrifying reason Vivian was everywhere in her thoughts, in her dreams.

Vivian’s face twisted, a mask of pain and fury. "You think I asked for the attention?" Her hands clenched at her sides, vibrating with controlled fury, a visible tremor.

"I think you love it." Penny’s voice was low, laced with bitterness, mirroring her own deep-seated resentment of the public eye she both craved and despised. Her eyes narrowed, a challenge.

Vivian’s laugh came bitter and short, like static crackling from a dying speaker, brittle and sharp. "So that’s what this is about? You think I’m playing dress-up while you do the real work?" Her eyes, dark and stormy, bored into Penny’s, demanding an honest answer, demanding everything.

Penny’s chest was tight, her breath shallow, as though the room had grown too small for both of them, the canvas walls closing in. The rain beat harder against the windows, a frenzied percussion, matching the frantic rhythm of her pulse, a wild, untamed beat echoing the storm brewing within her. She felt herself unraveling, piece by agonizing piece.

"It’s not about the dresses," Penny said, low, her voice strained, almost a plea. "It’s about—" But the sentence broke apart in her mouth, half-formed and burning, dissolving into an agonizing silence. What was it about? The data? The breeding lines? The man with the red brindle dog? Or the fact Penny had felt a wrenching, primal jealousy she’d never known she possessed, a raw, consuming fire.

Vivian was staring at her now, head tilted slightly, eyes unreadable but bright—like glass catching firelight, reflecting the chaos within. Her blouse was rain-damp where it clung to her collarbone, and Penny hated that she noticed. Hated that it mattered. Hated the desperate, consuming pull she felt towards the very person she was trying to destroy with words. Her body, so close, was a silent, aching question.

Vivian moved to the window, a deliberate, almost dismissive turn of her back, placing a steadying hand on the sill as if the storm outside offered more clarity than the woman behind her. Her back was a rigid line, her shoulders tensed, a wall erected between them. "You think I haven’t earned my place. You think I’m here because I smile the right way in photographs." Her voice was tight, strained.

Penny snorted, sharp and instinctive, a wounded animal's sound, a desperate attempt to draw Vivian back. "Well, the photos don’t hurt." The words were cutting, laced with her own self-loathing for the meticulous public performance that defined her.

Vivian turned just enough to raise an eyebrow, a flash of challenge in her eyes, a mocking glint. "Cute. You rehearse that one in the mirror, or does it come naturally?" Her voice was laced with a sarcastic sweetness that made Penny’s teeth ache.

"Comes with the job," Penny muttered, arms crossed like armor over her wildly beating heart, a defensive posture that betrayed her inner turmoil. "Unlike you, I don’t have time to flirt with photographers between field reports."

Vivian faced her fully now, arms loose at her sides, vibrating with a coiled energy, a predator ready to strike. "Field reports you love to pretend are neutral when you write me out of them." Her voice was low, dangerous, a challenge that hung heavy in the air.

Penny’s chin lifted, a defiant gesture. "I include the relevant data."

"And somehow I’m never relevant." The words were a quiet accusation, hitting a nerve, because Penny knew, deep down, that Vivian was always relevant, always present in her thoughts, a constant, irritating presence.

Penny opened her mouth—probably to say something biting, something scathing and safe, another practiced deflection—but the words dissolved before they could form. She hated how Vivian was looking at her. Not smug. Not wounded. Just there. Like she was weathering it. Like she expected this. Like she saw right through Penny’s flimsy armor, into the raw, aching core beneath.

Vivian tilted her head again, slower this time, her gaze narrowing like she was reading something Penny hadn’t meant to show. “Do you even like dogs?”

It wasn’t the words that startled Penny—it was the softness of the tone, like the question wasn’t meant to be cruel. Just honest.

Penny blinked. "What?" Her voice came out quieter than she meant, almost swallowed by the hush of rain against the canvas. One of the younger terriers bumped gently against her boot, and her hand, on instinct, dropped to its head, fingers threading through damp fur.

“You run the program like it’s a numbers game,” Vivian said, not unkindly. “I just wonder sometimes if you actually like the damn animals. Or if they’re just… a stand-in.”

Penny didn’t answer right away. Her palm stilled against the terrier’s head. She liked dogs—she always had. They didn’t ask things of her the way people did. They didn’t take offense when she forgot to smile, or talk too sharply, or left the room when the noise got too much. They just waited. Sat beside her. Let her be.

"I respect them," she said finally, voice stiff, measured. Safe. Respect was something she could explain, something no one could argue with.

Vivian didn’t move. “That wasn’t the question.”

And that was the trouble, wasn’t it? It never really was about the dogs. Not to people like Vivian. Penny could admire their gait, monitor bloodlines, map out training regimens with the precision of a surgeon—but affection was trickier. Love—trickier still. People always seemed to want more than she knew how to give.

Her jaw tightened. "Of course I do." But the answer, even to her own ears, sounded like a reflex. Not a confession. Not quite a lie, but not the whole truth either.

Vivian stepped closer, just a breath, her presence a magnet pulling Penny in, drawing her into the heart of the storm. "Then why does it always feel like you’re fighting me instead of fighting for them?" The air hummed with the unspoken, the raw, undeniable current of attraction that had fueled their entire tempestuous relationship, a desperate pull.

For a second, Penny almost said it. That she didn’t know. That maybe it was easier to go to war with Vivian than admit she admired her, desired her, hated the way Vivian saw right into her soul. That Vivian’s presence felt like a mirror Penny didn’t ask for—one that reflected every sharp edge she thought made her strong, and every softness she’d buried to get here.

But instead, she said, the words tearing from her throat, a raw, desperate sound, "Because you make it so damn easy." To hate you. To want you. To be consumed by you.

Vivian flinched like she’d been slapped, but her expression stayed calm—too calm, a chilling control. Her eyes, dark and unreadable, held Penny’s. "Right," she said softly, like she was tucking the word into her pocket for later, a wound to nurse in private. "God forbid I make anything easy for you."

Penny scoffed, biting the inside of her cheek to keep anything truer from slipping out, to keep the raw ache of wanting from spilling into the small, suffocating space. "Don’t do that. Don’t pull the wounded act just because I don’t fall over myself every time you flutter your lashes at some donor in suede boots." The jealousy, ugly and untamed, was a desperate, thrashing thing inside her, a wild animal clawing at her composure.

Vivian’s eyes flared, color high in her cheeks now, a furious blush. "You think that’s what this is? That I flirt my way through the foundation while you—what, martyr yourself for the cause?" Her voice was rising, raw and edged with fury, a storm breaking.

Penny smiled, but it was all teeth, a predatory gleam, a desperate attempt to regain control. "If the shoe fits."

"You’re unbelievable." Vivian's voice was a low growl, a rumble of thunder.

"And you’re infuriating." Penny snarled back, matching her intensity, her own voice a low, dangerous growl.

"God, you must be exhausting at dinner parties." Vivian's eyes narrowed, her body leaning forward, a silent challenge, daring Penny to come closer, to cross the final boundary.

"I don’t go to dinner parties," Penny snapped, her voice tight, strained, a desperate, thin thread.

"Yeah," Vivian said, stepping closer still, her voice low and taut, a dangerous hum, a silken cord pulling Penny in. "I figured. Hard to be charming when everything’s a war to win." The last barrier between them seemed to crumble, their bodies almost touching, the air thrumming with unbridled fury and an aching, desperate hunger. The space between them vibrated with a raw, undeniable pull, a magnetic force drawing them into an inevitable collision.

The silence after that felt volcanic—like the earth had cracked just beneath them, heat and tension hissing out of the fault lines. The rain blurred everything outside, a deafening roar, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for them to combust.

Penny’s face twisted, something raw rising to the surface, breaking through the last vestiges of her control. "At least I know what I’m doing here. You—you just swan in and smile and act like you’re not scared shitless of the actual work." The words were a desperate lashing out, a projection of her own deep-seated fears.

Vivian’s mouth parted like she might laugh, but no sound came, only a sharp intake of breath. "You have no idea what scares me." Her eyes were dark, fathomless pools, hiding a pain Penny could only guess at.

"I don’t care." The lie tasted like bile.

"Liar," she said like she could read her thoughts.

Penny flinched. The word cut deeper than she expected, slicing through her carefully constructed defenses. It was too accurate.

Vivian stepped into her space—close enough that Penny could smell the rain still clinging to her skin, the damp earth on her collar, something floral that didn’t suit her but still made Penny’s stomach turn traitorously. The air crackled between them, thick with unshed tears and unspoken desires.

"You don’t get to keep calling me useless and act surprised when I stop pretending it doesn’t hurt." Vivian’s voice was a low, guttural plea, a demand for honesty.

"I didn’t ask you to pretend." Penny’s voice was barely a whisper, a desperate attempt to deny the complex dance they’d been performing for months.

"No," Vivian said, and now her voice was breaking, frayed and uneven, raw with emotion, "but you like it. You like having someone to hate." Her eyes pleaded, tearing at Penny's soul.

"That’s not—" Penny’s breath caught, a strangled sound. "That’s not true." The words were a desperate, aching truth, tearing free from the carefully constructed fortress of her anger. A confession, sharp and painful, that she hated the words she'd spoken, hated the distance she'd created, hated the lie that she hated Vivian.

Vivian’s jaw tightened. "Then what is it? Really?" Her voice was barely audible over the thundering rain, but it was a command, an irresistible pull.

Penny shook her head, eyes stinging, tears blurring her vision, threatening to spill. "Why does it matter to you so much what I think?" The question was a desperate admission, a mirror of Vivian's own vulnerability.

"Because you’re the only one here who doesn’t fucking look at me like I’m already a success. You look at me like I’m a mistake waiting to happen." Vivian’s voice was a low, aching moan, a confession of her own profound insecurity, laid bare for Penny.

"I never said that."

"You didn’t have to."

They were so close now, their words barely louder than the rain, bodies pulled together like magnets fighting gravity, vibrating with a shared, desperate energy. Penny could feel the heat radiating off Vivian—anger, confusion, something unspoken and electric that lived in the space between them, a desperate yearning.

Penny’s voice dropped, bitter and shaky, almost a sob. "God, why do you always have to make everything so—so fucking intense?"

Vivian laughed once, sharp, a broken sound. "Me? You’re the one who acts like every sentence is a grenade. You can’t even say a nice thing without it tasting like blood." Her eyes were wide, luminous, challenging Penny to deny the truth.

Penny blinked fast, breathing shallow, like the air between them had gotten too thick to inhale. "And you can’t take a single thing seriously." Her voice was tight, strained, on the verge of breaking.

"I take you seriously."

That stopped everything. The words hung in the air, suspended, shattering the furious tension like crystal. Penny’s lips parted, but nothing came. Her heart stuttered against her ribs, a frantic, desperate bird trapped in a cage. Every defense crumbled.

Vivian’s hand hovered, uncertain, like she wasn’t sure what to do with it, whether to reach out or pull back. Then she turned away, swallowing hard, her shoulders slumping. "Forget it. I’m done—"

But Penny surged forward, something snapping, a desperate, primal need erupting from deep within her. "No. Don’t you dare." She couldn't let Vivian retreat, couldn't let the intensity dissipate. This raw, exposed truth was all she had left.

Vivian turned just in time for Penny to shove her back—not hard, not with violence, but with a desperate, demanding push that kept Vivian from leaving, kept her tethered to the explosive intimacy between them. Her hands fisted in Vivian’s jacket, clinging, pulling her closer, and Vivian didn’t push away, didn’t resist. Their eyes locked, twin reflections of fury and aching desire, tears beginning to sting Penny's eyes, blurring Vivian's face.

They stared at each other, trembling, both of them shaking from something that had nothing to do with the cold, but with the raw, consuming heat between them. The tent was suffocating, the air charged with their unspoken longing. Penny could feel the furious beat of Vivian’s heart against her own, the frantic pulse of life echoing the storm outside. 

A silent, desperate scream tore through Penny’s mind. Touch me. Please. Just touch me. The world outside roared, a deafening torrent, mirroring the tempest within them, demanding release. And the only direction they could possibly go was into each other.

With a choked sob, a sound torn from the deepest part of her, Penny turned from Vivian, stumbling backward. The canvas flap of the tent whipped open, pulled by a sudden gust of wind, revealing the chaos outside. The rain was a solid, blinding sheet, the wind a physical assault. 

Penny blindly plunged into it, not caring, needing to escape the suffocating intensity of the tent, needing to escape her . The mud sucked at her heels, the cold rain a shocking balm on her fevered skin. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to move .

"Penny!" Vivian’s voice, a raw, desperate cry, tore through the roaring wind.

Penny pushed on, sobbing now, half-blinded by rain and tears, her movements clumsy, frantic. Her foot caught on an exposed root, and she lurched, stumbling forward, a gasp ripping from her throat. She was falling, tumbling into the viscous mud.

Then, soft hands grabbed her, pulling her upright, yanking her back against a solid, warm body. Vivian. Her arms were wrapped around Penny, holding her tight, anchoring her against the furious wind. Penny’s breath hitched, a broken sob. Vivian’s face was inches from hers, rain plastering dark strands of hair to her forehead, eyes wide, desperate, reflecting Penny’s own raw pain.

The impact spun them, sending them stumbling further into the deluge, until they collided against the rough canvas wall of the tent, the rain hammering down on them, washing over their faces, mingling with Penny's tears. Vivian's arms tightened around her, holding her steady, holding her close, their bodies pressed together, the thin, wet fabric of their clothes offering no barrier to the sudden, overwhelming heat that flared between them.

"Penny," Vivian’s voice was ragged, laced with fear, her grip tightening, pulling Penny into the unyielding warmth of her body. 

"Let go." Penny’s chest heaved, her breath coming in ragged gasps, the scent of Vivian’s rain-damp skin, of earth and faint florals, filling her lungs.

Her fingers, trembling, curled into Vivian’s sleeves, clutching the soft fabric as if it were the only anchor in the storm. Their eyes locked, a furious, aching battle of wills, a raw, desperate plea. Thunder cracked in the sky, a violent punctuation to the storm, and for a moment neither of them spoke, only the roar of the rain filling the void, the frantic beat of their hearts echoing the tempest. The air between them vibrated, a taut, humming wire, stretched to breaking.

Penny looked up, her vision blurred by rain and tears, her breath ragged. Vivian's face was inches from hers, streaks of water running down her high cheekbones, her green eyes dark and intense, reflecting the flickering lantern light from within the tent.

There was no anger there now, only a raw, consuming desire that mirrored Penny's own. The world outside the small bubble of their embrace ceased to exist. The thunder rolled, the wind howled, the rain lashed, but all Penny could hear was the frantic beat of her own heart, echoing the wild rhythm of Vivian's.

Their gazes locked, a silent, desperate question passing between them, a question that had been simmering beneath months of rivalry, of polite smiles and cutting remarks. It was a question of longing, of truth, of a connection that defied every rule Penny had ever lived by.

"You drive me insane," Penny rasped, her voice hoarse, a confession ripped from her very soul, her gaze burning into Vivian’s.

Vivian’s eyes, dark and fathomless, burned back, a silent dare. "Then do something about it," she whispered, her voice a low, fierce murmur that promised both salvation and ruin.

And then, with a low, guttural sound that was half groan, half desperate plea, Penny did—she surged forward, a desperate, undeniable force, abandoning all pretense, all control. Their lips met, not tentatively, but with an explosive, primal force that sent a shockwave through Penny's entire being.

It was a kiss born of storm and fury, of months of unspoken tension and raw, unacknowledged desire. Penny's hands, which had been pressed against Vivian's shoulders, now tangled in her wet, auburn hair, pulling her closer, desperate for more. Vivian's mouth was fire, urgent and demanding, tasting of rain and something wild, something Penny had craved without ever knowing.

Her tongue traced the curve of Penny's lip, then plunged, deep and searching, igniting a conflagration that consumed every thought, every inhibition. Penny responded with an equal ferocity, her own lips parting, her body arching into Vivian's, a desperate, hungry surrender.

The rain poured over them, chilling their skin, but the inferno between their bodies burned hotter, a desperate, consuming need. Vivian's hands slid from Penny's arms, one tracing the curve of her spine, pressing her impossibly closer, the other cupping the back of Penny's neck, deepening the kiss.

Penny gasped, a small, choked sound lost in the storm, as Vivian's fingers tangled in her blonde hair, tilting her head back, exposing her throat, her vulnerability. Their breaths mingled, hot and ragged, a symphony of raw longing against the drumming chaos of the world.

Every touch, every press of their bodies, every hungry movement of their mouths was a revelation. It was wild, untamed, utterly reckless, and in that moment, under the furious sky, it was the most real thing Penny had ever known.

The next morning the storm, a relentless percussion against the canvas, slowly subsided, the furious drumming replaced by the soft, steady drip of water from the eaves.

The last echoes of thunder rumbled into the distance, leaving an eerie quiet. As the first tentative slivers of pale, bruised light began to pierce the heavy clouds, painting the eastern sky in muted greys and faint, bruised purples, the harsh, unforgiving reality of the new morning dawned. 

The chill of the tent, the damp earth beneath them, the tangled clothes and scattered papers – all bore silent witness to the night that had passed. The passionate storm had raged and receded, leaving behind an undeniable, perilous secret. 

Vivian’s rescue network had always walked a fine line between survival and collapse — forever chasing grant deadlines, forever defending her progressive methods to a donor base steeped in old money traditionalism. She specialized in fostering the animals no one else would take — the anxious, the sick, the unpredictable — and her credibility in that world was everything. If it became known she was romantically involved with a Sinclair, especially one already married, the whispers alone could unravel her standing. People would call her opportunistic, accuse her of using the connection to secure funding, and the work she’d fought for would be dismissed as a vanity project fueled by scandal.

And Penny — bound by a marriage that existed more as a polished photograph than a living relationship — had everything to lose if the truth emerged. The Sinclair image demanded perfection, demanded lineage as much as loyalty. Her parents would never forgive a deviation from that script, not when she was the mother of Cadence — the eldest grandchild, the heir apparent to the family fortune. One whiff of impropriety, of “unsanctioned desire,” and she risked being cut off entirely. No inheritance. No security. Just the public ruin of a Sinclair daughter whose private truth was the wrong kind of story.

This wasn't her first brush with the forbidden, the quiet, illicit moments with other women tucked away in the deepest corners of her memory, each one a dangerous whisper against the roar of expectation. But each of those had been fleeting, easily dismissed, never threatening the carefully cultivated narrative of her life. 

This, with Vivian, was different. This, was a conflagration. 

Her innocent child, a beacon of purity in a life increasingly shadowed by deceit, represented the ultimate vulnerability, a life she was fiercely determined to protect from the inevitable fallout of scandal. 

The very air around them seemed to thicken with the unspoken weight of it all—the shattered illusions, the dangerous truth, the lives that could unravel with a single misplaced word. 

Without needing a single word, their eyes, heavy with the dawn's cold light, met across the damp, crumpled canvas. A silent, desperate understanding passed between them, a recognition of the precipice upon which they stood.

They had never named it, but both understood from the first touch that this wasn’t something brief or careless. It was not a dalliance to be folded away with the summer clothes. It rooted itself quietly, insistently, as if it had always been there, waiting. Every glance carried the dangerous intimacy of recognition — the knowledge that they had stepped across a threshold they could never retreat from.

The danger was not in being caught in a moment, but in what would be revealed if anyone saw the whole of it: how naturally they fit into each other’s silences, how easily their lives might rearrange themselves if freed from scrutiny. The risk was not scandal alone, but the undoing of the selves they’d spent years perfecting for the world.

Slowly, tentatively, their hands reached across the small, damp space between them, fingers intertwining, a fragile, desperate anchor in the turbulent waters. A life, once a carefully plotted course, now veered into treacherous, uncharted waters, irrevocably altered by the wild, untamed truth of a single, stolen night.

Chapter Text

So they moved through their days as if under glass, every smile and parting touch containing the ache of something fiercely alive, kept alive only by the choice to protect it. The months stretched into a tapestry woven with hurried encounters and whispered confessions. Their meetings were an intricate puzzle, pieced together from fragments of opportunity, each one a precious, dangerous jewel.

Sometimes it was a room between towns. A room with no name, no story, no windows that opened. A room where the air hung heavy and over-treated, like water strained too many times, like something alive had once breathed here and never quite left. Penny would enter with the hush of someone trespassing in their own life, her heels clicking across cheap carpeting patterned with unspeakable stains—lattices of other people’s sins. The moment the door shut behind her, the silence folded in like a bruise.

The suit came off first, tweed stiff like a second spine. Her pearls puddled on the bedspread with a sound she could only ever describe as resigned. She peeled herself out of the day like a molted skin, leaving behind posture, poise, pedigree. There were nights—these nights—where she could almost believe she was no one at all.

Vivian was always already there. Leaning by the window in silhouette, the city’s jaundiced light etching out the curve of her shoulder, a cigarette held not for the smoke but the shape it made in her hand. A priestess of ruin. Green eyes flicking back to her like headlights on an empty road.

"You made it," she said. Her voice was a drag across velvet, smoke-drenched and too low for this world.

Penny crossed the room not with certainty but with the inevitability of water chasing a crack. Her hand found Vivian’s palm—always soft, always warm, a map of some terrain she didn’t dare name—and her fingers began their litany.

"Always," she said. And it was a wish as much as a vow. A child’s voice echoing in the dark, swearing she would come back even if the world turned against her.

Outside, the night peeled itself open and lay flat. The city hummed its usual dirge—sirens, dogs, strangers calling names not their own. But in here, in this in-between place where hotel curtains filtered light into halos, they were no one. They were only breath. Only skin. Only the way two people who shouldn’t exist in the same orbit find themselves pulled by the same stupid gravity.

They were a mythology built of stolen hours. Desperate touches. Mouths murmuring names like psalms. Penny could map every freckle on Vivian’s shoulder. She could drink from the hollow of her collarbone and forget, just briefly, that she had a last name.

Their bodies found each other with the practiced urgency of a secret. They didn’t speak. They confessed. The bed creaked. The hours bled. Somewhere, a TV muttered advertisements for things no one needed. The wallpaper turned gold, then violet, then blue.

In the hush between, Penny would talk. Of houses filled with figurines and cold laughter. Of her mother’s hands, all rings and expectations. Of auctions where porcelain cherubs with tortured expressions were passed off as heirlooms.

"God, the Sinclair Annual Charity Auction," she muttered once, her head hitting the headboard like a verdict. She sounded tired in the way women do when they’ve run out of ways to be charming. "This year it’s antique porcelain figurines. Mother’s idea, of course. One-of-a-kind, hand-painted cherubs—all with tragic expressions and ruffled underpants. It took three interns, a professional appraiser, and several sedatives to get them ready."

They were laughingstock angels. They were Penny, in miniature. Sad-eyed, painted into sweetness. Frozen in postures of joy.

"Ruffled underpants," Vivian said, muffling a laugh into her sleeve. "Bold choice for high society."

Penny watched her. The way her hair fell, half-tamed. The way her socks never matched. The way she existed like she hadn’t signed the same social contract as the rest of them.

"It’s what they live for," Penny said, dry. "The drama of rococo genitalia."

And the thing was, she meant it. Her family didn’t want beauty. They wanted spectacle. Even the cherubs had to look like they were weeping.

"You should’ve let me come."

She could see it—Vivian loose in the ballroom, unsupervised and unapologetic, knocking things over just by existing.

"You would’ve broken one on purpose."

"I would’ve broken two. But only after cataloging them properly. I do have standards."

"You? With standards?"

Vivian’s foot tapped her knee. It was the kind of touch that didn’t ask for permission. Didn’t care.

"Please. You’re the one with standards. I just... improvise mine as I go."

The warmth of her foot lingered. Penny’s skin felt singed. Like a sunburn in a place she hadn’t known was exposed.

"Terrifying," Penny whispered.

She looked down at the bedspread, some loud horror of polyester flowers, orange and brown like a bruise. It was ugly. But it was unpretending. And that, for Penny, was almost sacred.

"Everything’s always so… curated. Not just the auction. All of it. The speeches, the champagne, the laughter that sounds like teeth clinking together. It’s like living inside a snow globe—perfect from the outside, but the air’s all artificial and you can’t breathe."

Vivian moved. A rustle. A shift. Weight in the mattress.

The silence was heavy, but not thick. Not oppressive. It wasn’t the kind of silence Penny had grown up with, where unspoken things hung in the air like cobwebs no one dared disturb, polished into invisibility. This was a different kind of quiet—malleable, raw, a hush that stretched its arms around them and waited to be filled, not with the performance of speech, but the truth of it.

She sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded like confession, like surrender. There was something aching in her chest—slow and spectral—the echo of a girlhood she couldn’t quite remember but carried still, like a splinter beneath the skin. Something soft and festering.

Vivian’s voice broke the stillness, sharp and clean.

“So break the glass.”

The words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. They arrived like a stone through a stained-glass window, a shattering clarity. Penny felt something shift inside her—deep, not quite visible. Something old and aching. Like a cathedral finally caving in on itself. Or a tree, rooted in poisoned soil, waking up after decades of stillness and realizing it had grown in the wrong direction. That the light had always been somewhere else.

She blinked.

“You say that like it’s easy.”

Her voice cracked slightly, barely, like porcelain tapped too many times. It wasn’t defiance. Not really. Just the exhausted recognition of someone who had lived a whole life behind glass and only now realized her fingers were bleeding from pressing too hard against it.

Vivian didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.

“I don’t think it’s easy,” she said. Her tone had changed, softened. It came slow and steady, like breath after crying. “I just think no one’s ever told you that you’re allowed.”

Allowed. The word lodged itself in Penny’s throat like a peach pit. Not sharp, but choking just the same. There were so many rules no one had said out loud. But she’d still followed them, hadn’t she? Inherited them like furniture, like secrets. Sat up straight. Crossed her ankles. Bit her tongue. Said thank you. Gave things up before anyone asked her to.

“You say that like you know me.”

The defenses crept back, elegant and brittle. She could feel them, like embroidery along her spine—each syllable stitched with practiced detachment.

Vivian didn’t smile. Didn’t mock. She just met her gaze and said it like fact.

“I do know you.”

A pause. A tremor beneath the words.

“No,” Penny replied, voice suddenly small. Hollowed out. “You know the version that lies next to you in stolen hours and talks about politics over hotel coffee.”

It was a half-truth. But even half-truths cut deep when spoken aloud.

Vivian leaned in slightly, but not enough to crowd. Her voice didn’t rise. It curled.

“I know the version who hates the color beige but wears it anyway because it makes her mother happy. I know the version who remembers every dog’s lineage three generations back but forgets to eat lunch. And I know the version who doesn’t let herself want things.”

Each sentence landed like a step into somewhere darker. Somewhere truer. Penny didn’t breathe, couldn’t. Her pulse pounded so loudly it drowned out the hum of the hotel’s aging air conditioner.

It was too much. It was precise. It was scalpel-sharp. Like being opened.

“You’re a menace.”

It came out flat, but her throat burned.

“I’m not wrong.”

“You’re incredibly annoying.”

“You’re not denying it.”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Penny rubbed at her face, fingers pressing against her cheekbones like she could erase herself. Blur the edges. She had the sudden, wild desire to disappear into the bedspread, into the terrible mauve wallpaper, into anything that didn’t require her to speak honestly.

“Why are you so damn good at cutting through bullshit?”

Vivian looked at her, and her eyes were soft in the way sunlight is when it finds you at the end of the day, when you weren’t looking.

“Probably because I spent so long trying to convince people I was more than just a smile in a dress. You start to recognize the armor on someone else.”

There it was again—recognition. That terrifying intimacy.

Penny’s eyes burned.

“It’s not just armor.”

Her voice was quieter now. Like the end of something.

“I know. Sometimes it’s a lifeline.”

And the silence came back—not like a door closing, but like something sacred. A lull. A space that felt holy in its stillness. They both sat there, caught in it, the way you sit with grief or grace, unsure whether to speak or listen.

Then, finally: “You said I don’t let myself want things. You’re wrong.”

Vivian didn’t say anything. She just watched her. “Then what do you want?”

It wasn’t a taunt. It wasn’t a dare. It was the kind of question that stripped you. Penny hesitated, a heartbeat too long, the breath stalling in her chest. And then she moved. Not much. Just enough. Her fingers brushed Vivian’s wrist. A small, almost shy gesture. Like reaching for something warm in the dark.

“This,” she said. Her voice trembled. “You. This weird little hotel room where nothing’s curated. Just us. Just now.”

Vivian’s breath caught. It wasn’t loud. But Penny felt it. Saw it. The way you notice a leaf falling. Or a sky about to break.

The moment swelled around them, fragile as soap film. Vivian’s breath caught, a sharp intake of air, a mirror of Penny’s own vulnerability. She turned her hand over to link their fingers, slow and deliberate, a silent acceptance, a profound promise, a tangible connection that sent a jolt of electric warmth through Penny’s entire being. "Then let’s just be here." 

And they were—until the silence built again, full of pulse and breath and the barely-there friction of skin, a symphony of raw, escalating desire, a crescendo of unspoken longing. 

Penny leaned in first, a desperate, undeniable pull, abandoning all pretense, all control, but Vivian met her halfway, a mirror of her own longing, a mutual surrender. The kiss wasn’t a culmination—it was a continuation. It was a murmur spoken in the language of touch, full of secrets and late-night confessions and heat, slow and aching, a balm to wounds Penny hadn't known she carried, a healing touch. 

Penny sighed against her mouth, a soft, broken sound, like she was exhaling a part of herself she hadn’t known she was holding back, a lifetime of suppressed longing finally released, a breath of true freedom.

Vivian kissed like she trusted the moment. Like she trusted her . And Penny, for once, let herself believe it, let herself sink into the terrifying, exhilarating truth of it all.

Chapter Text

Whispered phone calls became their ritual—slipped between silk sheets and silent hallways, cradled in the kind of dark only old houses could hold. Penny would wait until the wing was still, the hum of central air the only companion, and dial.

It rang twice.

"Penny?" Vivian’s voice, low and unguarded, wrapped around her like a warm blanket. No pretense, no polished edges. Just her name, said like it meant something.

Penny shifted beneath the duvet, pressing the phone tighter to her ear. "Hey. You busy? Or just losing another fight with a pedigree chart?"

Vivian made a small sound—half laugh, half groan. "Don’t mock me. This one’s a third-generation tangle of typos and wishful thinking. I’m about ready to tell the client their prize-winning retriever is half ferret."

Penny snorted. "Scandalous. The breeding world may never recover."

"Honestly? It would be an improvement."

There was a brief pause—comfortable, familiar.

"You safe?" Vivian asked softly. Always that. Always first.

Penny hesitated. "Safe enough."

"Which means not at all," Vivian murmured, voice like a frown. "Where is he?"

"‘Conference.’" Penny’s fingers curled into the sheets. "You know, where all the most important conversations happen—preferably near the golf course and far from his wife."

Vivian didn’t respond, not immediately. Just breathed, steady and present, grounding Penny without needing to say a word.

She sighed. "Mother’s currently drafting a new set of commandments for the spring gala. Apparently, last year’s hydrangeas lacked impact. "

Vivian made a noise of mock outrage. "The horror."

"Oh, it’s a crisis. We're talking floral palettes, canapé microphysics, and the logistics of parking for minor aristocracy."

"You poor thing," Vivian said, gently teasing. "Surrounded by color swatches and ornamental nobility."

"It’s hell," Penny deadpanned. "Did you know there are tiers of ribbon-cutting etiquette depending on whether minor royalty is in attendance? I’m basically a glorified wedding planner in heels."

"I think I liked you better when you were talking about illegal terrier smuggling in Belgium," Vivian said dryly.

Penny smirked. "We all peaked during the Belgian terrier crisis."

Their laughter lapsed into a warm silence.

Then, softly: "You really hate it, don’t you?" Vivian’s voice had shifted—lower, quieter.

Penny stared at the dark ceiling. "It’s not hate exactly. It’s like… like wearing a very beautiful coat that doesn’t quite fit. And everyone compliments you on how well it suits you, so you never take it off. Even when it starts to choke."

Vivian was quiet for a long beat. "You ever think about leaving?"

Penny let out a slow breath. "Every day. I just… I don’t know where I’d go. Or who I’d be once I got there."

"I think you’d still be you," Vivian said gently. "Just… louder. Wilder. A little less ‘taupe.’"

Penny huffed. "That’s rich coming from someone who once color-coded her sock drawer."

"That was one time, and it was for a bet."

"Oh, I bet. You were probably thrilled."

"I’ll have you know," Vivian said, mock haughty, "those socks were a feat of organizational brilliance."

"And I bet your wild side came out in the argyle section."

Vivian laughed, bright and easy. Penny smiled, the sound soaking into her skin.

"You know," Vivian said after a pause, quieter now, "I was out with the dogs earlier. This scruffy little terrier we just brought in—completely useless lineage, coat like a Brillo pad—stumbled across a rabbit warren. Didn’t bark. Didn’t lunge. Just… stood there. Staring. Nose twitching. Like it had never seen something so alive."

Penny closed her eyes. "Jealous of a dog now. Great."

Vivian smiled through the phone. "It reminded me of you."

Penny blinked. "Is that an insult or an awkward metaphor?"

"Neither," Vivian said, serious now. "You—when no one’s watching. The way your whole face changes when you’re with the dogs. When you think no one’s paying attention. That’s what I mean."

Penny’s voice faltered. "Viv…"

"I like that version of you," Vivian said softly. "The one that isn’t edited."

Silence settled again, but it wasn’t empty. It was full—of unsaid things and held breath.

Penny swallowed. "You say that like you think she’s real."

"I know she’s real. And she deserves more than dim rooms and curated misery."

Penny was quiet for a long time. "You make it sound so simple."

"It’s not," Vivian said. "But loving you? That part is."

That word— loving —landed like a dropped stone in a still pond. Penny’s eyes prickled. Her voice, when it came, was rough.

"Say that again."

"Loving you is simple," Vivian whispered. "Even if everything around you is impossibly complicated."

Penny pulled the phone tighter to her ear, heart thudding. "Stay on the line a while?"

"I’m not going anywhere."

The phone was warm now, from the heat of her palm and the way she’d been clutching it like a lifeline. The rest of her, curled beneath layers of blankets, was cold. Not from the temperature — the heater hummed softly in the background — but from the absence. From the space beside her that had never been filled and yet somehow felt hollowed out.

She breathed in shallow, like anything deeper would split her in two.

"Vivian," she whispered again. The name quivered from her lips like a secret not meant for the world, but still aching to be heard. A confession, a spell. Her throat tightened, her eyes burned. "Vivian..."

She said it again, slower this time, mouth shaping around it like it was a language only her body remembered. A liturgy of grief and hunger. The syllables were all she had to hold onto — and they slipped from her like mist.

The silence on the other end was thick. Not empty, but expectant , like the space between lightning and thunder.

She buried her face into the pillow. The darkness of the room stretched wider around her, making her feel like a pinprick in the center of the universe. A single, trembling thing.

Her voice cracked when she said it the third time. "Vivian."

There was a breath on the line. A shift. And then—

"Penny…" Vivian’s voice was a balm and a wound all at once — soft, low, rich with something just as desperate. Her name fell from Vivian’s mouth like it belonged there, like she’d been holding it between her teeth all day and finally let it go. "Penny."

It wasn’t just a name. It was an ache. A reply across time zones and tangled sheets and the aching space between their stubbornness.

Penny’s eyes closed, and she pressed the phone harder to her ear, as if that could bridge the distance. As if wanting was enough to bring someone back. Her fingers curled into the blanket like she might rip it in two. Her body ached—not with pain, but with absence. With memory. 

The blanket was too warm. The pillow too soft. The night too quiet.

"I hate this," Penny breathed, voice cracking. "I hate how much I—"
She stopped.

But she didn’t have to finish. Because everything she couldn’t say bloomed in the silence.

And on the other end, Vivian whispered, barely audible, "I know."

Chapter Text

Their so-called "collaborations" happened under the fluorescent flicker of committee meetings, planning sessions, and fundraising dinners where bloodlines and sponsorships were debated like holy scripture. The table was long, the chairs too close, the air stiff with hierarchy and pedigree.

And still.

Vivian always took the seat next to Penny. Always a beat too late, like she was letting her arrive first.

Penny would keep her posture impeccable, her pen poised, her notes neatly tabbed in color-coded files. Vivian would slide into her chair like a threat — blazer off, shirt open just one button too many, legs crossed and slow to still. She always brought a cup of something — coffee, or tea, or whatever burned — and set it down beside Penny’s notebook with a casual, muttered:

"Hope you like it bitter."

Sometimes, she’d let their knees brush under the table — once, twice, then pretend it hadn’t happened at all.

Other times, her fingers would rest just a breath too close, knuckles grazing Penny’s wrist during a shared glance at fostering schedules or budget breakdowns.

Penny would keep her eyes on the page, always. But her breath would catch, traitorous and small.

Once, midway through a long meeting about proposed revisions to the breed standard guidelines, Vivian leaned in — close enough that Penny could feel the heat of her breath against her neck — and murmured,

"Can’t believe you still write your notes by hand."

Penny didn’t flinch. She just whispered back, dry as bone:  "Some of us don’t need to perform literacy to prove we’re qualified."

Vivian grinned. "Sharp as ever." Under the table, their ankles locked.

It was supposed to be professional. Competitive. Rivalry was the only language they were allowed.

So when Penny was called to review budget sheets at the edge of the banquet hall — a small cluster of board members pressing spreadsheets into her hands — she forced herself not to look back. Not to care.

But she heard it. Vivian’s laugh. Low, unguarded, teeth in it. She turned slightly, under the pretense of reaching for her pen — and saw.

Vivian, standing too close to that insufferable judge from Devonshire, the one with the navy cuffs and the wandering hands. He was saying something — something charming, no doubt, something obvious — and Vivian was smiling. Not politely. Not diplomatically.

Smiling with her teeth. Smiling like she meant it. Penny’s eyes narrowed, the folder in her arms suddenly too heavy.

Vivian flicked her gaze over the judge’s shoulder — and caught Penny watching. And just for a second — A heartbeat — Her smile shifted. Became something else.

She tilted her head, almost imperceptibly. Raised one brow. A challenge. Jealous?

Penny turned back to the spreadsheet. When she spoke, her voice was clipped. "We’ll need to reallocate funding for the import lot. The insulation budget is laughably underprepared for winter."

One of the board members blinked. "Yes — absolutely. Of course. I’ll have that noted."

But her eyes were still on the ink, burning. And behind her, Vivian’s laughter was already moving on — Like it didn’t gut her.

Later, Vivian would corner her in the corridor — in that narrow hallway just past the coatroom where the cameras didn’t reach. She’d lean one hand on the wall beside Penny’s shoulder, grinning like she hadn’t just played her like a fiddle.

"You get territorial when I talk to other people."

Penny didn’t look up. "I get irritated when men flirt with you in the middle of committee meetings. There’s a difference."

Vivian leaned in, breath soft against her ear. "Don’t worry. No one’s ever been very good at keeping my attention."

Penny’s hand curled around the folder she held. "You’re exhausting."

Vivian smiled, slow and wicked. "You’re addicted."

And for a second — just a second — Penny’s fingers brushed the inside of Vivian’s wrist as she passed. Barely there. But enough. Enough to burn.

They never touched when anyone could see. But everyone felt it. And that, somehow, was worse.

Chapter Text

One day, an unpleasant little reporter cornered her at Westminster—young, smug, and clearly hoping for scandal. He was a vulture in a cheap suit, his eyes sharp and hungry for the carrion of a public downfall. Penny hadn’t flinched. Her composure was a fortress, built brick by unyielding brick over a lifetime of keeping secrets.

"Mrs. Sinclair, any comment on your husband’s... extracurriculars?" His voice was a barbed hook, seeking to snag a reaction, to tear at the seamless fabric of her public image.

She tilted her chin, a subtle, almost imperceptible movement that spoke of generations of inherited poise. A faint, perfectly polite smile bloomed on her lips, a delicate, unreadable flower. Her eyes, cool and blue as glacial ice, met his, giving nothing away. 

"I assume you mean his chess club," she purred, the words smooth as polished river stones, each syllable carefully chosen. "He’s dreadfully passionate about it." 

The lie was delivered with such effortless grace, such unshakeable conviction, that it hung in the air, shimmering like a mirage in the desert. It was a masterpiece of deflection, a silent, elegant rebuke that left no room for further inquiry.

Then, with the quiet dignity of a queen dismissing a troublesome subject, she’d turned and walked away. Her steps were even, unhurried, a metronome of control. She’d gone to the coatroom, a sanctuary of hushed whispers and forgotten desires, and called Sam. Her voice was calm, measured—the same tone she used when dealing with florists who got the centerpieces wrong, or when instructing the kennel staff on a particularly delicate breeding schedule. It was the voice of command, devoid of emotion, a blade of ice wrapped in velvet.

"This has reached the wrong kind of people," she said. "Fix it."

That was all. No dramatics. No questions.

He did what was expected. Ended the affair. Came home.

A week later, she left a set of car keys on the foyer table. It was a used Saab. He’d been eyeing it for months. She never mentioned it again.

She never asked about the woman, either. Only once did she bring it up—months later, after their daughter was asleep and the dishwasher humming quietly in the background. Penny had a glass of wine in hand, her eyes on the window.

"Was she clever?" she asked.

Sam looked up. "Penny…"

"I hope she was," she said, evenly. "I hope she made you feel interesting."

He hesitated, then said, "I was trying to get your attention."

Her mouth curled slightly. "You could have tried flowers."

"I did," he said. "For years, Penny. You were… somewhere else. Always somewhere else."

She said nothing. She couldn’t tell him that her ‘somewhere else’ was a woman who smelled like leather gloves and lavender water. A woman who only touched her when no one else could see.

Instead, she said, "I do love you, Sam."

He looked up. He looked so tired. "No, you don’t."

"I do," she said again, quiet but firm. "But I’m not built for drama. I show up. I keep things steady. I raise our daughter. I pretend to like the art exhibits you love and bike the shoreline with you even though I hate the wind in my hair. I refill your tea before you ask. That is love."

Sam let out a dry, quiet laugh. "Wait. You were pretending to like the Rothko?"

She smiled, just a little. "I liked that you liked it."

He didn’t press. Just looked at her for a moment like she was a painting he suddenly wasn’t sure he understood — familiar and unknowable all at once.

Penny kissed Sam’s cheek every morning. She raised their daughter with unwavering tenderness. She organized galas, chaired committees, played hostess with laughter that never quite reached her eyes.

To the outside world, she was enviable.

Inside, she was slowly disappearing.

Her life with Sam had the rhythm of a long-married couple. It was built on shared schedules, quiet mornings, evening walks, mugs of milky tea. A kind of comfort had grown between them, predictable and pleasant. They read in silence, watched films with interlocked ankles on the sofa, and wordlessly passed each other newspaper sections like clockwork.

And Penny didn’t hate it. In a way, she was grateful for the calm.

But she wasn’t alive in it.

Where Vivian made her feel unmoored — like her soul was in freefall, like she couldn’t catch her breath without laughing or gasping or weeping — Sam gave her gravity. He gave her stillness. And in some darker way, that stillness was a kind of burial.

Yet Penny did love him, in her way. He was the father of her child. He had once, in their twenties, biked across town just to leave her daffodils on her windshield after she'd broken her arm falling from a horse. He had spent a decade swallowing his dislike of her parents, her dogs, her world, just to stay by her side. He didn’t understand her, not really. But he tried. Sometimes that counted.

He still wore those tweed jackets. Still drank milky tea. Still annotated war documentaries like they were holy texts. He still took the dogs out each morning and let their daughter ride on his shoulders at the farmer’s market. He still looked at Penny like he couldn’t believe she picked him.

She just no longer remembered why she had.

Chapter Text

It was a slow Thursday afternoon, the kind that didn’t feel real, a soft, muted hum in the city's vast symphony. The bookstore, a haven of forgotten whispers and quiet dreams, was half-empty, tucked on a sleepy side street that Penny cherished because no one she knew ever seemed to find its dusty, comforting embrace. 

She was skimming a shelf labeled Obscure Travel Memoirs, her fingers, usually so precise, now absentmindedly trailing along the worn spines, each furrowed edge a silent story. 

Across the room, bathed in the muted light filtering through the high windows, Vivian was a vibrant splash of color, flipping through a battered guide to Patagonia, a faint smirk playing at her lips as she read aloud bits of the introduction under her breath, a low, melodic hum that drew Penny's attention like a moth to flame.

Then Penny froze. A sudden, cold dread seized her, a serpent coiling in her gut.

Her fingers went stiff against the book, the paper suddenly rough, alien. Her eyes, usually so composed, darted to the front window—and there she was. Mrs. Albright. Garden club matriarch. Her mother’s bridge partner. A woman whose smile could curdle milk, whose whispers could shatter reputations. A single raised eyebrow, a few well-placed words, and Penny’s carefully constructed world could crumble to dust. The panic was a cold, sharp claw, raking at her composure.

Penny didn’t think—just moved, a primal instinct overriding generations of decorum. She grabbed Vivian’s sleeve, the soft fabric a lifeline, and pulled her into the narrow, shadowed space between two packed bookshelves. It was cramped and dusty, a forgotten corner, and smelled faintly of old glue and mildew, a scent of forgotten histories. 

Vivian let out a startled "Jesus, okay," a sharp intake of breath, but Penny, her own heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, just held her finger to her lips, a desperate plea for silence, and pressed them both into the deeper shadows, seeking refuge from the encroaching light.

Mrs. Albright’s voice, a polite, nosy drone, filtered closer, each word a distant, ominous bell. Penny stood ramrod straight, every muscle tensed, barely breathing, a statue carved from pure, unadulterated fear. Vivian shifted slightly beside her, a subtle adjustment, yet Penny felt the warmth of her body, the faint brush of her coat sleeve, an electric current passing between them in the suffocating closeness. The air was thin, charged with unspoken tension.

A long, tense beat passed, stretching into an eternity, punctuated only by the distant murmur of the bookstore.

Then Vivian exhaled. Slowly. Not loud, but definitely pointed, a soft, knowing sigh that vibrated through the confined space. "You know," she muttered, her eyes, dark and knowing, flicking toward the window, then back to Penny, "some people don’t have to duck and dive every time someone with a pearl necklace walks by." The words were a gentle barb, a quiet accusation that stung with its truth, yet held a hint of weary understanding.

Penny didn’t answer. Her heart was still hammering, a frantic drumbeat against the silence, her throat tight with a desperate, unspoken defense. You don't understand. You don't know what it's like.

Vivian leaned back a little, not quite looking at her, her gaze drifting to the worn spines around them, as if seeking answers in the silent stories. "I mean. It’s been, what? Years now?" Her voice was casual, almost too casual, but there was something in the way she said years—light, but sharp. A little curved at the edges, like a question mark etched in the air, a silent tally of Penny's endless evasions.

Penny blinked at her, caught off guard, the sudden shift in Vivian's tone unsettling her. "Viv," she whispered, the name a fragile plea, "I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking, I just—" It was instinct. Pure, unadulterated fear. The fear of exposure. The fear of losing everything.

"No, I know," Vivian said, and smiled. But it wasn’t a warm smile. It was the kind she gave when something smarted, a quiet acknowledgment of pain, a flicker of something Penny couldn't quite decipher. "It’s just funny, that’s all. Still so quick on the escape tactics." The words were delivered with a quiet resignation, a hint of old hurt, a weary familiarity with Penny's ingrained defenses.

There was no real accusation. Not yet. But the words lingered. They hung there, brittle and heavy, in the narrow air between them, a silent weight pressing down on Penny's chest. She sees it. She always sees it.

Penny’s throat felt tight, raw with unspoken truths. "I have to be quick," she said quietly, almost more to herself, the words a desperate, whispered confession. "You don’t get it." The burden of her name, the weight of expectation, the constant performance – how could Vivian, so free, ever truly understand?

Vivian didn’t answer right away. Her eyes dropped to the space between their shoes, a small, shared patch of worn linoleum. She gave a soft, almost bitter laugh, a sound of quiet despair. "Yeah. Maybe I don’t." The words were a quiet surrender, a painful admission of a chasm between them that Penny had created, a wall built from fear and denial.

They stood like that, wedged between two worlds—the hushed, dangerous reality of their hidden space, and the polite, oblivious world beyond the bookshelves. Still touching, but not close, a fragile bridge spanning a vast, unspoken distance. Silent, except for the rustle of a page somewhere nearby and Mrs. Albright’s brittle laugh floating through the stacks, a mocking echo of the life Penny was trapped within.

Then Vivian stepped out first—calm, measured, with her chin tilted just enough to pretend it hadn’t meant anything, a graceful exit from the shared tension, leaving Penny alone in the lingering silence.

But Penny stayed behind. For just a second longer. The shadows clung to her, a comforting shroud.

And it had meant something. 

Even if neither of them could say it aloud, the moment lingered—quietly altering the gravity between them.

Chapter Text

Some days passed. Maybe more. Penny had slipped back into her routines with practiced ease, but something was off-kilter now, a quiet tremor beneath her stillness.

Sam noticed.

"Penny." Sam’s voice wasn’t loud, but it stopped her in her tracks. It was the kind of quiet that meant something—sharp and controlled, the calm just before the lightning strikes. 

A silence that pressed in, heavy with unspoken accusations, making the very air around her thick and difficult to breathe. Penny turned, still holding a faint, brittle smile that hadn’t quite faded, a last, desperate flicker of the illusion she wore for the world. 

The pearls at her neck, usually a cool comfort, felt suddenly hot, a suffocating weight as her fingers found them, reflexively, seeking an anchor against the rising tide of dread. 

"Sam?" she asked, voice even, steady, a perfectly modulated tone that belied the frantic drumbeat of her heart. "Is something wrong?" He stood by the fireplace, posture relaxed in the way that said he’d been waiting, a predator in his own drawing-room. 

In his hands, a folder. Slim, elegant, a deceptively innocent sheath. But when he opened it, the paper inside shifted with a telling weight, like the rustle of dry leaves before a storm, or the soft, insidious sound of a coffin lid settling. 

"You tell me," he said, not unkindly, but not gently either. His voice was a flat, unyielding stone, dropped into the quiet pool of her carefully constructed peace. She crossed the room slowly, her heels quiet against the polished floor, each step a deliberate act of will. Her spine was straight, rigid as a mast against a coming gale, her chin lifted in the defiant posture of a queen facing her executioner. 

When she was close enough, he held the folder out, not thrusting it, but offering it. Like an inevitability. Like a mirror held up to her deepest, most guarded self. 

Inside: the photo. Penny and Vivian, in that quiet park at dusk. Their heads tilted toward each other. A kiss, soft and slow. Tender. A stolen moment, now brutally exposed to the harsh, unforgiving light of judgment. It was the raw, beating heart of her secret, laid bare. 

The rotten thing, the beautiful, terrifying truth she had kept buried beneath layers of Sinclair decorum, now screaming from a glossy page. Her breath caught, a jagged gasp that tore at her throat, but she didn’t look away. 

Her gaze hovered on the image a moment longer than she meant it to, drawn by a morbid fascination, by the undeniable beauty of the forbidden. Then, with hands that trembled imperceptibly, she shut the folder, the soft click echoing like a final, irrevocable judgment. "Sam," she said softly, her voice a fragile whisper against the rising tide of panic. "I can-" 

"Don’t," he cut in. Not cruel, just tired. His voice was a weary sigh, heavy with years of unacknowledged truths. "Don’t say you can explain. Don’t insult both of us with that." Her jaw tightened, a muscle twitching betraying the furious battle within, but she nodded once, a sharp, decisive movement.

She folded her hands in front of her, lacing her fingers together, a desperate attempt to anchor herself. Composed. Unmoving. A statue carved from ice. A Sinclair to the last, even as the foundations of her world crumbled beneath her feet. He looked at her then, really looked at her, his gaze stripping away the layers of her carefully crafted facade. 

"I don’t think I ever wanted to find it," he said. "Not really. I think... part of me kept pretending not to notice. You’ve always had your silences, Penny. And I let them be. I thought it was just who you were. Proper. Contained." 

His words were tiny, sharp needles, piercing the illusion she had so painstakingly maintained. She didn’t flinch, though his words struck deep, each one a direct hit on the hidden vulnerabilities she had guarded with her life. 

"But it wasn’t that, was it?" he continued, his voice laced with a newfound, bitter clarity. "It was never me you were holding together for." The implication hung in the air, a suffocating shroud. It was the truth, spoken aloud, that she was not straight, that her entire marriage had been a performance, a sacrifice on the altar of family expectation. 

This was the greatest shame, the part of herself she could never confront, now exposed by the very man she had married to hide it. Fear, cold and insidious, bubbled up inside her, a geyser of terror threatening to erupt and shatter her composure. She didn’t reply. Her silence wasn’t an admission. It was armor, a shield forged from decades of repression, now cracking under the relentless assault of truth. 

"I would’ve forgiven you," he said quietly, his voice tinged with a strange, almost mournful regret. "If it had been a man. I know how that sounds. I’m not proud of it. But that’s the truth." The words were a final, devastating blow, confirming the depth of the societal chasm that separated her truth from acceptable transgression. 

Penny’s expression didn’t change, a mask of marble, but inside, a thousand fragile things shattered. She only straightened a little more. Shoulders back. Chin high. A desperate, almost pathological need to remain unbroken, even as she bled internally. "

“But this?" His voice cracked faintly, a raw edge of pain. "Vivian?" That name, a whispered incantation, spoken aloud in this house that had always demanded her conformity, made the very air shift, thick with the weight of forbidden desire and exposed truth. 

Penny looked down at her hands for a moment, as if gathering something fragile and invisible, the scattered fragments of her dignity, the remnants of a life meticulously hidden. "I never meant to humiliate you," she said, evenly, her voice a flat, emotionless plane, a desperate attempt to smooth over the jagged edges of her betrayal. "I never wanted to hurt you." 

Sam gave a small, bitter laugh, a sound devoid of humor, a dry, rasping echo of their broken vows. "You think that makes a difference?" 

"No," she admitted, the single word a quiet, devastating surrender. "But it’s still true." He was quiet for a long moment, the silence stretching between them, vast and empty as the years they had spent together. 

Then: "Cady deserves better than this." Her composure finally faltered, just for a beat, a hairline crack in the steel. 

The mention of Cady, her innocent child, was the only key that could unlock the carefully guarded fortress of Penny’s heart. "I know." The word was a raw, aching whisper, a confession of her deepest fear. 

"I don’t hate you, Penny," he said. "And I don’t think you’re a bad person. But I can’t—" He looked away, his gaze drifting to the dying embers in the fireplace, as if seeking warmth in the ashes of their life. "I can’t be in this anymore. I’ve met someone. Nothing happened while we were still—this. But it’s real. She’s real. And I want a life I don’t have to second-guess every time you go quiet." 

The words landed gently, like falling leaves, but they still hurt, each one a quiet, precise cut. She nodded once, a brittle grace, a final, fragile act of acceptance. He looked at her for a long time, his gaze searching, as if sifting through the ruins of their marriage for the ghost of the woman he had married. Then: "You’ll hear from the lawyers." 

Penny’s breath hitched, a desperate, ragged sound that tore at her throat. The words hung in the air, a death knell. Her carefully constructed composure, the steel armor she had worn for decades, threatened to shatter. No. Not now. Not here. 

Not when her greatest shame, the rotten, hidden truth of her very being, had been so brutally unearthed. Fear, cold and sharp as a winter wind, bubbled up inside her. She had to contain this. She had to.

"Wait," she said, her voice a sudden, desperate plea, sharper than she intended, but laced with the frantic urgency of a drowning woman. Her hands, which had been clasped so tightly, now reached out, a fleeting, almost imperceptible gesture towards him, as if she could physically grasp the unraveling threads of their life. 

"Sam, let’s—let’s talk this out. We can fix this. We can—" Her mind raced, a frantic, desperate scramble for a solution, for a narrative she could control, a way to mend the irreparable. This cannot be happening. Not like this. Not after everything.

Her gaze, wide and pleading, met his, searching for any flicker of the man she had married, the man who had always yielded to her quiet authority. "You’re leaving?" The question was a raw accusation, a desperate attempt to shift the burden of their collapse. 

"Because I would never. Not after all these years. Not after everything we built. I didn’t." She said this with Sysiphian desperation- a reminder of his own past transgression years ago she had never held against him. The words were a bitter echo of the Sinclair code, a testament to her ingrained belief in endurance, in maintaining the facade at all costs. She, Penny Sinclair, did not abandon her post. She did not break her vows, even if they were made of lies. And he, by leaving, was committing the ultimate indiscretion in her rigid world.

He turned to go, then paused. His voice, when he spoke again, was softer, tinged with a strange, melancholic understanding. "I used to think you were untouchable. Like nothing could get through to you. I know now that wasn’t true." The words were a final, unexpected gift, a recognition of her buried vulnerability, a truth she could not, would not, acknowledge.

She said nothing. What could she say? Her voice, her very soul, was hollowed out, stripped bare by the relentless tide of revelations. He left without another word, and the door clicked shut behind him, sealing her in the vast, echoing silence of the room. 

Penny stood alone in the center of the room, the folder still clutched in her hand, a forgotten relic. She didn’t cry. The tears were frozen, locked behind the icy gates of her composure. She didn’t fall apart. Her body, trained for decades in the art of stillness, remained rigid, a monument to her own suffering. 

She just stayed still, her eyes fixed on the fireplace, on the phantom flames of a life consumed, her breathing shallow and steady, a desperate, fragile thread holding her to the precipice of sanity. 

She had always been good in a crisis. A master of self-preservation, a survivor forged in the fires of expectation. 

She would be good now. She had to be. 

But when she finally moved, just once, it was to open the folder again. To look, one more time, at the photo inside. At the one place she hadn’t been performing. At the tender, devastating truth that had shattered her world. And then she closed it, carefully, almost reverently, and placed it on the mantle. Like a relic. Like a truth that no longer needed to be hidden—only survived.

Chapter Text

And yet.

A fragile hope bloomed in the wreckage. Penny was free of Sam. Free of the lies. The agonizing divorce was a violent stripping away of the old life. It was a necessary pain, a brutal tearing, but it made room for them. 

The toll of the past months, the suffocating secrecy, the constant fear of exposure, had etched itself onto Penny's face, a subtle gauntness around her eyes, a perpetual tension in her jaw. The effort to maintain the illusion of her perfect life had drained her, leaving her hollowed out, a fragile shell.

It was Summer 16 as Cady called it who, nearly seventeen, watched with the quiet, observant eyes of an adolescent too young to fully grasp the nuances of adult deceit, yet old enough to feel the tremors of a fracturing home.

Penny had spun a careful narrative for her daughter: Sam had left them for another woman, a simpler, more palatable truth. But the real fear gnawed at Penny. Cady was the eldest grandchild, the heiress to the fortune, a beacon of the future for the Sinclair legacy. 

Penny was terrified that if Cady ever knew the true, unspeakable reason for the divorce, Cady might not choose the rigid, gilded path of a Sinclair. Penny, selfishly, desperately, needed Cady's presence, her very existence, to restore her own shattered standing with Harris and Tipper. Her parents knew nothing of the true nature of the infidelity; this was a battle Penny was fighting alone with her lawyers.

Sam, in his raw, wounded fury, had threatened to expose everything, to shatter her carefully constructed world. His revenge was cold, precise: he demanded everything in return for his silence. Financial ruin, the stripping away of her assets. 

The family name, always a shield, remained polished and unblemished, even as Penny herself shattered, isolated and alone in this fight. Her parents, Harris and Tipper, would never countenance a daughter who loved a woman. Penny understood this with a chilling clarity. 

The threat of losing Cady, of having her daughter ripped from her by a family that prized image above all else, was a constant, icy grip on her heart. It was a fear that drove her, a desperate need to navigate this treacherous landscape, to somehow salvage a future where she could still be a mother, even if it meant living a life forever shadowed by compromise.

Coming into Beechwood this summer was more important for Penny than ever before. Usually, she would have contrived an excuse to leave for weeks, to meet with Vivian in some anonymous hotel room, to steal moments of solace and connection. But this time, she couldn't. She had to put all her attention into winning back favor with her parents, to present a united front, and to come up with a plan to fix this Sam issue without any collateral damage to Cady. She was truly alone, facing this abyss with only her lawyers as confidantes.

The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and burgeoning green, a heavy shroud cast over the hushed Vermont farmhouse. Penny stood by the window, her gaze lost in the endless, indifferent unfurling of new leaves on the maples outside. 

Each budding branch seemed to echo the turmoil within her, a relentless, crushing rhythm. When her voice finally emerged, it was a brittle whisper, barely audible above the distant hum of spring peepers. "He's going to tell them." The words, though few, carried the weight of a collapsing world.

Vivian, ever the anchor in Penny's storm-tossed existence, leaned beside her, a steady presence against the rough-hewn wall. Her auburn hair, catching the soft light from the window, seemed to glow, a warm contrast to Penny's pale tension. 

Her gaze, dark and knowing, held a quiet strength, a deep well of empathy. "Tell them what?" Vivian's voice was a calm, unyielding current, like the gentle flow of a mountain stream. "That you weren't exactly devoted during the marriage? Join the Sinclair club." 

The sardonic humor, a familiar balm, offered little comfort against the cold dread that coiled in Penny's gut, but Vivian's presence itself was a small, steadying hand.

Penny offered a dry, humorless smile, a mere twitch of her lips that felt more like a grimace. It was a practiced gesture, a shield against the world's probing eyes, against the truth that threatened to unravel her. Her insides were a knot of icy fear, tightening with each passing second. 

"Oh, he's got a whole narrative," she murmured, the words tasting like ash. "Starred and underlined. Says I was scheming the whole time. That I lured him into a fake marriage for the family name and ran off to find myself… romantically." The cruelty of it, the audacious distortion of a painful truth, was almost laughable, if it didn't threaten to consume her entirely. The word "romantically" hung in the air, a fragile, dangerous thing she couldn't quite bring herself to define, a chasm of unspoken reality.

Vivian’s hand, warm and firm, found Penny’s arm, a silent reassurance that spoke volumes, a lifeline in the swirling chaos. Her touch was grounded, real, a stark contrast to the ethereal dread that clung to Penny. 

Her eyes, dark and knowing, held a flicker of anger, a shared indignation that burned bright. "God, he makes it sound like you faked your own death and moved to France with a poet." Vivian's voice was laced with a mix of disbelief and genuine amusement, a brief, welcome lightness.

Penny managed a wry, almost imperceptible smile. "Close. Just replace the poet with you and the fake death with a... personality crisis." The words were a bitter confession, a shared secret between them, a truth she could only hint at, shrouded in evasion. 

Vivian's eyes softened, her earlier amusement fading into a deep, protective concern. "Penny..." she began, her voice gentle, almost hesitant. "Is he serious?"

Penny shrugged, a small, weary gesture that spoke of burdens too heavy to bear. Her gaze drifted back to the horizon, a vast, empty canvas stretching into an uncertain future. 

The truth, a dangerous, living thing, lay coiled beneath her skin, a serpent waiting to strike. He believed in the power of noise, the deafening roar of scandal. "He thinks if he makes enough noise—press, blogs, God knows what else—people won’t notice who actually left who." Her voice faltered, the words catching in her throat, too raw, too revealing, too close to the bleeding heart of her secret. 

She shrugged again, a more pronounced movement this time, as if shedding an invisible weight, a desperate attempt to dislodge the truth that clung to her. "Just that I was—smiling too much around you. That I got the math wrong." The implication hung heavy in the crisp New England air, a silent accusation that vibrated between them.

"He’ll make you the villain," Vivian stated, her voice devoid of judgment, only a stark recognition of the inevitable. She didn't try to sugarcoat it, but her tone was laced with a protective concern.

Penny looked down, her fingers twisting the cold metal of her ring, a symbol of a life she no longer recognized, a life that felt like a distant dream. The silver band felt like a shackle, binding her to a past she desperately wanted to escape. 

"He’ll make me a headline," she whispered, the words a chilling prophecy, a stark vision of her name splashed across a page, stripped bare for public consumption.

Vivian’s voice was sharp, incredulous, cutting through the melancholic air like a sudden gust of wind. "And what—he thinks that’s worth the whole fortune? The entire Sinclair legacy?" Her disbelief was genuine, a raw, honest reaction.

Penny’s laugh was a harsh, bitter sound, devoid of mirth, a dry rustle of dead leaves underfoot. "Apparently. He says unless I give up everything—the shares, the Burlington house—he’ll go to the press. And Sinclair women don’t end up in Page Six." The words were a mantra, a family law etched into her very being, a sacred, unbreakable rule that governed their gilded lives.

"So let him," Vivian countered, her tone dismissive, almost flippant, though her eyes held a spark of defiance. "It’s not like Harris and Tipper read anything that doesn’t have a yacht on the cover. They live in their own little world, Penny, you know that." A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through Penny, a shiver of doubt.

Penny turned, her eyes flashing, a sudden, fierce defiance burning in their depths, like embers fanned by a sudden breeze. "Nothing gets past them. You think Tipper wouldn’t claw my name out of the will with her salad fork?"

Vivian's lips curved into a thin, knowing smile. "She always did have sharp cutlery." The shared understanding, a dark humor, flickered between them.

"My daughter is the eldest grandchild. Heiress to the estate." Penny’s voice was firm, a declaration of Cady’s rightful place.

"And she will be," Vivian affirmed, a soft, steadying hand on Penny's arm, a gentle reminder of the stakes. "This doesn’t erase bloodlines."

"It muddies them," Penny retorted, her gaze fixed on the budding trees outside, as if they held the answers to her predicament. "And people like my parents hate mud." 

She looked away, the weight of generations pressing down on her. "I just need to make it through this summer. One good, clean performance. Smile at the board, wear the pearls, play Sinclair Barbie while he shacks up with his Pilates instructor in Boston." The thought tasted like ash, a bitter residue on her tongue, a grim sacrifice.

"You don’t even like Beechwood," Vivian observed, a gentle prod, a soft challenge to Penny's resolve. 

"I like what it means," Penny retorted, her voice hardening, a steely resolve replacing the earlier despair. The light in her eyes was cold, calculating.

"Which is?" Vivian pressed, seeking the deeper truth, her gaze unwavering, patient.

"That Cady gets her inheritance. That I don’t get cut off. That I don’t end up renting a basement suite in some post-divorce suburb with laminate floors and bad lighting." Her voice was a low growl, the horror of such a fate palpable, a nightmare from which she desperately sought to escape, a fall from grace too terrifying to contemplate.

Vivian chuckled, a soft, warm sound that levid out Penny’s despair, a ripple of light in the encroaching darkness. "Oh no. Not bad lighting." Her eyes crinkled at the corners, a genuine amusement that briefly lightened the heavy atmosphere.

"Laugh all you want, Viv," Penny snapped, her eyes holding a desperate, burning resolve, "but I didn’t grow up like this just to end up folding towels at Pottery Barn. I’ve played the game this long. I’m not losing now." 

Her voice was a fierce declaration, a promise whispered against the hush of the weeping willows in the farm, a testament to Penny's unwavering determination to survive, no matter the cost.

Vivian's gaze, steady and probing, met Penny's. "You think playing nice for a summer’s going to fix everything?" The question hung in the air, a challenge, a doubt, but also an invitation for Penny to truly consider her path. Penny's eyes, however, held a chilling certainty. "It doesn’t have to fix it," she countered, her voice dropping to a low, fierce murmur. 

"It just has to hold. Until the will’s signed. Until they’re dead. Until I’ve won." The last word hung in the air, a chilling declaration, floating away into the indifferent Vermont air.

Vivian was quiet for a moment, her gaze thoughtful, then she spoke, her voice soft, almost a whisper. "And then what?"

Penny didn’t answer. She just stared at the hydrangeas, blooming too early by the back steps, their vibrant pinks and blues a stark, beautiful contrast to the seeming desolate landscape of her future.

Chapter Text

The anger that fueled inside her was adolescent, she felt fourteen again. She remembered then: the bathroom smelling like powder and lavender soap. 

Somewhere downstairs, a blender was whirring and someone was laughing too hard at nothing. Penny stood at the mirror, balancing on bare toes, pressing her lashes into the curler like she was pinching back a secret. Her lip gloss shimmered pink and sticky. She looked like the girls in the magazines that Carrie and their cousin Yardley would smuggle under their beds.

She looked like someone else’s idea of grown.

She liked that. She didn’t.

That day, a boy had passed her a note in class that read "ur rlly pretty" and she had smiled without meaning to. He had flinched. She felt bad for him. She felt bad for all of them. The boys who couldn’t meet her eyes anymore, the ones who said "you’re different now" like it was her fault for sprouting taller than them in eighth grade and brushing her hair before school.

She used to be one of the boys. She missed that. She missed being easy. She missed sleepovers.

Tipper knocked once, then entered without waiting, like always.
She was already in her church clothes, already tightly-heeled and set. Her eyes skimmed Penny like a scan, and for a moment, she just watched. Penny tried not to blink.

"Your lip’s too shiny," Tipper said. "You’ll look like you’re trying."

Penny shrugged. "I am."

Tipper didn’t smile. She reached past Penny for a bobby pin and started twisting a strand of her hair up without asking. Her touch was clinical. Too careful to be loving. Penny stared at their reflections: mother and daughter, same cheekbones, same lashes, same cursed mouth.

"You’re going to break hearts," Tipper murmured, almost like a threat.

"I can’t wait," Penny said, with her new voice. The one that could be mistaken for confidence.

"You say that now." Tipper fixed the last strand, stepped back. "But you don’t know what it costs."

Penny swallowed. Her throat clicked. Her lip gloss caught a strand of hair and dragged it to her mouth.

"Don’t let your heart show on your face. That’s not very Sinclairian."

Penny rolled her eyes, but not all the way. The phrase "very Sinclairian" had begun to curdle in her mouth lately. It used to sound like a spell. Now it was a rulebook no one ever let her read.

"Do you think Marlene’s still in choir?" Penny asked, not looking up from the eyeliner she was trying to smudge into something cooler than raccoon but cleaner than church-appropriate.

Tipper didn’t answer right away. She was quiet the way she always was when Penny mentioned something she’d hoped had been forgotten. She sat on the lip of the tub, running a comb through her hair like she was listening, like she cared. But she was calculating something. You could hear it in the silence—how it turned heavier.

"She might be," Tipper said eventually, voice light. "Though I think her mother moved them to a different parish."

Penny didn’t believe her.

She twisted the cap back on her gloss, lips sticky. "She used to sing so loud during the psalms. I liked that."

There was a pause. Then, as if on impulse: "Let me see your palm."

Penny blinked. "What?"

"Come on," Tipper said, smiling now, too quick, too breezy. "Don’t be so suspicious. It’s just a bit of fun."

Penny offered her hand. She didn’t know why. Maybe because she wanted to believe her mother could be warm like this, could play pretend. Maybe because she still wanted her to see her, to find something good in the lines.

Tipper cradled the hand like it was china. Her thumb moved across the skin with a strange reverence—over the lifeline, the heart line, the little fork at the base that Penny had once heard meant divided affections.

A crease appeared in Tipper’s brow. She looked for too long.

"What is it?" Penny asked, voice low.

Tipper dropped her hand as if it had gone suddenly limp—not burning; no, that would have meant passion. This was something else. Revulsion dressed as detachment.

"Nothing," she said, turning back to the mirror. "Wash off the gloss. It’s too much."

And then, more softly, like an afterthought that had sharpened into a warning:

"Make your heart a small target, Penelope. That’s the only way it survives."

That was it. But Penny felt something had shifted.

After that the phone didn’t ring anymore. The invitations stopped. Sleepovers—once entire weekends braided with music videos and lip gloss and midnight popcorn—quietly faded.

"Not this weekend" turned into "Your father and I are busy," turned into "She seems like she’s in a different phase of life now," turned into nothing.

Tipper never said the word no. She didn’t have to.

Penny didn’t ask why.

Instead, she lay in bed at night with a flashlight and studied her palms like scripture. Her skin suddenly seemed treacherous—these lines, these creases, tiny cracks that whispered truths without her consent. Had they tattled on her? Had they said: she wants things she’s not supposed to want? She had never kissed Marlene the way she’d wanted. Had barely held her hand for too long. But still.

Maybe her hands had known.

Maybe God had, too.

From then on, Penny learned to tuck her feelings into smaller places. Into the corners of smiles, into shrugs, into jokes with sharp teeth. If she couldn’t be the kind of girl who felt the right things, she could at least look like it. Straight spine, steady voice, chin up like a flag raised under fire.

She’d be the girl who everyone loved, who looked back at the boys and almost believed she could love them too.

She’d be the girl who wanted less. Or at least never admitted she wanted more.

And her hands? She kept them folded. Always.

At the party later that week, three boys asked for her number. One said he liked the way she wore her sneakers with a dress. Another said he had always liked girls who didn’t talk too much. Penny smiled at all of them. Declined all of them. Walked home feeling heavy.

She wanted to feel the way they made her supposed to feel. She wanted to want it.

But she didn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe something in her was turned the wrong way. Maybe something had been ruined before it had even begun.

She promised herself she'd be better at hiding it next time.

She could still be what they wanted. She could be the strong girl. The sharp one. The one who straightens her back when they call her name, who lets the comments slide off her skin like oil. The one who knew all the girls and liked all the boys. The one with the smile full of teeth and the eyes that never gave anything away.

Penny Sinclair could be a fortress. She could be her own disguise.

And she would make her heart a small target.

And one day, it would stop hurting to do so.

Chapter Text

The drive to Beechwood was a blur of green hills and winding roads, each mile a further separation from the quiet sanctuary of Vermont. The air grew heavier, thick with the scent of salt and the oppressive weight of expectation. 

By mid-afternoon, the formalities were over. The family portraits had been taken on the lawn—everyone in coordinated shades of blue and white, the kind of performance the Sinclairs perfected for the holiday card. Cady had slipped away just before the last shots, returning in a shirt streaked with paint. Penny took one look, arched an eyebrow, and said mildly, “Just stand behind someone tall.” No lecture, no fuss. She’d already clocked the switch with Mirren—an obvious dodge from Bess’ neuroticsm. Penny let it go.

An hour later came the sandcastle competition. Buckets, shovels, debates over moat engineering—every Sinclair thrown into the fray except Penny and Bess, who stretched out in loungers, sunglasses in place, drinks in hand. Penny made easy conversation with Carrie and Ed, laughing where expected, offering smooth, surface-level charm.

But by the time the last castle had collapsed into the tide, Penny felt the familiar pull in her chest—an itch to move, to burn it off. The ferry had barely docked that noon before she’d found the dogs, two of them—lithe, sandy-coated, already stamping the shoreline with prints. She’d slipped into running tights, zipped her jacket, tied her hair back in a practiced knot, and set off down the beach.

Now, with the day’s smiles and small talk weighing heavy, she found herself doing the same again. The sun hung low over Beechwood as her feet hit the sand, each stride pounding out the residue of the afternoon—the forced poses, the polite evasions, the easy lies. Running was the only thing she did without an audience. No sisters to impress, no father to appease, no one asking for explanations. Just breath, tide, and the steady thud of her own body pushing forward.

The tide was out, the sand firm beneath her shoes. She ran hard, lungs filling with sharp salt air, the dogs leaping beside her in tangled arcs. They needed no leash, no command; they stayed close because they wanted to. That was what she loved about them—dogs didn’t care about pedigree, about husbands or boyfriends, about whether she ate the sandwiches at lunch. They didn’t suspect. They didn’t notice the way she guarded her body like a fortress.

She had been running on Beechwood’s sand since she was a girl, back when she’d sneak out before breakfast to escape her father’s watchful eyes. Running meant solitude. It meant control. She could go as fast or as far as she chose, her body moving under her own command. Out here, there was no performance. No husband she didn’t love, no truth she couldn’t tell, no mother’s disappointment to navigate. Just the rhythm of her feet, the dogs’ excited yelps, and the endless pull of the horizon.

Chapter Text

The wine was warm, the sun hotter. Carrie was draped across the lounger like a lizard in heat, and Bess was due to arrive at any moment with her drama and her perfect moral compass. Penny breathed in slowly through her nose, sunglasses slipping slightly down the bridge. She was trying to keep still — the way still water kept secrets — but her insides were tight. Coiled. Everything lately felt like a performance. She wasn't sure who was watching.

Carrie squinted at a service worker beyond them, lounging at the dock like he was the Marlboro Man with a bad tan, and then took off her glasses in that way she thought would make her point clearer. "That’s what you need," she said to Penny, "a distraction."

A distraction. As if that had ever been the problem.

The idea of being with a man — the mechanics of it, the theater — made something inside her wince. Little did Carrie know, Penny hadn't been unattached in a very long time. There had been someone. Had been someone, a whole secret world carved out like sea glass — smoothed by time, by ritual, by devotion. 

But she couldn't say her name there. Couldn't even think it too loudly.

She smiled lazily instead, a trick of the sun and shadows. Penny barely flinched. Tilted her head back against the chair, let her voice fall casual, almost sleepy. "I don’t need a distraction," she said. "I need a decorator."

Because that was the real crisis, wasn't it? The curtains at Windemere still smelled like her mother’s lilacs. The kitchen was trapped in the early aughts. Every corner whispered of someone else’s version of taste, someone else’s life.

Every summer, one of them got to redecorate their respective slice of legacy real estate — a sick family ritual — and this time, she had won. She had needed the cleanse. Not for aesthetics, not really. For control. For reinvention. For the illusion that her life wasn't quietly falling apart.

Bess arrived like a verdict, carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and judgment in the other. Her hair was too neatly curled for the beach. She sat, adjusted her sunglasses, said, "I’m not sure what’s harder — wrangling three girls for a five-minute FaceTime with their father or keeping him on the line long enough to talk to his wife."

Penny stayed still, her posture unbothered. But her tone was sharp enough to slice. "I mean, at a certain point, are you even really married?"

"My marriage is just fine," Bess snapped.

Penny looked at her then, feigning concern. "So was mine," she said, airily. "Until it wasn’t."

Carrie sipped, narrowing her eyes. "To be fair, Penny, you are emotionally unavailable."

A smile cracked her lips before she could stop it. Genuine. Warm, even. Like a secret joke only she was in on.

Because of course she was. That was the whole thing, wasn't it? Penny was emotionally unavailable to men because there was nothing there to be available for. Her detachment had always been chalked up to personality, or trauma, or selfishness — never to the simplest answer. And Carrie, for all her insight, still didn't see the shape of it.

But it wasn't cruel, this smile. It was fond. Like catching sight of an old photograph of yourself in a costume you had long since outgrown. A part of her was even proud of it — that she had been able to fool them all this long.

Carrie turned to Bess. "And Bess, you are—"

"She is a Beacon Hill trad wife," Penny cut in. Dry. Precise.

Carrie blinked. "I don’t know what that is."

"It’s rude, is what it is," Bess said, fuming.

Penny shrugged. Already, she could feel herself drifting — her limbs light, her spirit halfway gone. These conversations felt like a dinner party in a house she didn't live in anymore.

Bess lifted her chin. "Brody was able to build his empire because I ran our household like a Fortune 500 CEO. I kept three gremlins out of trouble and still made it to Sunday dinners at Mom and Dad’s every week. Whereas you—" a pause, cruel and perfect, "—you bread dogs."

Penny laughed. This time, it was real. She actually found it funny.

"And sit back at arm’s length while your brilliant daughter overachieves. Did I miss anything?"

Penny breathed in. "Nope. Nailed it." She took another sip. 

Vivian, Vivian, Vivian — her name was barely a whisper in Penny’s mind, a breath of warmth and auburn hair. A sacred thing, hidden deep. A place no one else could touch.

Carrie gestured toward the dock. "Bess, tell Penny it’s alright to get naked with Salty Dan."

Penny’s stomach twisted. Not for Dan — not exactly. But for the entire premise. For the suggestion that this was still the game she was supposed to be playing.

"Who?" Bess asked.

"Salty Dan," Carrie purred, pointing.

Bess cringed, barely hiding it. "The harbor service guy?"

The recoil in her voice sent a cold spike through Penny’s spine. If that was her sister’s reaction to Dan, what would she do with the truth? The real truth? What would any of them?

Penny drained the rest of her drink. It was sour, briny. Or maybe it was just her mouth. She made a face like it was the lime that was wrong — not the conversation curdling around her.

Carrie went on, dreamy-eyed. "He’s a cowboy. A cowboy of the sea."

Penny wanted to vanish.

The way they talked — the way women always talked, had always talked — about men like trophies, like solutions, like the beginning of a story that ends in approval. 

She had sat through a lifetime of this. Pretending to understand. Pretending to care. Her whole life, she had played the part, nodded at the right times, laughed on cue.

But inside, something recoiled. Always had. She felt outside of it — a ghost with a fork at a feast she didn't want to taste.

"Gotta get back on that horse," Carrie said, lightly.

She gave Carrie a tight smile. Shook her head. Laughed like it was all some cosmic joke she was tired of telling.

Penny rose too fast. The motion was automatic. Her arm stretched out like reflex. "Give me," she said, motioning for the glass — for anything to hold, anything to brace against.

Her whole body was a rejection. Of this setting. Of the script. Of the story everyone kept trying to write her into.

They didn't know. Not really. Not the shape of her longing. Not the truth of her allegiance. Not what she had protected all these years.

And god help her, she wasn't ready for them to.

Chapter Text

But memory had a way of slipping in through the cracks— not loud, not sudden, but slow and sensory, like the scent of cinnamon when no one’s baking.

Before she could stop herself, she was somewhere else entirely.

It was early then—Cady still just a kid, Sam always away. Penny had said she needed an afternoon to herself, and no one had questioned it. But driving up to Vivian’s place that first time had felt quietly monumental, like crossing some invisible line she wasn’t sure she could redraw.

The windows had fogged with warmth, softening the harsh Vermont winter into something almost dreamlike. The air smelled of butter and cloves, a hazy sweetness that clung to her skin and curled into her lungs like comfort. The world outside had been ice and silence. But inside Vivian’s kitchen—god, that day—it had felt like being chosen.

The windows, once clear panes to the stark Vermont winter, were now softly steamed, a translucent veil against the fading light. The air, thick with the nascent promise of baking, was a balm against the lingering chill of the world outside. 

Golden-hour light, diffused and tender, filtered through gauzy curtains, pooling on the worn kitchen table like spilled honey, illuminating dust motes dancing in the quiet air. 

The space itself breathed warmth, a lived-in symphony of mismatched mugs, a string of dried herbs hanging like ancient talismans by the sink, and a dusty old radio humming some folksy tune, a quiet counterpoint to the domestic hum. 

This was Vivian's world, Penny realized, her first true glimpse beyond the carefully curated public persona, and it was disarmingly, infuriatingly, real.

Penny stood near the counter, sleeves rolled up with an almost comical seriousness, feigning competence as she peered suspiciously at a mixing bowl. Her internal monologue was a frantic scramble. Act nonchalant. Casual. Like you routinely wrestle with dough. Like your hands aren't trembling slightly from the sheer novelty of it all.

"This feels like something that would survive a nuclear blast," she declared, eyeing the dough like it was a small, potentially hostile animal, a lumpen, defiant mass that refused to yield to her will.

Vivian, smiling, her hands deep in a cloud of flour, a faint dusting on her cheekbones that caught the golden light like stardust, merely chuckled. "That means you overworked it. Again." Her voice was soft, laced with an amusement that Penny found both irritating and utterly captivating.

"Well, maybe it should’ve tried harder not to provoke me," Penny retorted, her voice sharper than intended. "It had a certain insolence about it." Maintain the wit. The detached air. Don't let her see you're actually terrified of this lump of flour and water.

"I warned you not to keep punching it like that," Vivian said, her tone gentle, almost chiding. "It’s not a legal brief, Penny."

"You said 'knead,' not 'treat it gently like your traumatized inner child,'" Penny shot back, a desperate attempt at deflection. "There was ambiguity. A vast, unnavigable chasm of semantic imprecision." 

The truth was, she'd never kneaded anything in her life. Sinclair women had staff for such tactile indignities.

Vivian giggled, a sound like wind chimes in a summer breeze, pure and unburdened. "There was not."

Penny watched her laugh—Vivian’s whole face lit up when she did, a constellation of small, perfect joys. Her eyes, those deep, intelligent pools of green, crinkled at the corners, her nose wrinkled adorably, and the softest dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth, like fleeting indentations in warm clay. 

Penny’s heartbeat stuttered in the dumbest, most obvious way, a clumsy, unbidden rhythm that betrayed her carefully constructed composure. It was a familiar, infuriating flutter, a testament to Vivian’s singular ability to bypass all her defenses, to make her feel entirely, gloriously undone.

"Okay, but admit it—you like bossing me around in your apron like a sexy flour witch," Penny stammered slightly, a rare and telling lapse in her usual flawless delivery. "It’s a whole aesthetic." Too much? Too obvious? God, just be cool, Penny. Be cool.

Vivian paused, brushing a stray strand of flour-dusted hair from her cheek, and smirked without looking up, her movements fluid and unhurried. "Maybe I do. Is it working?"

"I would burn down civilization if you asked me to say 'yes, chef' right now," Penny admitted, the mask slipping just a fraction, revealing a terrifying, raw sincerity. "Consider it a testament to your culinary sorcery." The words were out before she could stop them, a confession of utter devotion that felt both liberating and utterly terrifying.

Vivian laughed again, a richer, warmer sound this time, a light blush blooming on her cheeks, a splash of color against the flour. She turned toward a bowl of peeled apples, already sliced into delicate half-moons, each one gleaming like a small, pale jewel, and began arranging them with practiced, almost meditative care.

"You know, when I was little, my mom used to make these pies every fall," Vivian mused, her voice soft, tinged with nostalgia. "We lived in this drafty old house in New Hampshire—mountains on one side, river on the other. I’d wake up to the smell of cinnamon and the sound of frost crackling on the windows. I thought that was what love smelled like."

"You're telling me you’re from a literal Norman Rockwell painting?" Penny mock whispered, leaning closer, as if sharing a scandalous secret. "The kind where the dog is always perfectly behaved and no one has existential dread?" Keep her talking. Keep her close. Don't let this moment end.

"Pretty much," Vivian confirmed, a faint smile playing on her lips. "I used to write poems in the attic and pretend I was Jo March. I'd sketch the neighbors through the window and fall in love with all the wrong people. Usually older boys who played guitar and didn’t know I existed."

"See, this is what I’m talking about," Penny said, a genuine awe in her voice. "You say things like that and suddenly I’m in a Sofia Coppola film, clutching my chest in slow motion while dust particles float around you, bathed in an ethereal glow. It’s disorienting. You're disorienting."

Vivian gave her a long look, amused and a little flustered, her faint smile deepening. "You’re ridiculous."

"You love it," Penny countered, leaning in, a predatory, flirtatious glint in her eye. "Don't pretend otherwise."

"Maybe I do," Vivian said sincerely, her voice dropping to a soft, resonant tone that vibrated through Penny, sending shivers down her spine.

Penny short-circuited a little at that—Vivian's voice was soft and deadly serious in a way that made her stomach flutter like bad Wi-Fi, disrupting the carefully calibrated signals of her composure. 

She cleared her throat, a small, involuntary twitch, and returned to her "dough," which was now more of a regrettable, misshapen sculpture, a monument to her utter lack of domestic grace.

"So, how do you know when it’s... good?" Penny asked, trying to sound casual, her gaze fixed on the dough. "The dough. Not, like, me. Though, feel free to answer both. For science."

Vivian wiped her hands on a towel, a domestic goddess in flour-dusted glory, and came over, placing one hand gently over Penny’s to stop her frantic, ineffective punching.

"Here—don’t press with your palms so much. Use the heels of your hands, like this."

She guided Penny’s movements, her fingers lightly curling around her wrist, a touch that sent a jolt through Penny’s arm, up to her very core. Penny tried to focus, really she did, on the mechanics, on the dough, on anything but the dizzying proximity of Vivian. 

But Vivian smelled like vanilla and something green and clean—like rain in the woods, or the first breath of spring. It was impossible. It was intoxicating. This is new. This is terrifying. This is everything.

"You’re a menace," Penny mumbled under her breath, a half-hearted complaint that held the weight of profound affection. "A domestic siren."

"You’ll get it," Vivian said, pretending not to hear, a knowing glint in her eye. "It just takes practice. And a willingness to surrender control."

"Ugh, gross. Feelings talk," Penny scoffed, pulling back slightly. "I thought we were making pie, not having a therapy session."

"Baking is feelings talk," Vivian countered, her voice soft but firm. "You can’t force this stuff. It’s like... it wants to be coaxed into shape, not ordered. It has its own will."

"So, it's basically a stubborn Victorian child," Penny said, arching a brow. "Delicate. Moody. Needs constant attention or it faints dramatically."

Vivian laughed, brushing a bit of flour from her cheek. "Exactly. Dough has high standards. You can’t just barge in with your ego and expect results. You have to listen to it."

"Christ," Penny muttered. "I came here to make a pie, not unlock repressed emotional labor."

"Too late," Vivian said sweetly. "That’s step one."

They both cracked up, the laughter dissolving whatever remaining awkwardness clung to the corners of the room, a shared bubble of mirth against the encroaching winter. Penny glanced at Vivian, her expression softening, the sharp edges of her usual demeanor blurring into something tender.

"You know, I never really... did stuff like this growing up," Penny confessed, the words a quiet admission of a life lived by different rules.

"Like baking? Or just... existing without a strategy?" Vivian teased gently.

"Like slowing down. Making things with my hands. Being... domestic," Penny mused, a wistful note in her voice. "It was always about the next competition, the next social engagement, the next perfectly curated appearance."

"Is it weird?"

"Yes. And also infuriatingly cozy," Penny admitted, a genuine smile now gracing her lips. "I feel like I’m one pie crust away from knitting my own socks and sobbing during Hallmark commercials. It’s a terrifying descent into... normalcy."

"You say that like it’s a bad thing."

"It’s terrifying. You’re turning me into a functional human being. The horror."

"Too late." Vivian leaned in, her eyes sparkling with mischief, and dabbed a bit of flour onto Penny’s nose. Penny froze, a statue of bewildered affection, her breath catching in her throat.

"Oh. We’re doing that? We’re being adorable now?" Penny asked, her voice a little breathless, her face flushing. "Is this in the script?"

"We’ve been adorable for at least twenty minutes," Vivian retorted, her grin widening. "Try to keep up, Sinclair."

"You’re lucky you’re hot and emotionally literate," Penny muttered, a genuine compliment disguised as a playful jab. "It balances out my inherent dysfunction."

"You’re lucky I like disasters with good taste in music and horrible taste in dough," Vivian shot back, her eyes dancing.

"That’s our tagline. We should start a band. Or a reality show."

"Only if we get matching aprons. And maybe a theme song about flour."

"You’re a monster."

Vivian grinned, a wide, genuine smile that crinkled her eyes, and kissed her on the cheek, leaving a faint dusting of flour behind. Penny turned bright red, a blush that spread across her cheeks, betraying her usual cool, a warmth that had nothing to do with the oven.

They finally got the pie assembled—Vivian doing most of the work, her hands moving with graceful efficiency, Penny contributing mostly by narrating the process like it’s a competitive baking show and occasionally getting deliciously distracted by the curve of Vivian’s neck, the way her hair fell just so. 

By the end, Penny had actually managed to coax a semblance of shape from the dough, a small, hard-won victory in this new, bewildering domestic landscape. When the pie, a golden promise of warmth, finally went into the oven, they collapsed onto the couch, shoulder to shoulder, the exhaustion of domestic bliss settling over them.

"I’m going to dream about this pie," Penny murmured, her head resting against Vivian's shoulder. "And probably you. Mostly you with the pie. It’s a very specific, very delicious dream."

"You’re hopeless," Vivian whispered, her voice soft.

"But charming," Penny countered, a small, contented sigh escaping her lips.

"Painfully so."

The kitchen filled slowly with the intoxicating scent of sugar and spice, a fragrant embrace that chased away the last vestiges of winter's chill. Outside, dusk began to settle across the mountains, painting the sky in hues of lavender and deep indigo. 

Penny reached out and, without saying anything, laced her fingers through Vivian’s, a silent, profound act of connection.

Neither of them let go. The moment stretched, suspended in the golden light, a fragile, perfect tableau against the vast, indifferent world.