Four Of A Kind

Chapter 121: [3.23] The Story of a Hemline

I looked back up at the ceiling.

That was my second mistake.

The ceiling was becoming a recurring location in my consciousness, which said something deeply concerning about my life trajectory. What exactly, I wasn’t qualified to diagnose. But the data suggested I needed hobbies that didn’t involve staring at expensive plaster while girls with purple eyes made declarative statements about me.

“Isaiah.”

“Still here.”

Her voice came soft, patient in the way that suggested she had all the time in the world. “Look at me.”

“Looking at the ceiling is safer,” I said honestly.

“Safer than what?”

I didn’t answer that.

Silence stretched. Three seconds. Five. Ten.

Then her hand touched my cheek.

Cool fingers. Careful pressure. She turned my face toward hers with the kind of authority that suggested negotiation was not available.

I looked at her.

The amber light from the window caught her differently now, painting half her face gold. Her expression still gave nothing away. But her eyes were doing something mine probably were too, which was recognizing another person at extremely close range.

She’d slid closer. I hadn’t noticed when. We were close enough now that I could count individual eyelashes if I was so inclined.

Which I was not.

Absolutely not.

Sabrina tilted her head, studying my face like she was memorizing details for later use. Her fingers hadn’t left my cheek.

“You look scared,” she said.

“That’s just my face.”

“No. Your face is usually tired.” She brushed her thumb along my cheekbone. “This is different.”

“Because you’re touching it.”

“Mm.”

Her hand moved from my cheek to my hair.

I blinked.

She combed her fingers through it once, slowly, like she was testing the texture. My hair was a disaster, as usual. I hadn’t bothered with anything more than running water through it that morning. But Sabrina didn’t seem concerned with presentation.

She did it again. Her fingers scraped lightly against my scalp and I felt it run straight down my spine.

This was not professional.

This was the opposite of professional.

I should move. Say something. Remind her about boundaries and employment law and her mother’s probable surveillance state.

I did none of those things.

Because somewhere between the ceiling and her fingers in my hair, my entire operating system had shut down and rebooted in safe mode. Only essential functions remained. Breathing. Blinking. Not imploding.

Sabrina’s shoulders loosened fraction by fraction as she kept working her fingers through my hair. Her breathing slowed. The tension I’d seen in her since I walked into the room was draining away like water circling a drain.

“You know,” she said quietly, “my mother told us a story once. Years ago, when father was still alive.”

I kept my eyes on a point somewhere past her shoulder. Maintaining eye contact felt like weaponizing nuclear materials. Unsafe at any distance.

“Father was under enormous pressure,” Sabrina continued. “Always. The company. The brand. The expectations. She said people assumed he was like her. Cold. All business.” Her fingers moved to trace the shell of my ear, and I stopped breathing for a second. “But he had this warmth underneath. Always. Even with everything else bearing down.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Probably.” Her hand came back to my hair, threading through it in a way that made my thoughts extremely unhelpful. “Mother said she noticed it first at Fashion Week in Paris. She was twenty-four. He made her laugh during a presentation about hemlines. Nobody made her laugh. She’d trained herself not to.”

I could picture it. Camille Valentine, younger, surrounded by fashion people who took themselves seriously, and Richard Valentine saying something that cracked through her walls.

I’d seen what those walls looked like now. Reinforced steel. Gun turrets.

“What happened?”

“He kept making her laugh.” Sabrina’s voice had gone distant, like she was repeating something she’d memorized. “Through meetings. Through galas. She said it was extremely inconvenient. That falling in love with him ruined her entire strategic plan.”

Her thumb found my jaw.

“But she fell anyway,” Sabrina said. “Because warmth like that doesn’t ask permission.”

Her fingers traced down to my chin.

“She said he saw people as they were instead of what they could do for him.” Sabrina’s thumb moved to brush across my lower lip, so light I almost thought I’d imagined it. “He asked questions nobody else asked. About what she wanted. What made her happy. Not what she could deliver or produce.”

Her eyes never left mine.

“He noticed details,” she continued, her voice barely audible now. “Small things. How she took her tea. When her smile was real versus when it was corporate. Whether she’d slept. Whether she’d eaten.”

My internal monologue, which had been screaming warnings about professional boundaries, went quiet.

Because I knew where this was going.

“Sabrina—”

Her thumb pressed against my lip gently. “He made her feel seen,” she said. “Before the quadruplets. Before any of it. Just her. The person underneath the name.”

The room was very warm all of a sudden.

“That’s the man she fell in love with,” Sabrina said softly. “The one who looked at people and saw them.”

Her hand remained on my face, thumb still against my lower lip. Her expression had shifted into something I couldn’t name but recognized anyway.

“And you’re,” she said, “dangerously close to—”

A knock interrupted her.

Sharp. Loud. Commanding.

Sabrina’s eyes widened a fraction. Then she pressed her index finger against my lips in a clear command.

Don’t speak.

The knock came again, harder this time.

“Sabrina!” Cassidy’s voice cut through the door. “I know you’re in there. Is Angelo with you?”

I looked at Sabrina.

She looked at me, her finger still on my lips.

The knock got louder. More impatient.

“Open up! Vivienne needs him for the seating chart thing and he’s not answering his phone and Harlow said he came to see you about an emergency and—” Cassidy’s voice took on a dangerous edge. “If you’re making him do weird stuff again, I’m breaking this door down.”

Sabrina sighed very quietly.

She pulled her hand away from my face and stood in one fluid motion, like gravity forgot to apply to her. I scrambled up less gracefully.

She crossed to the door and opened it exactly six inches.

Cassidy stood on the other side, still in her uniform, her hair pulled into its usual messy ponytail. Her purple eyes narrowed immediately.

“What were you two doing?”

“Talking,” Sabrina said.

“With the door closed?”

“Yes.”

Cassidy looked past her sister to where I stood in the middle of the room like an idiot.

“Angelo,” she said. “Vivienne needs you. Now.”

“What for?”

“Launch party seating chart.” Cassidy’s eyes hadn’t left my face. “She’s in her study and she’s doing the thing where she reorganizes the same spreadsheet seventeen times, which means she’s stressed and needs someone to tell her she’s right.”

That sounded accurate.

“Go,” Sabrina said from the doorway. “We’re finished anyway.”

I looked at her.

She looked back, her expression completely neutral again. Whatever had been happening before the knock had been filed away behind her usual walls.

“Thanks for sitting with me,” she said. “You may leave now.”

Dismissed.

I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.

Cassidy moved aside to let me pass, then immediately slipped into Sabrina’s room. I heard her voice before I was five steps down the hall.

“What the hell were you doing with him?”

I kept walking.

My heart was doing something irregular. Probably cardiac arrest from stress and poor life choices. Nothing to worry about.

I pulled out my phone and checked the screen.

Seven missed calls from Vivienne.

Three texts from Harlow with photos of Iris examining Harlow’s manga collection.

One message from Cassidy, sent twenty minutes ago: Where r u. Vivi is losing it.

I climbed the stairs to the west wing, where Vivienne’s study was located.

The door was closed. I knocked.

“Come in.”

I opened it.

Vivienne sat behind her glass desk, her laptop screen displaying what appeared to be a spreadsheet with approximately four hundred color-coded cells. Her hair was still in its perfect ponytail. Her blazer was still buttoned. Her expression suggested she’d been staring at this seating chart since lunch and was considering violence.

“You’re late,” she said without looking up.

“Sabrina needed something.”

“I needed something first.” She finally looked at me. “Your phone was off.”

“Had it on focused mode.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, which meant she didn’t believe me but wasn’t going to waste time arguing about it.

“Sit.” She gestured at the chair across from her desk. “The Lumière party is in five days and my mother just added seventeen people to the guest list without consulting the floor plan.”

I sat.

This was going to be a long afternoon.

And somewhere below us, in a room full of books and unopened letters, Sabrina was probably explaining to Cassidy why she’d had me in her room with the door closed.

Or she wasn’t explaining at all.

Sabrina didn’t explain when she could simply not explain instead.

I pulled Vivienne’s tablet toward me and looked at the seating chart disaster.

“Walk me through it,” I said.

Vivienne’s expression shifted into something resembling relief.

Then she started talking, and I stopped thinking about Sabrina’s thumb on my lip.

Mostly.