Chapter 486: At One Year Old

Arianne caught Lexx by the back of his overalls half a step before his hand found the bottom tier of the cake.

He twisted against her grip, unbothered, reaching again. One year old and already certain the world would eventually give him what he wanted if he just kept asking. She set him on her hip and turned him toward the garden instead, where the noise was louder and more interesting than frosting.

The Rochefort lawn had been rearranged for the occasion. Long tables under the pergola, a banner strung low enough for a one-year-old to notice, blue and gold because Lily had voted twice and Leo had let her win. Franz stood near the drinks table with his sleeves pushed up, laughing at something Gilbert had said, and did not look over. He didn’t need to. Arianne had learned, over three years, that he always knew exactly where in a room she was.

"He’s going to end up wearing more of it than eating it," Gilbert said, crossing to take Lexx from her arms without asking. Audrey followed a step behind, already holding out a napkin he wouldn’t use.

"He usually does." Arianne wiped a smear of frosting off his wrist and let Gilbert take the rest of him.

Julian arrived with Kyle on his shoulders, the boy’s hands wrapped in his father’s hair like reins. "He wants a turn," Julian said, setting him down. "He’s been rehearsing his cake-eating technique for a week."

"I have a whole strategy," Kyle said.

"Same thing," Lily said, appearing at his elbow, already certain she’d settled it. Leo didn’t argue. He rarely did when Lily had spoken for both of them. He crouched instead, next to Lexx, and held out one finger for the baby to grab, which he did, immediately, with both hands.

"Careful," Leo said. Two words. Enough.

Nate came through the side gate with Mikaella beside him, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, laughing at whatever he’d said twice in a row. She looked well.

"You slept," Arianne said.

"First one in months." Mikaella tipped her face toward the sun like she was still confirming it was allowed. "I keep waiting for it to feel less strange."

"It stops," Nate said, and didn’t elaborate, and didn’t need to.

Gio came in last, alone, a bottle of wine under one arm that nobody had asked him to bring and everybody would drink. He found a spot near the hedge and stayed there, watching the party the way he always did, checking the gate out of habit more than need. When Sam arrived twenty minutes later with a gift bag and a laugh already prepared for whoever greeted her first, he didn’t move toward her. He didn’t move away either.

"Miss Summers." The voice was stiff enough that she knew who it belonged to before she turned.

Lucas stood at the edge of the pergola in a suit better suited to a boardroom than a birthday, holding a box wrapped with the kind of precision that came from a store, not a person. He had the look of a man who’d budgeted exactly forty minutes for this and meant to leave on schedule.

"You came." Arianne didn’t reach for the box yet.

"I said I would." A pause, the kind that in Lucas usually meant he’d rehearsed the next part. "Last time. I didn’t. I’m aware."

He held the box out. Inside, wrapped in tissue folded by someone who did this often and reassembled by someone who did not, was a rocking horse, hand-carved, the mane painted in careful uneven strokes. A card was tucked under the reins, block letters, no flourish. *For when he’s old enough to fall off things on his own.*

"He’ll ruin it in a week." She turned the horse over once, checking the joints.

"I know," Lucas said. "I asked for something that could survive that."

She didn’t tell him it was a good gift. He was already checking his watch, already halfway back to the version of himself that ran a legal department and rarely visited, and something in the set of his shoulders said he’d take the compliment worse than the silence.

The candle went in at five, a single one, because Amanda had said a whole cake’s worth of flame near a one-year-old’s face was asking for trouble. Lexx stared at the fire like it had personally wronged him, unconvinced by all the singing. Franz crouched beside the high chair, one hand braced on the table, and blew it out for him when his own breath only rearranged the frosting on his chin.

"There," Franz said. "Now you’re one."

Lexx smashed both hands into the cake like the year had been worth waiting for.

Lexx was elbow-deep in frosting when Gilbert’s phone lit up on the table, face up, a headline scrolling under a business-network logo. BLACKWOOD CORP — SOURCES CONFIRM DIVORCE FILING, ANNOUNCEMENT EXPECTED WITHIN DAYS.

Gilbert turned the phone face down without picking it up. It didn’t stop Arianne from having already read it.

"They’re moving faster than she said they would." Arianne kept the words between the three of them.

"Three weeks was never going to hold," Gilbert said. "Not with everything else already coming apart."

Franz didn’t ask which everything. He didn’t need to. Blackwood Corp had been bleeding for months, and everyone at this table had spent a year learning exactly how deep that particular wound went. He looked at Arianne instead, checking, the way he always did whenever something crossed her face and stayed a second too long.

"Not ours to carry today," he said.

"No." She let it go, and Lexx had frosting in his hair and down both cheeks, and Leo was narrating the disaster to Kyle in a voice too satisfied to interrupt, and there would be time enough for Blackwood Corp tomorrow.

Franz’s hand found the small of her back, unannounced. Across the garden, Gio hadn’t left the hedge, and Sam hadn’t looked over. Under the pergola, Lexx shrieked at the cake in his own fists like it had just given him something nobody else in his short life ever had.