Kelsey showing up had certainly been a shock. Seeing her—regal, tall, mature—in the doorway had sobered me a great deal. All the champagne, bubbling in my head, had burned away in the heat of my anxiety. I had to look at the scene with a realistic eye.

Of course, I had asked Michael to “whisper” the news of my marriage to several different outlets. Kelsey reading “JACK GARRINGTON RUMORED TO BE MARRYING SECRET GF IN PARIS” would have been enough to bring her here, perhaps just out of curiosity.

And now, here she was.

We stood on the terrace in the heat of the July night. This woman, who’d I’d first fallen in love with as a much, much younger man, seemed like a stranger. Her eyebrows rose high on her forehead, without wrinkling that porcelain skin of hers in the least. I remembered when she’d first gotten plastic surgery. Her face had seemed so plastic. Like a version of herself made of modeling clay. Even her laugh had been different.

“What is all this about, Jack?” she asked me. Her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She glared.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, playing innocent.

“This sham wedding.”

I matched her stance, glaring down at her. “This isn’t a sham wedding. Do you want to see the documents?”

“All right. Sure. You got some strange, poor girl to marry you so you could take Gigi away from me,” she said, her voice tart. “That’s really disgusting, you know that? I leave New York for one week, and I come back and my daughter’s just fucking…gone.”

“You mean you don’t want to talk about the time you literally lost her in the Caribbean, because you thought you’d gotten a babysitter but you hadn’t?” I glowered. “Or the time she hung out on your movie set with the sound guy for ten hours, while you boned the director?”

She placed her delicate hands over her ears. I knew these were fighting words. Her nostrils flared. Her eyes flashed. “Stop. Stop. Just stop.”

“Listen,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was acting, at this point. “That girl in there. Our daughter. She’s been happier, in the past few weeks, than I’ve seen her in years. And it’s because she’s here with me and Margot. I love them both to the bone, Kelsey. Can’t you just let me have that, for once? Can’t you just let me be happy?”

Kelsey’s bottom lip quivered. We hadn’t spoken to each other so frankly in all the years we’d known each other. Usually our conversations were filtered between assistants and lawyers and agents. She glanced back into the restaurant, her eye catching on Margot. “She has the most beautiful, pure smile,” she said. “Tell me. How did you get her to fall for you? And where did you find such an innocent person in New York?”

My brain scrambled for the lie. I swallowed. “I met her in a bar in Brooklyn, of all places. I had the first normal conversation I’ve had with anyone in years. I felt like a regular guy. Not like Jack Garrington, celebrity and actor. Just like… Jack Garrington, from Pennsylvania.”

Kelsey smirked. “I think I might remember Jack Garrington from Pennsylvania.”

“You were never anything but a celebrity, K,” I said, bowing my head. “I still remember it. I fucking worshipped you.”

“Stop.”

I looked at her for a long time. My heart hammered in my chest. I knew that Margot and I were one wrong word, one wrong move, from not getting away with this “sham” marriage. But I also knew that everything I’d said about Margot was absolutely true. She did make me feel normal—in the grandest, most three-dimensional way. I was addicted to it.

Perhaps that meant I was using her.

But wasn’t she using me in return?

Isn’t that all any relationship was? Using one another, into infinity? Or until one of you got tired of the game?

Kelsey was staring at our daughter again. Her eyes glistened with tears. “Gigi does look happier than I’ve seen her in years,” she said, her voice in a low whisper. “I forgot how easy it used to be to make her laugh.”

“She’s picking up French, as well,” I said, boasting. “She speaks in this strange mix between the two. And I’ve already started looking at schools for the Fall.”

Kelsey raised her hand, stretching the fingers thin. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said, sniffing.

“I know. I know. It’s a lot to ask you to give up your daughter,” I said. “But I needed to get out of New York. Margot and I both did. And we’ve built something for Gigi here that’s irreplaceable. Can’t you see that?”

I was relieved to see Kelsey nod her head. Yes. She did. She traced her tongue along her white teeth, inhaling sharply. “Okay. Okay, okay,” she whispered. “I’ll tell my lawyer to back up. I’ll give you guys six months, and then we can reevaluate. I’ll of course use this as an excuse to come visit you in Paris often. You’ll be seeing quite a bit of Kelsey Bonner. Maybe I’ll even take a French lover.”

I laughed, feeling my heart grow light in my chest. I brought my hand to hers, giving it a firm squeeze. There was nothing between us, now. Nothing sizzled. But at the same time, the war was over.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice low. “I don’t think you know what this means to me. To me and Margot, that is.”

“You better love that girl well,” Kelsey said, drawing back from me. She dropped my hand. “She’s young and malleable and unsure, but I can tell—she loves you more than you could ever know. You have that effect over women. Use it well.”

I watched Kelsey leave the terrace and head back inside. She stole a glass of champagne from a table and sipped it, leaning down to speak to Gigi. Her eyes were alight, showing that she really did love the kid. She did. She just didn’t have the patience to be a mother. How were we to know that, going into it, almost a decade ago? How could we have known what the future would bring?

My eyes traced Margot’s frame. She was focusing on Kelsey’s demeanor, growing less and less worried as the minutes ticked away. She and Marcus met eyes. He winked at her. Perhaps they sensed that we’d gotten away with it. That it was all over. The tabloids would cease. Gigi could remain with me.

The world would keep turning, without panic.