Chapter 3

The next morning, I found Sophie's name in a second place where mine should have been.

The first was my home.

The second was my work.

I had barely slept.

Ethan stayed in the guest room until morning.

I didn't ask him anything else about the kiss.

I didn't tell him I was pregnant.

At seven, I got dressed and went to the office like I always did.

At nine-thirty, the final pitch agenda hit the project channel.

We had been working on the account for four months.

I had built the strategy from the first round of consumer research through the brand narrative and into the final recommendation.

Every major version of the deck had passed through my hands.

Sophie handled the client relationship.

Over the past few weeks, she had been joining more calls and taking more presentation time.

Especially after Chicago.

Ethan had told me she needed more client-facing experience.

I hadn't objected.

Because one thing, as far as I knew, had never changed.

I was the Campaign Lead.

I was also the Strategy Owner.

I opened the agenda.

The project name sat at the top.

Beneath it was the final list of attendees and roles.

My eyes stopped.

Campaign Lead: Sophie Reed

The next line read:

Strategy Contributor: Claire Bennett

For a moment, I simply stared.

Then I refreshed the page.

Nothing changed.

I checked the date.

Then refreshed it again.

Still the same.

I opened the version history.

The staffing edit had been made the previous afternoon.

Approved by:

Ethan.

I read his name twice.

Last night, Sophie's resident access had been an old setting he forgot to remove.

The kiss had been a mistake.

Now her name was sitting where mine had been.

"Claire?"

I looked up.

The project manager stood beside my desk with her laptop tucked under one arm.

"Did you finish the consumer-tension revisions?"

"Rehearsal's at ten-thirty."

"Yes."

"Great."

"Send the final strategy section to Sophie."

"She's leading today."

I kept my eyes on her.

"Who said she was leading?"

She blinked.

"The final staffing was locked yesterday."

"Who approved it?"

There was a brief pause.

"Ethan approved it."

Her gaze shifted toward my screen, where the agenda was still open.

Then back to me.

"I thought you knew."

The words sat between us.

I thought you knew.

Last night, Sophie had thought I knew she still had access to my home.

Now a coworker thought I knew I had been replaced on my own campaign.

Around us, the office kept moving.

Someone laughed near the kitchen.

A printer started behind me.

A Slack notification chimed on the project manager's laptop.

She shifted her weight.

"Do you want me to--"

"No."

I looked back at the agenda.

Chicago.

That was when Sophie had started getting more client-facing time.

More calls.

More presentation slots.

And now, for the first time, her name had been formally written beside Campaign Lead.

The kiss Ethan admitted to had happened before Chicago.

I leaned back in my chair.

I had kept everything separate in my head.

A kiss.

Access to my home.

A few client meetings.

A staffing change.

Now they all pointed to the same person.

At ten-twenty, I closed the agenda.

The project manager had asked me to send the deck directly to Sophie.

I didn't.

I uploaded the final strategy file to the shared project folder instead, where everyone on the account could see the file, timestamp, and version.

Then I picked up my notebook and headed toward the conference room.

People were already taking their seats when I arrived.

Coffee cups.

Laptops.

Printed agendas.

The screen at the front showed the title page of the deck I had spent four months building.

Sophie stood beside it with the remote in her hand.

Ethan sat at the far end of the table.

He looked up when I walked in.

For one brief second, his expression changed.

I took the empty chair across from him and set my notebook on the table.

Sophie clicked forward.

And I watched her open my first page.