Chapter 242: Hers.
CATHERINE
I was not rattled by guilt. I want to be clear about that, even to myself, especially to myself, because guilt was an indulgence I had never had the luxury of affording.
I was rattled by something closer to threat assessment. The invitational draw party was the kind of event I usually enjoy, circuit people, sponsors, the specific performance of casualness that everyone in this industry had perfected. I had been to a hundred of them. I knew exactly how to occupy a room like this.
Sedona Preston occupied it differently than I expected. She wasn't performing recovery. That was what bothered me. Watching her from across the room. A careful distance between us. A glass of something was untouched in her hand.
She wasn't the fragile comeback story the press had f
