From Cast-off To The City's Queen

Keely brought the wine Blair liked, the Bordeaux from his family's vineyard in Napa, the one he saved for celebrations. She wore the dress he had bought her in Paris, the silk that matched her eyes, the cut that he had said made her look like a woman who knew what she wanted.

She knew what she wanted. She wanted him to look at her the way he had looked at her in Paris. The way he had looked at her before Hadley, before the divorce, before everything had become so complicated.

The office was empty except for Blair. He sat at his desk, staring at a blank search bar on his computer screen, and didn't look up when she entered.

"Blair." She set the wine on the side table, moved behind his chair, let her hands rest on his shoulders. The muscles beneath her fingers were knotted, tense. "You've been working too hard. Come home with me. I'll make you dinner, run you a bath-"

He shrugged her off. Not roughly, but definitely, the way one might shake off an insect. "Not tonight, Keely. I have things to do."

"What things?" She kept her voice light, playful, the way she had learned to be with him. Never demanding, never needy, never the woman who had left him for Paris and returned only when that dream had failed. "Blair, you've been distracted for days. Ever since-" She stopped herself, but too late.

"Ever since what?" He turned to look at her, and his eyes were the color of winter, the color of walls, the color of nothing she wanted to see. "Say it, Keely. Ever since Hadley left? Ever since she proved she could survive without me? Is that what you were going to say?"

"I was going to say," she lied, "ever since you finalized the divorce. It's natural to feel unsettled. But Blair, she's gone. She's nothing. Some man picked her up off the street, for God's sake. She's not worth this-this obsession."

"Obsession." He laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "You think I'm obsessed with Hadley?"

"Aren't you?" The words escaped before she could stop them, carrying three years of jealousy, of waiting, of being the second choice even when she was the first. "You check your phone constantly. You ask Alex about her. You stare into space like you're waiting for her to walk through that door. What else would you call it?"

Blair stood. He moved to the window, putting distance between them, and she saw his reflection in the glass-the face she loved, closed and cold and completely unreachable.

"I call it concern," he said. "She was my wife. I have a responsibility to ensure she's not being exploited."

"By making sure she's not happy?" Keely's voice rose, breaking through her careful control. "By trying to destroy any chance she has of building a life? That's not concern, Blair. That's spite. That's-" She stopped, the truth arriving like a physical blow. "That's regret."

He didn't deny it. He didn't turn around. He simply stood at the window, looking out at the city that had made him rich and powerful and, she was realizing, completely empty.

"You went to the Post," he said, not a question. "You tried to have her smeared in the press."

"I was protecting us. Protecting what we have-"

"What we have?" He turned at last, his voice laced with a cold fury she hadn't heard in years. "What you did was interfere. Did you think I couldn't handle this myself? That I needed you to fight my battles for me with some trashy gossip column?" He picked up his jacket from the chair, slung it over his shoulder. "Don't do that again. The press, the investigations, any of it. Your little stunt just made things worse. It's beneath you. And it makes me look weak."

He walked past her to the door.

"Where are you going?" she asked, hating the desperation in her voice.

"Out."

"Blair-"

He stopped. Looked back at her with something that might have been pity, if he were capable of such an emotion. "I don't know what I feel right now, Keely. But I know what I don't feel. And I think you know it too."

The door closed behind him. Keely stood in his office, surrounded by the trophies of his success, and felt victory turn to ash in her mouth.

She had won. Hadley was gone, disgraced, married to some nameless man who had apparently acquired the power to silence newspapers. She had Blair's name, his apartment, his body when he chose to share it. She had everything she had fought for.

And she had never felt more alone.

She picked up her phone. Scrolled through her contacts until she found Richard Adams, the CEO of Adams Pope Design, the man who had been pursuing her for months with offers of collaboration, of partnership, of mutual advancement. She had ignored him before, loyal to Blair, loyal to the future they were building together.

That future felt less certain now.

"Richard," she said, when he answered, his voice thick with surprise and pleasure. "It's Keely. I think it's time we talked about that project you mentioned. The one that needs the right designer to make it work."

They talked for twenty minutes. By the end, Keely had what she needed: a plan, an ally, a way to strike back at the woman who had somehow, impossibly, continued to haunt her life even in absence.

Hadley wanted to design? Fine. Keely would make sure she never worked in this city again. She would use every connection, every favor, every weapon at her disposal to ensure that Blair's cast-off wife remained exactly what she was meant to be: nothing.

She left Blair's office, her heels clicking against the marble floor, her reflection in the elevator doors showing a woman who had learned to take what she wanted. Who would never again be left behind, forgotten, second-best.

She didn't look back. She didn't see Blair's computer screen, still glowing with the search bar, the name he had typed and deleted and typed again: Austen Roy.