Dana noticed Cole at the same moment he noticed her. A flush crept up her cheeks and she straightened up quickly, smoothing her skirt with an embarrassed smile.
"Working on a Saturday?" Cole asked, keeping his voice easy.
In his previous life, he had lived under the same roof as Dana and Ava for months without really seeing either of them. His head had been so full of Vanessa that everything else just blurred into background. Looking back now, he genuinely wanted to shake himself.
Dana blinked, clearly not expecting him to strike up a conversation. She recovered quickly though.
"I just moved to the Credit Department. Haven't hit my targets for the month yet, so the weekend isn't really mine right now."
"Credit Department." Cole's attention sharpened. "That's loans, right? Applications and approvals?"
"That's right." She nodded, stepping into her heels and straightening up to her full height.
There was something about the bank uniform that did a lot of work without trying. Dana wasn't the kind of beautiful that stopped traffic — she had more of a girl-next-door quality, soft and approachable, with a voice that was naturally high and sweet in a way that caught you off guard. The combination was quietly dangerous.
"I'm heading out — bye!" She gave him a little wave, turned, and was out the door.
Cole stood there for a moment, then went into the bathroom humming to himself.
It was funny, really. The moment he'd let go of Vanessa, it was like a fog had lifted. Serena Park, Ava, Dana — none of them were any less than Vanessa Vale. Not even close. He honestly couldn't explain what had been wrong with him in his previous life, devoting every waking thought to one woman while completely blind to everything around him.
He was still shaking his head at himself when he came back out of the bathroom.
Ava was in the hallway, yawning with her eyes half open, shuffling out of her room in a way that suggested she and mornings had a difficult relationship.
She spotted him and a slow grin spread across her face.
"Hitting on the neighbors this early, huh?"
Cole winced. The walls in this apartment were genuinely terrible.
"Don't beautiful women like a little attention in the morning?"
Ava blinked. Then she laughed — actually surprised.
"When did you get interesting?" Her voice had that teasing lilt that made the air feel slightly warmer. "I feel like I've been living with a completely different person."
Cole kept a straight face, eyes glinting.
"We just haven't spent enough time talking. Give it a while. You'll find out interesting is only the beginning."
Ava narrowed her eyes.
"Men and their mouths." She snorted, swayed past him into the bathroom, and shut the door firmly.
Cole looked at the closed door.
"How many times did someone lie to you for that reaction to be this automatic?" he said to no one in particular.
He dropped his toiletries back in his room and headed downstairs.
---
There was a breakfast spot around the corner from Elmwood that he liked — nothing fancy, just a bowl of soy milk and a couple of fried dough sticks. Quick, cheap, enough to get him going. He ate standing up, paid, and caught the next bus to the Crestfield Antique Market.
---
The Antique Market was six floors of organized chaos, each floor covering enough ground that you could spend a full day on just one of them and still miss things. Porcelain, jade, paintings, sculpture, furniture, miscellaneous curiosities — if it was old and someone had once valued it, it was probably here somewhere.
By the time Cole walked in it was already busy. Saturday brought out the browsers — people with nothing to lose and a vague hope of stumbling onto something worth having.
Cole didn't browse. He went straight to the third floor.
The newspaper coverage in his previous life hadn't named the shop directly, but enough curious readers had tracked it down afterward that the information had made its way online. He'd absorbed it without knowing it would ever matter.
The shop was called Carter's Antiques. He found it without difficulty.
Then he stepped inside and his confidence took a small hit.
The place was huge — several hundred square meters, floor to ceiling, every surface covered in vases. Hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. Different sizes, different styles, different eras, all crammed together on shelves that went back further than he'd expected.
Cole stood at the entrance and stared.
He had seen one photograph of the vase in a newspaper article, years ago in another life. He was betting that was enough.
He started at the first shelf and worked his way through methodically, row by row.
---
Outside the Antique Market, a luxury sedan rolled smoothly to the curb.
Derek stepped out first, then jogged around to open the passenger door before it occurred to him that he'd done it out of habit more than anything else. Margaret Ashford stepped out in a black dress, unhurried and composed. She drew looks from several people nearby without seeming to notice or care.
Derek felt the familiar swell of pride at being seen with her, followed immediately by the familiar frustration of her complete indifference to it. He moved to take her hand. She was already walking.
He followed her in.
They weren't here to browse. A gift for Margaret's father — the chairman of the Ashford Group — wasn't something you found by wandering. They were heading straight for the sixth floor, where the serious dealers kept their serious inventory.
They were passing through the third floor when Derek stopped.
Through the window of Carter's Antiques he could see a figure moving slowly along the shelves, head bent, examining vases one by one.
Cole Harmon.
"Someone you know?" Margaret had noticed him stop.
"College classmate. Give me a second."
The smile that crossed Derek's face didn't reach his eyes. Seeing Cole here, now, shook loose something irritable in his chest. If Cole had just done what he was supposed to last night, Derek would be waking up this morning with one less problem. Instead here they were.
---
Cole had been at it for over an hour when something in the corner of his eye made him stop.
Tucked into a back corner of the shop, half hidden behind two larger pieces, sat a vase coated in a thin skin of dust. Someone had pushed it out of the way at some point and apparently forgotten about it.
He crossed the shop and crouched down to look at it.
His memory of the photograph was not perfect. But the shape was right. The glaze was right. The particular way the neck met the body — that was right too.
He wiped the dust away carefully with his sleeve.
It was the one.
He picked it up gently and carried it to the counter, keeping his face neutral.
The clerk glanced at the vase without much interest.
"Three hundred."
Cole kept the relief locked completely off his face. He counted out three bills and set them on the counter.
"Receipt please."
The clerk slid one across without looking up. Cole was dressed simply — nothing about him read money — and the clerk clearly had better things to think about.
"Can you wrap this for me?"
The clerk looked up with the expression of someone being asked to do something deeply unreasonable.
"Gift wrap is two hundred extra."
Cole put two more bills on the counter without hesitating.
"Wrap it well."
The clerk stared at the money. He'd expected pushback. Nobody spent two hundred dollars wrapping a three-hundred-dollar vase. For a moment he just sat there recalibrating.
"Well, well. Old classmate. Small world."
Cole turned around.
Derek Harrington was standing in the entrance of Carter's Antiques with a wide smile on his face that had absolutely nothing friendly in it.