By the time the four girls made their way over to him, Liam Brooks had already been sitting in that ballroom long enough to vanish inside it.
That was the funny thing about rooms built to impress people. You noticed the flowers. You noticed the chandeliers, the polished silver, the white ribbon tied around the columns, the champagne glasses catching light like they belonged in a movie. You noticed the women in satin and the men in black tuxedos moving around like they had practiced how to enter a room. The waiters flowed between them without ever seeming to stop. Somewhere near the stage, a string quartet played music so polished it might as well have been part of the wallpaper.
Liam had installed half those chandeliers himself the previous Tuesday.
He had spent nine hours up on a lift tightening brackets and running wire while an event manager walked the floor beneath him with a clipboard. His hands had done the work that made the place glow. Big hands. Rough hands. Scarred hands. Especially the right one, where an old jobsite injury had left a pale ridge that still showed when the light caught it. Not one person at that gala would look high enough to think about who put the room together. And none of them would look at the maintenance guy sitting in the wrong corner with cold tea in a paper cup and guess he had once held the room’s light in place.
Even his badge didn’t help much.
It was clipped to his jacket, but the venue’s system printed the job title bigger than the actual name, like what he did mattered more than who he was. From across the room it only really said BUILDING MAINTENANCE, which in a place like that might as well have meant background object.
Liam didn’t mind being invisible as much as he used to.
There was a time it got to him. A time when every little slight landed. Every look past him. Every half-second of hesitation before people remembered they were supposed to say thank you to the man who fixed the doors, checked the pipes, rehung the sconces, set up the chairs, and disappeared before the guests got there. But grief changes what still has the power to hurt you. Three years earlier, after Rachel died and left him alone with a two-year-old son and a life that suddenly needed two parents where only one was left, the opinions of strangers stopped cutting as deep. He still saw class. Still saw dismissal. He wasn’t blind. But he had stopped confusing being noticed with being known.
That was why the four girls caught him off guard.
They appeared all at once from somewhere between the dessert table and a ribboned column, like they had formed out of symmetry and planning. Four identical faces. Four navy dresses with sashes tied into bows that had started out neat and were now drifting toward crooked. Four dark pairs of eyes fixed on him with the kind of seriousness kids sometimes have when they’ve already made a decision and are just waiting for the adult to catch up.
They stopped in front of his table.
None of them fidgeted.
Liam set his cup down and looked up.
The girl on the far left spoke first. Later he’d learn her name was Lily, and later he’d also learn Lily speaking first was not random. It was apparently how the whole unit operated.
“We’ve been watching you for eleven minutes,” she said.
Liam blinked once. “Okay.”
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