It was one of those quietly elegant restaurants tucked between old brick buildings, all soft lighting and vintage jazz humming through the speakers. The kind of place people went to toast endings, beginnings — or just to feel like something mattered, even for a night.

You weren’t really celebrating anything. A friend had picked the spot, wanting something “classy but not obnoxious,” and here you all were — scattered around a table with half-drunk wine glasses, picking at shared plates and laughing a little too loud.

And then you noticed her.

Kate Lockwood.

She was seated a few tables away, just far enough that it didn’t feel real at first. But it was her — unmistakably her. The scar down her arm, bare and unhidden under the soft cream sleeves of her dress. Her hair tied back, posture graceful but relaxed, as if she didn’t need the power anymore to be powerful. She wasn’t talking much, just listening — Teddy beside her, laughing at something his husband said, a bottle of something expensive between them.

You weren’t staring, not really. But your friends noticed. One of them leaned over and whispered, “That’s Kate Lockwood, right? From the whole… you know.”

Everyone knew.

The fallout from the Goldberg story had burned through the news cycle for months. The company dissolved, the public apologies, the talk shows. But here she was now — not some headline, not a myth. Just a woman in the corner of a restaurant, quietly celebrating the end of a life she’d walked away from.

And then — maybe it was coincidence, maybe not — she looked up.

Right at you.

Not cold. Not shy. Just… aware.

She held your gaze for half a second longer than a stranger should. Then her mouth curved, almost imperceptibly, into a smile. Like she knew exactly what people thought when they saw her — and had already forgiven you for it.