The Rival's Obsession

Julian Sterling has been telling himself the distinction for three months. Not his father's designs. The idea of them. He redrew every line, recut every pattern, built each piece from the ground up. Tributes are standard in this industry. Everyone references everyone. Someone brushes past him shoulder to shoulder in the last seconds before the curtain, does not stop, does not turn, and says four words pitched so only he can hear them. *Borrowed taste doesn't last.* Nathaniel Ashford saw those sketches once. Three months ago. For thirty seconds. The next morning Julian is counting zeros on a bank statement when his sister Maya limps into the office with a chipped mug and does the arithmetic out loud. Two weeks from default. Three if they skip the studio rent. Four if they skip the spring fabric order. Their mother's care facility is raising its rate again in October, and the only thing the family owns outright is the building their grandfather bought in 1962. Harriet Vance will sign the contract that saves the label. She has exactly one condition, and she delivers it without blinking: Julian co-designs the collection with Nathaniel Ashford. Nathaniel has no more room to move than Julian does. He proves he can build bridges instead of burning them, or the Ashford label goes to Trevor, his younger brother, who does not have the eye but does have their father's ear. Trevor films their first meeting from the doorway, phone raised, grinning, documenting for Dad. So the two of them share a cutting table: pins laid out in a neat row, muslin, a shoulder seam, a shirt unbuttoned for a fitting under clinical light and a thumb brushing once across a collarbone. And then a designer named Damien Cross comes to the studio with a second folder, spreads forty-seven sketches across that same table, and points out that every one of them is dated four years earlier than Julian's father's versions and signed in careful block letters with a name that is not Sterling. An enemies-to-lovers workplace romance between two men in fashion, about borrowed lines, a house running on fumes, a brother with a phone camera, and what it costs to finally put your own name on something. The romance is closed-door.