That did it. I straightened, every inch of me snapping to full alert.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
He shrugged, glancing at the door, then back at me with that same cocky, controlled smile. “I just wanted to talk.”
“No,” I said, stepping back. “You wanted to control the narrative. Same as always.”
That smile faltered. Barely—but I saw it.
“You’re still angry,” he said, tilting his head like I was some unruly child. “I get it. But you can’t deny the chemistry.”
“You’re right,” I said, my voice turning cold. “I can’t deny it. It was there. Right until you twisted it into something cruel.”
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Not here. Not with him standing too close, his shadow long and familiar.
But the floodgates had cracked.
“You played perfect in public, Marshall. You made everyone believe you were the golden boy. Our friends. Strangers at fundraisers. But behind closed doors? You weren’t charming. You were calculated. You didn’t yell. You condescended. You didn’t hit. You humiliated. Quietly. Expertly. And always with a smile. Thank God I never introduced you to my parents. Although, that might have made today more interesting.”
His eyes darkened. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said, my voice steady. “What wasn’t fair was the time you made me leave a gala because you didn’t like the way I laughed at someone’s joke. What wasn’t fair was you deleting my friends’ numbers from my phone. You always had a reason. Always spun it into some concern. But it was about control, and you know it.”
He stepped forward again. Too close.
I didn’t back down.
“Sloane,” he said, his voice dipping, “we were young. People make mistakes. I’ve grown. You’ve grown. Don’t act like we didn’t have something good.”
My jaw locked. “We didn’t have something good. We had something toxic. And you’re not in here because you’ve grown. You’re in here because you saw the look on my face and realized you weren’t in control anymore.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I wasn’t done.
“I see you, Marshall. Not the shell you parade around in your fucking country club blazer. I see the man who needed me small so he could feel big. The man who ghosted me when I finally started to push back.”
He bristled at that, finally dropping the act.
His smile vanished.
“I didn’t ghost you,” he snapped. “You iced me out. With your independence, your sarcasm, your constant need to prove you were smarter than me.”
“No,” I said softly. “I just stopped shrinking.”
We stared at each other for one blistering moment, and the silence pulsed with all the things we’d never said.
Rage. Resentment. Regret.
And then—just as I drew in a breath, just as I prepared to leave this cursed room and this man and the memory of who I used to be—the door creaked.
And in walked the man from the ball.
His eyes swept the room once, sharp and stormy, and then landed on us—on me, on Marshall, on the tension thick enough to slice.
And everything changed.
Because he didn’t walk like a gentleman. He walked like a reckoning.
He didn’t walk like someone who needed permission. He walked like he’d already taken it.
