He's—
My eyes drop to the man standing next to him.
Younger. Blond. Smug smile already forming, like he's been rehearsing it.
The bottom drops out of my world.
I know that face. My pulse spikes before my brain catches up. My chest locks. The champagne glass in my hand suddenly weighs a thousand pounds.
No.
No no no no—
Leo.
Not Leo Montgomery, which was the name I knew him by for the three weeks I made the mistake of spending time with him in my second year at Kingston. Leo Santego, apparently. The same entitled jaw. The same practiced confidence. The same hands — I can see them from here, gesturing at something, and my body flinches before I've consciously decided to flinch.
Those hands.
I remember the party. The hallway. The way he had me pinned against the wall before I understood what was happening, his grip so certain, so convinced he had the right. I remember sayingnoand the way his expression shifted to irritation and anger. Like I was being unreasonable.
I remember the bruises on my wrists the next morning. The split lip I covered with makeup for a week. The police report that disappeared so fast I started to wonder if I'd imagined the whole thing.
His smile when they released him. That smile, directed at me across a precinct parking lot.
I'm going to be sick.
My father is still talking. His voice reaches me in pieces —union—families—Santego—, but I can't hold onto the words because the room has gone very bright, very loud, and my body is doing something independent of my brain, cataloguing exits, calculating distances, running the math of trapped.
I press my free hand flat against my stomach, just for a second. Just to remind myself what I'm carrying. What I have to protect.
Breathe.
And then —Axel is Leo's father.
The realization arrives like ice water, cutting through the panic and replacing it with something worse. I scan back to Axel's face, find him already watching me with an expression that confirms everything — recognition, horror, a guilt so fresh it's almost bleeding.
He knows.
The man I gave my virginity to. The man whose baby is growing inside me right now, the reason I've been sick every morning for weeks now, the reason I spent five days at a countryside estate trying to put myself back together.
Is my future father-in-law.
"Aurora." Dad's voice has an edge now. "Don't be rude."
My legs carry me forward. I don't tell them to. They just go, the way the body does when the mind has given up trying to find another option — one step, two steps, walking toward Leo, toward Axel, toward the wreckage this night is going to make of me.
I make my face blank. Still. I learned this from my father.
You survive the room first. You fall apart later, alone.
Leo smiles as I approach, his face doing exactly what it’s been trained to do. The smile that lands is warm. Genuinely warm-looking, the kind that makes people in a room relax. He's good at this. I forgot how good.
"Aurora." He takes my hand with both of his, not grabbing — holding. The picture of a man meeting his future wife and finding himself pleasantly surprised. Around us, people are watching, and he knows it. "I have to say, I wasn't expecting someone like you."
"Leo." I keep my voice level. "It's been a while."
"It has." His thumb moves once across my knuckles — just once, just enough that only I feel it and nobody else sees it. His eyes find mine. There it is, underneath the warmth: the recognition. The look that says I got you at last.
