“No.” My voice drops low, rough with the effort of not going back there and finishing what I started. “They were seeing you in ways no one but me should.”
The confession hangs between us. But I can’t take it back. I don’t want to. Because it’s true. The thought of anyone else looking at her the way I do, knowing her the way I do, touching her the way I just did—it makes me want to burn down more than just chairs.
She goes quiet. Not the angry quiet or the hurt quiet I remember from before. This is different. This is her processing the weight of what I just admitted. That after three years, after everything, I still think of her as mine.
We find our seats and her hand finds mine under the table, hidden by white linen. Her thumb strokes once across my knuckles as conversations flow, but I’m only aware of her. The warmth of her thigh against mine. The way she shivers when I trace my thumb across the inside of her wrist. The soft catch in her breath when I lean close to murmur something innocuous about the wine.
We’re performing for the room, playing the part of the devoted couple. But under the table, in the spaces between words, we’re having a different conversation entirely.
“Rowan,” she whispers.
“I know,” I murmur back, wanting to get out of here as fast as we can.
The trivia coordinator’s voice cuts through the room. “Time forLaw & Order:Partner Unit! Grab a teammate and a buzzer, and get ready to prove your overpriced education!”
The game show grin he’s wearing makes me want to object on the grounds of excessive enthusiasm, but the tension that’s been coiling in my chest finally loosens. Just a fraction.
Beside me, Tessa’s shoulders drop slightly. Her exhale brushes my arm. “You better carry your weight, King.”
“Try to keep up, Whitmore.” The smirk comes automatically, muscle memory from a thousand debates and a hundred late-night study sessions where competition was our foreplay.
She rolls her eyes, but there’s something underneath the exasperation now. Something softer, warmer.
The room reorganizes itself around us—cocktail tables draped in white linen, candles flickering. Jazz floats from hidden speakers, the kind that’s supposed to make you feel sophisticated but really just makes you aware of how hard everyone’s trying.
And then there’s Tessa.
Still in that green silk that’s been destroying my concentration all evening. She’s in heels—delicate things that make her legs look impossibly long—but I remember her barefoot in my room, remember the way her toes curled against my sheets, remember?—
Stop.
She’s eyeing the appetizer table with the kind of intensity usually reserved for hostile witnesses. “Can we like try all of it?”
“If you want.” I reach for two plates. “Though, I’m not staying up all night when it gives you a stomachache.”
She punches me lightly.
“Just focus on getting us through trivia.”
I glance at her, at the way the pendant lights’ reflection catches in her hair. “Afraid you won’t be able to keep up?”
She shrugs, and the movement makes the silk shift against her skin in ways that are absolutely not helping my composure. “I can keep up but I rather be fucking.”
The plate nearly slips from my hand. I have to force my grip to relax before I shatter the china.
We pretend she never said the wordfuckingand navigate through the crowd toward a table tucked strategically beneath one of the flat screens.
She’s already pilfered two bacon-wrapped figs and a tiny quiche.
“You took the quiche,” I observe, needing words to fill the space before I do something stupid.
“I took it for research purposes.”
“Uh-huh.”
She bites into it with deliberate delicacy, then makes a sound that shoots straight to my dick. “Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Without thinking, I take it from her hand and finish it. Her lips part slightly as she watches me swallow.
