I take a sip.
One. Just one.
It slides down my throat like liquid fire. Burning a little. Warming a little. Loosening the tight coil of anger that's been winding in my stomach all evening.
Maybe I should ask him if he wants me to personally taste itwith my pinky raised, just to make sure it's worth the mortgage on a house.
I glance at Wes. He's speaking to the sommelier now, voice low and deliberate, as though everyone around him is too stupid to comprehend the brilliance of his ordering skills.
A feral tug pulls at my lips. The urge to snort laughter bubbles up and—thankfully—stays contained.
How do you even drink wine like this? Do you swirl it? Sniff it? Or just pour it over a pile of money and call it good?
I let my lips brush the rim again.
"Good?" Wes's voice cuts through my thoughts.
His eyebrows arched just enough to remind me he thinks this is all part of his charm.
I meet his gaze, and a tiny, venomous part of me can't resist.
"Oh, absolutely," I say. Voice calm. Sweet. But dripping with just enough edge to make him pause. "I always dreamed of drinking eighteen-thousand-dollar grape juice while being scolded like a child."
His lips twitch—not quite a smile. More a warning.
"Don't be difficult," he says, leaning forward.
I suppress the urge to laugh—or maybe it's a sigh of pure disbelief—sliding it into a dry smirk instead.
"Who, me?"
Wes blinks, momentarily taken aback, as if my words were a gust of air he hadn't calculated.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the laughter in. There's a delicious, guilty sort of freedom in having a thought like that.
I take another sip, letting the wine warm me. Loosen me. Sharpen me all at once.
The absurdity of it hits me: this gold-rimmed prison of a restaurant, all this expensive, overthought perfection—and me, quietly sass-mocking it in my head, finding cracks of rebellion in the edges of a glass.
Wes launches into stories of mergers, acquisitions, contracts—each one delivered as if the universe were constructed solely towitness him in motion. Percentages, timelines, forecasts, and power plays tumble from his mouth like confetti thrown at an audience that exists only in his imagination.
Numbers blur into noise. His tone a steady hum that fills the room like a finely tuned machine, too expensive to ever stop.
I drink more wine. Faster than I should. Let it slide down my throat, let the heat pool in my chest, softening the edges of tension just enough to feel dangerous.
My mind drifts—quietly, almost imperceptibly—back to cliffs and salt air.
To wind tangling my hair. To laughter that didn't have to be tempered. To sunlight that never asked for approval.
The freedom of it was raw and unpolished. The kind of freedom that didn't need chandeliers or uncomfortable velvet chairs or eighteen-thousand-dollar wine to exist.
And here I sit. Silk clinging in the wrong places. Gold glinting like a halo I never wanted. Watching someone else perform a life I used to dream about.
"Did you see the numbers on that merger?" Wes's voice cuts through my haze, anchoring me back.
He leans back, arm brushing my shoulder in that measured, deliberate way that's equal parts charm and ownership. Possession disguised as intimacy.
I nod. I don't care about the numbers.
