It’d be Harrison all over again — the spectacle, the whisper chain, the texts, the social media videos, and the inevitability that my parents and their friends will hear about it by Sunday morning — and the version of me I’ve spent a lot of effort becoming will be wasted.
Because I’ve done the math on this.
The thing that ruins you is not the act, it’s your reaction. If I push his hand off, I’m the uptight girl who can’t take it. If I cry — and there’s a hot pressure behind my eyes that says that’s close — then the story follows me through every dining hall and seminar room.
So I do the worst thing I can do, which is the thing I came here to do.
I let the smile hold.
I don’t react.
I don’t give the fire oxygen.
Across the room, from the corner of my eye, I see Rowan. His neutral expression is gone. His face has gone hard in a way I haven’t seen on him before, and his hand has tightened around his glass.
He’s watching Mason’s hand on me.
seven
ROWAN
The same beerhas been in my hand for ninety minutes, and it’s warm now.
I don’t care. I’m not here to drink. I’m here because Luca asked, because showing up is what I do, and because I told myself two hours ago that being in the same room as Sloane doesn’t mean anything.
People are in rooms together all the time.
But my eyes keep finding her, and each time it’s harder to pull them back.
She’s in Mason’s circle, laughing at something Whit is saying. It’s the polished laugh, because the real one is louder and less contained. I’ve seen it a few times now, and Mason has yet to draw that laugh out of her.
Her toga is long ivory linen, both shoulders covered, hem to the calf, and the care she put into not being looked at is the part I can’t stop looking at. It’s meant to be modest, but it’s cinched at the waist, and the linen skims every curve she’s trying to play down.
The swell of her chest.
The dip of her waist.
The soft line of her hip.
My mouth goes dry, because modest is somehow hotter, feeding my imagination and the desire to know what’s underneath. And right now I’m thinking, very specifically, about the side of her neck, and what it would be like dragging my mouth down from there.
“Hale,” Seb says.
“What?” I take my eyes off her.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m not,” I say, trying not to look at Sloane.
Seb starts into a story about something Theo did at practice, and Niko is doing the face he does when he’s not listening. But I struggle to find purchase in any of it, because I keep looking back at her.
Seb clamps a hand on my shoulder. “She’s got you good.”
Niko’s eyes flick over, suddenly interested.
“I’m watching the room,” I say.
Seb drinks from his cup of party punch. “She’s a hell of a room.”
