Page 83 of Cruel Lies

"I didn't invite him," he says. "For the record. Someone with a table must have bought a seat and brought a guest."

I ogle Todd across the ballroom. He looks smaller than I remember. Not literally. He's still six foot two. But something about him has gone smaller, like a wilted balloon a week afterthe party. Paula says something to him and he doesn't answer. She looks away, lip curled in frustration.

They don't look happy.

I wait to feel something. Rage. Grief. That cold, fanged thing. The old panic.

I wait for the voice that told me for a decade that I was too much in every direction. The voice that lived in Todd and moved into my own head and made itself at home there, like a parasite.

I think about the last thing Todd ever said to me about dancing. It was years ago, at one of his frat brother's weddings, and I'd wanted to go out on the floor because I loved the song. He'd looked at me and given that little half-smirk and said,You sure? In that dress?

I'd sat right back down. I stayed there for the rest of the party and I didn't dance. I told myself I hadn't really wanted to anyway.

He said I was too fat to dance. He didn't use those words; he was too careful for that. But it's what he meant to say.

I look at him now, small and unhappy across the room, next to the woman he blew up his whole life to be with.

And I turn to look at Ronan.

He's watching me. Not Todd.Me. He read the whole thing off my face before I could even say it, the way he reads everything. He knows about the wedding and the half-smirk and the dress, or he knows enough.

He holds out his hand.

"Dance with me," he says.

I hesitate. "I don't want to cause a scene."

A slow, shark-ish grin spreads across his face. "I dare him to start one."

Taking my fingers in his, he leads me out onto the floor. Right out into the middle of it, under the biggest chandelier, where everyone can see. I feel a flutter of the old fear.

He pulls me in. One hand at my waist, warm and firm through the green silk. The other closes around my hand.

"I don't really know how to do this," I admit in a shy whisper.

"You don't have to know," he says. "I do. Just follow me."

The band switches to a new song and Ronan starts to move. It's easy, because he makes it easy. He doesn't count out loud or steer me like a shopping cart. He just moves, and somehow, I find myself moving with him. After four or five steps, I realize I'm dancing.

I'mdancing.

In front of hundreds of people. In a five-figure dress I zipped myself. In heels, on a floor, with a gorgeous man's hand at my waist.

I laugh, quiet and disbelieving.

"What?" Ronan says.

"Nothing. It's stupid."

"Tell me."

I look up at him. He's looking down at me the way he looked at me in the blue light, like there's nothing else in the room worth seeing.

"My ex said I was too fat to dance," I say. "So I sat down one day, and in a certain kind of way, I've never really stood up again. Until now."

Ronan's jaw goes tight. That coldness moves under the surface of him. But he doesn't let it out. He reels me out, slow, and brings me back in, closer this time.

"He's watching," he growls in my ear. "So let me show you how a real man treats his woman."