Page 16 of Waiting for You

When I finally pulled my gaze up, he was already watching me.

My pulse stumbled, a crush I hadn't braced for. I'd spent eight years hauling around the guilt of what I'd done to him, building a whole new life over the wreckage, and here he was. He stood across the crowded room, his dark eyes locked on mine. I stared back, bracing for the blow I expected to find.

I found nothing.

There was no burning contempt, no leftover warmth. His face gave nothing back, his eyes steady, his chin resting at the same relaxed angle it had a moment before. He looked at me, registered that I existed, and then looked away, shifting his attention to the centerpiece, to his dinner plate, to anywhere that wasn't me.

My hand wasn't quite steady where it rested on the table.

The dinner rolled on, and the speeches began. Violet wept openly, her chin trembling and her bare shoulders shaking while Simon anchored her hand to his and never looked away from whoever held the microphone. I watched Simon's devotion, his refusal to look anywhere else, and then dropped my gaze back to my untouched wine.

Violet's senior editor gave a charming toast. Olivia delivered a witty speech she'd clearly rehearsed for weeks while pretending she'd winged it. It landed, and I studied Violet's face through the whole thing. Her eyes were shining, her lips pressed into that tight line she used when she was fighting not to cry and already losing.

I kept my eyes on the tablecloth whenever I wasn't watching the speakers.

Once the plates were cleared, the guests rose, and the room fractured into clusters, that lingering phase where the meal's over but the night won't end. Olivia wandered off toward a friend near the floor-to-ceiling windows. The publishing crowd drifted to the open bar. I stayed in my chair.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled through social media like the screen held a crisis only I could handle. I liked photos I didn't look at. I skimmed captions I couldn't process. I was sitting inside a stunning room I'd designed myself, staring at a glowing screen, fighting a war just to keep my head down.

"It's been a long time."

His voice came low over my left shoulder, so close I felt the vibration against my skin before my brain caught the words. I jumped and spun around.

Xavier stood right behind my chair.

I scrambled to my feet. Even in four-inch heels, he towered over me, and I was no short woman.

"Xavier," I breathed, the name scraping my throat.

"It's good to see you," he said, his tone mild. His face stayed open and polite, the frictionless expression you offer a stranger you hold zero unresolved feelings for.

"You too." I forced my spine straight. "How have you been?"

"Well. And you?"

"Good." I pinned my hands flat against my sides. "Things have been great. And your clinic?"

"Thriving. More of the same."

He pulled out Olivia's abandoned chair and sat. I sank back into my own seat, realizing with a spike of panic that we were sharing the same six feet of air for the first time in eight years.

The pull of him beside me was immediate, gravitational. I strangled my phone in my lap and stared at the linen tablecloth.

"We don't have to hate each other, Sloane," he said.

My shoulders locked.

I'd braced for glacial cold. I'd braced for surgical cruelty that tells you how much damage you caused without lifting its volume. I'd braced to be invisible to him, or to wither under a glare that carried every vicious insult he was too refined to scream out loud. I'd spent years convincing myself that if our paths ever crossed again, the hatred would be there, and it would be deserved. At least his hatred would mean I'd mattered enough to leave a scar.

What I'd failed to brace for was mild indifference.

"Relationships end," he continued, his tone reasonable. "It's a normal part of life. There's no reason to carry this awkward tension between us."

The vile letter I'd mailed him, the horrific words I'd chosen, the targeted cruelty I'd weaponized to make sure he never came looking for me: every piece of that wreckage was enough to justify a lifetime of tension. And yet he sat beside me, easy as anything, waving it off as ancient history.

"I want you to know something," he added, conversational. "What you wrote in that note? You were right. I didn't deserve a woman like you. Not back then." His dark eyes swept the banquet hall. "Your honesty pushed me to make something of my life. So in a strange way, I should be thanking you."

I searched his profile with no idea what my own face was giving away.