Page 25 of Waiting for You

I turned around.

Xavier was walking straight toward us.

My pulse kicked hard enough to bruise. I gripped the stem of a passing waiter's champagne flute like a weapon. He closed the distance, his dark eyes landing on my tear-streaked face.

"You alright?" His brow pulled tight.

"I'm fine," I lied.

"Dance with me."

"I'm already dancing with Violet."

He arched one dark eyebrow. I spun to grab her arm and found nothing but empty space.

From somewhere in the crowd, I heard Violet's wicked laugh.

I turned back to face him. "Fine." I exhaled hard. "One dance."

SEVEN

SLOANE

The song was slow, and we moved through it without much grace. My pulse ran too loud, my hands couldn't decide where to settle, and I kept waiting for the awareness humming between us to quiet down. It didn't.

One of his hands settled at the small of my back, the other closing around mine, and somewhere in the slow turning I gave up the careful distance I'd meant to keep. He was taller than me even in heels.

My free hand found his shoulder, the wool of his jacket rough under my palm, and my other sat swallowed in that steady surgeon's grip I'd once known better than my own. When the music turned us, his thumb moved once across my knuckles, like he was reminding himself I was real.

"You're letting me lead," he said, close to my ear.

"Don't get used to it."

"Eight years, and you still dance like you're winning an argument."

"I usually am," I said, and felt his laugh more than heard it.

Across the room, Violet watched us over the rim of her glass, her head tilted, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She set the glass down and started toward us through the crowd.

She reached my elbow with her bouquet already handed off to someone, her attention fixed conspicuously on the two of us.

"I need you both to grab two bottles from the wine cellar," she said, her eyes bright. "The sommelier marked them. It'll take two minutes."

And she was already stepping back, already turning, already dissolving into the reception before either of us could argue.

We took the back stairs down together.

The sommelier had supposedly staged the reserve bottles in one of the cramped cellar rooms beneath the main banquet hall. It was a claustrophobic anteroom lined with floor-to-ceiling wine racks and lit by a single flickering sconce, a space built for backstock and overflow. The thumping bass of the reception died the second the heavy door swung shut behind us, replaced by the pressurized hush of a private room.

Xavier reached the handle first. He pulled the door open and stepped back, waving me in with one hand.

I froze on the threshold and eyed him.

"I honestly don't remember you being this cultured," I drawled.

"You're lying," he countered.

"I'm really not."