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Now it was her turn to be speechless.
Leaning in closer, Samuel gently thumbed a tear from her cheek.
“I came here to ask you something I should have asked you a long time ago.”
“What’s that?” Arlie sniffed.
Shifting on the sofa, he turned to her, taking her hand in his. “Arlington Banks. Will you go to the prom with me?”
“Prom?” One great hiccup of laughter bubbled out of her through her streaming tears. “What prom?”
“The prom that’s happening tonight at the Lennox Finch Preparatory events hall,” he said.
“But I don’t have a dress,” she protested.
Behind her, Kassidy gave an excessively exaggerated ahem.
Arlie turned and saw her best friend holding a garment bag aloft. “Would you look at that? I just happen to have a prom dress right here.”
“You knew!” Arlie accused, elated as she was incredulous.
“How the hell do you think he knew where you were staying?” Kassidy sauntered across the room and laid the garment bag gently over the club chair. “This young man not only asked for my assistance, he asked for my permission. Which, benevolent creature that I am, I graciously gave him.”
“After she told me that she’d rip my spine out through my ass if I hurt you,” Samuel added.
“That part is exceedingly important.” Kassidy pointed a finger at him, the effect greatly compromised by her unabashed grin.
Before that moment, Arlie had never felt happiness so large, so expansive, that it registered as an actual pain in her chest. Having the greatest worry of her life completely taken away. Glancing back and forth between her best friend and the boy she had adored, hearing them joke with one another. Could this actually be real?
Could this really be her life?
“Well?” Kassidy prodded Arlie’s shoulder. “Are you going to answer the man or sit there ruining the makeup I so skillfully applied?”
Dabbing the corners of her eyes with her borrowed bathrobe, Arlie nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Samuel Kane, I’ll go to the prom with you.”
Samuel smiled like a man who hadn’t known what a smile was until that precise second. Using his uninjured arm to steady himself, he leaned in and kissed her.
She could taste the salt of tears on her own lips as they met his. Forgiveness asked and freely given. Years and hurts and missed chances mended by the feeling of his mouth on hers.
“All right, you two,” Kassidy scolded, shoving the dress at Arlie. “That’s enough of that. Let’s get you dressed and on your way, madam.”
They retreated to Kassidy’s room, where she zipped Arlie into a vintage floor-length Versace of the deepest blue, a slit in the rustling silk rising high up her thigh.
Had she lived another hundred years, Arlie knew she would never forget the way Samuel looked at her when she emerged. A mix of hunger and wonder and pride that lit a fire somewhere in her soul.
“Shall we?” he said, offering her his good arm.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Kassidy called after them as they descended the stairs together.
“That rules out, like, one and a half things,” Arlie called back.
Her best friend’s laugh danced like bells on the air until it was broken off by the door closing.
A glossy black vintage Packard limousine waited for them at the curb, the driver standing ready to open their door.
Samuel handed Arlie in, carefully ducking in after her.
Once they were both inside, the air around them crackled with barely restrained electricity.
What was it about limos anyway?
In that thick silence, Samuel traced her bare skin through the slit in her skirt, beginning at her knee and wandering lazily up her thigh.
“That’s a good way to get yourself in trouble,” Arlie breathed.
“Think you can wait until we get to Lennox Finch?” Samuel’s finger dipped beneath the silk, sliding over her sex through the lace of her panties. “I may or may not have a very specific fantasy I’d like to enlist your cooperation in.”
“I can if you can.” Summoning every ounce of willpower she possessed, Arlie picked up Samuel’s hand and put it back in his own lap.
Which was a very big mistake. He was already hard.
“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to take care of this for you?” Arlie ran her hand along his length. “We can’t have you walking into the prom with a trouser tent.”
With a groan of frustration, Samuel mirrored her gesture, removing her hand from his lap. “Give me a minute to think about profit and loss statements.”
“And here I thought those would be just as likely to get you hard.”
His lips twisted in a wry smile. “You’re not entirely wrong about that.”
After a journey that seemed to last five minutes and forever, the limo pulled up in front of the prep school’s sprawling edifice. A place that transported her back through many years to a much younger and braver self.
They strolled arm-in-arm down the long colonnade that Arlie had always felt belonged in a monastery more than a school.
Music pulsed out to them on the night air in a whoosh as the double doors to the gym opened and they made their way in.
Arlie froze in the entryway, her mouth dropping open.
A hand-painted banner bearing the words I Left My Heart in San Francisco was hung just beyond the door. But it wasn’t just any painted sign.
It looked exactly like the one she remembered laboring over only hours before the original prom was set to start.
“How did you—” she began, but the words died away as she saw the rest.
