Chapter 29 – Rowan
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rowan
The silk slides through my fingers for the third time, and I let it fall. The tie isn’t crooked. Nothing about it needs adjusting. But I’m nervous.
Behind me, I can hear Tessa through the bathroom door, her voice drifting out in fragments of off-key Billie Eilish. She’s singing like she’s happy. Actually happy. Not the performed kind she’s been wearing all weekend, but the real thing that used to make her glow from the inside out.
The same glow she had an hour ago when I—
Stop.
I force my hands still. My reflection stares back from the mirror, and I don’t recognize the man there. He looks... softer. Fed. Like something starving in him finally got what it needed.
Tessa appears in the doorway, and my hands freeze.
The dress she’s wearing is silk, deep green, with an open back and, it’s going to torture me all evening. Her hair is still damp from the shower, leaving wet spots on the silk that make the fabric transparent in places it shouldn’t be. She’s barefoot, shoes dangling from her fingers.
She’s smiling. Not the sharp, defensive smile she’s been wielding like a weapon since she showed up at my door with that damn dog. This is the smile from before. From when she used to wake up in my bed on Sunday mornings, soft and unguarded.
The smile that says she’s full. Satisfied.
The smile that says I did that.
My body responds immediately, and my fingers itch to pull her back against me, to mess up her dress and make us later than we already are.
“You missed a loop,” she says, moving behind me.
“No, I didn’t.” But I let her fix it anyway.
Her knuckles brush my throat as she adjusts the tie. Such an innocent touch, but my body remembers other touches. Her nails on my back thirty minutes ago. Her teeth on my shoulder…
“You’re staring again,” she murmurs, catching my eyes in the mirror.
“You’re wearing that dress.”
The words come out rougher than intended, heavy with everything I’m not saying. That she looks like every fantasy I’ve tried not to have for three years. I want to lock the door and spend the rest of the evening proving that this thing between us isn’t dead, just dormant.
We both freeze, caught in the mirror’s reflection. The air between us thickens, becoming something living. I watch pink creep up her neck, watch her pulse flutter at the base of her throat where I had my mouth twenty minutes ago.
She finishes the knot with a little tug—tighter than necessary. Her fingers linger against my chest, palm flat over my heart. I hope she realizes how much effort it’s taking not to spin her around and kiss her until she screams.
“There,” she whispers, but she doesn’t step back.
Neither do I.
We stand there, her front pressed to my back, watching each other in the mirror.
An hour ago, she was crying my name.
Her thumb moves, a tiny stroke over my heart. “We should go.”
“We should.”
But neither of us moves. Because moving means breaking this spell. Means pretending again. Means taking this thing we just broke wide open and shoving it back into a box marked professional arrangement.
I turn my head slightly. “That dress is going to be a problem.”
She smiles against my shoulder, and I feel it through my shirt. “Good.”
The word is deliberately provocative. The Tessa I remember. The one who used to challenge me just to watch me rise to meet her.
“Careful,” I murmur, letting my voice drop to that register that used to make her shiver. “We have to be convincing tonight.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” Her eyes meet mine in the mirror, dark and knowing. “Do you?”
No. It’s not.
Because I’m about to walk into that ballroom with my hand on her back, right where her dress dips low. I’m going to introduce her as mine—not pretending, not performing, just stating fact. I’m going to watch other men notice her and know that she’s coming back to my room tonight.
The knowledge sits hot and possessive in my chest, dangerous in its certainty. Because this was supposed to be a business arrangement with clear boundaries.
Instead, she’s standing in my room, wearing a dress that’s going to haunt me.
“We’re going to be late,” she says, but she’s leaning into me now, her weight warm against my back.
“Let them wait.”
“Rowan.” My name on her lips, half-warning, half-want.
I turn then, finally, breaking the mirror’s spell. She has to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact, and the movement exposes the line of her throat, the place where her pulse is racing. If I touch her now, we won’t be leaving this room—but I let myself look anyway.
“You should put your shoes on,” I say, voice carefully controlled.
She steps back, and the loss of her warmth is immediate. But she keeps her eyes on mine as she bends to slip on her heels deliberately slow. Testing me.
She’s always been dangerous. But she’s lethal when she knows she’s won.
And from the smile playing at the corner of her mouth she knows exactly what she’s done to me.
We’re not over.
We never were.
We just got very good at pretending.
But after today, after that hour that undid three years of careful distance, I don’t think either of us is interested in pretending anymore.
She smooths her dress, and transforms into the polished version of herself. But I can still see the marks I left. The slight redness on her neck. The swollen quality of her mouth.
“Ready?” she asks, and there’s a challenge in it.
I offer her my arm, and when she takes it, when her fingers curl around my bicep.
“Ready,” I lie.
We walk to the door, her hand on my arm, my hand hovering at the small of her back where her dress leaves her bare. The silk whispers against her skin as she moves, and I’m already calculating how quickly we can leave this dinner.
Our fingers thread together the moment we step into the hallway, with no thought required. Her palm fits against mine the way it always did—perfectly wrong and perfectly right.
Outside, the evening air hits my skin, cooler now that the sun is bleeding orange across the horizon. The manicured path stretches toward the main hall, our shadows long and intertwined on the walkway. Every few steps, I catch her glancing from under her lashes.
Neither of us smiles.
But our hands stay locked.
Mine wrapped around hers. Hers gripping back.
The dining hall announces itself before we reach it—warm light spilling from tall windows, the orchestrated sound of laughter that’s really just networking in evening wear. The clink of glasses. The murmur of ambition dressed up as small talk.
Tessa’s shoulder brushes mine as we pause at the threshold, and I feel her subtle shift closer. “This feels more like a court gala than a retreat.”
Her voice is steady, but I can feel the slight tremor in her fingers.
She’s nervous. Not of the room, but of walking into it together.
Of what we look like now, after what we just did.
If everyone can see it on us—the flush still on her skin, the way I can’t stop touching her.
Our bodies are still having a conversation our mouths can’t.
“That’s because it is,” I murmur back, letting my thumb stroke once across her knuckles. A tiny comfort. A promise that I’m here. “Just with worse lighting and more seafood.”
We don’t make it two steps before they materialize.
Masden. Harris. Hale.
And behind them—Camden.
Calculating our worth with eyes that have destroyed careers over brandy.
“King.” Masden’s voice slides like oil. His gaze flicks to Tessa, lingering a beat too long on the curve of her neck. “Miss Whitmore.”
Tessa stiffens beside me, and I shift forward—just half a step, but enough. Enough to put my body between them and her. Enough to make the territorial message crystal clear: Look somewhere else.
Harris offers what he probably thinks is a smile. “We hope there won’t be… a repeat of this afternoon.”
“Of course not.” My voice could freeze blood. “Your chairs are safe.”
Masden’s jaw ticks. “So is your reputation—at least for now.”
The threat hangs between us. He’s reminding me that he could talk. Could paint me as unstable, and unfit for the position we’re all competing for.
Camden, always desperate to be included in tensions he doesn’t understand, raises his glass in a mock toast. “Nothing personal, King. We’ve all lost our tempers. Just… next time, maybe not on custom Italian leather.”
I don’t respond. I can’t. Because what I want to say would end with security escorting me out and Hale crossing my name off every list that matters. What I want to do involves my fist and Masden’s smug face and the satisfying crack of cartilage.
But I don’t move. I don’t blink. I simply hold Masden’s gaze until he looks away first.
Hale watches this entire exchange with the stillness of a predator deciding if we’re worth the energy. Her eyes move from me to Tessa—taking in our joined hands, and the protective angle of my body.
Then she nods, and walks away.
The moment they’re gone, Tessa spins toward me. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Rowan.”
The truth sits heavy on my tongue. That hearing them talk about her like she was a thing to be consumed made me see red.
That the sound of Masden’s voice describing her body made my vision tunnel to a single point of rage.
That I’d been one heartbeat away from doing something that would have destroyed everything I’ve worked for, and I hadn’t cared.
Not if it meant defending her.
“They made a comment,” I say finally, the words carefully measured. “I disagreed.”
“Define disagreed.”
I exhale through my nose. “There may have been a cigar. And a chair.”
Her mouth falls open, and heaven help me, it’s adorable. The shock in her eyes mixed with understanding, maybe. Or recognition. “You burned something?”
“I didn’t throw a Molotov cocktail, Whitmore. I just… redirected the end of a conversation.”
“Into leather upholstery?”
“It was already ugly.”
She makes a sound—half groan, half laugh. “You always did this. Every time someone so much as looked at me—”