Chapter 34 #6
I laugh once, helplessly, because crying would be too dramatic even for me.
“You can’t just say things like that.”
His mouth lifts.
“I already did.”
Then, because apparently I haven’t suffered enough, he kisses my forehead once and disappears into the bathroom with his own garment bag, leaving me alone with the dress, the ocean, and the wildly inconvenient fact that I may actually be in love.
Not crush.
Not obsession.
Not lust so intense it masquerades as destiny.
Love.
The kind that waits.
The kind that remembers.
The kind that studies your wounds like they matter.
The silk skims my body like it was cut with me in mind.
It hugs my waist and glides over my hips without trying to make me smaller.
The back leaves a clean sweep of skin exposed, the straps delicate over my shoulders.
The sandals buckle neatly around my ankles.
My hair takes ten extra minutes because I keep having to stop and stare at myself like I’m seeing not just a dress, but the girl I might have been if that first night had gone differently.
Only better.
Stronger.
Sharper.
Still standing.
When I’m done, I touch gloss to my mouth and turn toward the bathroom just as the door opens.
And there he is.
In a tuxedo.
My knees actually weaken.
It should annoy me how devastating he is.
It doesn’t.
It just finishes me.
Five years ago he was beautiful in that prep-school prince way that made girls stupid and boys competitive.
Now—he is all man.
Broader. Harder. Muscle filling out the clean lines of black formalwear like it was designed for exactly this.
His dark hair is brushed back, his jaw sharper somehow, his shoulders impossible, his whole body radiating quiet power and money and male confidence so precise it barely has to announce itself.
The older version of the boy I first fell for.
Only this one has weight to him. A gravity that makes the whole room feel smaller around his body.
He stops when he sees me, eyes go over me once, and the air leaves his lungs so visibly it makes my heart somersault. Because he is looking at me like the dress worked too well, like every expensive detail just made things infinitely worse for him.
He steps closer until he’s standing in front of me with something almost like disbelief still in his eyes.
“You’re killing me,” he murmurs.
I smile without meaning to.
“You bought the weapon.”
That gets the ghost of a laugh from him. His hands settle carefully at my waist, like he’s testing his own control again.
“Still dangerous,” he says.
“Still here.”
His gaze flicks over my face, softer now.
“Yeah.”
I don’t know which one of us leans in first.
Maybe both.
The kiss is brief.
Gentle.
Completely unfair.
When he pulls back, he looks more composed than I feel.
“Ready?” he asks.
No.
“Yes.”
He smiles like he knows the truth and offers me his arm anyway.
The limo is obscene.
I should be used to it by now after the plane and the suite and the hotel and the dress, but apparently Tristan decided subtlety was dead and this weekend required full commitment.
We sit side by side in the dim backseat as Newport glides by outside in wet black streets and old stone walls and glowing windows. His hand rests over mine. The city looks like memory with better lighting.
By the time we pull up in front of the venue, my stomach has climbed into my throat.
The building is exactly how I remembered it and not at all. The same bones. The same old-money grandeur. The same steps, the same lit facade, the same feeling of walking into a machine designed to decide who belongs.
Only now I don’t need it to choose me.
Girls spill out near the entrance in tiny dresses, impossible heels, expensive makeup, too-young laughter. Phones flash. Someone is already angling for a group shot under the archway. I hear fragments as we step out—hashtags, names, social calculations dressed as fun.
I pause with my hand still in Tristan’s and watch them for a second. Because I know exactly what that kind of room can do to a girl standing on the edge of it, trying to fit into a life that was never made for her body or her bank account or her truth.
“Tristan.”
He looks at me immediately.
“What?”
“Are there any scholarship girls here tonight?”
His brows draw together.
“Probably. Why?”
I glance toward the entrance again.
“Find out who they are.”
He studies my face.
“And then what?”
I look back at him.
“Make sure you give them a dance and a few selfies.”
He understands before I finish saying it.
I smile a little, but it feels fragile at the edges. “Some stranger in the shadows once did that for me,” I say. “Turns out it mattered.”
His whole expression changes.
The heat in it doesn’t go away.
“I was going to say this needs to be about you,” he says softly. “That you’re not allowed to spend tonight thinking about strangers.” He lifts our joined hands and brushes his mouth over my knuckles. “But I think,” he says, eyes never leaving mine, “I know what you meant earlier.”
I swallow.
“What?”
His thumb traces once along the inside of my wrist.
“When you said this must be what love is like.”
Tears sting behind my eyes so fast it almost embarrasses me.
There, on the sidewalk outside a glittering room full of rules I no longer care about, I nearly lose it over a boy in a tuxedo speaking the exact language my heart didn’t know it was waiting to hear.
He sees the tears gather. His free hand comes up and smooths lightly beneath one eye before anything can fall.
“Hey,” he murmurs.
I laugh shakily.
“Rude.”
His mouth curves. Then he takes my hand and guides me inside before I can turn into a full disaster in public. The ballroom is all chandeliers and candlelight and expensive nostalgia.
Music drifts low and golden under the chatter. Velvet curtains frame the far side of the room. Everything gleams. Everything glitters. Everything smells faintly of perfume, champagne, and expectations.
I feel eyes on us the second we walk in. A few girls glance our way and then look again. Boys do too. Phones lift. Whispers move. Some things never change.
“Royal Oaks Royalty!”
“Cortez and Vale!! OMG! DYING!”
“T&T is so cooked.”
Only this time I don’t feel seventeen and invisible.
Tristan leans close enough that his mouth brushes my temple.
“Still okay?”
I tilt my face toward him.
“Ask me after the first dance.”
His mouth touches the corner of mine in something too brief to count as a kiss and too intimate not to. Then his hand slides to my waist and he steers me not toward the center of the room—but toward the back. Toward the curtains.
My pulse stutters.
The same hidden place—a nook behind the small concert stage. The same shadowed slice of history where everything first went wrong.
He stops there and turns to face me.
No speech.
No theatrics.
Just his hand at my waist, his other lifting mine, and his body moving into mine like we have always known how to do this.
We start to dance.
Slow.
Cheek to cheek.
Forehead to forehead.
Breath to breath.
His hand spreads warm at the small of my back.
Mine slides up over black wool to the hard line of his shoulder.
We sway in the soft shadow of the curtain while the room glitters on without us, and for a minute I can’t tell whether I want to cry or kiss him or climb inside his ribcage and live there.
Maybe all three.
He says nothing.
He doesn’t have to.
His body says enough.
That he’s here.
That he remembers.
That he came back for this.
For me.
The song shifts.
And then it happens.
The first note hits and everything in me goes still.
No.
I know this song.
I pull back a fraction, eyes flying to his.
He already knows.
He did this on purpose.
My breath catches so hard it almost hurts.
Five years fall away and then don’t, because the difference is standing right in front of me in a tuxedo with his hand steady at my back and love—God, maybe love—in his eyes.
This time, Tristan doesn’t get nervous.
Doesn’t hesitate.
Doesn’t hide behind charm or fear or youth.
He just looks at me through the whole song.
Holds me through it.
All the way.
Not tight.
Not desperate.
Sure.
The kind of sure that says more than any apology ever could.
His forehead rests to mine again. We move together slowly while the music wraps around us like memory corrected, and it feels like the entire room disappears until there is only the two of us and the song and the impossible, beautiful fact that he did not let go this time.
When the final refrain starts to swell, he lifts his head.
Looks at me like he’s waiting for permission and already knows the answer.
Then he kisses me.
Not hidden.
Not careless.
Not fast.
The kind of kiss that could ruin a girl for anyone else.
My fingers clutch his lapel. His hand flexes at my back. The curtain brushes softly against my arm. Somewhere beyond us, the ballroom keeps breathing and glittering and pretending the world is still normal.
It isn’t.
When he finally pulls away, both of us are breathing harder.
I look at him for one dazed second and whisper, “I think I’m ready to get out of here, my bad prince.”
His eyes flare.
He takes a shaky breath and lets out the smallest disbelieving laugh. “Is it weird that I’m trying very hard not to look too aroused to function in a tuxedo?”
That breaks me into helpless laughter.
I lift both my hands between us.
They’re trembling.
His gaze drops to them.
Then back to my face.
The humor fades.
“I don’t know how to say this,” I whisper.
He goes still instantly.
“Stella.”
I try again, because the words are there somewhere, lodged in the part of me that has never been this vulnerable and wanted at the same time.
“I’ve never…” My voice catches. God. “I’ve never been with anyone who made me want to.”
The silence after that is enormous.
His eyes widen.
Heat first.
Then shock.
Then something that looks almost wrecked.
“Why?” he says softly, and then, rougher, “Baby… you waited?”
My throat tightens.