9. Emma #3
“I wanted to see what he was really like.”
“So you are investigating him.”
“I prefer gathering information.”
I glance at the red silk. “In that dress?”
She looks down at herself, then back at me. “I can gather information and look good doing it.”
I press my lips together.
“Do not give me that look,” she warns. “I am not handing him the shovel he intends to use to hack Pinehaven apart.”
I am still deciding how to answer when someone steps into our space.
He is handsome in the polished, expensive way men in rooms like this often are, the kind who has never had to wonder whether he belongs.
His attention goes straight to Sofia.
First her mouth.
Then lower. And it makes my skin crawl.
“Sofia.”
Her spine straightens.
“Preston. I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Funny. I was going to say the same thing.” His eyes travel over her dress. “I didn’t think this was your scene.” He draws out the last word and lifts his brows at her.
The emphasis makes the insult clear.
She does not belong in this room, among this kind of money, with men like him.
Color rises across Sofia’s cheeks, and her shoulders pull inward by a fraction. I have never seen her shrink from anyone. I open my mouth with no plan beyond putting myself between them.
Danny gets there first.
He steps in behind Sofia and slides an arm around her waist, pulling her into his side as though that is exactly where she belongs.
“Her scene is wherever she decides to stand.”
Then he looks down at her, his voice changing.
“Sorry I kept you waiting, baby.” He bends and presses a kiss to her temple.
Sofia goes rigid with surprise, but I doubt anyone else catches it. A second later, she relaxes and smooths her expression back into place.
Together they are striking, champagne dress and dark curls against crisp black, a composition begging for a canvas. I can’t see Sofia’s face from this angle, but I can see Preston’s, and he looks like he swallowed a frog.
Danny shifts her half a step, placing his body between them without making the movement obvious. Then he looks at me.
For the first time since I returned, Danny Hartley speaks directly to me.
“How are you?”
The question is painfully ordinary.
I have to suppress the old instinct to hug him.
Then I remember him standing in Pinehaven town hall, tearing me apart in front of everyone because he believes every terrible thing Alex believes about me.
Still, I cannot hold it against him. Somewhere beneath the tuxedo and all that anger, I can still see the boy who went trick-or-treating with us that one fall, dressed in a ridiculous costume for no other reason than to make Liam happy.
“I’m good,” I say. “And you?”
“Good.”
Danny’s mouth pulls at one corner.
Preston clears his throat, waiting for someone to acknowledge him.
No one does.
He tries again, louder this time.
Danny lets another second pass before turning his head. “Did you need something?”
Preston opens his mouth, but Alex and Dante return before he gets a word out.
Alex’s eyes go first to Danny’s hand at Sofia’s waist, then to the man standing in front of them.
“And you are?” Alex asks.
“Preston. Sofia’s friend.”
“That’s a stretch,” Sofia mutters.
Danny keeps his expression blank. “Paxton, if you don’t mind,” Danny says, “we have a family matter to discuss.”
“It’s Preston,” he mumbles, and no one, anywhere, cares.
I should not be enjoying this. I’m so invested in this drama, and I am never invested in drama.
Danny Hartley, all grown up, is publicly staking a claim on my Sofia while she stands too stunned to shove him away. My two worlds have collided beneath chandeliers, and I may need a chair.
Preston gathers what remains of his dignity and leaves.
Dante watches Preston disappear into the crowd. “That was cruel.”
“Bet he deserved it.” Alex’s gaze shifts from Danny to Sofia.
Sofia seems to remember Danny’s hand is still at her waist. She steps out of his hold and gives him a look that should be warning enough.
Danny lets her go without argument, though his eyes stay on her.
Dante turns to me.
“It was nice meeting you again, Emma.”
He takes my hand and presses his lips to my knuckles, wicked smile aimed past me at the man whose teeth I can hear grinding from here.
Dante releases my hand, and Alex takes it before I can lower it, his fingers closing over the same place Dante’s had been.
The gesture is so unmistakably possessive that heat shoots up my arm and settles low in my stomach. My thighs press together beneath the gown.
Ten years, and apparently my body still has no dignity where Alex Hartley is concerned.
He draws me away from them, not roughly, never enough to hurt, but with a grip that leaves no question about where he wants me. Dante’s laugh follows us across the ballroom.
I glance back at Sofia in apology.
She is watching us with the rapt expression she usually reserves for Abuela’s favorite telenovelas, her gaze bouncing between Alex and me as though she is afraid to miss something. Danny stands beside her, much quieter, watching us with a thoughtful look I cannot make sense of.
Alex keeps moving until a column cuts us off from most of the room.
Then he turns to me.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Mark?”
Whatever I expected, it was not that.
I thought he would warn me away from Dante or invent another rule designed to keep me beneath his thumb.
My knees lock.
“What?”
“The gambling, the money he owed, all of it.” His voice stays low. “Why didn’t you say anything, Belle?”
For a second, I can only stare at him.
There is hurt in his face now, stripped of the coldness he wears so well, and I do not know what to do with it.
The ballroom keeps moving behind him. Couples turn across the dance floor. Servers pass with champagne while my fingers rise instinctively toward my throat.
They find bare skin.
The locket is still in Alex’s pocket.
How much does he know? Who told him?
Every question feels dangerous.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, buying myself a second I do not have.
Alex watches me, the line between his brows deepening.
“Perhaps you looked at me and saw a construction worker’s son with dirt under his fingernails.”
“Alex—”
“Maybe you thought I’d care more about the Mitchell money than what was happening to you. That I’d ask what your family could give me before I decided whether you were worth helping.”
His mouth tightens, and the hurt spreads deeper.
“Or maybe you just never trusted me enough to find out.”
That hurts more than if he had shouted.
In the beginning, when I still believed the trial would end, the bad men would go to prison, and I would be allowed to go back to Riverside Falls, I used to imagine seeing Alex again.
I knew he would be furious. I knew he would believe I had betrayed him.
I built whole conversations in my head. Practiced explanations in the dark. Rehearsed what I would say when he looked at me with hatred and asked why I had left him without a word.
I prepared myself for his anger, his punishment, every cruel thing he might throw at me.
I never prepared for this.
For Alex to look back at what happened and somehow find himself at fault.
To take the boy who loved me and decide he had not been enough.
For one unbearable second, I see him at twenty-two again, waiting outside the library with sawdust caught in his cuffs, the man who would have crossed the country for me if I had only asked.
I want to tell him that none of it was about his money or his worth. That trusting him was never the problem. The truth rises dangerously close to my mouth.
A shout cuts through the music. Red hair flashes between the guests. I see Finn running toward the ladies’ room.
The fear on her face wipes every other thought from mine.
I pull my hand from Alex’s and follow.
“B—Emma!”
There is an order in his voice, but someone is in trouble, and that is enough.
I keep going.
Sofia catches sight of me running and falls in beside me. A second later, the ladies’ room door slams against the wall as we push through.
The perfume and gardenia are gone beneath bleach and the acidic smell of vomit. The dark-haired woman I saw speaking to Finn is convulsing on the floor.
Finn kneels near her head, her hands hovering helplessly.
“Kiki. Kiki, please.”
My feet stop inside the doorway.
Sofia doesn’t.
She pushes past me and drops beside Kiki. “Move the trash can. Give her space. Don’t try to hold her down.”
A waitress stands frozen by the sinks, staring.
“You.” Sofia points at her. “Open the door. Get someone to bring the first-aid kit and the AED.”
That gets her moving.
Sofia clears everything away from Kiki and waits out the convulsions, watching her with a focus I have never seen from her before. The moment they stop, she checks her breathing.
Her face changes.
“Emma, call an ambulance.”
I yank my phone from my bag. My fingers miss the screen twice.
Beside me, Sofia presses two fingers to Kiki’s throat and tips her head back to open her airway.
The dispatcher answers, and I force the words out.
“Woman in her twenties. She had a seizure. She’s unconscious, and she isn’t breathing.”
Sofia plants one hand over the other and starts compressions, counting each one in a voice that never wavers.
People crowd the doorway behind us.
Alex appears with his phone already in his hand. Danny is beside him, speaking into his own.
The dispatcher asks for the hotel address.
My mind goes blank.
I know the hotel. I know the ballroom. I know we are somewhere in Manhattan.
I have no idea what street we are on.
For one awful second, I just stand there with the phone pressed to my ear while Sofia keeps counting on the floor beside me.
“I—I don’t know the address.”
The words make me feel completely useless.
Alex takes the phone from me and answers without missing a beat. One hand settles briefly at my waist as he moves me aside, putting his body between me and the crowd while continuing to relay information.
A tall, dark-haired man forces his way through the doorway.
Olive skin. Expensive tuxedo. And a look on his face so raw with fear that everything polished about him disappears.