22. Cali
CALI
The car is black and quiet, like all his cars are. The driver doesn't say much. He just tells me his name is Paolo and that Mr. Akov is waiting.
I spend the whole ride not looking out the window. I look at my hands. I look at my phone. I check the little photo of myself again, and then I turn it off because looking at it too long makes the old voice want to wake up.
We pull up to a building in Midtown with a red carpet running out the front and lights everywhere. There are a lot of people. Many of them are guests in their glitz-and-glammiest. Lots of the others have cameras with flash bulbs going off every nanosecond.
Paolo opens my door before I can figure out how to operate the Space Age handle.
And then Ronan is there.
He's standing at the bottom of the steps in a black tuxedo. It fits him the way everything fits him, like the fabric knows better than to be anything but perfect. His hair is combed back. His eyes catch the light and do that shimmery, half-gray, half-blue thing they love to do.
He holds out his hand.
I take it and let him help me out of the car. My heels wobble on the carpet for a second and his hand tightens, steadying me, and then I'm standing in front of him.
He doesn't say anything for a moment. He just looks at me. "You look like a woman who zipped her own dress," he remarks.
That is not what I expected.
I gawk at him. "How do you—"
"Your shoulder," he says. He reaches out and, very lightly, touches the top of my right shoulder through the fabric. "You're holding it like it's sore. You reached behind you at a bad angle. You did it alone."
I will never not be amazed by this man's powers of observation. "I did," I admit. "We might need to go straight from here to a chiropractor."
He laughs as his hand comes back to mine.
"As if I'd ever let anyone else put their hands on you.
" And then, because he can't help himself, he leans in a little closer, close enough that I can smell the sandalwood aroma of his cologne, and says, "You are beautiful, Calista Meadows.
That's today's dose. In person this time. "
I feel my face go hot. "You already texted it this morning."
"Did I? Well then, I guess this one's extra."
"You can't just bend the rules to suit you, you know," I tease.
"I can do whatever I want. It's my party." He straightens and offers me his arm. "Shall we?"
I take it.
We walk up the steps together. The cameras go off, a billion flashes in a row, voices shouting, begging us to turn and give them a twirl, but I don't look at them. I keep my chin level and my hand on his arm and let him steer.
Inside, the ballroom is enormous. There are glistening chandeliers and tables with white cloths, and a band playing off to the side. People are everywhere in their tuxedos and their gowns, holding little glasses, talking in that low, chuckling murmur rich people do.
I feel every single one of them notice us.
Who's that with Ronan Akov?
Ronan's hand comes over mine where it rests on his arm. He doesn't look at me. He just presses down, once, like he heard the thought.
"Breathe," he says quietly.
Come to think of it, that's pretty good advice. I take a deep inhale and let myself relax on the exhale, all the tension easing out of me in a long, happy sigh.
He's got me. I'm safe. It's okay.
Then he stops us just inside the doorway, off to the side where the crowd thins. "One more thing before we go in." He reaches into his jacket.
"If this is money—" I start.
"It's not money." He pulls out a small flat box. Not wrapped. He opens it himself and holds it out to me.
Inside is a bracelet. It's thin, gold, and simple, no giant stones, no showing off. There's a small charm on it. I lean in to look.
It's an octopus.
I laugh before I can stop myself. It comes out too loud and a couple of heads turn.
"You did not," I gasp.
"I saw it in a shop window and it seemed to be screaming at me that it wanted out of its container. I thought it was appropriate."
I'm laughing, suddenly flushed and giddy. "You are unbelievable."
"May I?" He takes the bracelet out of the box. I hold out my wrist and he clasps it, his big fingers surprisingly careful with the tiny latch. It settles cool against my skin.
"There," he says. "Now, you match the room."
"I don't think anyone else here is wearing an octopus."
"Then you outshine the room. In my opinion, that's even better."
He puts the box back in his jacket and offers his arm again, and we walk in properly.
It feels like time gets put on fast forward from there. One thing stands out above the blur of names and faces, handshakes and champagne toasts:
He's good at this.
Not in the Todd way, not the big-handshake, big-watch, look-at-me way.
Ronan moves through the room like he was born to do exactly this.
He introduces me to everyone. A man who runs some kind of hospital foundation.
A woman with silver hair and a laugh like a bell who turns out to run a museum.
A couple who owns half the real estate in Tribeca.
And every single time, he introduces me the same way.
"This is Calista Meadows. She built a predictive analytics engine that's going to put half the fraud investigators in this city out of work."
Not "my date."
Not "Todd Bradshaw's ex."
Not a woman who was cheated on.
Calista Meadows. A woman who built something.
The first time he does it, I feel my whole spine straighten up on its own. The silver-haired museum woman lights up and asks me about the engine, like she truly wants to know. When I hear myself explaining it, I realize I sound like a person who knows what she's talking about.
Because I do.
Ronan stands beside me while I talk. He gives me space when I need it and support when I need that. The hand on my waist is the reassurance I need, and his presence lets me know I'm not alone.
When the museum woman drifts off, I lean in close to him. "You keep introducing me by my company."
"That's who you are."
"You could introduce me as your date."
"I could, and it would reflect quite well on me to have such a beautiful woman agree to share my company.
" He picks two glasses of champagne off a passing tray and hands me one.
"But you're not here as an accessory. You built a thing that caught a criminal nobody else could catch.
That's the most interesting bio in this entire room. Why would I lead with anything else?"
Well, alrighty then, Mr. Rico Suave.
I don't really have an answer for that. I take a sip of the champagne instead.
The night goes on and it keeps being like this. Someone tries to corner Ronan about business and he handles it with two sentences and a hand on their shoulder. Somehow, it's enough that they go away happy.
A woman I don't know looks me up and down in a way that's not friendly. Ronan just steps a half inch closer to me and the woman's whole face resets into a smile.
He never leaves my side. Not once. When I need to find the ladies' room, he walks me to the door of it and is standing right there when I come out, hands in his pockets, surveying the crowd.
"You didn't have to wait," I say.
"I know. I chose to."
At some point, they bring out food. It's small and fancy and there's a lot of it, but Ronan ensures that we get to try everything. He remembers, from the aquarium, that I don't like fennel, and I watch him quietly move a plate away from me before I even see the fennel on it.
He listens. He always, always listens.
By the time the plates are cleared, I've forgotten to be nervous.
I came in braced for a whole evening of holding my breath, and somewhere in the middle of it, I just... stopped. Because every time I looked around and felt the room start to close in, Ronan was right there, and the room opened back up.
As dinner concludes, the band shifts into a slow number. Couples start drifting toward the dance floor in the middle of the ballroom. Ronan sets down his glass and holds out his hand, but before he can ask, I catch motion in the distance.
Two people, near the far edge of the dance floor.
Two people I recognize.
Todd is in a tux, standing stiff, holding a drink he isn't drinking. Next to him, in a gaudy gold dress, is Paula. Her honey-blonde hair is done up. She's got a smile on her face, but it's tight and forced. Even from here, I can sense her discomfort.
They haven't seen us. Not yet. Todd is scanning the room like the social climber he is, always looking for a leg up.
"Ronan," I mumble.
He follows my eyes. His face doesn't change, but I feel the shift in him. It's under the surface. Controlled.
"I didn't invite him," he says. "For the record. Someone with a table must have bought a seat and brought a guest."
I ogle Todd across the ballroom. He looks smaller than I remember. Not literally. He's still six foot two. But something about him has gone smaller, like a wilted balloon a week after the party. Paula says something to him and he doesn't answer. She looks away, lip curled in frustration.
They don't look happy.
I wait to feel something. Rage. Grief. That cold, fanged thing. The old panic.
I wait for the voice that told me for a decade that I was too much in every direction. The voice that lived in Todd and moved into my own head and made itself at home there, like a parasite.
I think about the last thing Todd ever said to me about dancing. It was years ago, at one of his frat brother's weddings, and I'd wanted to go out on the floor because I loved the song. He'd looked at me and given that little half-smirk and said, You sure? In that dress?
I'd sat right back down. I stayed there for the rest of the party and I didn't dance. I told myself I hadn't really wanted to anyway.
He said I was too fat to dance. He didn't use those words; he was too careful for that. But it's what he meant to say.
I look at him now, small and unhappy across the room, next to the woman he blew up his whole life to be with.
And I turn to look at Ronan.
He's watching me. Not Todd. Me. He read the whole thing off my face before I could even say it, the way he reads everything. He knows about the wedding and the half-smirk and the dress, or he knows enough.
He holds out his hand.
"Dance with me," he says.
I hesitate. "I don't want to cause a scene."
A slow, shark-ish grin spreads across his face. "I dare him to start one."
Taking my fingers in his, he leads me out onto the floor. Right out into the middle of it, under the biggest chandelier, where everyone can see. I feel a flutter of the old fear.
He pulls me in. One hand at my waist, warm and firm through the green silk. The other closes around my hand.
"I don't really know how to do this," I admit in a shy whisper.
"You don't have to know," he says. "I do. Just follow me."
The band switches to a new song and Ronan starts to move. It's easy, because he makes it easy. He doesn't count out loud or steer me like a shopping cart. He just moves, and somehow, I find myself moving with him. After four or five steps, I realize I'm dancing.
I'm dancing.
In front of hundreds of people. In a five-figure dress I zipped myself. In heels, on a floor, with a gorgeous man's hand at my waist.
I laugh, quiet and disbelieving.
"What?" Ronan says.
"Nothing. It's stupid."
"Tell me."
I look up at him. He's looking down at me the way he looked at me in the blue light, like there's nothing else in the room worth seeing.
"My ex said I was too fat to dance," I say. "So I sat down one day, and in a certain kind of way, I've never really stood up again. Until now."
Ronan's jaw goes tight. That coldness moves under the surface of him. But he doesn't let it out. He reels me out, slow, and brings me back in, closer this time.
"He's watching," he growls in my ear. "So let me show you how a real man treats his woman."
And then he moves.
I don't know how to describe it except that the floor disappears for a second.
He turns me out and spins me and pulls me back, and my feet just go where his hands tell them, and the green silk flares out around my legs, and the chandelier light spins over us, gold, erasing every flaw I ever thought existed.
He dips me, one arm strong across my back, and I'm not scared for even a moment that he'll let me fall, because I know he won't. He wouldn't. He never will.
He brings me back up and I'm laughing out loud now, breathless, a hand pressed to his chest.
People are looking. I can feel it, the whole room orienting toward the two of us under the biggest light in the place. But for the first time in as long as I can remember, being looked at doesn't make me want to fold up small.
Because I know how I look. Not from a mirror—I don't have those anymore. Why would I even need one, when I have Ronan's eyes to look into? They tell me everything. They say I'm beautiful, in hues of blue and gray. They say I'm worthy. They say I'm enough on my own.
My ex said I was too fat to dance.
The billionaire just swept me off my feet in front of a ballroom full of people, and made it look like the easiest, most natural thing in the world.
The song swells and Ronan pulls me in against him, chest to chest, and we just sway.
His hand on my back is reassurance I can love without desperately needing.
My cheek is near his shoulder. I can feel his heartbeat, slow and even, a man who is never in a hurry because he already knows how everything ends.
"You're doing beautifully," he murmurs.
"You keep saying that word."
"I'm going to keep saying it until you believe it. It's in the terms, remember?"
I close my eyes and let myself have it. The music, the light, the warm, solid weight of him. A whole decade of being shamed into sitting down at weddings, and here I am on my feet, dancing, being held by a man who tells the truth at all costs.
I could stay right here. I really think I could. I would, too, if it weren't for—
"Cali."
Ronan turns to stone.
I feel him turn us both, slow, so that I come around to face the sound.
Todd is standing at the edge of the dance floor. Close now, too close, his drink finally gone from his hand and an ugly tremor working in his jaw.
"Cali," he says again. "We need to talk."