28. Ethan
ETHAN
Iguided Salem through the edge of the crowd, holding her hand where it rested against my chest. My other hand settled at her waist. It was slow, easy, no conversation required.
She followed without hesitation, her fingers light but certain against my shoulder.
There was something different about her tonight.
Not the dress, though it was doing considerable damage.
It was something in the way she was carrying herself—lighter, less guarded, like she’d put something down for the evening and hadn’t picked it back up yet.
We stayed like that—slower than the music, the room surging around us
“Come on,” I said.
“Where?”
“Outside.”
She didn’t argue.
The balcony doors closed behind us, and the noise dropped away. Cool air hit my face—sharp and clean after the warmth of the ballroom—and I exhaled slowly without meaning to.
Salem stepped up beside me at the railing.
The city spread out below us. Lights scattered across the dark in every direction. Bridges and buildings and the distant shimmer of water caught whatever the sky was willing to give back. It was the kind of view that stopped people, the kind you took photos of and sent to those who weren’t there.
I looked at it for about four seconds.
Then I looked at her. She was the kind of view people stopped for. She had her arms crossed against the chill, her chin tipped up slightly, dark hair lifting at the edges in the breeze.
“Cold?” I said.
“A little.”
I shrugged off my jacket and stepped closer, draping it over her shoulders.
It was enormous on her. She disappeared into the shoulders, her hands swallowed by the sleeves, and she looked up at me from inside it with an expression that was unguarded in a way Salem almost never was—no wit, no deflection, just her.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.”
She looked up at me.
The city behind her. The light in her green eyes. My jacket around her shoulders.
I brushed my fingers against her jaw, and she didn’t pull back.
I kissed her—not careful like the first time, not sudden like the second.
This was something else entirely. We were two people who had stopped pretending.
Her hand came up to my chest, and her fingers curled into my shirt.
I thought, with the small part of my brain still functioning, that I was a goner and had been for some time.
I pulled back just enough to look at her.
Her eyes opened slowly. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
Neither of us moved.
The breeze lifted the edges of her hair, and she pulled the jacket tighter around herself. This woman, in my jacket, on this balcony. The vision settled somewhere it wasn’t going to move from.
“Is it too much if I ask you to stay with me tonight?” I asked.
She looked at me steadily. No hesitation. “I want to.”
We turned back to the city. The quiet settled around us comfortably—no event, no camera, no audience. Just us figuring out what came next.
After a moment, I said, “After this month, what does it look like?”
She was quiet long enough that I wondered if I’d pushed too far. “I’m buying the shop. At least, I think so. The auto shop. Chuck is retiring. I have enough for a down payment. The loan’s not confirmed yet, but… it’s close. It’s really close.”
I looked at her. “Salem. That’s incredible.”
“It’s terrifying, but it’s mine.” She said it the way you say something you’ve been holding for a long time and have finally decided to put down somewhere safe.
“Rowan must be so proud.”
“Actually, she doesn’t know.”
“How long have you been carrying that?”
“Too long.” She looked back out at the city.
“She thinks we’re going to Madison together next year.
She’s been planning it, and every time I have a chance to tell her I just—don’t.
Because the moment I say it aloud, it becomes real and she’s going to be devastated, and I love her too much to watch that happen even though I know it has to. ”
“She’s going to be okay.”
“I know. I just have to actually do it.”
“Yeah.”
We stood there for a moment, the city below doing its thing, the autumn air moving between us.
“I was thinking,” I said carefully, “that after the contract ends—after all of this—I’d like to keep seeing you.”
She held my gaze. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Even if I’m going to be a stressed new business owner who smells like motor oil most of the time?”
“Especially then.”
She laughed—full and surprised—and I felt it move through me.
“Okay. Yeah. I’d like that.”
I looked at her standing there in my jacket with the city behind her.
A scream cut through the air.
Sharp. Close. Wrong.
Salem’s head snapped toward the doors. I was already moving.
“That didn’t sound like part of the event.”
“No,” she said. “It didn’t.”
I pushed through the balcony doors.