29. Salem
SALEM
The doors swung open, and the noise hit us.
About forty people had drifted into a loose semi-circle near the dance floor. They had drinks in their hands as they watched whatever was happening there with the mild curiosity of people who had seen enough gala drama to recognize it but not enough to be bored by it yet.
From what I could gather, I saw no emergency. No one hurt, no blood, nothing that would warrant a scream like that.
I hadn’t seen Lucy all evening. I’d noticed her absence the way you notice a weather system that hasn’t arrived yet—aware of it, waiting for it. I wondered briefly if Ethan had clocked it too.
So, her being in the center of this current situation seemed on point. She was laughing—big, open, with both hands pressed against the chest of a man I didn’t recognize.
He was tall. I’d give him that. Broad-shouldered, in a suit that was a little too fitted, a little too shiny at the lapels. His dark hair was slicked back like he’d studied the look from a watch advertisement.
Ethan’s hand stayed in mine, and his jaw shifted slightly.
“Was that Lucy who screamed?” I said slowly.
“Yeah.”
“On purpose?”
“Yeah.”
Lucy had staged it, it seemed. A pull for attention. She pulled us off the balcony mid-conversation, mid-everything, with a scream designed to land like a grenade. It had worked; we’d come running like everyone else.
Lucy was fully spinning in the other man’s arms. Her laugh climbed a little higher, her fingers curling tighter into his lapel. Most guests turned to look. I mean, she was louder than the music.
He dipped her. She came back up flushed and bright-eyed, and that’s when she looked over and found us standing there.
The slow blink. The parted lips. The carefully assembled expression of surprise.
“Ethan.” Warm. Easy. Like running into an old friend at a farmer’s market.
The man at her side looked between them, then at me.
I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Salem. Good to meet you.”
He shook it, looking relieved to have something normal to do. “Marcus.”
Lucy didn’t acknowledge the exchange. She stepped forward—just one step—and let her hand fall from Marcus’s arm without looking back at him, like he was a prop she’d finished using. “I wasn’t sure if you were here yet.”
Ethan’s thumb moved once across my knuckles. Slow. Deliberate.
“Yep, we are,” he said.
The ‘we’ dropped between all four of us and sat there.
Lucy’s smile held. Barely. “Marcus was just teaching me to dip,” she said lightly, gesturing toward the man she’d abandoned mid-sentence. “He’s incredible. Aren’t you, Marcus?”
Marcus, who had clearly been hoping to avoid further involvement in whatever this was, straightened slightly. “I—yeah. Sure.”
“He swept me right off my feet,” she said, her calculated gaze still fixed on Ethan. “I think I actually screamed.”
“You did,” I said pleasantly. “We heard it from the balcony.”
Something moved across Lucy’s face. Gone fast. But I caught it.
“Good acoustics in here,” she said smoothly.
Alba appeared at my shoulder, drink in hand, expression neutral. “Just checking in. Everyone okay over here?”
“Fine,” I said. “Lucy screamed.”
“Lucy screamed.”
“Doesn’t seem to be an emergency,” Ethan said.
Alba took a long, slow sip of her drink. “Cool. Great. Totally normal gala behavior.” She lowered her glass. “Carry on then.” But she stayed where she was.
“Dance with me,” Lucy said, turning confidently toward Ethan. “Just one.”
The room shifted in the way rooms do when everyone was pretending not to listen.
When Ethan didn’t immediately move, something flickered behind Lucy’s eyes. Recalibrating.
“It’s one dance, Ethan,” she said, softer.
“No thanks. I am here with Salem tonight.”
Simple. Quiet. Closed.
Lucy held her smile and turned toward Marcus with the smooth, unbothered energy of someone who had not been rejected in front of forty people. “More for you then,” she said brightly, taking his arm.
Marcus accepted her return, took a drink from a tray, and had the good sense to say nothing.
“To be that delusional,” Lucy said finally, almost wistfully. “I could only dream.”
I pressed my lips together until it hurt.
Ethan made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was close. Something in his face had settled—not relief, just certainty, the way a decision looks once it’s been made and doesn’t need revisiting.
He squeezed my hand once. “Drink?”
“Drink.”
He kept my hand the whole way to the bar.
Behind us, the gala carried on. Music. Laughter. The clink of glasses. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Lucy danced with Marcus. But Ethan didn’t look back, and neither did I.