Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alycia
Kyle’s fingers are still threaded through mine when the applause fades behind us.
The ballroom doors swing shut, muting the music to a distant thrum, and suddenly, it’s just the two of us, standing in the soft glow of the hotel corridor.
All night, cameras and expectations have held us together, but out here, there’s no script left to hide behind.
His thumb sweeps once over the inside of my hand, and the feeling travels all the way up my spine. I want to hold on tighter. I want to let go. I want too many impossible things at once, and the confusion presses hard against my ribs.
My body reacts before my brain can catch up.
Heat blooms in places that have no business waking up tonight, my breath stuttering like I’m bracing for impact.
I shouldn’t need him this much. I shouldn’t want him this much.
Not when every future I’ve worked for collapses the second anyone decides I chose a man over my career.
But his touch feels like the one steady thing in a room full of shifting ground.
And that steadiness, the thing I crave most, is exactly what I can’t let myself reach for.
My fingers twitch like they’re begging to anchor themselves to him, to pull him closer and pretend the world outside this moment doesn’t exist. The want is a physical ache, climbing up my throat and crowding out the air until I can’t tell if I’m breathing or breaking.
I’m spiraling, and somehow, his hand in mine is both the reason and the lifeline.
The contradiction is enough to make my chest tighten, like I’m holding back an entire storm behind my ribs.
Kyle leans in, his voice dropping softer than I’ve ever heard it. “Alycia… talk to me.”
And that’s the problem. If I talk, I’ll crack open. The gala is over, but everything we didn’t say on the dance floor is still pulsing between us, loud enough to drown out the distant conversation.
I swallow hard, reaching for the professional version of myself—the one who can face donors and crises without blinking—but she’s nowhere to be found. Not with his hand wrapped around mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“We should get going,” I whisper, but my voice betrays me, thin and unsteady. “The car’s waiting.”
He doesn’t move. He just looks at me like he’s still standing under those chandelier lights, like something in him stayed behind on that dance floor, and he’s trying to decide whether to pick it back up or walk away from it forever.
“Alycia.”
My name in his voice is its own kind of unraveling. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
And I can’t afford any of this. So, I do the only thing I can: I gently loosen my fingers from his before I say something we can’t come back from.
“We should go,” I repeat, steadier this time, because when you can’t save your heart, you save your job.
Kyle follows, but the space he gives me feels like a loss.
We walk toward the private exit, our steps echoing softly against marble.
The noise from the ballroom fades with every stride.
I should feel proud. Every donor was impressed.
Every camera was satisfied. Every crisis was neutralized.
But inside my chest, everything is unraveling.
The edges of my vision fuzz like my body finally stopped holding it together for the sake of a room full of people. The moment we push through the door into the quieter wing of the hotel, something inside me gives out just a little, like a seam I’ve been ignoring finally splits.
Kyle stays half a step behind me, not reaching for me the way he did all night. His restraint is unbearable. I can feel him wanting to touch me, but I need breathing room so I don’t do something reckless. The pain of putting that space between us intensifies with each step.
The hallway is too still, like the hotel itself is holding its breath in the aftermath of everything that almost happened between us.
My heels click softly against the carpet runner, steady but not steady enough.
I can feel the tremor in my legs, the exhaustion settling deep in my bones, the emotional collapse I’ve kept duct-taped together since the music stopped.
By the time we reach the corner where the staff corridor meets the private exit, I know Kyle can sense the shift.
He’s deciding whether to close the distance or honor the space I fought so hard to create.
“Sweetheart,” he says, and the way he says my name makes something behind my ribs quake. “Slow down.”
“I’m fine.” It’s a lie, and we both know it.
He exhales, quiet and controlled. “You don’t have to be.”
“Yes.” My voice cracks, humiliatingly soft. “I do.”
I wrap my arms around myself, but it’s useless.
I can still feel the echo of his hand at my waist and the warmth where our palms pressed together hours ago.
They cling to me like fingerprints I can’t scrub off.
He takes one tiny step closer, slow enough that I can walk away if I need to, but I don’t.
“What’s going on?” he asks quietly. “You were… fine all night, and now you’re pulling back so fast I can’t keep up.”
The bewildered edge to his voice lands in the center of the ache I’m trying so desperately to ignore.
I am pulling back. I can feel it in every shaky breath, every inch of distance I’m stuffing between us before I ruin everything I’ve spent years building.
If I don’t pull back now, I won’t be able to.
If I stay in this hallway with him for even one more minute, I’m going to make the one mistake I can’t take back.
I drag in a shaky breath, fighting the urge to reach for him, to hold on to something I have no right wanting. “Kyle, please. Don’t— Don’t be kind to me right now.”
His brows pull together, hurt flickering across his mouth. “Why not?”
“Because I won’t survive it,” I whisper.
The confession cracks something open between us.
Silence swells, thick and heavy, with every emotion I’m not allowed to name.
He watches me like I’m slipping through his fingers, and he’s terrified to grab too hard, terrified he’ll make me fall apart if he does.
And I hate how right he is. How easily I could crumble if he gave me even an inch of tenderness.
“Alycia…” His voice is bruised. “Talk to me.”
I want to so badly it physically hurts. I want to tell him his touch felt like home and that his hand in mine steadied me in ways nothing else ever has.
I want to tell him I’ve never been more afraid of wanting someone.
That I don’t know how to want a man who could cost me everything I’ve fought to build.
But that truth would ruin us both. So, instead, I force my spine straight—every vertebra trembling—and give him the only thing I can: distance that feels like cutting off my own air supply.
“We need to go,” I whisper, not trusting my voice with anything else. “The car is waiting.” His eyes search mine with quiet devastation, like he’s trying to memorize something before it disappears. Then he nods slowly, and the understanding in that simple movement almost breaks me.
We start walking again, side by side but miles apart, heading toward the door that leads to the waiting town car. With each step, it feels like I’m peeling away a layer of skin. Every inch of space between us is a wound I gave myself. I’m walking toward a choice I’m not strong enough to make.
Kyle walks beside me in silence, matching my pace, contained in that selfless way he gets when he senses I’m breaking. It’s like he’s holding himself together for both of us, even though I can feel his hurt trailing behind us like a shadow.
“You don’t have to shut me out,” he murmurs, low enough that the words settle in the space between us like a plea. “Not after tonight.”
I close my eyes for a breath that doesn’t steady anything. “I’m not shutting you out.”
“You’re running.” His exhale is soft, almost a laugh. But there’s no humor in it.
“I’m trying to breathe,” I whisper, staring at the floor because looking at him might undo the last thread holding me together. “There’s a difference.”
“Sweetheart.” His voice is nearly a whisper. “Let me in.”
God, I want to so badly it aches, but wanting him has never been the problem. Keeping him would be. “Please… I just want to go home.”
By the time we reach the back exit, my throat is tight and raw, like I’ve swallowed something sharp, and it’s lodged just below my ribs. Kyle reaches for the door to open it but pauses, his hand braced on the frame, body angled toward mine like he’s giving me one last chance to choose him.
“Alycia… what happened in there—”
“Don’t.”
He flinches like I hit something tender, and guilt slices through me, but the panic is louder.
“I’m not trying to push you,” he says, voice rough. “I just… tonight meant something. To both of us.”
My spine goes rigid because hearing him name the thing I’ve been trying to hold at arm’s length makes my whole chest seize.
“It can’t mean anything,” I whisper, barely getting the words out. “Kyle… it can’t.”
“Why? Because of your job?”
“Yes. Everyone above me knows this is fake. Janine knows. Cooper knows. The front office knows. They signed off on it because it was the quickest solution to get the rumors under control.”
The words shake so hard they barely hold together. I feel naked under the bland hallway lighting, like every hidden part of me is suddenly visible. I feel him step closer, like he’s trying to meet me in the space I’m still too afraid to give.
“But if anyone out there thinks even for a second that it’s real? That I’m involved with a player I’m directly responsible for? Everything I’ve worked for disappears.”
His brow furrows, confused in the way only someone protected by a different world can be.