12. Rafe
RAFE
THE YMCA INTERVENTION
Even after Georgiana Sorel agreed to review the full provenance packet herself, I stayed braced for a refusal that did not come. The tension had been part of me too long to release on command. My jaw hurt. My fingers had gone stiff. Even my breathing felt too measured.
The quartet continued playing. Guests drifted between tables and the silent auction displays, laughing over glasses of champagne. The last ten minutes had shifted the axis of my life, and no one had noticed.
The necklace was home. The sword wasn’t yet in my hands, but it was no longer trapped behind polite refusal and administrative delay. Georgiana had suspended third-party discussions. She’d agreed to review the claim personally. She’d given me a timeline.
It was close enough to a victory that my body hadn’t yet decided what to do with the sensation.
Quinn stood beside me, one hand resting lightly on Max’s head while he sat at attention, his tie perfectly centered. She’d handled Georgiana with care I hadn’t expected and precision I should’ve.
It was a rare and uncomfortable thing, to have one’s own ache translated so cleanly by someone else.
“You’re doing the thing again,” Quinn said.
“What thing?”
“The very intense thinking face.”
“I am thinking.”
“I know. That’s why I named it.”
I glanced toward Georgiana and Miriam, who were still dancing. Georgiana held herself with her usual composure, but Miriam was laughing, cobalt sleeves bright beneath the ballroom lights, and Georgiana’s attention was fixed on her as if the rest of the event had become background noise.
“I was thinking,” I said, “that you were very effective.”
Quinn’s mouth softened before she tried to hide it. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was.”
She looked down at Max, then back at me, likely waiting for a correction, perhaps, or a more precise term that would turn praise into a report.
I could have done that. It would have been easier.
“You were exceptional,” I said instead.
Her expression changed. Not dramatically. Quinn was too practiced for that. But the quick humor paused, and she simply looked at me, eyes warm and startled, as if praise had touched some bruise she hadn’t expected me to find.
“Thank you.” Then, because she was Quinn, she added, “I’m going to pretend I handled that gracefully.”
“You did.”
“That’s generous of you, but no.”
I let myself smile, and she caught it. She always caught it. At first, that had irritated me. Now I found myself offering the smallest ones on purpose, which was idiotic.
“You should know,” I said, “if you continue to perform at this level, I’ll be speaking directly to the partners about securing your position after the internship.”
Her smile faded.
“I intend it as support,” I said.
“I know.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her gaze dropping toward the floor before returning to mine. “And I appreciate it. Truly. But if I get the position because you forced the issue, I’ll always wonder if I actually earned it.”
“You did earn it.”
“Maybe.” Her tone stayed light, but her eyes didn’t. “But there’s a difference between someone important saying, ‘She’s good, pay attention,’ and ‘Hire her.’ I need the first one. I don’t want the second.”
I wanted to argue; I was good at arranging outcomes once I decided they were correct, and in this case, the correct outcome seemed obvious. Quinn deserved the position. Payton she was protecting her right to know what she had earned.
I thought of my father telling me, years ago, that help offered in the wrong shape could still become an unwelcome weight.
“Then I won’t force it,” I said.
Her shoulders eased.
“But I will write the strongest recommendation I am capable of writing.”
“That I’ll take,” she said, smiling again, a little steadier now. “I’ll frame it. Sleep beside it. Possibly have Max notarize it.”
“Can he notarize documents?”
“Not yet, but I believe in continuing education.”
Max rose at the sound of his name and leaned against her leg.
She looked out at the dance floor, where the quartet was now playing something lively enough for more guests to dance.
Couples clapped along in a loose circle, following a caller through a simple sequence that involved far more coordinated stepping than dignity usually allowed in black tie.
Quinn’s face brightened. I didn’t like the direction of that brightness.
“You want to leave?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I’d suggested burning the hotel down for warmth. “Leave?”
“Our objective is complete for tonight.”
“Our objective, yes. But we’re at a gala.”
“I’m aware.”
“A real gala.”
“Painfully aware.”
“There’s food, music, people pretending not to look at Max, and tiny desserts arranged like they have better retirement plans than I do.”
“That all seems like a reason to leave to me.”
She pressed one hand to her chest. “Don’t you enjoy anything?”
“I enjoy many things.”
“Name one gala thing you enjoy.”
I considered the room. “Leaving at the appropriate time.”
She nodded toward the dance floor. “What about dancing?”
“No.”
She glanced down at Max. “Can you believe this?”
Max’s gaze shifted from me, to the dance floor, to Quinn. His expression remained neutral, but I’d begun to understand that neutrality from Max often concealed judgment.
“Do not recruit the dog,” I said.
A woman near the edge of the dance floor laughed as her partner turned the wrong way. The caller corrected the group, and the entire circle shifted into motion again: step, turn, clap. The people participating were smiling too broadly to care about whether they were elegant.
Quinn watched them with open interest, her earlier nerves having vanished. She’d never been to a gala. I’d nearly forgotten that. I’d spent most of my life avoiding places like this whenever I could and enduring them when I couldn’t.
To her, the room was still full of firsts.
That made me feel, briefly and uncomfortably, like an ungrateful prick.
“You really don’t like these?” she asked, quieter now.
“No.”
“Do you like any events?”
“They’re all largely the same.”
“They’re not. This one has a dog in a naval portrait over there.”
“It is a dachshund.”
“Exactly. Have you ever been to an event with a portrait of a dachshund?”
I looked toward the auction table. She was right. The dachshund portrait had a small crowd around it now.
“My dislike is not specific to the art,” I said.
“Then what is it?”
I should’ve given her a simple answer. I didn’t like crowds or posturing, noise or performative generosity. All true. None complete.
“At these events, people are often busy deciding what I am before I have spoken.”
“Dragon?” she asked.
“Sometimes. Other times they see me as heir, asset, threat. My father’s son. My mother’s son.” I let out a quiet breath. “Rarely just a man who would prefer to eat dinner without being analyzed.”
Quinn’s eyes met mine, and in her face, I saw the same recognition she’d given me earlier. “Yeah. I get that.”
I believed her. Our lives weren’t similar in the least, but Quinn Bradley also knew what it meant to enter places that decided who you were before you could speak for yourself.
She tilted her head in the direction of the dance floor. “Then let’s do something they can’t analyze usefully.”
“That sounds ill-advised.”
“It’s a group dance, Rafe. The stakes are low unless you count rhythm, and based on the situation over there, no one does.”
“I don’t know the steps.”
“Neither does half the people on the dance floor.”
“That’s not comforting.”
She held out her hand.
It was absurd that the simple offer of her hand could quiet the world around me. We had touched in the stairwell. She’d placed her palm on my chest. I’d offered her my arm more than once this evening. But this was different, because she was asking me to step into public foolishness by choice.
“Come on,” she said. “We booked a Friday meeting. Your family’s sword is officially closer to coming home. Max looks phenomenal. This is a victory lap.”
“I don’t take victory laps.”
She rolled her eyes. “Then call it a strategic morale exercise.”
I looked down at her hand. “You think renaming it will help?”
“I think renaming things is fifty percent of law.”
I scoffed. “That’s not true.”
She stood there with her hand extended, smiling up at me in a ballroom full of people who might very well look over and decide something about us. About me. About her. About whether a dragon heir looked foolish stepping in time with donors, lawyers, philanthropists, and one retired military dog.
My mother’s voice came back to me, soft and dry.
Some rooms are badly built.
Perhaps Quinn was right. Perhaps the answer wasn’t always winning the room. Perhaps, occasionally, it was refusing to let the room define the victory.
I took her hand.
She grinned bright enough that the decision seemed less like surrender and more like reward. “Oh, this is going to be great.”
“I’m already regretting it.”
The caller waved us into the outer edge of the circle. Quinn pulled me into place with more enthusiasm than accuracy, Max trotting after us before settling on the edge of the dance floor beside a woman in pearls who immediately bent to admire him.
“Max is networking,” Quinn said.
“He’s better at it than I am.”
“He has softer eyes.”
I shook my head. “I won’t compete with the dog.”
“Wise.”
I wasn’t bad at dancing. That would’ve been unacceptable.
I watched the pattern once, then followed: step left, step right, turn, clap, change partners briefly, return.
It was simple enough, though several guests treated “left” as a philosophical suggestion.
Quinn giggled when an older man in a white dinner jacket spun the wrong direction and nearly collided with a table.
When the sequence brought her back to me, her hand found mine, and something in my chest eased.
“You’re smiling,” she said.