QUINN
Oh, dear God.
He’s wearing a tux.
Dorian Moretti is standing in my hallway in a black tuxedo.
My brain, which has been running emergency drills all day about how to behave like a normal human tonight, immediately shuts down.
It just… quits. Like an overheated laptop.
I can practically hear the little powering-down chime inside my skull.
The tux fits him like it was stitched directly onto his body by someone who understood the assignment on a spiritual level.
His hair is pushed back from his forehead, gleaming in the overhead light.
There’s a watch on his wrist that catches the light, and he smells like something I want to press my face into and never leave.
I spent forty-five minutes on my hair and another twenty on makeup, and I’m in heels I haven’t worn in two, maybe three years. He’s looking at me the way he looked at me in the boutique. This time, there’s no Adriana lurking around the edges of my awareness. It’s just us and the hallway.
“You look very beautiful,” he tells me.
My mouth opens, and the half-dozen different compliments I came up with—because I knew I would need them, because hello, the man is perfection—all bubble to the surface, ready to be used. What comes out is, “You look delicious.”
Guess what? That was not one of the compliments I came up with.
“I mean, vicious,” I blurt out. Oh, god, that’s not any better. “No, not that either. I meant handsome. You look handsome. That’s the word I was looking for. Handsome.”
The corners of his mouth twitch. “Delicious,” he repeats.
“We’re not going to talk about that.”
“We might need to talk about it later.”
“We are never going to talk about it, because it didn’t happen. Now let’s go before I get in trouble for missing pictures.” I am never going to survive this. I’m going to burst into flames, which would be sad because the dress would go with me, and it’s a very pretty dress.
He offers me his arm, and I take it, because my knees are all watery and loose, and I need the structural support.
We walk out to the car where Sal is waiting, and I climb into the back seat in an emerald dress that costs more than a semester at school.
I’m sitting next to my boss, who I just called delicious, on our way to a party where I have to pretend he’s my boyfriend.
This night’s going to be great. I can feel it.
The Whitmore is exactly as terrible as I remembered it.
It’s the kind of venue my parents and their friends love.
Marble floors and vaulted ceilings, that kind of thing.
“I knew there would be an ice sculpture,” I whisper as we pass it.
I think it’s supposed to be two swans, but one of them has started to melt, so it looks more like a swan and a large, depressed duck.
The second we walk through the doors, I feel it.
The eyes. Not all at once—it’s more of a ripple, the way attention moves through a room when someone unexpected walks in.
And Dorian is definitely unexpected. He’s taller than most of the men in here, for one thing.
Broader. He carries himself with the kind of quiet authority that makes people step sideways without knowing why.
His hand is on the small of my back, and it’s warm and steady and enormous, and I’m vibrating like a tuning fork.
“This isn’t going to work,” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth.
“It’s already working,” he murmurs, low, close to my ear. “Smile.”
I smile. It probably looks unhinged.
Mom finds us first, because she has a sixth sense for new information and moves toward it like a shark moves toward blood.
She’s in a navy dress with her hair pinned up, and she’s holding a glass of white wine.
Her eyes go from me to Dorian and back to me with the speed and precision of a spectator at a tennis match.
“Quinn! Sweetheart!” She kisses my cheek. “You look gorgeous. And this must be—”
“Dorian.” He takes her hand, and I watch her entire operating system reboot in real time. He holds her hand briefly, warmly, and says, “Thank you for having me, Mrs. Thomas. Your family must be proud of the party you’ve put together here tonight.”
My mother, a woman who has never once in her life been at a loss for words, blinks mutely for much too long.
“Well,” she chokes out. “Well! Aren’t you just—Quinn, you didn’t tell me he was—” Once he lets go of her hand and turns back toward the rest of the room, she fans herself and mouths oh my god at me over his shoulder.
Okay, so it is working.
We move through the room together, with Dorian’s hand on my back always. He greets Dad with a handshake that makes Dad stand up straighter. He compliments my Aunt Linda’s earrings. He tells my sister she looks radiant, and Alyssa actually blushes, which I’ve never seen happen in all my life.
He does all of it with the easy, natural confidence of a man who has walked into a hundred rooms and owned every single one. I keep waiting for the moment when the act slips, but it doesn’t come.
Once the basic introductions have passed and photos have been taken, he pulls me closer and presses a kiss to my temple.
Just a brush, barely there. His lips against my hair, his hand tightening at my waist. But my whole body lights up like a circuit board, and I lose the thread of whatever Mrs. Donahue is saying about her kitchen renovation.
“You okay?” he murmurs against my hair.
“Mm-hm.” I am not okay. I’m on fire.
And that is precisely the moment I spot Aaron.
He’s standing by the bar with a blonde I don’t recognize, holding a drink in both hands like it’s going to save him.
His suit doesn’t fit as well as he probably thinks it does, and his hair is doing the thing where he’s clearly spent forty minutes on it but wants it to look effortless.
Six months ago, the sight of him would’ve made my stomach turn.
Right now, with Dorian’s hand on my waist, I feel nothing. Less than nothing. I feel the absence of the thing I was afraid of, and it’s so light I almost laugh. I start toward the bar, and Dorian stays in step with me.
Aaron spots us and does the face. The sorry face, the understanding face, the face of a man who thinks he’s being generous by acknowledging your existence. “Quinn. Hey. You look great.”
“Aaron. Thanks.” I feel Dorian’s thumb move against my hip. A small press. I’m here. “This is Dorian. My boyfriend.”
The word lands on Aaron’s head like a brick. His eyes go to Dorian—all the way up to Dorian, because Aaron is five-ten and Dorian is not. Something behind his face recalculates. “Oh. Wow. Hey, man.”
When he extends a hand, Dorian takes it. I watch Aaron’s fingers disappear inside Dorian’s grip, then I watch something pass across Aaron’s face that is deeply satisfying.
“Aaron,” Dorian says. Flat, like he’s reading the name off a list of things that don’t matter. “Quinn’s told me about you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Aaron gives a nervous laugh as he takes his hand back. “All good things, I hope.”
Dorian looks at him for a long, quiet beat. “No.”
And that’s what makes me choke on my champagne.
It literally comes out of my nose. Actual champagne coming out of my actual nose in the middle of the Whitmore, in front of Aaron and the blonde, and God, and everyone.
I’m coughing and wiping my face with the back of my hand when Dorian produces a handkerchief from somewhere—because of course he carries a handkerchief—and hands it to me without breaking eye contact with Aaron.
“It was nice to meet you,” Dorian tells him in a voice that means the opposite, before he steers me away with his hand on my back.
I’m still coughing when we reach the other side of the room. “You can’t just… you can’t just say no to someone’s face like that—”
“Why not?” he counters. “It’s the truth.”
“Because there are rules.”
“I don’t follow those rules.” He takes a glass of champagne off a passing tray and hands it to me, replacing what I lost through my nasal cavity. “Also, he’s still looking.”
I start to turn, but his hand catches my hip. “Don’t look. He’s been watching since we walked away. Him and the blonde.”
“So what do we do?” I whisper.
“We put on a show.” Before I can ask what he means by that, his hand comes up to my jaw, and he kisses me.
Not on the temple. Not on my cheek. On my mouth.
His lips are warm and firm, and he tastes like the scotch he was drinking earlier.
One of his hands is on my jaw and the other is on my waist, and he kisses me like he’s done it before.
Like he’s done it a thousand times, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
His mouth on mine in a room full of strangers.
Every single thought in my head goes quiet at once. Every worry, every anxious little voice that’s been chattering since I opened my front door. All of it, gone. Silent.
I’ve imagined this before. I don’t even want to think about how many times, because it’s kind of embarrassing.
Nothing in my wildest dreams could’ve prepared me for the reality of being pressed against his firm chest while he grunts softly as he explores my mouth like a man with absolutely nothing better to do.
My body goes warm before turning hot, like hot enough to melt me where I stand because, my god, does the man know how to kiss.
I don’t decide to raise my arms and link them around his neck. It just happens. It happens the way I breathe, and now I’m pulling him closer, and he lets me. The kiss deepens, and I forget we’re in a room with people; I forget Aaron exists. I’m pretty sure I forget my own middle name.
Until someone clears their throat.
It’s a very specific type of throat-clearing that’s been honed over decades. It carries within it the full weight of seventy-eight years of Catholic disapproval.
I pull back. So does Dorian. We both turn. My grandmother is standing three feet away in a lavender dress and pearls, holding a martini, looking at us over the rim of her glasses the way a librarian looks at someone who’s been talking too loud.