Chapter 10
ten
“DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’” — JOURNEY
Tavey
I am holding Miller’s hand.
That is the first, last, and only coherent thought in my head for a solid thirty seconds after we step off the dance floor.
Not in a weird way.
Not in a detached, clinical, huh, what an interesting social development kind of way.
No.
In a full body, sparkling nervous system, heart-pounding, internal-screaming kind of way.
I am holding Miller’s hand.
Actually—correction—Miller is holding my hand.
Which somehow feels even more important.
His hand is big and warm and solid around mine, and my brain, being a helpful and well-adjusted organ, immediately starts assigning meaning to every tiny detail.
He didn’t let go right away.
He tightened his fingers when we stepped around another couple.
He seems perfectly comfortable with this.
This is a thing people do when they are together.
Are we together?
No.
Probably not.
Maybe.
Oh, God.
I do the only sensible thing possible under the circumstances and keep my mouth shut because anything I say right now is likely to come out as, “Hello, yes, I would like to discuss the symbolic significance of your hand placement and whether this means we are moments away from eloping.”
Instead, I squeeze his hand once.
Subtle.
Cool.
Chill.
A normal person’s response.
His thumb brushes over my knuckles.
I nearly burst into flames.
“So,” I say, because apparently silence is unbearable after all. “You dance.”
He glances down at me, eyes warm with that low-key amusement that always undoes me. “You already said that.”
“Yes, but now I’m saying it with the benefit of hindsight.”
“And?”
“And I was right.”
“That must be a new and exciting experience for you.”
I gasp. “Rude.”
“You’ll survive.”
I tip my head at him. “Interesting. That line sounds familiar. Have you considered that maybe you’re the one with a limited verbal repertoire?”
“I know lots of words.”
“Oh yeah?” I flutter my free hand. “Use them in a sentence.”
He doesn’t answer right away, and for one horrifying moment I think maybe I’ve pushed him too far into actual silence.
Then he says, dry as kindling, “You are a menace.”
I beam. “Excellent sentence. Strong word choice. Very concise. Minimal room for ambiguity.”
“Glad you approve.”
“I do.” I pause. “Though if we’re being technical, that’s a statement, not a sentence crafted to showcase your full verbal range.”
He opens the door for me to step out onto the covered patio that wraps around one side of the reception hall. “You’re criticizing my grammar at a wedding.”
“I’m encouraging your growth.”
The patio overlooks a stretch of Hill Country glowing copper and violet in the fading light. Strings of little bulbs have already come on overhead, and clusters of people are at cocktail tables laughing and drinking and pretending it isn’t still slightly too warm for outdoor formalwear
Or faux furs.
One man is definitely still wearing faux furs.
He looks damp.
Miller guides me toward an open stretch of railing with that same hand at the small of my back he’s been using all evening, and I swear that touch alone is becoming its own language.
There are so many things I want to ask him.
Did you really dress up just because I said I would?
Did you know you looked devastating at my door?
Do you realize I nearly forgot my own name when I touched your chest?
Do you have any idea what holding my hand is doing to me?
Instead, I say, “I’m proud of you for embracing fantasy barbarian chic.”
He leans one forearm on the railing. “I’m thrilled to have made you proud.”
“You should be. Personal growth matters.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Yes. And bravery.” I look him up and down, purely for science. “And, arguably, public service.”
His mouth twitches.
There’s a beat where neither of us says anything.
Not awkward.
Just full.
A silence that feels almost like another person standing between us, watching and waiting.
I take a sip of my drink to give myself something to do with my hands and immediately remember that my other hand is still in his.
Still.
In.
His.
I look down at our joined hands as discreetly as possible, which is to say, not discreetly at all.
He follows my gaze.
Our eyes meet.
And then—
instead of letting go—
he shifts his grip, threading our fingers together more securely.
I stop breathing.
It’s such a small movement.
Such a simple thing.
But it feels like the world is tilting on its axis.
I look away first because I’m pretty sure if I keep staring at him I’m going to do something deeply embarrassing, like recite a sonnet or fall over.
“So,” I say too brightly, “have you ever been to one of these before?”
“A themed wedding?”
“A wedding where the groom may or may not have referred to the cocktail hour as ‘the feast before the forging of alliances.’”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “No.”
“Same. Though I have to say, I’m enjoying it enormously.”
“I noticed.”
“There are a lot of things to notice.”
“I noticed that too.”
I look up at him suspiciously. “Are you flirting with me?”
His gaze rests on my face for one long second, before he admits,“Maybe a little.”
Oh.
Oh wow.
My heart does a full somersault.
The thing is, Miller is not a man who says things lightly. He jokes, yes, but sparingly. Dryly. With precision. So if he says maybe he’s flirting, then statistically speaking he is probably flirting with devastating sincerity.
I should say something charming back.
Something smooth.
Something that lets him know I am not only receptive to flirting but enthusiastically in favor of it.
What comes out is, “Good.”
I cringe internally.
Good?
That’s it?
What am I, a medieval lord approving a land treaty?
But his expression softens in a way that makes me think maybe I didn’t completely blow it.
“Good?” he repeats.
I lift one shoulder and try to reclaim some dignity. “Yes. Good. I am… pro-flirting. Generally speaking.”
“Generally?”
“Oh my God.” I close my eyes briefly. “Please don’t make me clarify. I’m hanging on by a thread here.”
That gets a real laugh out of him.
A real one.
Low and warm and delighted.
And just like that, the tiny mortification curl of my soul loosens. Because if I can make him laugh like that, maybe I can survive anything.
Even mutual attraction.
Even hand-holding.
Even the possibility that tonight might actually mean what I desperately want it to mean.
He’s still smiling when he says, “I’ll stop making you clarify.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We drift back inside after a minute because the reception is shifting into dinner, and apparently some people at weddings expect you to do things other than stand under café lights having emotional revelations.
Rude.
Our table is near the edge of the dance floor, close enough to the action to feel festive but far enough away that conversation is possible.
The centerpiece is dramatic enough to qualify as theater: black taper candles, dark roses, silver goblets, something that looks like forged metal, and a place card shaped like a dragon scale.
I pick mine up. “I would like it noted that if anyone here forgets to take home their place cards, I will steal them.”
Miller pulls out my chair for me, because of course he does. “You really have no shame about your kleptomania?”
“It’s not kleptomania if it’s themed.”
“That feels legally inaccurate.”
“Maybe. But spiritually, I think I’m right.”
He sits beside me. Beside me. Not across from me. His mere proximity feels like its own kind of miracle.
Devon isn’t here yet, thank God. Him observing my clumsy attempts to flirt with Miller might just be the scissors that cut the thread by which I am hanging.
No one else is seated yet either, except a woman and her husband I vaguely recognize from Geeta’s side of the office social scene. Miranda, I think.
They seem nice.
More importantly, they are not currently speaking to us.
A server appears to pour water, and I become abruptly aware that I may already be slightly tipsy.
Not drunk.
Not even close.
Just… buoyant.
Extra sparkly around the edges.
I blame the blue glitter cocktail and the fact that Miller Evans danced with me and then interlaced our fingers on purpose like some kind of menace.
I reach for my water.
Miller notices. Of course, he notices.
“Pacing yourself?” he murmurs.
I glance over. “Are you suggesting I can’t handle one festive beverage?”
“I’m suggesting your festive beverage had enough liquor in it to power farm equipment.”
“That’s fair.”
His gaze flicks briefly to my half-finished second drink—the one I definitely did not realize I’d acquired sometime between the patio and the table. “And I’m suggesting maybe alternate.”
I look at the water. Then at him.
“Wow. You really are weirdly bossy for a barbarian warlord.”
He picks up his own glass. “Drink your water, Khaleesi.”
I stare at him.
Then I burst out laughing.
I laugh so hard I have to set the glass down before I spill it all over the table, and Maybe Miranga smiles indulgently like she thinks we’re adorable.
Which—
Okay.
Maybe we are.
Maybe not in the polished, coordinated, Instagram-worthy way some couples are adorable, but in the “one of them is dressed like a fantasy queen and the other one looks like he could throw an enemy over a horse” way.
Honestly, that feels more authentic.
Dinner is announced and servers begin appearing with salads that are far prettier than any lettuce has a right to be.
Conversation rises around us. The rest of the table settles in, with Devon sitting near Maybe Miranda, chatting with her and only occasionally sending Miller and Me skeptical looks. For a while, things are easy.
Really easy.
The kind of easy I’ve only ever had with Miller in snippets before—leaning over a bug report, sharing a joke in the office kitchen, arguing over whether dragons or aliens make better narrative devices.
But this is different.
Because now there’s no office between us.
No desks.
No swivel chairs.
No reason to pretend this is just friendship if it isn’t.
At one point, I reach automatically for the butter, and so does he, our hands brushing.
We both pause.
It’s tiny.
Barely a touch.
Still, heat runs up my arm so fast it’s ridiculous.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
And then, with a calmness I absolutely do not possess internally, he slides the butter dish toward me first.
“Thanks,” I say, my voice coming out softer than I intended.
He nods once. “Sure.”
The groom’s aunt-or-aunt-adjacent person starts telling a story about a goat that escaped during someone’s rehearsal dinner ten years ago, and I try very hard to focus on that.
I really do.
But then Miller leans in a little to murmur a dry comment in my ear about how this family seems to have a surprising amount of livestock-related chaos, and his breath ghosts across the side of my neck, and suddenly my ability to follow a story about goats is permanently compromised.
I turn my head.
Too fast.
Too close.
For one suspended second, we are almost nose to nose.
My pulse trips.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Everything in me goes still.
The entire room seems to recede, all sound and light blurring around the edges.
This is it, I think wildly.
This is it.
He’s going to kiss me.
I know he’s going to kiss me.
Except—
“Hey, you made it!”
The moment shatters.
I jerk back so fast I nearly elbow my water glass.
A guy from product—Jeremy? Jason? Something with a J? God, why can’t I remember anyone’s names?—has stopped at the edge of our table, grinning broadly at both of us like he hasn’t just accidentally interrupted the possible climax of my emotional life.
Miller sits back too, expression neutral in that infuriating way he has of masking things instantly.
“Yeah,” he says. “We made it.”
The J-name guy launches into some anecdote about the drive, the open bar, and how he lost a bet to someone in QA over whether the groom would actually wear leather bracers to his own wedding.
I smile and nod when appropriate, but my entire body is still humming from that almost-kiss.
Because it was almost a kiss.
Right?
It was.
It had to be.
I know what I saw.
I know what I felt.
When the interloper finally moves along, I risk a look at Miller.
He’s already looking at me.
There’s something unreadable in his expression. Something intent. Something that makes my stomach flip all over again.
Neither of us says anything about what almost happened.
How could we?
What would I even say?
Hey, did you almost kiss me while someone was discussing escaped livestock and table-side butter?
Though, honestly, if that isn’t our vibe, I don’t know what is.
So I do what I always do when feelings become too large and unwieldy to hold comfortably.
I make a joke.
“Well,” I say lightly, “nothing says romance like near-mouth-contact during a goat story.”
For one terrifying heartbeat, he says nothing.
Then his mouth curves.
“Was that what that was?”
I stare at him.
He stares right back.
Completely calm.
Completely unfair.
“You know,” I say, because now I’m committed and death is preferable to retreat, “for someone with such a limited verbal repertoire, you can be extremely difficult.”
“And yet,” he says, reaching for his water, “you keep talking to me.”
I tip my chin up. “Maybe I like difficult.”
His eyes hold mine as he takes a drink.
And then, very quietly:
“Maybe I do, too.”
Oh.
Oh no.
No, actually—oh yes.
The servers begin clearing plates, the lights dim a little more, and somewhere near the dance floor I spot members of the wedding party starting to gather, which probably means speeches or cake-cutting or some other ceremonial development is imminent.
I should be paying attention.
I should be acting normal.
I should not be mentally replaying every point of contact Miller and I have had in the last three hours like a scholar assembling sacred texts.
But here we are.
Here I am.
Hopelessly, gloriously in trouble.
And the worst part is—
I don’t think I want out.