7. Sloane
SEVEN
SLOANE
The song was slow, and we moved through it without much grace. My pulse ran too loud, my hands couldn't decide where to settle, and I kept waiting for the awareness humming between us to quiet down. It didn't.
One of his hands settled at the small of my back, the other closing around mine, and somewhere in the slow turning I gave up the careful distance I'd meant to keep. He was taller than me even in heels.
My free hand found his shoulder, the wool of his jacket rough under my palm, and my other sat swallowed in that steady surgeon's grip I'd once known better than my own. When the music turned us, his thumb moved once across my knuckles, like he was reminding himself I was real.
"You're letting me lead," he said, close to my ear.
"Don't get used to it."
"Eight years, and you still dance like you're winning an argument."
"I usually am," I said, and felt his laugh more than heard it.
Across the room, Violet watched us over the rim of her glass, her head tilted, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She set the glass down and started toward us through the crowd.
She reached my elbow with her bouquet already handed off to someone, her attention fixed conspicuously on the two of us.
"I need you both to grab two bottles from the wine cellar," she said, her eyes bright. "The sommelier marked them. It'll take two minutes."
And she was already stepping back, already turning, already dissolving into the reception before either of us could argue.
We took the back stairs down together.
The sommelier had supposedly staged the reserve bottles in one of the cramped cellar rooms beneath the main banquet hall.
It was a claustrophobic anteroom lined with floor-to-ceiling wine racks and lit by a single flickering sconce, a space built for backstock and overflow.
The thumping bass of the reception died the second the heavy door swung shut behind us, replaced by the pressurized hush of a private room.
Xavier reached the handle first. He pulled the door open and stepped back, waving me in with one hand.
I froze on the threshold and eyed him.
"I honestly don't remember you being this cultured," I drawled.
"You're lying," he countered.
"I'm really not."
"You are. I've always been this well-mannered."
"That's objectively false." I stepped past him into the dim room. "You were aggressively unmannered."
I delivered the insult, but it rang hollow the second it left my tongue.
He had always been mannered. He was the man who held doors on reflex, walked on the street side of the pavement, quietly checked with the table before ordering appetizers.
He'd always been this considerate, and I was just teasing him out of habit.
Something fluttered loose in my chest at how easily we'd slipped back into our old rhythm, the two of us needling each other with no real venom behind it.
"You're only saying that," he argued, stepping inside and letting the door click shut, "because you're trying to villainize me."
"Why on earth would I do that?"
He dropped his chin and widened his dark eyes into the grave expression of a prosecuting attorney. "Because you're inherently evil. I can't fathom the dark machinations inside the mind of an evil woman."
A laugh burst out of me, and I pointed an accusing finger at his chest. "You're insane."
"Hey, I'm not the evil one here."
We moved deeper into the cramped space. The wooden racks stretched along the far brick wall, hundreds of dusty bottles stacked in their labeled sections.
I spotted the sommelier's bright chalk marks on two bottles near the back corner.
The light was low and warm, reducing the reception to a muffled heartbeat.
Xavier stepped up to the rack and started reading the labels.
"Did you develop a palate for wine over the years?" he asked.
"No." I scoffed. "I still think it's pretentious."
"You were literally drinking champagne. I watched you do it."
I opened my mouth to argue.
"Don't," he warned, not bothering to look up from the reds. "I saw you holding the bottle."
I snapped my mouth shut and dropped my gaze to the floorboards. I'd been ready to lie straight to his face, which was stupid. He'd always had an infuriating ability to see through whatever walls I tried to throw up.
"Fine. I drink wine," I conceded. "I just don't enjoy it. The whole culture's overrated."
"Then why force yourself to drink it?"
"Just because you don't enjoy something doesn't mean you refuse to consume it."
He slowly turned, arching a single dark eyebrow, his chin tilted in disbelief.
I scrambled for a defense. "I can't think of a single example."
"You used to hate caviar."
"I still hate caviar," I shot back, my voice spiking on the last syllable. "I refuse to eat it. I haven't eaten it. I never will."
"Good." He nodded. "I'm glad you're holding the line on that one."
"What else?" I challenged, folding my arms.
He tilted a dusty bottle toward the sconce, squinting to read the vintage year, his mouth pulling to the side in thought.
"Vanilla," he announced.
My face dropped. "I still hate vanilla."
"You just said you still hate it, but the guilt says you eat it."
"Those are two separate statements."
He turned all the way around, pinning me with an accusing stare.
"Vanilla," he repeated, dragging the word out.
"I have a defensible reason."
He let out a bark of laughter. I threw up one hand like a traffic cop to silence him, but the laughter only grew.
"It was for Violet's novel!" I defended. "Her debut crossed a million reads, and I wanted to throw a huge celebration. So I bought a custom cake, and the cake happened to be vanilla, and it was incredible. It was a phenomenal cake, Xavier. I have no idea what the baker laced it with."
He shook his head, a boyish grin splitting his face. "A total traitor to the cause."
"Stop laughing at me."
"I also still hate vanilla."
"I know."
"We made a blood pact."
"I know."
"We compiled a logical, extensive list of reasons."
"I know," I sighed. "I remember the whole manifesto. The artificial aftertaste is disgusting, the scent is cloying, bakers only use it to mask the absence of real flavor, and it's the universal default for cowards who don't trust their own palates."
"And yet you gleefully betrayed the cause."
I clutched my chest. "I carry deep, profound remorse. Every single day. But the cake was fantastic, and I apologize to the movement."
He laughed again, a rich sound that bounced off the brick. I let myself laugh right along with him, forgetting to hold any distance at all.
We did have a fiercely guarded reason for hating vanilla.
It started on a freezing walk after dinner, the night our casual friendship turned into something heavier.
We'd stumbled past a glowing 24-hour bakery and ordered the "baker's choice" slice, the classic idiotic move of two people trying to look spontaneous.
The exhausted cashier handed us a slice of cake.
It was painfully vanilla. I choked down every bite.
He did the same. Hours later, on the walk back from somewhere else, he finally cracked and admitted it tasted like sugary cardboard, and we stood shivering on the cracked pavement, laughing ourselves stupid.
From that night on, it was our thing: hating vanilla together, trading disgusted looks across rooms in solidarity.
I reached out and grabbed a bottle at random to inspect the label and hide my flushed face.
"Any other grand betrayals you'd like to confess while we're locked in here?" he asked.
"I can't think of a single one." I slotted the bottle back into the rack. "What about you?"
He went still.
"Yes," he said.
"What did you do?"
"I went to see the aurora borealis."
My jaw dropped.
He burst out laughing again, and I yanked the nearest bottle from the rack and brandished it at him.
"Don't you dare hit me," he wheezed, throwing his hands up in mock surrender.
"We were supposed to do that together!" My voice cracked, losing its teasing edge. "That was supposed to be ours. We mapped out the whole itinerary!"
"I was angry," he said, the humor fading from his eyes. "I wanted to do something that would hurt you back, something beautiful you couldn't be there to see. So I booked the flight."
"That's petty and terrible."
"I acknowledge that."
"I'm furious with you."
He offered an unapologetic smile. "I know."
I shoved the wine bottle back onto the rack and turned toward the far wall.
The northern lights had been one of those romantic milestones that lived purely in the future tense between us, a plan with no date that felt inevitable anyway.
We'd spent hours lying in the dark, debating whether we could legally get married right underneath those glowing green skies.
And he'd booked the flight without me.
He'd stood shivering under those cosmic lights alone. And without having to ask, I knew how much it had gutted him to do it.
I stared at the label of the bottle in front of my face, unable to read the French.
It was my fault.
"Sloane."
His deep voice came from right behind my shoulder.
"It's fine," I deflected. "We should get these bottles upstairs."
His hand clamped around my wrist before I could take a step. "Don't be angry," he murmured. "I was trying to force myself to forget you. And I failed."
"It doesn't matter," I choked out, staring hard at the wine rack. "We just agreed on the sidewalk to leave the past buried. This is the past."
I tried to wrench my arm away, but he pulled me backward. His arms boxed me in, with his hands planted against the wooden rack on either side of my shoulders. He was terrifyingly close, his body heat wrapping around me a full second before I turned to face him.
"I was wrong," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "I never should've gone to see them without you."
"You aren't going to win my forgiveness through physical intimidation," I warned, though the threat lost its teeth when my voice came out breathless.