7. Sloane #2
"I'm apologizing." He leaned in a fraction, his lips hovering close to my ear. "Can't you feel how sincere I am right now?"
Every coherent thought left me.
I turned my head and found his dark eyes already locked on mine, close and unmoving.
"You haven't been backed against a wall by a man in a long time, have you?" he asked, his gaze dropping to my lips. "You look like you have no idea what to do."
"I know what to do," I whispered.
I didn't move a muscle.
I'd dated men since the breakup. I was an adult woman with physical needs, and those arrangements had been just what they were built to be: mutually beneficial, casual, finite.
But not one of them had ever been him. He was the one man on this earth I couldn't be casual with. He was the only man whose bed I'd ever wanted to wake up in. Trapped in his gravity, my knees liquified and my hands forgot how to work.
He pushed off the rack and stepped back.
I let out a shaky exhale.
"We need to grab the bottles," I said, smoothing my dress.
"Right." His voice was tight.
We went back to the racks. I worked through the rows, reading labels and shoving dusty bottles into his hands, muttering yes or no, keeping my flushed face aimed at the woodwork instead of his jaw. Eventually we had everything the sommelier asked for.
I turned toward the wooden door and pushed my weight against it.
It didn't budge.
I grabbed the iron handle and yanked it back, with the same result. The handle turned freely, but the door stayed cemented to the frame.
"What's the holdup?" Xavier asked from behind me.
"It's locked."
"Step back. Let me try."
I turned and gave him a dry look. "If I can't force it open, what makes you think you can?"
"I'm not saying you lack upper body strength," he said, waving me aside. "I just want to look at the mechanism."
I rolled my eyes and stepped aside.
He gripped the handle and shoved. The door didn't rattle.
He took a step back, his broad back to me, bracing one hand against the doorframe while he inspected the hinges where the door met the frame. Without turning around, he said, "Besides the obvious mechanical failure… I lift weights several times a week. I can deadlift considerably more than you."
"That's a blatant lie," I scoffed. "Your physique shows zero evidence of aggressive gym routines."
He turned around to face me, a wicked smirk pulling at his mouth.
"It's all hidden under the suit," he purred. "You'd have to strip the clothes off me to see the results for yourself."
We both went dead still.
Neither of us dared to breathe, let alone speak.
My legs finally gave out. I stumbled backward, found an empty wooden crate, and sank onto it. The damp chill of the cellar had been gnawing at my bare arms since we walked in, and now that the adrenaline was crashing, goosebumps erupted across my skin.
He watched me shiver. "You're freezing."
"I am," I admitted through chattering teeth. "I'm not Violet. She runs at a core temperature that defies human biology."
He let out a short laugh, grateful for the out. "She always has. We'd be standing outside in the dead of winter, shivering and breathing clouds of vapor, and her bedroom would somehow be a frozen tundra. I have no idea how she didn't catch pneumonia constantly."
"I asked her about it once." I wrapped my arms around my ribs. "She told me she preferred the cold."
"She would."
I rubbed my bare shoulders. He watched my hands for a moment before grabbing his suit jacket off the wine barrel where he'd draped it.
"Put this on." He held it out.
"What do you think happened to the lock?" I asked, reaching for the warm wool.
"The internal latch probably jammed," he said. "Happens constantly in these old, humid buildings. We could call the event staff."
"I left my clutch and my phone upstairs at the table."
"Same."
I stared at him as it settled in. "So we're trapped."
He swept his gaze over the tight little room, the towering racks, the guttering orange sconce, the suffocating quiet, before locking his eyes back on mine.
"There are worse places to be trapped," he murmured.
My pulse tripped, and I dropped my gaze to the floor.
He was charming and warm with everyone he met. This was how he operated in a room, and I was dangerously overreading the moment. I'd been reading too much into every interaction since we collided back into each other's orbit.
I lifted my eyes back to his face. The corners of his mouth held still. His dark eyes were anchored to mine, refusing to look away.
I slid my freezing arms into the oversized sleeves and pulled the lapels tight across my chest. I breathed in on reflex, and my lungs filled with his scent. It was clean, masculine, and agonizingly unchanged.
Then my frozen fingers brushed something deep inside the right pocket: a rigid cube, its velvet corners worn smooth from years of anxious handling.
My stomach dropped.
I reached inside and pulled the tiny box into the dim light. My thumb popped the worn clasp.
The ring sat in the dark silk. It was the same brilliant oval diamond, guarded by that halo of deep blue sapphires, elegant from a distance and dizzyingly complicated up close.
I'd worn this piece on my left hand. I'd woken up every morning, stared at the stones, and thought that I got to keep this.
I got to keep him forever. And then I'd shoved it into a cardboard shipping box and mailed it back with a letter I'd built to gut him.
The air went out of the room.
I hated the sight of it. It didn't matter that it was a breathtaking piece of art.
I hated it because those sapphires mapped the shape of everything I'd chosen to slaughter.
And here it was, sitting in his suit pocket at his sister's wedding, the velvet corners rubbed bald by a man who'd refused to give it away.
I lifted my gaze to his.
"You kept it," I whispered. My voice fractured, sounding like tearing paper.
He opened his mouth, his expression caught between panic and confession.
The wooden door swung open.
Violet stood in the doorway, a panicked venue staffer hovering behind her shoulder.
The employee stepped in, apologizing in a rush, explaining that the old iron latch had been sticking all week and he should've warned the bridal party before sending anyone down.
I ignored him. I snapped the velvet case shut, shoved it back into the deep pocket, shucked the jacket off my shoulders, and pushed the wool into Xavier's chest. He caught it without a word. Neither of us spoke.
Violet's sharp eyes locked onto my face. Her chin dipped, her brows pinching as she read the crackling tension between us.
I refused to look at her, fixing my stare on a scuff mark past her shoulder.
Violet steered me back onto the reception floor.
The DJ was blaring something loud and joyful while Olivia and Simon owned the center of the dance floor.
Violet hauled me to the quiet outer edge of the room.
I practically tackled a passing waiter, snatched a fresh flute of champagne, and downed half of it before I tried to speak.
"What happened down there?" Violet demanded, crossing her arms. "You two were trapped in that cellar way too long. I know the lock jammed, but when I opened that door, you both looked like—"
"I was freezing, so he gave me his jacket," I cut in, the words rushing out. "And when I put my hands in the pockets to warm up, my fingers hit something."
"What kind of something?" she pressed, her eyes narrowing.
"The ring," I gasped. "The same ring he proposed with."
Violet stared at me, paralyzed.
"Sloane, that can't be true," she whispered.
"It's true." I drained the rest of the champagne in one gulp. "The oval-cut diamond ringed by the sapphire halo. I'd recognize that custom setting in pitch blackness. I wore it on my own hand."
"Sloane." She lunged forward and grabbed my bare arm. "He had the engagement ring."
"He had the engagement ring!"
Violet's brows drew together and stayed there. Her jaw flexed once before she pressed her lips into a thin line.
"He brought it to my wedding," she said, her voice dropping. "He was carrying it in his jacket pocket."
"I have no idea what it means," I said, my voice cracking.
"I can't comprehend the logic. If he wanted to try and start over, why corner me on the sidewalk and insist we should just be friends?
Why deliver that whole detached speech at the rehearsal dinner about burying the past and moving on, only to smuggle my engagement ring into the reception?
And if he genuinely just wanted to be friends… why pack the ring at all?"
Violet stayed silent, her eyes calculating.
"It makes zero sense," I pleaded.
"Or," she countered, her voice quiet, her eyes finally locking onto mine, "it makes one very specific, terrifying kind of sense."
My pulse slammed like a battering ram.
I turned my head toward the center of the room. Olivia was spinning wildly, Simon's hands guiding her shoulders, her head thrown back in pure laughter.
"Violet… do you think I still have a chance?" I whispered, terrified of the answer.
"I think," Violet said, her voice laced with certainty, "that a man who doesn't want you anymore leaves the damn ring in his dresser drawer."