Delaney James was wearing Chanel the night her husband told her he didn't love her anymore.
In an instant, her picture-perfect Manhattan life-complete with a brownstone on the Upper East Side, a blossoming career as a fashion journalist, and a devas...
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I've lost count of how many drinks I've had at this point. I just know I'm drunk – not the soft, manageable kind, but the kind that settles deep in my bloodstream, loosening everything it shouldn't and blurring the line between what I'm thinking and what I'm actually doing.
I've spent most of the night avoiding Greyson in ways that are starting to feel almost calculated. At the bar, I linger at the far end, my body angled enough to pretend he isn't somewhere behind me. The few times I sit, I don't stay long – if I see him move in my direction, I'm already standing, already finding some excuse to disappear into the crowd. Even something as simple as going to the bathroom turns into a detour, cutting through longer hallways and darker corners just to keep space between us.
But on the dance floor, I lose that control. Because every time I let myself look for him, even for just a second, he's already watching me.
Through the haze of smoke and the disorienting pulse of strobe lights, his gaze finds mine too easily, like the rest of the room doesn't exist for him in that moment. There's something in it that feels warmer than it should, something that lingers longer than a casual glance, and I feel it burrow somewhere low in my stomach before I can stop it.
I shouldn't react to it the way I do.
But I do.
And the worst part is, I don't even try to hide it.
My movements shift, my hips slowing just enough to match the weight of his attention, like my body is responding before my mind can catch up and tell it not to. I tell myself it's just the alcohol, that everything feels hotter, less controlled – but even through the haze, I know exactly what I'm doing.
He looks...
God, he looks good. It's irritating how good he looks.
His hair falls in that effortless, slightly disheveled way that shouldn't work as well as it does, and the sleeves of his shirt are pushed up just enough to expose his forearms, the subtle flex of muscle catching my eye in a way that feels almost instinctive. My imagination doesn't stay where it should. It drifts, uninvited, to the memory of what it felt like to be held, to the warmth of his skin, the solid weight of him.
And then there's his face. The light scruff around his jaw. The familiar sharpness of it. I find myself wondering what it would feel like to touch him again, to drag my fingers along the roughness of it just to see if it still feels the same.
His eyes meet mine again, and just like that, I'm yanked right back under.
He's always been my weakness. Apparently, that hasn't changed.
Jo pulls me back before I can get too caught in it, and I let her, grateful for the distraction as we lose ourselves somewhere in the middle of the dance floor. We spend most of the night there – dancing and singing along to songs we barely know like we're eighteen again and nothing in our lives has ever gone wrong.
