LOGINI sat on the cold marble floor of a bathroom that probably cost more than my entire college tuition, and I tried to remember how breathing worked. My head throbbed. My mouth tasted like regret and cheap champagne. Somewhere a vent hummed. Outside the window, Las Vegas breathed in and out, bright and fake and unforgiving.Someone crouched beside me. I did not look up. I heard the soft click of a heated towel rack. The sound of water running slow and quiet in the sink. Then a cool damp cloth was pressed gently into my palm.He did not touch my face. He did not push my hair back. He did not say a single word. He just held the cloth there, steady, unhurried, until my shaking fingers closed around it, until I was steady enough to lift it to my own forehead.I sat there for a long time. The cloth seeped cold into my skin. I did not cry. Not yet. I just breathed. In. Out. In. Out. Trying to remember who I was. Trying to remember what I had done.When I finally looked up he was still there. C
The first thing I noticed was the ceiling.I have spent enough mornings in enough strange beds, okay, not that many; I have spent enough mornings in Tristan's bed, and one or two in college dorms I would prefer to forget to know what an unfamiliar ceiling feels like. It always takes a half-second to register. A small, animal moment of where am I, whose pillow is this, what year is it.This ceiling was different.This ceiling was high.It was easily fourteen feet above me. White. Smooth. Crossed by a single, delicate, art-deco molding that looked like it had been hand-poured by an Italian craftsman in 1928. Suspended from the center of it was a chandelier the size of a small car.I blinked at it for a long, slow, uncomprehending moment.Chandeliers, my brain noted, very faintly, are not normally a feature of mid-tier Las Vegas hotel rooms.Then everything else hit me at once.The pounding in my temples. The dryness of my mouth. The soft weight of Egyptian cotton across my legs. The fai
"Marry me," he said.I laughed.I don't think I have ever laughed harder in my life. It came out of me in a wave — loud, ugly, completely unhinged. The jazz singer faltered for a beat. The couples on the dance floor turned to look. Damien did not move. Damien did not smile. Damien stood with his hand still at the small of my back and watched me come undone with the patience of a man waiting for a very slow train."Oh my God," I gasped, when I could breathe. "Oh my God, you almost had me. That was good. That was Damien, that was —""I'm not joking."I stopped laughing.The breeze picked up the hem of my dress. The singer found her note again. Somewhere far below us a car horn wailed, very small and very far away."You're not joking," I repeated."No.""You want to marry me.""Yes.""You don't know my last name.""I don't need to.""Damien." I pulled back from him by half a step. His hand fell from my back, slowly, like he was reluctant to let go. "Damien. We have known each other for f
I took his hand.That was the moment. Not the chapel that came later, not the ring, not the slurred I do. It was this — a stranger's palm against mine in a hotel bar at midnight, warm and steady, his fingers closing around mine with the quiet certainty of a man who did not expect to be refused.I should have pulled back.I didn't."Where are we going?" I asked."You said surprise you.""I also said I was three whiskeys in.""Four." He glanced at the empty glass on the bar. "And a burger.""That's terrifyingly accurate.""I pay attention."He guided me off the barstool. My legs were less reliable than I'd been pretending. He steadied me at the elbow without making a thing of it — no comment, no smug little smile, just a hand under my arm until I was standing properly, and then a gentle release.I looked over my shoulder at Marla.She was already polishing a glass that didn't need polishing, watching us with the expression of a woman who had won a private bet with herself sometime aroun
Up close, he was worse.That was the only word for it. Worse. Because at a distance — at the safe, manageable distance of the other end of the bar — he had been a vague, beautiful threat. A silhouette. A pair of eyes catching gold light. Something I could pretend I was imagining.Sitting two feet away from me on a barstool, he was a fully detailed problem.His shirt was black, the top two buttons undone, and there was a sliver of skin at the base of his throat that I forced myself not to look at twice. His jaw could have cut glass. There was a small, faded scar through the arch of his right eyebrow that I wanted, irrationally, to ask about.His eyes had not left my face since he sat down."You're staring," I said."I am," he agreed."That's rude.""It is."He didn't look away.I picked up my whiskey. I set it down. I picked it up again. I had absolutely no idea what to do with my hands."You said you would have him fired by morning," I said. "That was a strange opener.""Was it workin
Las Vegas hit me like a slap.I stepped out of the airport into ninety-eight degrees of dry desert heat, and the breath punched out of my lungs in a way that almost felt good. Like the city was already telling me to wake up, sweetheart, you are not in New York anymore.The cab line was long. The driver who finally took me had a thick mustache and a thicker accent and asked me, three blocks into the ride, "You here alone, miss?""Yes," I said.He glanced at me in the rearview mirror with the soft, tired sympathy of a man who had picked up a hundred women like me from this airport over the years."You celebrating?"I almost laughed."Something like that," I said.He nodded once and let me have the rest of the ride in silence.---I had not booked a hotel.I realized this around the time we pulled onto the Strip, and panic rose briefly in my throat before I shoved it back down. I had a credit card I had been quietly building good standing on for two years. I had emergency savings I had n







