Mag-log inAlicia’s POVI ran into Alex near the student union on a Thursday afternoon that felt deceptively ordinary.The sun was warm against the brick of the buildings, and the quad was busy with the usual mid-semester energy, of students cutting across the grass with coffee cups, someone laughing too loudly near the steps, a group arguing good-naturedly about a group project deadline. I had just left the library after two hours of pretending to revise notes while my mind kept drifting back to the gala, to the unfinished sentence in the lounge, to the way Rhys had kissed my knuckles in the car and said soon like the word carried more weight than he was ready to explain.I wasn’t paying full attention to where I was walking. That was how I nearly collided with him.“Whoa—easy.” Alex stepped back just in time, one hand lifting in a quick, reflexive gesture. Then recognition settled across his face and he smiled. “Alicia. Hey. Almost took me out.”“Sorry.” I adjusted the strap of my bag and offe
Rhys’s POVI stepped back into the ballroom with Alicia beside me, the private lounge and the unfinished sentence already feeling like they belonged to a different hour. The East Coast investors were waiting near the far windows, their expressions polite but expectant. Hayes caught my eye from across the room and gave a small, apologetic nod. He had tried to hold them off, but it had not been enough.I performed the required version of myself for the next twenty minutes. Handshakes. Measured answers about expansion timelines and risk tolerance. The kind of conversation that had once felt natural and now sat against my skin like a suit that no longer fit the way it used to. Alicia remained close without clinging, her presence a quiet constant at the edge of my awareness. Every time I glanced at her I felt the weight of the words I had not managed to say.There is something I’ve been wanting to tell you.The sentence kept turning over in my mind while I nodded at appropriate intervals
Alicia’s POVI saw the change in him before anyone else did.One moment Rhys was steady beside me in the soft gold light of the ballroom, the composed version of himself that belonged to rooms like this, with his shoulders set, voice even, the quiet authority that made people adjust their posture when he looked at them. The next moment something in his face locked, it was small, almost nothing. A stillness that settled behind his eyes and stayed there even as he continued answering the woman who had spoken to him.I didn’t know what she had said. I only knew the way the air around him shifted, the way his hand at the small of my back went briefly heavier before it relaxed again into the careful public touch he had maintained all evening. Whatever the words had been, they had reached a place he usually kept sealed.I did not ask in front of the room.We finished the necessary conversations. We smiled where smiling was required. We moved through the last orbit of investors and polite i
Rhys’s POVWe arrived the way I had planned it, close enough in time that I never lost track of her, and separate enough that no one standing near the entrance would immediately connect the black car that brought me with the one that had dropped her ten minutes later. The Langford’s ballroom already hummed with the low, noise of people who measured their worth in invitations and the length of time it took a waiter to notice an empty glass. I saw her the moment she stepped through the inner doors.The champagne silk moved with her like it had been waiting for her body and no one else’s. She paused just inside the threshold, one hand resting lightly against the small clutch Clara had chosen, eyes taking in the room with the careful attention of someone who had learned early to read spaces before fully entering them. For a fraction of a second she looked younger than her twenty-five years. Then she drew a quiet breath, squared her shoulders, and walked forward.People noticed, I felt i
Alicia’s POVI said yes on a Tuesday afternoon, sitting on the edge of my dorm bed with my phone pressed to my ear and Mirabel’s laughter floating in from the hallway.The word left my mouth before I had fully decided I meant it. Rhys had been quiet on the other end of the line after asking the question for the second time. Not pressuring, just waiting. That was somehow worse than if he had tried to convince me. The silence left room for every fear I had been carrying since the night he first mentioned the gala—cameras, questions, the possibility of someone recognizing me as more than a polite guest on the arm of a man who was never supposed to look at me the way he did.“Yes,” I said again, softer this time, as if repeating it would make the decision feel less like stepping off a ledge. “I’ll go.”His breath shifted on the other end of the line. Relief, maybe. Or something closer to gratitude.“Thank you,” he said. I spent the next two days trying not to think about it. Moving from
Rhys’s POVThe email arrived while Alicia was still soft against my side, her breathing even, with one hand resting lightly over my heart like she had claimed the space without thinking about it. The penthouse was quiet, tge city lights glowed beyond the glass, distant and cold. For a little while the world had felt small enough to hold.Then the phone chimed.I reached for it out of habit. The subject line alone was enough to pull the warmth out of the moment.Connell Group Annual Investor Gala – Final Confirmation RequiredI opened it and read.Three weeks. The Langford ballroom. Black tie. Full board. Major investors. Partners from every division that mattered. Influential guests whose opinions carried weight in rooms I couldn’t afford to ignore. Press. Photographers. And a short list of names I hadn’t seen in years—people who remembered the version of me that existed before grief and caution had reshaped everything. The language of the email was polite and directed. Attendance wa







