Chapter Two : Behind the Mask

Cassian

I had been watching the door for an hour.

I wasn't waiting for anyone. I sat in the far corner booth with a glass of whiskey I hadn't touched, half listening to an investor drone about acquisition terms. Really, I was sitting with a date on my mind, one I had never said aloud to anyone. I knew what today was. I always knew.

Then Elara walked in.

My body knew before my mind did. My spine went rigid. My fingers tightened on the glass until the crystal bit into my palm.

She was wearing green. It was a dress I had no business noticing, cut simply, skimming her waist and following the curve of her hips down to just above the knee. Her hair was loose over one shoulder, and when she turned her head I saw the line of her neck, bare and soft, and something low in my body pulled tight.

Look away.

I couldn't, not for one full second.

Then her eyes found mine across the room.

Every muscle in me locked. If I held her gaze, she would see everything. So I did what I had always done. I made my face go flat and cold, and I turned my head like she was nothing to me.

From the corner of my eye I watched her flinch. I hated myself for it.

"Mr. Rooke?" the investor said. "Did you hear the number?"

"No," I said. "Say it again."

He said it again. I missed that too.

I pressed my thumb into the glass until the pain cleared my head, and counted my breath. In for four, out for four. I'd learned the trick years ago, the first time I watched her laugh at one of Lucien's dinners and understood I was in trouble. She thought I hated her. Lucien thought I couldn't stand her. Everyone in that circle believed it, and the lie was the only wall that had ever kept me standing.

She crossed the floor with her friend's hand on her wrist. I watched her take a drink and lick a drop from her lower lip, and I dropped my eyes to the table so hard my neck ached.

She was trying so hard to enjoy herself. She was terrible at pretending.

Then she saw the booth.

I didn't need to look up. I heard the room change, the way the air seemed to lean. I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved.

"Mr. Rooke?"

"Excuse me."

I cut through the crowd toward the VIP steps and stopped at the bottom, just out of sight, close enough to hear.

"You promised me dinner."

Something cold and violent moved through my chest.

I listened to every word. Ivy's poisonous little smile. Lucien's bored voice. I heard him call his wife a waiting room. I heard him say my name, and the laughter that followed, and it went through me like a blade.

Even Cassian can't stand being in the same room with you.

That was my lie. I had built it brick by brick, and now he was using it to hurt her.

The singing started. I looked up at the phones rising all over the club, and my hands closed into fists so tight my nails split the skin. Then I heard him kiss another woman in front of her.

I could have broken his jaw. My whole body shook with how badly I wanted to. I took one step toward the stairs.

Then I stopped.

She's his wife. He's your friend.

Those two facts were the walls I had lived inside for six years. If I climbed those stairs, I wouldn't be doing it for her. I'd be doing it for me. For every night I lay awake thinking about her voice, for the way she looked in that dress, for everything I had never let myself say. And if I put my hands on her, even just to protect her, I wouldn't stop.

So I stood at the bottom of the steps like a coward and listened to her break.

Glass shattered above me. Ivy screamed. Mara shouted Elara's name while two guards hauled her toward the back office, kicking and swearing, her gold hoops swinging.

"Get that animal out of here," Lucien said.

Elara came down the steps with her chin high and her eyes bright and wet. She walked straight past me without seeing me. She was already breaking, and she was holding herself together on stubbornness alone.

Her shoulder brushed my arm as she went by.

It was nothing. A second of contact through my jacket. But her scent reached me, vanilla and wine and a warmth I knew from a hundred dinner tables, and my whole body locked. Heat rolled through me, sharp and shameful. I stood there with my jaw clenched and my breath shallow, watching the green of her dress disappear into the crowd.

Not now, I told myself savagely. Not like this.

"Rooke!"

Mara had twisted halfway out of the guards' grip. Her face was red, her jacket hanging off one shoulder, and she was staring straight at me.

"What, you're just going to stand there?" she shouted. "Like a statue? Like you always do? You cold, useless..." Her voice cracked. "Your best friend just did that to her and you can't even look at her. No wonder nobody can stand you!"

The guards dragged her through the door, and it slammed behind her.

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say that wouldn't ruin us all.

I pushed through the crowd toward the exit, my pulse pounding. Let her go, I told myself again. It had never worked before.

Cold air hit my face as I shoved through the doors. Elara stood at the curb with her arms wrapped around herself, her phone shaking in one hand, trying to call a ride and failing to read the screen through her tears. The green dress clung to her in the wind, and I could see goosebumps along her bare arms.

I stopped six feet away and made my hands stay at my sides.

"Elara."

She flinched and spun around. Her mascara had smeared beneath her eyes.

"Cassian." Her voice cracked on my name. She wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist. "Great. Of course. You were there too. I saw you. Did you enjoy the show?"

I knew what that was. Armor. The trouble was, she thought mine was real.

"I'll drive you home," I said. It came out cold and clipped, the way it always did with her.

"I don't need you to drive me anywhere."

"You're drunk."

"I'm fine."

"You're shaking."

She stared at me, and for a moment the anger in her face gave way to something raw and lost. Her lower lip trembled. She pressed her mouth flat, turned away, and started down the sidewalk in her heels with her arms around herself.

I stood on the curb with my heart pounding and my self-control hanging by a thread.

I took off my jacket. I held it in my hands for three long seconds, staring at her back, at the bare skin above the neckline of that dress, at everything I couldn't afford to think about.

Then I went after her.