Chapter 10: The Line

Julian sent us both to cover the same story, which felt less like coincidence and more like the universe running out of patience with how carefully we'd been avoiding being alone together since the night Ethan showed up at my door.

"Alumni fundraiser," Julian said, not looking up from his monitor. "Athletics department wants press there. Carter's required to attend as team captain, and I need someone covering it who already has a relationship with the program. Congratulations, Harper, you get to wear something nicer than a hoodie for once."

The banquet hall was full of donors and boosters and men in suits who all seemed to know each other from some world I didn't have access to, and I spent the first hour taking notes on quotes I'd barely remember writing, watching Ethan work the room in a suit that made him look older, more certain, less like the boy who'd shown up at my door rattled and honest a week ago.

He found me by the drink table during a lull, two glasses of something sparkling in his hands, offering me one like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You look like you're surviving."

"Barely. I've smiled so much my face hurts." I took the glass, grateful for something to do with my hands. "You clean up well, Captain."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not surprised. I'm annoyed. It's very inconvenient."

That got a real laugh out of him, quick and warm, and for a second the whole overdressed, overfunded room disappeared the way it always seemed to when it was just the two of us, some old instinct neither of us had managed to unlearn.

"Dance with me."

"Ethan."

"One dance. Everyone here already thinks we're colleagues covering a story together. Nobody's going to read anything into one dance." He held out a hand, steady, patient, giving me every opportunity to say no. "Please."

I shouldn't have. I want that on the record, wherever this ends up mattering. I took his hand anyway, and let him pull me into the small crowd of couples swaying to music too formal for either of our tastes, and told myself this was research, this was normal, this was two people who happened to know each other sharing exactly one dance at exactly one banquet.

It didn't feel like research. It felt like standing too close to a fire I'd spent three years being careful never to touch.

"This is a terrible idea," I said, mostly to remind myself.

"The worst." He didn't let go. "Doesn't seem to be stopping either of us."

We moved slow, careful, his hand warm at my waist, and I made the mistake of looking up at exactly the wrong moment, catching his eyes already on mine, and something in his expression made the whole banquet hall go quiet and distant the way it had the very first time he'd looked up and found me across a quad three years and one lifetime ago.

"Lily."

"Don't."

"I have to." His voice had dropped low, just for me, the music and the chatter around us swallowing anything anyone else might have overheard. "I've spent three years being careful. Being smart. Waiting for proof, waiting for the right time, waiting for Mason to be ready, waiting for the texts to stop, waiting for something to finally make this safe. And I'm starting to think safe was never actually coming, and I'd rather tell you the truth now than keep waiting for a version of this that doesn't exist."

"Ethan, we're at a fundraiser. Mason's coworkers are three feet away."

"I know exactly where we are." His hand at my waist tightened, just slightly, and he leaned in close enough that his next words landed somewhere just beneath my ear, quiet enough that no one else in that entire crowded room could have heard them. "I never stopped. Three years, Lily. I never once stopped."

I froze, every single nerve in my body lighting up at once, and for one long, dangerous second I let myself lean into it, let myself imagine an entire version of this night that ended somewhere other than exactly where it needed to.

Then a camera flash went off three feet away, some booster capturing candid photos of the event for the athletics newsletter, and we broke apart fast, too fast, the spell shattering into something that looked, to anyone watching, like nothing more than two colleagues finishing an ordinary dance.

"I have to go," I said, breathless, already stepping back.

"Lily—"

"Not here. Not like this." I set my glass down with hands that weren't quite steady. "I need to think."

I left him standing in the middle of that dance floor, and made it all the way to the parking lot before I let myself stop, hand pressed flat against my own chest like I could physically hold my heart in place, three words echoing louder than anything else that had happened in that entire crowded room.

I never stopped.