On the floor, the suit clocks my stare over Joy’s shoulder, amusement flickering. He settles at her waist and draws her into the count. She answers with clean lines and a fleeting smile that isn’t mine. He tries a spin; she lets him. Chorus hits; he pulls her closer, breath at her ear. Her mouth flickers—surprise, then neutral.
My chair scrapes. The guys go quiet.
I reach the edge of the floor. He keeps the hold, measuring me.
“Mind if I cut in?” I don’t raise my voice.
Joy looks at me; a beat, then the smallest nod. The suit lifts his hands graciously, a last flicker that readsenjoy your win, and steps back.
I catch Joy’s fingers, warm in mine, steady. The room hushes to a pulse.
“Two counts. A courtesy so you don’t look a fool in front of your friends,” she says, cool as glass.
“Copy.” I pull her in—frame solid, hands decent, no finesse because restraint is dead.
Two counts of perfect posture, then she steps in on the downbeat, close enough that her breath lives in my ribs. Three more turns and a smile I haven’t earned in weeks flashes—there and gone.
I want it back.
“Congratulations,” she grits, not breathless, not kind. “You’re cutting in on a dance I don’t owe you.”
“Tit for tat,” I rasp. “You cut in on a life I thought I understood.”
The song crests. Hope flickers—idiot, stubborn. She pushes my chest. For half a heartbeat I mistake the pressure for a touch. It isn’t. It’s a check. She steps back—one pace, then another. The crowd folds in, claps, resets around the ruin where I’m standing.
“Good game,” she says, pivoting, professional down to the consonants.
A fault line opens in my gut, quiet and catastrophic. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk to me as if we never happened.”
A beat. Her chin lifts. “We tried each other on, Kane. Tag tucked. That was the deal.” She looks at me and completes the cut. “Didn’t fit.”
My tone scrapes. “The Post-it in my stall, was that the return receipt?”
“It was the refund,” she bites, expression bright and unforgiving. “You got what you needed. I got what I needed. Transaction closed.”
Tanner materializes. “Group shot?” He reads the air, backpedals. “Or…later.”
“Now’s fine,” Joy says, bright again—the face you put on to keep you from bleeding. She steps in just close enough for the photo. I want to reach for her, but I don’t move.
Flash. The moment freezes as proof of nothing.
“For the record,” she says, only for me, “I meant every minute in Alaska.”
Her words slice me open.
She meant it—the dancing, the family dinners, the northern lights, the night tangled in my childhood bed.
She meant it, and I threw it away because her name is, what? Too complicated, too long, too much?
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “And this is exactly why I kept my family to myself.”
Because of men like me, who can’t see past the money to the girl underneath.
She pulls on the hoodie and turns. Rowan hooks an arm through, and she’s gone.
