“That’s not what I meant,” he insisted as the elevator jolted toward the rooftop.
“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled, staring at the panel of buttons as they flickered out, one by one, racing toward the bar. She drew in a stilted breath, her face flushing with that insufferable shame she couldn’t seem to shake around him. She was stupid for even suggesting it; they’d both regret it for longer than the list of reasons she kept tucked in the back of her mind. And it wouldn’t fix anything?—
Before she could finish her thought, her back was pressed up against the ice-cold handrail attached, one tattooed arm pinned to the wall beside her head, the other pulling at her chin.
“You’re a fucking mess,” Milo whispered, his lips brushing her jaw.
“Assho—” she muttered, but he cut her off with a thumb on her lip. He leaned into her, their bodies pressed together as the elevator came to a halt.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
“Milo—”
He grinned, his eyes sparkling as the doors slid open and he moved away from her.
“Can dish it out…”
He disappeared into the crowd, leaving her to wander in a daze to Sara. She leaned over a table and tasted Matty’s martini.
“You’re back!”
Hanna pursed her lips, the buzzing in her ears wildly different from what she’d felt earlier. Logan eyed her from across the table, but she happily ignored him and rested her fingertips on her lips, pretending to listen to Matty and… Brendon? Brandon? Shit.
Before she could ask Sara, the tattooed hand that had just pinned her against the elevator wall dropped a glass of golden whiskey between them.
“The Society welcomes you,” Milo murmured before tucking himself into the other side of the table.
Sara didn’t say one word, but her eyebrows certainly said plenty.
FIVE
“Show me the blue one again!”
Sara’s voice did the high-pitched half-squeal thing it had always done when she was overly excited. Hanna set the phone on top of her dresser while Sara spread out over her couch in SoMa, a backdrop Hanna was intimately familiar with from their FaceTime dates.
She reached for the zipper at her back, sweating her ass off between the chiffon and taffeta gowns strewn across her bed. Plastic packages and packing slips adorned the floor as she shimmied out of Number Four.
“The light blue or the navy?” she clarified.
“The light—oh! You’re home!” Matty caught Sara’s attention off screen, her eyes lighting up as he tossed his keys on the counter.
Hanna kicked the pink floral A-line dress they’d firmly ruled out into the corner of her room and snatched the light blue silk from the back of an armchair. It was a slick fit that hugged her every curve, with a back on just that side of scandalous.
Sara and Matty chatted back and forth for a moment before a third voice rumbled over the call.
Milo.
Hanna sighed. It was Wednesday. Movie and wing night. She hadn’t spoken to him after that night at the hotel two weeks earlier, but from what she could tell, thanks to a totally normal amount of social media stalking for a woman in her thirties, he’d started seeing some girl named something cool like Chloe.
Okay, not like Chloe.
Her name was exactly Chloe, and Hanna knew which art school she went to, the name of her labradoodle, and that she worked at the same software company as Milo.
All very normal things to know about someone she had touched once in an elevator.
Sara ran with her phone through their loft and set it down on the counter, the rustling of take-out bags buzzing over the speaker.
“Okay. Light blue is on!” Hanna called, yanking the zipper up the final half inch. The ceiling fell away and Sara’s face popped back into view.
