The guests are filtering in now, air-kissing and exclaiming over the space, the clothes, each other's outfits.
Fashion people.
I'll never understand them.
All that fuss over fabric and stitching and whatever the feck a "silhouette" is.
But Dalla...
I watch her move through the crowd, and I start to see it differently.
The way her eyes light up when she touches a garment.
How her hands trace the seams like she's reading a story written in thread.
She's not performing—shecares.
About the craft.
The creation.
She stops at one of the racks, pulling back the white draping to reveal something dark and structured underneath.
A jacket, maybe.
Or a coat.
I don't know fashion, but I know the look on her face as she adjusts the way it hangs.
Pride. Nerves. Hope.
She made this.
These are her pieces.
Something shifts in my chest.
Something I don't want to examine too closely.
A man approaches her—tall, silver-haired, wearing a suit that probably cost more than my monthly wage.
One of the buyers, based on the badge clipped to his lapel.
He says something that makes her laugh, and I watch his eyes drop to her neckline.
My hand twitches toward my weapon.
Easy. He's just talking to her. Looking at her. Like every other man in this room is looking at her.
I hate all of them.
Dalla touches the man's arm—a polite gesture, nothing more—and excuses herself.
She moves through the crowd with purpose now, stopping to adjust a garment here, speaking with a model there.
Doing her job and being brilliant at it.
Then her head turns, and those blue eyes find mine across the room.
