The song dips. My guard does, too.
“Tell me yours,” he says.
“My truth?”
He nods once.
I drag my gaze away from his mouth and force it to a safe place—the knot of his tie. It doesn’t help. The tie is navy, and myprivate, treacherous body reads the color like a letter addressed to it. “I want to stop pretending,” I say. “At least with you. I’m tired of smiling at people and calling it safety.”
His breath leaves him in a rush he covers with a quiet laugh. “That’s all I’ve wanted to hear since the maze.”
“Don’t,” I say, reflexively.
“Say the word in your head, if you won’t let me,” he says, maddeningly gentle. “Saymazeand remember that you stopped running.”
I do. I remember—how stillness could be a kind of courage, how consent could feel like stepping into a shadow you chose. It hums under my skin now, synced to the slow-dancing rhythm like a second song only I can hear.
We pass within three feet of my father. I feel the heat of his attention without turning my head. Triston’s hand doesn’t flinch. He keeps us aligned, keeps our distance casual, our connection invisible to anyone who refuses to see what they don’t understand.
“Your father has good instincts,” he says, a quiet fact.
“I know.”
“He thinks I’m a wolf,” Triston continues, unbothered. “He’s not wrong. He’s just missing the part where the girl already learned how to pet the animal without losing her hand.”
My mouth curves despite itself. “So I’m a zookeeper now?”
“You’re the one the animal listens to,” he says. “Vital distinction.”
“I feel like you’re trying to make me smile.”
“Trying? No.” The thumb at my hip draws a barely-there line, up and down, like a metronome only my body hears. “Succeeding? Absolutely.”
I let it happen. The smile, the small surrender, the understanding that I am allowed to enjoy the thing I chose even if other people would prefer to call it a mistake.
The songcrests, then softens, like a tide deciding to be kind. He tips his head, bringing his mouth closer to my ear. “One more truth,” he says. “My turn.”
I brace. With him, truth is never a gentle animal.
“I haven’t slept properly in weeks,” he says. “Not because I’m plotting. Because I can’t decide which version of you I miss most when you’re not in front of me. The girl who looks at me like I’m a risk. Or the woman who looks at me like she’s the one.”
My answer is not a word. It’s a noise my body makes when it has been seen and refuses to be ashamed. I press closer for exactly one beat—enough to tell him I heard him, not enough to announce it to the room—and then pull back into the moat of propriety the song expects us to swim.
He feels it. He always does. His hand tightens for a heartbeat, then releases, exactly the way he promised: never more, never less, only what I ask.
“Tell me to stop,” he repeats, softer now.
“I won’t,” I say. “Not tonight.”
“Then don’t look away,” he says. “If your father looks, let him see that I’m the man you chose. Not the man who cornered you into it.”
“That’s not how he’ll see it,” I say.
“Then he can be wrong,” Triston says evenly. “He’s allowed. He loves you enough to be wrong loudly.”
God, I hate how right that is. I love it more.
The song ends. Applause crackles over the room like ice breaking. He lets my hand go first. It feels like restraint and reverence, and I want to curl around both.
