“You didn’t need me to save you. You handled him.”
“I know, but having you there...” Her voice trembles slightly. “For the first time, it didn’t feel like I was standing alone.”
“You’re not,” I murmur, dipping my head. “I’d burn down this entire ballroom if it meant making tonight easier for you.”
Her breath catches, and she grips my jacket like I said something dangerous, eyes widening. “Kyle, don’t?—”
“I’m not taking it back,” I say, voice low. “Not tonight.”
She swallows hard, her throat working once—twice—before she steadies herself.
“We should get back out there,” she says, but the words feel like armor she’s lifting with two shaking hands.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I answer.
Alycia nods and gently threads her fingers through mine again. Then she steps forward into the swirl of golden light and champagne laughter, pulling me with her. Not because she needs the optics, but because she wants me there.
And for the first time in a long time, something inside my chest feels steady.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alycia
Kyle’s fingers are still threaded through mine when the applause fades behind us. The ballroom doors swing shut, muting the music to a distant thrum, and suddenly, it’s just the two of us, standing in the soft glow of the hotel corridor. All night, cameras and expectations have held us together, but out here, there’s no script left to hide behind.
His thumb sweeps once over the inside of my hand, and the feeling travels all the way up my spine. I want to hold on tighter. I want to let go. I want too many impossible things at once, and the confusion presses hard against my ribs.
My body reacts before my brain can catch up. Heat blooms in places that have no business waking up tonight, my breath stuttering like I’m bracing for impact. I shouldn’t need him this much. I shouldn’t want him this much. Not when every future I’ve worked for collapses the second anyone decides I chose a man over my career. But his touch feels like the one steady thing in a room full of shifting ground. And thatsteadiness, the thing I crave most, is exactly what I can’t let myself reach for.
My fingers twitch like they’re begging to anchor themselves to him, to pull him closer and pretend the world outside this moment doesn’t exist. The want is a physical ache, climbing up my throat and crowding out the air until I can’t tell if I’m breathing or breaking. I’m spiraling, and somehow, his hand in mine is both the reason and the lifeline. The contradiction is enough to make my chest tighten, like I’m holding back an entire storm behind my ribs.
Kyle leans in, his voice dropping softer than I’ve ever heard it. “Alycia… talk to me.”
And that’s the problem. If I talk, I’ll crack open. The gala is over, but everything we didn’t say on the dance floor is still pulsing between us, loud enough to drown out the distant conversation.
I swallow hard, reaching for the professional version of myself—the one who can face donors and crises without blinking—but she’s nowhere to be found. Not with his hand wrapped around mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“We should get going,” I whisper, but my voice betrays me, thin and unsteady. “The car’s waiting.”
He doesn’t move. He just looks at me like he’s still standing under those chandelier lights, like something in him stayed behind on that dance floor, and he’s trying to decide whether to pick it back up or walk away from it forever.
“Alycia.”
My name in his voice is its own kind of unraveling. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
And I can’t afford any of this. So, I do the only thing I can: I gently loosen my fingers from his before I say something we can’t come back from.
“We should go,” I repeat, steadier this time, because when you can’t save your heart, you save your job.
Kyle follows, but the space he gives me feels like a loss. We walk toward the private exit, our steps echoing softly against marble. The noise from the ballroom fades with every stride. I should feel proud. Every donor was impressed. Every camera was satisfied. Every crisis was neutralized. But inside my chest, everything is unraveling.
The edges of my vision fuzz like my body finally stopped holding it together for the sake of a room full of people. The moment we push through the door into the quieter wing of the hotel, something inside me gives out just a little, like a seam I’ve been ignoring finally splits.
Kyle stays half a step behind me, not reaching for me the way he did all night. His restraint is unbearable. I can feel him wanting to touch me, but I need breathing room so I don’t do something reckless. The pain of putting that space between us intensifies with each step.
The hallway is too still, like the hotel itself is holding its breath in the aftermath of everything that almost happened between us. My heels click softly against the carpet runner, steady but not steady enough. I can feel the tremor in my legs, the exhaustionsettling deep in my bones, the emotional collapse I’ve kept duct-taped together since the music stopped. By the time we reach the corner where the staff corridor meets the private exit, I know Kyle can sense the shift. He’s deciding whether to close the distance or honor the space I fought so hard to create.
“Sweetheart,” he says, and the way he says my name makes something behind my ribs quake. “Slow down.”
