It’s precise.
Minimal.
Ruining.
The kind of design that doesn’t beg for attention, it assumes it.
The skirt hugs her hips and then eases into a tapered flare that trails behind her like a whisper. Not a train. A suggestion of one. A reminder that she’s moving forward, and the room is reacting behind her.
Her hair is pinned back with curls slipping loose, framing her face, teasing the open back. Her freckles are visible, and that tiny, human detail in a room full of polished veneers hits like a punch.
She looks like Lucy, and she looks like someone who belongs here.
That contradiction should not work.
But it does.
And it makes me want to do something irrational.
She lifts her head, scanning.
Her eyes find mine.
I watch the moment recognition lights up her expression, the tiny widening of her gaze, the subtle inhale. Like she felt the weight of my attention before she understood why.
It’s too intimate for a ballroom.
Too quiet for what the night is supposed to be.
My body reacts before my mind catches up.
A single step forward.
Then, something uncharacteristic. A stumble. Not obvious. Just a fraction of a miscalculation, like my feet moved before I’d decided where I was going.
I correct it instantly. Walls up, spine straight, expression neutral.
I descend the steps with the same controlled pace I use in boardrooms and courtrooms, where the only weakness is visible hesitation.
By the time I reach her, I’m back inside myself.
But the cost of that control is a pulse I can feel in my throat.
“Lucy,” I say, and my voice comes out calm.
Her gaze holds mine a beat too long. Her lips part slightly, like she has words and isn’t sure which ones are safe.
“Hi,” she says.
It’s not shy.
It’s… cautious.
Good. She should be cautious.
“You look beautiful,” I tell her.
I don’t say it like a line, I say it like a statement of fact.
