“Thank you for being here.” His voice is soft and a little choked up. My heart aches for him.
“There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
His eyes flicker. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, and I’d love to know what he wants to tell me, but whatever it is, he doesn’t say it. Silence overtakes us, and suddenly the quiet conversations around us are very loud, and I become even more aware of how everyone is staring at us.
The guests. Jase’s parents. They don’t want their son to dance. They’ve stopped paying his tuition fees. And here he is, doing it anyway. He’s dancing. He’s not hiding it. He’s not hiding, and his brother is dead, and everything about this evening is terrible.
It breaks my heart.
“Do you trust me?” he murmurs, his face suddenly so close to mine that I would only have to stretch a little to be able to kiss him.
I swallow hard, every inch of my body responding to the husky sound of his voice. “Yes.”
His fingers glide lightly over my bare back. He spins me around, grabs my waist with both hands, and lifts me up. I react instinctively, tense every muscle, and stretch my arms wide upward. At that moment, I can fly, and Jase’s hands are my wings.
It’s over too quickly, and he lowers me back down to the floor, turns me to face him, and brushes a strand of hair that’s come loose from my updo off my forehead.
“Thanks for the dance.” His lips touch mine, and before I can reply, he takes my hand and guides me off the dance floor. We cross the room and step outside onto a wide terrace with a breathtaking view of Boston. No one’s here but us. Everyone else is in the ballroom.
It’s dark and quite cold.
“Let me get my coat,” I say. I want to pull back my hand so I can wrap my arms around myself, but Jase holds me tight and guides me farther until we’re swallowed by darkness. Then he lets me go and takes off his tux jacket. Silently, he lays it on my shoulders, and a tingle goes through my body as I feel his warmth and his familiar scent envelops me.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“No,” he says. Then he takes my face between his hands—and hesitates. We’re so close that his nose is touching mine, and his warm breath caresses my skin. His gaze lands on my lips, and he looks tormented. “I hate this whole thing.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“We can go.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t. Sam... Sam...” He stops, and a sad smile crosses his face. Then he kisses me.
I return his kiss, even though a distant voice in my head is telling me it’s wrong. We’re in public. Someone could come at any moment. It’s his mother’s birthday party. The anniversary of his brother’s death.
But maybe it’s not wrong at all. Maybe it’s completely right. Because this isn’t about me; it’s about him.
My lips part, and I welcome his tongue. I can taste the whiskey that he drank, bitter and smoky at the same time. And I taste Jase. All of him. His hands move to the back of my head, plucking one hairpin after another out of my hair before sliding under the jacket and onto my waist. They glide over the bare skin of my back, and suddenly I’m not cold at all. I reach up and twine my fingers in his hair, and as I turn his smooth locks into a tousled mess, he smiles against my lips.
I can’t help it—I back away a little because I want to see his smile. His smile, the smile that started everything last year, is so beautiful it hurts.
“Why does being with you make everything a little more bearable?” he whispers, so quietly I can barely hear him. I’m not sure if the words are even meant for me to hear.
I answer him anyway. “Because you make everything a little more bearable too.”
His eyes widen, but he doesn’t answer. Either he has nothing to say or too much. Instead, he pulls me close again, and I feel his breath against my skin, and then his mouth meets mine.
“Jase!” The deep voice makes us jump apart in surprise.
Shit.
Jase turns around and steps in front of me as if to protect me, while I wrap his jacket more tightly around myself.
“Haven’t you ever heard of privacy, Dad?” Jase asks so calmly that I flinch.
I peer past him and see Rufus Winslow just a few yards away from us. His eyes are full of barely suppressed anger as he confronts his son. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
