The front of his shirt grazed my chest, and I had to consciously slow my breathing so I didn’t press into him.
“I’m glad it’s working out,” Sebastian said.
“Me too.”
Our low voices hung in the space between us. I’d already been buzzed, but the longer I stayed, the drunker I got on the charged currents swirling through the air.
I attempted to wrangle my scattered thoughts into some semblance of coherence. My tongue darted between my lips, wetting them, but I regretted it when his eyes dropped to my mouth.
My heart renewed its insistent pounding.
“I found something interesting in my office last week.” I finally grasped on to a concrete thread of conversation.
“Yeah?” Sebastian drawled.
“Yeah. It was a necklace.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It is.” I held his gaze. “Any idea who might’ve left it there?”
“None.”
His breath brushed my lips, and a shiver coursed down my spine.
“Who’s the bad liar now?” I whispered.
Another curve of his mouth, this one nearly imperceptible.
He kept his eyes locked on mine as he reached up and slid a thumb across the delicate gold chain around my neck. His touch was warm against my flushed skin, and the air thickened as he gently freed the locket from beneath my bodice.
He opened it with a soft click.
I didn’t look down; the image was already etched into my brain.
It was a picture of me standing onstage after beating Sebastian in our university’s annual student debate. It was one of the greatest moments of my life, but I never got an official winner’s photo.
Less than a minute after receiving my trophy, I’d succumbed to a nasty case of food poisoning (courtesy of that night’s dinner) and thrown up all over myself. I’d been both humiliated and devastated, and the fact that I never took my winner’s photo had haunted me all these years. Sebastian had beaten me every year prior, and that was theonlychance I’d had to commemorate my victory.
The picture in the locket was a candid of me taken literally seconds before the Great Vomit Debacle. I was smiling at the dean,my trophy in one arm and a bouquet of congratulatory flowers in the other. My face glowed so brightly, it made my heart ache.
All these years, I never knew such an image existed.
But it did, and he’d held on to it this entire time.
Until now.
Sebastian held the locket in his palm and traced the edge of it with his thumb. “You were so happy when you won,” he said quietly. “I’ve never seen you smile that big before.”
“It was a great night until…”
“Disaster struck,” he finished, a gleam of laughter in his eyes. “Were you that happy because you won? Or because you won over me?”
“Both.”
“Hmm.”
My breath suspended in my throat when he closed the locket and slowly, carefully tucked it back under my dress’s neckline. His touch lingered, and little bolts of electricity filled my blood like static.
