“Yes.”
He smiles like he knows the truth and offers me his arm anyway.
The limo is obscene.
I should be used to it by now after the plane and the suite and the hotel and the dress, but apparently Tristan decided subtlety was dead and this weekend required full commitment.
We sit side by side in the dim backseat as Newport glides by outside in wet black streets and old stone walls and glowing windows. His hand rests over mine. The city looks like memory with better lighting.
By the time we pull up in front of the venue, my stomach has climbed into my throat.
The building is exactly how I remembered it and not at all. The same bones. The same old-money grandeur. The same steps, the same lit facade, the same feeling of walking into a machine designed to decide who belongs.
Only now I don’t need it to choose me.
Girls spill out near the entrance in tiny dresses, impossible heels, expensive makeup, too-young laughter. Phones flash. Someone is already angling for a group shot under the archway. I hear fragments as we step out—hashtags, names, social calculations dressed as fun.
I pause with my hand still in Tristan’s and watch them for a second. Because I know exactly what that kind of room can do to a girl standing on the edge of it, trying to fit into a life that was never made for her body or her bank account or her truth.
“Tristan.”
He looks at me immediately.
“What?”
“Are there any scholarship girls here tonight?”
His brows draw together.
“Probably. Why?”
I glance toward the entrance again.
“Find out who they are.”
He studies my face.
“And then what?”
I look back at him.
“Make sure you give them a dance and a few selfies.”
He understands before I finish saying it.
I smile a little, but it feels fragile at the edges. “Some stranger in the shadows once did that for me,” I say. “Turns out it mattered.”
His whole expression changes.
The heat in it doesn’t go away.
“I was going to say this needs to be about you,” he says softly. “That you’re not allowed to spend tonight thinking about strangers.” He lifts our joined hands and brushes his mouth over my knuckles. “But I think,” he says, eyes never leaving mine, “I know what you meant earlier.”
I swallow.
“What?”
His thumb traces once along the inside of my wrist.
