“I thought this kind of ballroom only existed in films,” Kate murmured reverently. Her steps echoed through the empty hall, which was otherwise completely silent. The soft music in the foyer and the voices from the restaurant couldn’t be heard from in here, and not even the noises of the city made it through the high windows.
“I often forget how big the ballroom is until I see it empty,” I confessed.
“Do you often have events here?” Kate asked without looking at me. She was gazing up at the ceiling, walking backwards slowly as she admired the painting.
“Yes. Pretty often, actually. You can rent it out for birthdays, company parties, and weddings. But we also organise our own events. In June, we have our summer solstice party, and at the end of October, we throw a masked ball for Halloween. The Pearl Gala takes place here too, of course.” The blank look on Kate’s face told me that she had no idea what I was talking about. “It’s a charityevent. We invite a lot of very, very wealthy people to raise money for a charitable organisation.”
“Oh, wait! Wasn’t there a scandal a few years ago when that drunk boy-band member threw up on the red carpet?”
“Finnian Gomez.” I remembered the incident clearly. It had happened at the first Pearl Gala I’d ever organised. Finnian and his band had been celebrating their breakout, which had been swiftly followed by their downfall. “I’m so glad that that stuck with you, of all things. We raised almost twenty million pounds for charity that year, but more importantly, Finnian puked.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “Twenty million?”
I nodded.
“Wow, that’s a lot of money. It’s cool that you do things like that.”
“The gala was started by my grandmother, but I’ve been responsible for organising it since she died,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. Somehow, Kate seemed to sense that something was on my mind, as she stopped and gave me her full attention. “This is probably a good moment to say that you inspired this year’s Pearl Gala.”
Kate furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
I took another step towards her. “The morning I left you alone in my apartment, I had a meeting about the gala. It was about which charitable organisation we want to raise money for this year. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you told me. That there aren’t enough sleeping places for homeless people in London. So I suggested it.”
Kate blinked. “You want to raise money for us?”
Us.
I nodded. “I hope that’s OK.”
She didn’t say anything. I thought I could hear my own heartbeat in the silence. The idea had seemed like a stroke of genius at the time, but now it felt like a mistake to not have asked Kate before.
She moved, stopping right in front of me. She smelled of lavender bath bubbles. The scent would, from now on, forever remind me of Kate. Although we hadn’t known each other for long, the circumstances of our meeting had permanently etched her into my memory.
“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured.
“Are you angry at me?”
“Angry?” The furrow in her brow deepened. “No, grateful.”
I exhaled in relief. “Really?”
“Really!” she confirmed, and I could hear her smile. “Do you know how many people you can help with that money? How many shelters could be built? How much food you could buy? Or clothes for the winter? Just ten pounds a day would change my life. And there are so many ten pounds in twenty million.”
There were tears in her eyes. Tears of joy. Shit. I hadn’t expected this.
She tried to blink the tears away, but one escaped and tracked its way down her cheek. Before it could fall to the ground, I caught it with my thumb. Without thinking, I had reached out and touched Kate. Her breath caught as my cool finger brushed her warm skin. For a brief moment, the world seemed to stop. Her expression was sombre, but I could also see her gratitude. And there was more. Another feeling, one that made me withdraw my hand. I stuffed it hastily into my hoodie pocket before I could do anything silly, like pull her towards me.
I cleared my throat. “Come on, I want to show you something.” I walked to a seemingly random spot in the hall and pointed at the floor. “Do you see that?”
Kate stopped next to me, her shoulder brushing against my arm. The touch was fleeting but electric. “Do you mean that scratch?”
“Yes. That was me. I fell off my bike,” I answered, trying to forget the touch as fast as I could.
“You rode your bike in here?”
“Yes, all the time. Bike. Skateboard. Rollerblades. Our parents technically forbade Logan and me to do any of it, but there’s so much space here, and it was the perfect place to race around when it was dark and cold outside,” I explained. “I like this hall because it’s so grand and impressive, but also because it reminds me of my childhood and all the mischief we got up to. We used to hide here from our parents, until the staff told on us.”
“It sounds like you had a good time here,” Kate said. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that her brown irises were so dark that even the chandelier light seemed to get lost in them. “You talk a lot about Logan.”
