My thoughts fade the minute she steps into view.
For one impossible second, the whole house seems to stop with me.
Octavia appears at the top of the staircase like something conjured out of every selfish, feverish thought I’ve had about her since the moment Jacob handed me that suit. The sight of her hits so hard it doesn’t feel like looking at a girl. It feels like beingstruck. Every bit of air in my lungs leaves at once, stolen cleanly by the shape of her in black.
The dress is sin made elegant.
Dark, fitted, impossibly soft-looking where it clings to her body before loosening just enough to trail behind her with every step. The neckline dips low enough to show the swell of her cleavage, enough to make my mouth go dry instantly. One slit parts high at her thigh, showing flashes of skin each time she moves, each glimpse somehow worse than if the whole thing had been bare. The dress doesn’t scream for attention. It doesn’t need to. It drags it in and keeps it.
Her hair is curled, half up and half down, the pinned-back pieces exposing enough of her neck to make me think sinful things before she’s even reached the second stair. The rest spills over her shoulders in dark waves that make the whole look feel softer and more lethal at the same time. Her makeup is heavier than usual, smoky black framing her eyes until they look even larger, even darker, her lipstick red.
Red.
My first coherent thought is that it’s going to end the night all over my mouth, my throat, my collar if I get any kind of luck at all.
The thought is filthy.
She sees me then.
That is the part that nearly does me in.
Her eyes widen the second they land on me. Whatever she had been expecting to find at the bottom of these stairs, it clearly wasn’t this. The color already in her cheeks deepens, pink rising under her makeup until it warms her whole face. It should make her look younger. Instead it makes her look devastating, like the woman in that dress still has enough girl in her to be caught off guard by the sight of me in a suit.
God.
Every part of me is fixed on her now. The room, the girls, Stephanie’s camera, Jacob’s watchful silence, all of it fades to static at the edges while she stands there looking at me like I’ve stolen something from her just by breathing.
And maybe I have.
Because she’s staring the same way I am.
Not politely. Not casually. Openly. The kind of stare people don’t usually survive in front of parents, friends, and formal dresses. Her gaze moves over the suit, the watch, my shoulders, my face, then comes back to my mouth and stays there just long enough to make the blood in my body change direction.
The pink in her cheeks turns deeper.
If I had any sense at all, I would look away first.
I don’t.
The silence only lasts for a second.
Cheyenne gasps first, loud and delighted, both hands flying to her chest like Octavia has personally offended her by keeping this hidden until now. Maria’s eyes go wide beside her, then wider, taking in the dress, the hair, the makeup, every careful little detail that turned the girl who ruins me in private into something so stunning in public that my body forgets, for one dangerous second, that we are standing in her parents’ foyer.
“Oh my God,” Cheyenne breathes. “You look…”
“Gorgeous,” I say.
The word leaves me before she can finish, with no room left in it for anything but truth.
The whole room stills around it.
Stephanie’s gaze flicks to me immediately, and for the first time since I’ve known her, there is an actual question in her face. Not accusation. Not even suspicion fully formed. Just the brief narrowing of her eyes, the small pause of a woman hearing too much certainty in a boy’s voice when he looks at her daughter. Itis there briefly, gone almost in the same breath, smoothed over before anyone else can catch it, but I see it.
God.
Octavia sees none of it, or maybe she is too busy trying to hold herself together under the weight of all of us looking at her. She starts down the stairs, careful with the dress, one hand skimming the banister while the other gathers the trailing fabric just enough to keep it from catching. Every step makes the slit at her thigh shift. Every step gives me another glimpse of skin and another reason to stop pretending I know how to act normal in this house.
Cheyenne and Maria are talking now, both at once, their praise tumbling over itself in the way only girls can manage.
