“And yet, here we are—the last two left.” Knox raised his glass. “May we stay just as committed to emotional unavailability.”
Gabriel was about to answer when the back of his neck prickled. He knew that feeling—he’d learned to trust it across years of reading rooms and sensing threats before they announced themselves—and he turned.
A server crossed the terrace toward the bar. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun. She moved with grace, her footsteps careful on the ancient stone, the tray of champagne flutes steady in her hands. She was watching him and didn’t look away. As she approached, her posture changed, shoulders pulling back and spine locking into something rigid, and Gabriel watched recognition dawn across her features. She reached the bar, stopped, and their eyes met.
Hers were warm brown with amber flecks that caught the fading light, and he knew them. He had memorized them when he was sixteen and stupid with first love, dreamed about them when he was eighteen and desperate to forget, and tried to bury them under two decades of late nights at the office and a desk drawer he never opened.
Tessa Thorne.
His pulse kicked at the base of his throat. The color drained from her face, and her grip on the tray went slack. The flutes slid forward, crystal tumbling through the air until they hit the flagstone—one, two, three sharp cracks followed by the shattering of glass. Gabriel flinched at the third one, his own glass tightening in his hand.
Other servers rushed forward with towels and a dustpan, already cleaning up the mess, but she didn’t move. She stared at him, frozen, a statue of shock.
“Tessa.” Her name came out wrong. His voice cracked halfway through, like he was thirteen again and his voice had betrayed him in the middle of a pop quiz. He’d spent two decades learning how to command a room with nothing but his voice, and one word had reduced him to a fumbling adolescent.
She took a step back.
“I never thought I’d see you again.”
Then she turned and ran across the terrace, through the archway, and was gone.
Gabriel stood frozen, glass still in his hand. Knox had stopped mid-sentence and was staring, his expression shifting from confusion to calculation. “Friend of yours?” he asked.
Gabriel couldn’t answer. Tessa was here, at Ronan’s wedding, working as a caterer. He had loved her at sixteen—the girl he used to walk to every class, even when it made him late, the girl who’d kissed him behind the field house until they were both breathless and shaking.
“I need a minute,” Gabriel heard himself say.
He walked toward the far edge of the terrace where the water view opened up, leaving behind him the reception, Knox’s perceptive stare, and a scattering of glass shards that was the evidence his past had crashed into his present.
His hands were shaking. He set his glass on the stone wall and pressed his palm flat against the cool rock. Ridiculous. He was thirty-six, the COO of a successful private equity firm. He’d negotiated billion-dollar deals without breaking a sweat, stared down hostile boards, and made CEOs twice his age flinch with a look. One glance from her, and he was bracing himself against a wall like a kid who’d just learned heartbreak isn’t just a song.
He pulled out his phone and typed her name into the search bar.
Thorne Events: exclusive catering and event planning for the New York metropolitan area. The website showed elegant food photography, testimonials from satisfied clients, and a small headshot of Tessa in the corner. She looked professional and polished, wearing the same focused expression he’d seen on the terrace.
She’d done it. She’d built something solid, made herself into exactly what she’d said she would, back when they were kids dreaming at Ashford Academy, stealing moments between classes when the future seemed infinite.
He stared at her photograph. She looked older now, refined in a way that suited her, but he could still see the girl who used to steal fries off his lunch tray without asking, the girl who’d kissed him behind the field house until neither of them could breathe.
His thumb hovered over her contact link. He locked the phone before he could talk himself into it.
Footsteps sounded on the terrace. Gabriel pocketed his phone and turned. Knox stood there with two whiskeys, already extending one. Gabriel took it, and they drank.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Knox said.
“A ghost would be easier to ignore.”
Knox waited. He could outwait anyone; years of negotiating had taught him patience. Beneath the jokes and deflections, he let silence do the tightening.
“Who was that?” he finally asked.
“Tessa Thorne.”
Knox turned the name over. “And how do I not know that name?”
“Because I have never said it.”
“So how do you know her?”
