I let out a laugh, and Ian orders our drinks. He gets something complicated and I get wine because I'm apparently incapable of leaving the Paris mindset even in a nightclub, and for a while we just stand at the bar and let the music and the crowd wash over us and it's—good, actually. Better than I expected. The noise does what Ian said it would, fills up all the space where the quiet worry lives, and I feel myself loosen by increments, shoulders dropping, the held breath I've been holding all day finally letting go.
Ian makes me laugh twice in twenty minutes. The second time, I nearly choke on my wine, and he looks vindicated in a way that's deeply irritating.
“See,” he says. “This is better than the balcony.”
“Don't flatter yourself. I'm perfectly capable of moping in public.”
“Sure, but in that dress?” His gaze roves over me. “Yep. Reth's gonna kill me for letting you out of the house in that dress.”
“Lucky for you, he's not here. Come on.” I take his glass and put it on the bar. “You brought me out to dance, so let's dance.”
He lets me pull him onto the floor with the expression of a man who has made peace with his fate, and then the music gets into him the same way it's gotten into me, and within thirty seconds he's stopped performing reluctance and started actually moving, and I laugh again—a real one, because Ian dancing is somehow both exactly what you'd expect and nothing like it at all. All that coiled, lethal precision redirected into something loose and ridiculous and completely unbothered.
“You're actually good,” I say, surprised.
“I'm excellent at everything.” He spins me once, catches me easily. “Some of us are just built different, Crazy.”
I let the music take the rest of it—the flowers, the door, the long, hollow day—and for a few songs I'm just a woman in a black dress in Paris, dancing with someone who makes her laugh, and it's enough. It's actually enough.
My hips move and the bass vibrates through me, Ian's hand is at my waist, and I close my eyes, allow myself to just exist inside the beat for a little while, not waiting, not counting days, not listening for something that isn't coming.
When I open my eyes, Ian's looking at me.
Not the way he usually looks at me. This is different. Slower. His eyes on my face like he arrived there without meaning to and then just—stayed, and for one unguarded second there's something in them that makes my breath catch a little. Warm in a way that isn't about keeping me safe or making me laugh or any of the things Ian usually is.
His mouth pulls up at one corner.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.” He turns me once, smooth and easy. “Having fun is a good look on you.”
His words land without the usual ironic cushion. No wink hidden in his tone, no escape hatch built into the sentiment. I don't know what to do with it, so I don't do anything. Just let the beat take us forward and pretend the moment was smaller than it felt.
We dance to two more songs before I gesture toward the bar, parched and sweaty, while Ian looks like a Marine who can combat dehydration at a cellular level.
“Get me a beer,” Ian says close to my ear. “Bathroom break. Do not move from this spot.”
I nod, and he narrows his eyes at me.
“I mean it. Do not. Fucking move.”
“Oh, my God, I’m not eight.”
He lingers just long enough that I roll my eyes, and only then does he shoulder through the crowd toward the back.
I turn to the bar and flag down the bartender, order Ian's beer and top up my wine, and lean back against the bar while I wait,letting the music move through me. The club has hit that point in the night where everyone's stopped being self-conscious about it, bodies looser, the energy on the floor shifting into something warmer and less deliberate.
I face the bar just as the bartender sets down my drink, and my heart just. Stops. Next to the glass…is a lollipop.
Pink.
Heart-shaped.
I suck in a breath, and my heart restarts at twice the speed. “Who sent this?” But the bartender is already moving, gesturing vaguely down the bar.
“The gentleman—” He turns. Frowns. “He was just here.”
I look down the bar. Nothing. Nobody. And I stand there for one suspended, airless second. The music pulses. The crowd moves around me like water around a stone. And then something shifts in the room—a change in the quality of the air, like a pressure system moving in, like the atmosphere itself rearranging around a presence it recognizes.
