Page 48 of The Accident

Bidding opens at $1,000 and climbs in a lazy, sinuous way, almost like the room is testing him. By the time it hits $4,000, three different women are in play: a petite redhead in a feathered mini, a tall blonde who looks like she eats women like me for breakfast, and a woman in her forties with a severe chignon and a black silk dress that looks painted on.

The chignon wins. She doesn’t blink as she raises the paddle to $6,000, and the other two fold instantly, glancing at each other with silent, mutual understanding. Evan bows, gives the crowd a little salute, and is ushered offstage by a volunteer in pearls.

Stella claps, delighted. “She’s going to destroy him,” she says, and I want to agree, but my stomach is a knot of nerves.

I barely notice the next two bachelors—something about a firefighter and a hedge fund guy. I know I should care, but I don’t. My eyes are glued to the side door.

Then, at last, the emcee takes a breath, glances down at his notecards, and says, “And now, ladies, the man you’ve all been waiting for—our headliner, the gentleman who needs no introduction, and if you don’t know him, you’re not on social media. Give it up for Minneapolis’s own Trevor Cahill!”

The room goes up like a flare: cheers, laughter, a few shrieks that make my ears ring. The crowd’s collective energy spikes—people lean forward, women’s hands go up, even some of the men at other tables are craning to see. There is a bassline of hunger in the air.

Trevor strolls onstage with the casual violence of a cat. He’s in the same tux I saw earlier, but under the lights he looks like something out of an old Hollywood film: the powerful lines of his body, the impossible clarity of his eyes, the way he stands with his hands loose at his sides like he owns the entire fucking world. I swallow because I thought I knew Trevor, but seeing him like this, I realize he’s always had a kind of gravity to him. Every woman in the room feels it. I feel it in my throat.

Stella is breathless. “Kay, I’m not kidding. If you don’t bid, I will. Your mom will kill me, but I’ll risk it for this.”

The emcee gives a spiel about Trevor’s company, his charity work, his “unique sense of humor,” then steps back and lets the crowd take over.

Bidding starts at $5,000. Five paddles shoot up instantly.

“Ten!” someone yells.

“Twenty!”

“Twenty-five!” The blonde from earlier, eyes wild.

The numbers blur. It’s not just the socialites anymore—now women in their thirties and forties, all silk and diamonds, are playing hard, tossing out numbers like they’re in a backroom poker game and every hand is life or death.

Trevor just stands there, smiling, watching the room with a kind of clinical detachment. Occasionally, his gaze drifts across the crowd, and each time it passes our table, I feel a cold shot of current in my spine.

It hits $50,000, then $75,000.

At $100,000, there’s an actual gasp in the room.

I see Trevor’s face—he’s almost amused, but there’s something else, too, a kind of dark pride or maybe hunger.

A woman two tables over, in a black Valentino, goes to $120,000. Then a new voice—maybe the one from the back of the room, I can’t see—says, “One-fifty.”

The air is thin and electric. Stella is gripping my wrist so hard I might bruise. I look at my paddle. I look at Trevor. He’s not watching the crowd now; he’s staring at something in the distance, although a small smile hovers on his lips.

“Kayleigh?” Stella hisses. “Are you in?”

My mouth opens, but I can’t speak.

The emcee is shouting, “Do I have one-seventy-five?”

Black Valentino raises her paddle again, cool as marble. “One-seventy-five.”

There is a hush. The whole ballroom waits.

And then, without thinking, my hand goes up.

My voice is clear, louder than I’ve ever heard it: “One million dollars.”

The silence is absolute. Even the chandeliers seem to freeze.

Every head turns.

Stella makes a sound, a cross between a laugh and a yelp. The emcee’s jaw drops.