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It took some wrenching to pry Seth’s hands off my hip and my shoulder—he was holding on extra tight, maybe afraid I’d fall again—and then turn around in what I hoped looked like a controlled fashion and not utter panic like I was feeling inside. Picking up my skirts so that I wouldn’t fall again, I strode through a blur of lights and wavery violin notes toward an opening on the far side of the room.

“Abby! Wait!” Seth called behind me. I didn’t stop, though my feet did stutter for a moment, as if they’d rather listen to him than my brain. It was hard to blame them. Sometimes I didn’t like my brain, either.

The opening led to a corridor lined with conference rooms and business suites. The doors were all locked with a code, and the straight lines left nowhere to hide, so I kept moving. The end of the corridor led into a lobby, which was empty aside from a bored front desk attendant who barely even spared me a glance. Among the frilly potted trees and trickling fountains, I sank into one of the couches. My bare shoulders immediately stuck to the leather.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. I tried to focus on the magazines splayed out before me on the table. Golf Fancy. Architectural Digest. Bon Appétit. They looked like all the magazines Bev and Benjamin had on their table, which sent me spiraling again, struggling to pull enough air into my lungs.

“Abby?” Seth said from behind me. I turned to find him panting in his tux, which meant he’d probably gotten his fancy shirt all sweaty. He’d have to pay for dry-cleaning, and it would be all my fault. See? He’d be better off without me.

That voice wasn’t as convincing as it had been before.

“Hi, Seth.” My words sounded tinny. “I just…needed some air.”

He laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh, like he wasn’t sure how much he should pretend to believe me. “You looked like Cinderella running away at midnight. Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”

“Cinderella didn’t turn into a pumpkin, that was her carriage,” I said in the automatic way of someone who’d watched every single Disney Princess movie multiple times as a child. Maybe this was it, how I could spin it. Princesses ran away.

But queens? Queens stayed to face the facts. And I wasn’t a princess. I was a queen.

“I hope Cinderella will accept my deepest, most sincere apologies,” Seth said. “How about you? I hope I didn’t do something to make you run away. If it was the dancing, we don’t have to—”

“Seth.” I stood up and turned to face him, balling my fists at my sides for strength. “I ran away because…because…” I couldn’t seem to get the words out.

But, looking at his soft eyes, his patient expression, I knew I had the time to. I pulled in a breath so deep I was worried it might snap my bra. “Because I have real feelings for you and I don’t know how to deal with them.” I let all the words out in a torrent. Hopefully, they wouldn’t drown him. Or me. “I’m not used to this. I don’t know how to open myself up to someone else, but I want to, because I’m in love with you.”

The shock of that last phrase was enough to snap my mouth shut. My heart pounded in my chest so hard I thought I might vomit it up. What had I been thinking? In love? My face heated, little prickles spreading over my forehead. Great, I was sweating all over. Now I was going to have to pay for dry-cleaning, too, before Bev could return my gown.

My mouth opened again and the words started coming out, whether I wanted them to or not. “I know I’m probably not what you pictured. I’m not open and nurturing and emotional like you, and I probably never will be, and I’m prickly, and I’m grumpy in the mornings, and I always see the glass as half-empty, and I don’t like talking about my feelings, and…” I trailed off.

Seth raised an eyebrow. “Are you done?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said, taking a step closer to me. This close I could smell that lovely, irritating, delicious scent of oranges and campfire, which clung to him even through the dusty tux his father had dug out of his closet. “Because there’s a lot you forgot. You’re brilliant, and funny, and driven, and ambitious. I know you like to think you’re cold and calculating, but you’re really not; you’re caring and you like to help people, no matter how much you try to hide it. Being around you makes my heart race and my brain work hard, because you make me want to be a better person. To be someone who’s worthy of you.” He paused. “Oh, and you’re beautiful, too. Can’t forget that.”

All those things he was saying were spiking my blood pressure, that side of my brain telling me, He’s wrong, he’s lying, you’re not worth it.

I ignored it. I took a step closer. Now I couldn’t just smell him; I could feel the heat of him, warming my front like an actual campfire. “I still find the positive attitude a little annoying sometimes,” I said. “But I want it to keep annoying me.”

He stepped even closer, placing our faces inches apart. I could see his spiky eyelashes, the tiny beauty mark near his right eye, the little patch of hair he’d missed shaving on the line of his jaw. “Oh, by the way. Almost forgot,” he said. “I’m in love with you, too.”

I don’t even know who kissed who, but it didn’t matter. Our lips were moving against each other’s, our bodies pressed together. I didn’t care who saw us. All I wanted was to be here, with him, our limbs entwined and our fingers tangled in each other’s hair and the wet heat of his mouth on my own.

I felt that mouth smile beneath mine. “It’s hard to kiss you when you’re smiling,” I whispered.

“You’re smiling back,” he whispered. It was true.

Did we have to go back to the ball? I kind of wanted to stay here forever, but I would settle for the rest of the night. Why go back to Seth’s childhood room when we had an entire hotel above our heads, one with comfy king-size beds and no parents within earshot? One whose rooms probably cost more than my rent up in Vermont?

Stop thinking about logistics. For once, I listened to myself, and lost myself in how it felt when his beard rubbed my chin, the tender way he cupped my cheek, the—

“Abigail? Is that you?”

That familiar voice might as well have been a bucket of cold water thrown over my head. I wrenched away from Seth, my stomach lurching into my chest.

No. It couldn’t be.

“Abigail, it is you.”