It had all been here the entire time.
It had been waiting the whole six years, one phone call away, while I taught myself to disappear inside a house in Bel Air.
There is a particular ache in seeing, all at once, everything you gave up, and understanding that you gave it up for nothing — that the man you traded it for wouldn’t have loved you any better if you’d arrived draped in the whole Crawford fortune, because loving you was never what he’d come for.
I walked into that ballroom mourning the six years even as I reclaimed them.
Both things at once.
That’s how it actually goes.
Chapter 9 — The Doors Open
Inside the ballroom, no one would speak to Declan.
He moved through the crowd reaching for hands that turned away, for conversations that closed before he arrived.
The most powerful people in the room drifted from him as if he carried something contagious — because in their world, he did.