Selene's POV

I had told myself it didn't matter.

For six weeks I had been very disciplined about telling myself that. It didn't matter that he would be here tonight. It didn't matter that I had checked the sponsor list four separate times since that Sunday in my garden. It didn't matter that I had selected my outfit since two weeks ago, and had hoped Marcus would approve.

The dress was black. Simple, and I packed my hair just the way Cade used to like it. I tried to convince myself it was nothing, I just needed to look different.

Marcus looked at me twice, and approved with a nod. I was glad.

The gala was everything these evenings always were. The Langham's ballroom dressed in white and gold, two hundred people performing wealth and generosity at each other with practised ease. I knew this room. I knew these people. I knew exactly which smile to use with which face. I moved through the evening gracefully giving no clue about the turmoil happening in my belly.

Marcus was in his element. The handshakes, the laughter that reached his eyes because here there were cameras and witnesses. I stayed the appropriate distance from his elbow and said the appropriate things and was, by every visible measure, the perfect accompaniment.

I looked at the entrance constantly.

At 8:14 PM, he walked in.

I knew it before I saw him, some thing that my nervous system registered before my eyes caught up. And then there he was. Dark suit. That jaw. That particular way he carried himself like......

I felt the breath leave my body.

And then I saw her.

She appeared at his side from just behind him, tall, polished, on a beautiful burgundy dress that complimented her perfectly. Her hand found his arm, and she said something close to his ear and he tilted his head slightly to hear her and the gesture was so casually intimate that something in my chest turned over and kept turning.

Of course, I thought. Of course he brought someone.

What had I expected? Five years. He was Cade Mercer. He had the looks, and certainly the money. He definitely wouldn't be single.

I looked away.

Back to Marcus. Back to the couple we were talking to; the Foresters, property developers, Marcus's current priority. I smiled at something Mrs Forester said. It was one of my better smiles. Nobody could tell.

The evening moved the way these evenings moved in long slow circles, having the same conversations over and over again. I ate nothing and drank one glass of champagne and made sure not to move past one part of the hall. I was particularly avoiding the part Cade was.

But the universe has a very ironic sense of humor. As, Mrs. Alderton, whom Marcus had warned me about moved towards me to talk about something.

"Mrs Hale, you simply must come and thank the Mercer man personally," she said, materialising at my elbow. "Tremendous sponsorship package. Your husband's been meaning to, I'm sure, but you know how these evenings go....."

"Of course," I heard myself say interrupting her.

Because what else do I say.

He was standing with a small group near the sponsor display, the woman beside him, one hand still at his arm, laughing at something one of the other guests had said. Up close she was even more polished. Composed. The kind of woman who looked like she belonged anywhere she stood.

I approached with my best smile already assembled.

"Mr Mercer." My voice was perfect. "I wanted to thank you personally for Mercer Logistics' generous support this evening. The Foundation is very grateful."

He turned.

For one fraction of a second, something moved across his face. And then it was gone and he was looking at me the way a stranger looks at a stranger and extending his hand.

"Mrs Hale." His voice was even. Unreadable. "The Foundation does important work. We're glad to support it."

His hand around mine. Five seconds. The same hands. The exact same hands and I was not going to think about that.

"This is Diane," he said, and the woman in burgundy smiled, and she even looked more perfect. This is Cade's exact spec. She's polished, and elegant. He must have settled for me back then.

"Lovely to meet you," I said.

"And you," Diane said warmly.

I turned and walked away.

I found a quiet corner at the bar. The champagne in my hand was something to hold and I held it and watched the room from a distance and told myself I was fine, I was always fine, this was nothing.

I looked back once.

He was adjusting something on Diane's shoulder, her wrap, a strap, and as he straightened his eyes found mine across the room.

I didn't know whose gaze dropped first. I told myself it didn't matter.

I finished my champagne. Set the glass down. Decided to find Marcus, just to have somewhere to walk toward, and something to do with the rest of this evening.

I found him at the back of the building.

The side door that led to the private car park. Slightly ajar. I almost didn't push it open.

I wish I hadn't pushed it open.

Marcus. And a woman I didn't recognise. His hand in her hair. Her back against the car. His mouth on hers with a hunger I had never once seen him direct at me in five years of marriage.

I stood there for three seconds.

He didn't see me.

I let the door close quietly, the way I did everything in that house. Quietly. Without a trace.

I walked back into the ballroom, found my smile, and wore it for the rest of the evening.

"Some things you do without deciding. The deciding comes after, when it's too late to matter."

The Other Side Of The Room

Diane Cross had been on his contact list for two years before he called her for something like this. Juno explained it'd be better for him to attend the event with a plus one, preferably a lady.

She ran client relations for a property firm that intersected with Mercer Logistics on three separate contracts. When he'd called she'd listened to what he needed, named her rate for the evening, and shown up at his door at seven thirty in a dress that said she understood the assignment completely.

"You're doing that thing," Diane said beside him now, champagne in hand, eyes forward, voice low enough that only he could hear.

"What thing."

"The thing where you're in the room but you're not in the room." She took a small sip. "You've been doing it since we arrived."

"I'm here."

"Physically." She glanced at him sideways. "Someone important?"

He didn't answer. Diane nodded once, the nod of a woman filing something away without making it a conversation, and turned to greet someone approaching from their left. She was very good at this. He was glad he'd called her.

He kept his eyes forward.

Across the ballroom, in a black dress with her hair pinned the way he remembered from years he wasn't supposed to be counting, Selene Hale smiled at something a man in a grey suit said and looked, to every person in this room, completely fine.

He watched the smile.

Mrs Alderton brought her over at half nine and he was ready for it. He was composed, and they acted like strangers. No one would know she's woman he had once known better than anyone.

He kept looking at her, she was smiling at something someone was saying, but something was off about the smile. Had been since she'd walked back from wherever she'd disappeared to twenty minutes ago.

He knew that stillness. He'd worn it himself for five years.

He looked away.

Diane appeared at his elbow. "I'm going to find the ladies room," she said pleasantly. "Back in five."

He nodded. She moved away.

He stood alone for a few seconds, Then he set his glass down and went to find her.

She wasn't at the bar anymore.

He found her in the corridor off the east wing. She was standing with her back against the wall and her eyes closed and her champagne glass held in both hands like it was the only thing keeping her upright. She hadn't heard him coming. That alone told him something, Selene is quite sensitive and hear everything..

He stopped a few feet away.

"Hey," he said.

She opened her eyes.

She stared at him for a long time and finally said. "You shouldn't be back here,"

"Probably not."

She looked away. Something moved across her jaw, a tightening, a decision being made and unmade. "I'm fine," she said. "Go back to your evening."

"You're not fine."

"Cade......"

"You walked back into that ballroom twenty minutes ago and something was different." He kept his voice low. Even. "I don't know what happened. But I know your face."

She laughed a small, hollow sound that had nothing to do with amusement. "You knew my face. Five years ago."

"Some things don't change."

She looked at him then. Really looked, the way she hadn't let herself all evening, and he looked back and neither of them said anything for a moment that stretched longer than it should have.

"He was kissing someone," she said quietly. "In the car park. I went to find him and he was...." She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters."

"It doesn't change anything." Her voice was steady. He hated how steady it was. "Nothing about tonight changes anything."

"Selene....."

"Don't." The word came out sharp. Exhausted. "Don't say my name like that. Don't look at me like that. I can't....." She stopped again. Set the champagne glass down on the narrow ledge beside her.

He closed the distance between them.

Not all of it. Just enough.

"Tell me to go back," he said. Low. "Tell me and I'll go."

She didn't tell him to go back.

She looked up at him, at his jaw, his mouth, his eyes... Like she was deciding hard to make a decision she already knows the cost of, and then something in her broke open just enough, just a fraction, like a crack in someone who has been holding everything together all at once.

He kissed her.

Or she kissed him.

Afterward he couldn't have said which it was. Only that it happened the way necessary things happened, with the particular gravity of something that had been waiting five years for a corridor and a moment of weakness and a woman who forgot, just briefly, to keep her walls up.

She kissed him back.

Both hands in his jacket. Her mouth urgent and furious and achingly familiar and he pulled her closer because he was done being reasonable.

She broke away.

Hands flat against his chest. Eyes closed. Breathing.

He waited.

"I'm married," she said. Not to him. To herself. Like a thing she needed to hear in her own voice.

"I know."

"This can't......" She stopped. Opened her eyes. And the fury in them was something he wasn't prepared for. Not at him, not exactly, but at everything, at the whole architecture of the situation she was standing in, and underneath the fury something so raw and so honest that it cost him something just to look at it. "It can't happen again," she said.

He said nothing.

She picked up her champagne glass. Straightened her dress. Looked at him once more, then she walked away.

He stood alone in the corridor and listened to the sound of the gala continuing without him and thought about the way she'd kissed him, furious and desperate, and the way she'd walked away from it like it was something she could put down.

She'd walked away from him before.

He'd let her, last time.

He was not entirely sure he was going to let her again.