Chapter 144 The Gala

Chapter 144 The Gala
Levi's POV

The ballroom smells like money, champagne and lilies and the particular perfume of people trying too hard to look like they're not trying at all.

I've been to a hundred of these, I know the choreography. Shake the hand, hold the eye contact two seconds longer than comfortable, laugh at the joke before it's finished.

Tonight none of that matters, because Anya is standing at the edge of the room in a dress the color of wine, looking like she'd rather be anywhere else, and all I can think is that I'm done pretending she isn't the only reason I want to be here.

"You're staring," she says when I reach her, voice low, eyes flicking toward the cluster of my father's business partners by the ice sculpture.

"I'm allowed."

"Levi." A warning, soft. She smooths a hand down her dress like it'll make her invisible. "Not tonight. Not here."

I know what she means. Here is dangerous. Here is cameras and reporters and men who'll smile at her and then ask my father who she is, like she's a rumor to be confirmed or denied. She's spent three months existing in the spaces between my life, the back exits, the private dinners, the let's not make this a thing and I let her, because I told myself I was protecting her.

Tonight I understand I was protecting myself.

My father's voice cuts through the noise, easy and practiced, the microphone catching the edge of it. "...and none of this would be possible without the extraordinary generosity of the Thorne Foundation's partners"

Applause. The room turns toward the small stage like sunflowers. I feel Anya's hand start to slip from mine, already retreating, already making herself smaller so I don't have to explain her.

I hold on.

"Levi," she whispers, panic threading through it now. "What are you doing"

"Something I should've done months ago."

My father finishes his remarks, and there's that pause, the one where the room exhales and the string quartet almost starts up again and I walk forward before I can talk myself out of it.

I feel every eye shift toward me the way they always do, waiting for the heir to perform. I pull Anya with me, and I feel her fingers go rigid in mine, feel the fear radiating off her like heat.

"Sorry to interrupt," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. Someone hands me a mic without asking why. Old habits. "I promise I'll keep this shorter than my father's remarks."

A ripple of laughter. My father's smile tightens by half a degree, the only person in the room who can read that flicker for what it actually is.

I look down at Anya. She's gone very still, the way she does when she's bracing for something to hurt.

"Most of you know I don't usually do this," I say. "Speeches. Announcements. My father will tell you I'd rather be anywhere else at these things." A few knowing chuckles from the men who've watched me disappear from these events for years. "But there's someone I want you to meet properly. Not as a plus-one. Not as a rumor somebody's assistant will have to deny tomorrow."

I feel her hand tighten around mine. I don't look away from her.

"This is Anya. She's my girlfriend." I say it plainly, no hedge in it, and the word lands in the room like a stone in still water, I can see it ripple outward, see the exact second the reporters near the back start reaching for their phones, see my father's jaw set into something that isn't quite anger and isn't quite pride. "And I'd rather stand up here and say that out loud than keep pretending she's something I have to explain later."

Silence for one long second. Then applause, scattered first, then fuller, because that's what rooms like this do, they clap for whatever the story is now, whether they mean it or not. I don't care. I'm not looking at them.

I'm looking at Anya, whose eyes have gone bright and wet, whose mouth is caught somewhere between horror and something that might be joy if she'd let it.

"You didn't have to do that," she says quietly, just for me, under the noise.

"I wanted to."

"Everyone's going to talk."

"Let them."

She laughs, a small, disbelieving sound, half a sob tucked into it and shakes her head like she can't quite believe I did it, like she's waiting for the version of tonight where I take it back, i won't.

I've spent my whole life being careful, calculated, saying the right thing to the right person for the sake of a family name that's never once asked what I actually wanted.

I want this. I want her, in the light, not folded into the shadows of my life like something I'm ashamed of.

"Levi Thorne," someone calls from the edge of the crowd, already angling a phone toward us, "care to comment on"

"No," I say, still looking at Anya. "I think I said everything I needed to."

The room moves on around us the way rooms like this always do, new conversations, new gossip, my father already recalibrating, already deciding how to spin this to his partners over drinks. None of it touches me. Anya's hand is still in mine, warm now instead of rigid, and when I lean down and murmur, "Was that okay?" against her temple, she huffs a small laugh against my shoulder.

"You could've warned me."

"Where's the romance in that?"

"You're insufferable."

"You're still holding my hand."

She looks up at me, mascara smudged faintly at the corner of one eye, and for a second the gala disappears, the cameras, the partners, my father's careful, calculating stare from across the room. It's just her, looking at me like I'm not a headline or an heir or a name on a building, just a person who finally chose her out loud.

"I'm glad you did it," she says finally, soft enough that it's only mine to hear.

"Me too," I say, and for the first time all night, I actually believe it.