Chapter 17 Chapter 17

Chapter 17 Chapter 17


My thumb pressed record and I held the phone steady.

I had always been good with the camera, It was a skill I had built over years of performing calm I didn't feel the weight of the phone, it was just the phone in between the steady hands of a girl and her sly boyfriend who just hurt for upteent time.

Tonight the stillness was real in me.

The screen showed what the garden showed. Liam, jacket collar up, mask hanging loose. Mia close against his side. The fairy lights soft and stupid above them. The sound carrying clearly in the cold air, his voice, her laugh, the small intimate sounds of two people who had been comfortable with each other for a long time and had stopped worrying about witnesses while they were kissing.

Thirty seconds.

Enough for the voice. Enough for the faces. Enough for anyone watching to understand exactly what they were doing.

I pressed stop and lowered the phone.

Jax was right beside me. I hadn't looked at him while I recorded. I looked at him now. His expression was doing something I hadn't seen on it before, not the reading look he would have wear, I wouldn't want to say he was self concern for me.

"AirDrop it to me," I said.

He took the phone back. Looked at the clip for one second. Then, without a word, he opened the transfer and sent it.

My phone buzzed in my bag.

I took it out. Opened the file. Watched twelve seconds of it with the sound low, just to confirm the transfer was clean.

I saved it to a folder I made right there, in the garden, and named it nothing important. Then I locked my phone and put it back in my bag and looked up at the hedge where Liam was still talking, still laughing, still being exactly who he had always been when nobody who mattered was watching.

"You're not going to confront them," Jax asked.

"No."

"Tonight?"

"Not tonight."

He was quiet for a moment. "Most people would go in there right now."

"Most people haven't thought it through," I said.

I looked at the garden one more time. The fairy lights. The hedges. The stone path that had led me here. Liam's voice carrying in the cold air, easy and unworried, the voice of a boy who had never once considered the possibility that the photo he was dating might take a picture back.

Then I turned and walked toward the door.

Jax fell into step beside me without being asked.

The room had fully reassembled itself.

Masks readjusted, couples back in their arrangements, the DJ playing something bright and fast that had the dance floor moving again. The amber glow, the perfume, the noise, all of it exactly as I had left it, as if the last fifteen minutes had happened in a separate world that had no overlap with this one.

I stopped at the edge of the dance floor.

Liam wasn't back yet. He would be back in a few minutes, I knew his timing, knew how long he thought he needed between the garden and the room before his face was ready. Seven minutes, usually. Maybe ten tonight.

I had time.

I turned to Jax.

He was watching me with that specific attention of his, he didn't look away not even concern if Chloe was close by.

"Thank you," I said.

"For what?"

"The phone."

He looked at me for a moment. "That's all you're thanking me for?"

"That's all I'm acknowledging right now."

The corner of his mouth moved with a smile. Not quite the almost-smile. Something slightly different from his usual smile.

"Go back to Chloe," I said. "She's been looking for you."

His expressions shifted as I called Chloe name. "Sienna—"

"I'm fine," I said.

"I know you are." He said it like it meant something different than it sounded. "That's what worries me."

I looked at him for one second longer than I should have.

Then I turned and walked onto the dance floor alone, in my blood-red silk dress, and I let the music find me and I moved with it and I kept my face relaxed and my posture easy and my hands still at my sides.

Liam came back nine minutes later.

He found me near the drinks table, glass in hand, talking to a girl from my Calculus class about something that didn't actually interest me. His hand went to the small of my back like he hasn't done anything to hurt a while ago.

"Hey." He kissed my temple. "Sorry, was outside for a bit. Needed air."

"It's warm in here," I agreed pleasantly.

He looked at me. That brief scan, checking the surface, checking if anything was different, the way he always checked without me knowing he was checking.

I smiled at him now because everything was just getting clearer now.

The smile that had taken me three years to build and could hold anything behind it.

He relaxed.

As I watch him, I keep remembering everything he has said behind me.

Easy to manage, he had said.

Never pushes back.

I took a sip of my drink.

"Dance with me?" he said.

"Of course," I said.

He took my hand and led me onto the floor and I followed and I danced and I was absolutely, completely, perfectly present the entire time, laughing when the moment called for it, leaning into him when the music slowed, performing Sienna-and-Liam with the same flawless precision I had been performing it since we're an item everyone knew about.

The whole time, in the small quiet place inside my phone, a file sat in a folder called nothing important.

Waiting.

Patient.

Like a loaded question nobody had asked yet.

Across the dance floor, I caught Chloe's eyes over Jax shoulder.

She was with Jax, her hand in his, her face tilted up toward him with that midnight-glow expression. She looked beautiful and happy and completely unaware.

Her eyes found mine and she grinned — wide, excited.

I smiled back full and warm.

The most convincing thing I can do is to pretend to be fine and perfect.