A new song welcomed James and I onto the dance floor, slow and alluring. We danced in silence. Strangely, it wasn't awkward. Actually, it was ... comfortable. My hand in his, his other one resting on my side. The woodsy smell of him cocooned my perfume, but didn't overpower it. There was a healthy amount of space between us, but I noticed the way I'd breached the distance without thinking as our dance wore on. The music curled around us like a blanket, and we were breathing in sync. Yes, comfortable.

Too comfortable.

It scared me.

The violin surged, the song reaching its crescendo. James dipped his head lower, his mouth hovering so close that I could feel his cool breath coasting along the shell of my ear.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I glanced up.

His gaze was searing mine. Cautious. Kind. Concerned. All at the same time. It took me back to that night in his room—just him, me, and the blistering vulnerability that resulted in me confiding in him.

I broke it, watching the other dancers fluttering by. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He hesitated before answering, his voice low. Velvety. "You didn't answer the question."

Even without looking at him, I knew what he was asking.

James and I hadn't spoken since I'd so generously offered up the story of my father's passing on a silver platter. He'd tried to catch my eye during dinner, and again when I'd thanked his parents when they did the rounds of the tables. He wasn't the only one; Dex, Noah, and Holly had all asked the same question in their own unique ways.

I'd shrugged them off with a simple smile every time.

But the truth was that, no. I wasn't sure that I was okay. I hated that I'd revealed my dad's death to Holly and the guys in the way that I had. As a tool to get the better of some bitch in Dior and Manolos. Not only that, but that piece of my past was one I'd barely shared with anyone. Aside from my mother and sister, only Elijah and Lola knew. It was intimate. It was personal. It fractured the divide between acquaintances and friends.

I cleared my throat, hyperaware of the lump that was forming there. I'd already cried in front of James once. I didn't need a repeat.

"I will be."

My whisper trickled off into the night, twining with the violin's cry. The lights had darkened again, the marquee only lit by those tiny bulbs and the dancing candles on the tables. There was confidence woven into the bitterness, a promise that I believed what I said to be true. I was sure that I could survive the pain shredding my heart, sure that one day I could look at a picture of my dad and feel love instead of that sting of betrayal. I just wasn't sure what kind of person I'd have to be to get there.

James' hand slid to the small of my back. "That's all we can do," he murmured.

I didn't notice until he went quiet that the knots in my stomach seemed to unbundle. That oxygen was coming a little easier now, that breathing didn't feel like such a chore.

That's all we can do. No pity, no judgment. No fruitless words of unfounded advice. Just assurance that I was doing my best. Maybe even assurance that my reaction to my trauma—however big or small—was normal.

Dredging up memories of my dad always left me feeling like I was treading water, like wave after wave was crashing over me, pulling me into the pit of a never-ending black sea. It's why I seldom did it, why I pushed every memory with him—of him—to the back of my mind. Why, with James, did I feel like I could handle it? Like I'd finally found a buoy to tether me during the storm?

The lilting song ended, and James and I came to a slow, swaying stop. I looked down at the floor while the other dancers parted, drawing a sobering breath. Slowly, James stepped back. But when I glanced up at him, he was still smiling softly.

He guided me back to the table, then pulled back my chair. "Can I get you a drink?"

I tried to smile when I sat. "Lemonade, please."

"Sure. Wait here?"

I nodded. And had every intention to. My heels were practically nailed to the floor, my fingers drumming the embroidered tablecloth impatiently as another song began—a pretty serenade between harp and violin. The dancers on the floor dipped and twirled, the women's gowns rippling when their partners spun them. I felt a stare pelting me. Turned, and saw Joanna glaring at me from the bar, where James was getting our drinks.

She placed a hand on his arm, then threw back her head of hair, laughing. But my stomach hollowed out for a whole different reason.

My phone was vibrating. I pulled it out of my purse. I shouldn't have. But I did.

Drove past that chapel on the cliff this morning, the text from the unknown number read. The one overlooking our beach that you wanted to get married at. I thought about what that would have been like all day, all while you've been holding hands with somebody else.

My chest was rising and falling quickly. The room fogged over. The music was too loud. It screeched against my skull.

Noah .... He'd tagged me in a photo on Instagram. A behind-the-scenes snap he'd taken when the wedding party had been on that little hill, and when James had, indeed, been holding my hand—and only because the photographer had told him to. Eli, though blocked on his own account, must have been trawling through mine—on the same friend's phone he was texting me from now, probably.

The music was getting louder. My pulse was too fast, too heavy. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't escape Eli, or the memories of what we'd had, of what I'd left behind. What he'd destroyed. Why was he turning it back on me? Why was he trying to make me feel guilty for moving on? Why was I letting him? Why did I have to feel so damn much?

My eyes burned. I was going to cry. And I wasn't about to do it in a room full of people who probably already saw right through me.

So I broke my promise to James.

I left the dance floor.

Left the marquee.

I walked and walked and walked through the blur of green hedges and rose bushes, tears streaming down my face as I tried to find a place where I could breathe and exist without feeling guilty about it.

The evening breeze licked my cheeks, a cool, gentle wind that carried with it the fresh smell of grass and earth. I rubbed a hand up and down my arm, the night air rousing gooseflesh on my skin.

I'd found a slice of solace on the patio of what I took to be a guest house on the Bennet's property. It was far enough from the marquee that the music was only a whisper on the night, the grounds shrouded in wispy mist. The sky was so clear above me, its pure starlight obstructed only by a dim lamp post lighting the cobblestone path. I couldn't imagine how much clearer it could get if Noah's promise of that meadow rang true. Then again, I was still certain that his walk was just an excuse to get away and deal with whatever was going on with Tyler.

The crunch of shoes on pebbles pricked at my ears. I refrained from watching the tall, shadowed silhouette approach, looking up toward the cloud-veiled moon instead. The tentative footfalls sounded on the patio, and warmth curled into the air like smoke.

Something was placed in front of me on the railing.

A glass—of lemonade.

"You didn't wait," murmured the low, deep voice.

I took a shaky breath. When I was sure I could breathe evenly, and sure my cheeks were free of the memory of tears, I glanced up. "Sorry."

James leaned next to me on the railing, tilting his head in thought. It amazed me that even in the dark, his eyes still danced with so much light. "Is everything okay?"

I debated saying yes. "No."

"No?"

There was no point in lying. Not to James. I didn't even want to. But I didn't know whether I had the strength to explain, either. So I pulled up Eli's text, then slid my phone along the railing.

The silence was thick as James read over it. Heavy, like a cloying jacket in the summertime. I wasn't nervous, though. I was numb.

James pushed the phone back to me, indicating he was done reading the text. Or re-reading it, given that a minute had passed.

"Ass."

I frowned. "What?"

"Why don't you block him?"

My frown deepened. That wasn't what he'd said.

I let it slide. "I have. I block every number he texts me from." I locked my phone with a sigh, not wanting to see the message again. Not wanting to see anything but darkness. "He's persistent."

"He's psychotic."

"He says he loves me."

James went to say something else. Stopped himself.

I peered up at him. My eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, zeroing in on him as he moved a little bit closer. My heart was racing faster and faster with every small step, no doubt just a reaction to the champagne I'd consumed.

"What?" I prodded softly.

James shook his head. "It's not my place to say."

"Say it anyway."

James hesitated.

But then he said, his voice quiet and gentle, as if he was speaking to a small, lost kitten, "That isn't love."

I no longer knew whether I could argue otherwise.

My eyes stung again. I looked out toward the wisterias beyond the courtyard, needing to find something to latch onto. I couldn't cry. Wouldn't. Not again and again and again ...

Something hovered in the corner of my eye. I inched my face towards it, finding that James was testing the space between his hand and mine. His fluttered closer, centimeter by centimeter, as if deciding whether or not to offer a touch of reassurance. My stomach flipped at the thought.

Within a second, he'd reclaimed it, perching it on the wood beside mine instead. I dismissed my prick of disappointment, chalking it up to the fleeting moment of vulnerability. To my longing for comfort and nothing more.

Clearing his throat, he looked down at the wooden railing. The darkness cloaked us like a shroud, flickers of mellow light dancing across his face in a way that was almost bewitching. "I have to ask you something. And you can tell me to go to hell, you can say it's none of my business. But I have to ask." A ghost of a smirk lifted his lips, but it didn't quite make it to those iridescent blue eyes. "I can't stop thinking about it."

I tilted my head, letting my hair tangle with the breeze. "What?"

There was an inch of space between his arm and mine. I could practically feel the heat of his body on my bare shoulder. It didn't dissipate, didn't cool. Not even when he turned—almost regretfully—and grimaced. "Elijah."

I couldn't control my features as they hardened, couldn't fight the familiar tightness that claimed my aching chest. But I didn't tell James to drop it. Didn't tell him to go to hell.

"Is he ... or was he ..." He trailed off, flicking his tongue over his lips. Like he wasn't quite able to ask the question he claimed was haunting him, despite the look on his face that told me he needed to ask it. His eyes left mine, drifting further and further down. Down to my hand still perched on the wood.

I tracked his frown, though I already knew what he was looking at. There was only a faint indent on my middle finger now, a pale white line—the memory of a golden band—that no one else would have noticed or understood. But we did. He did.

"Did he ever..." A muscle in his jaw feathered, another emotion entirely searing those usually serene eyes. One a lot like fear, or maybe even anger. One that slotted the rest of his sentence—his question—into place.

"No," I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. I swallowed hard, flexing my fingers gently. Drawing his attention away from my hand, from the relic of our volatile argument with Eli, and back to my face. "He was never ... he never ... hurt me." Never physically, at least.

James' head was still cocked softly, and he considered my vow, my adamance, for another long moment. "I've just never seen rage like that." And in a flash of unobstructed starlight, I saw the seed of another emotion. One that I realized was overwhelming the others, swallowing them whole and making them redundant.

James looked ... scared. He looked scared for me.

"Neither have I," I assured him softly.

He seemed to breathe then. Like my answer mattered to him. Like he cared. And that ... that touched me in a place that hadn't been touched in a very, very long time.

"There were other things. Red flags." I gritted my teeth. At Eli. At myself. "Not that I saw them." The need for control, the need to control me. The fear of me branching out, of me making friends outside of the ones we shared. His possessiveness, his projecting, his jealousy. He called it love, and I believed him.

"It's hard to imagine." James' features were sterner when I peered back up at him, but his eyes were so soft that I could practically see the cogs turning in his mind. I arched an eyebrow, prodding him, and he shrugged. "You're so ..." A smile played with the corner of his mouth. He didn't indulge it, swallowing it back with the rest of a sentence that, for some reason, I desperately wanted to hear. "It's just ... hard. To imagine someone like you putting up with someone like that."

For a fraction of a second, that tightness released its hold over my chest. Maybe it was the insinuation, the inference that I was something akin to strong. But a new kind of sadness clouded it, struck me right in the place where my heart should have been. Pity, maybe, for the girl I once was.

"Not really. He told me he loved me." I lifted my shoulders simply, capturing his waiting gaze. "And I'd never been loved before."

Another second. Another moment of consideration.

And then James nodded. Like he understood.

Only when I blinked did I feel the tears in my eyes. Self-pitying tears that I wouldn't dare let fall. I cast my stare out to the flower boxes dotting the estate, hoping to shield that moisture, though there wasn't really much point.

James always caught me at my worst. At my most vulnerable. My ego resented him for it. He was so strong, so collected and composed. It was something that I desperately wanted to be, something he no doubt knew by now that I wasn't. But I couldn't deny that confiding in him about Elijah and Lola had bonded us in a strange kind of way. Like if I did cry, if he did see my tears, it wouldn't make him think less of me.

"You didn't tell me to go to hell."

I laughed. Actually laughed, even if it was only for a moment. "I think I've said enough things to you that I didn't mean."

He questioned me with a look, and I silently thanked him for it. But guilt pricked my stomach, the memory of our argument making me feel all kinds of ungrateful.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, making myself meet that confused stare. I held it, and clarified, "For snapping at you the other day."

Slowly, he spared a long glance over my solemn face. My walls were down, so I could feel that his were, too. Feel a new kind of vulnerability building between us, closing us off from the rest of the world. But it didn't make me uncomfortable. Didn't make me flinch. Actually, I realized that I liked being caught under that blue gaze. Liked swimming and floating in that ocean inside his eyes.

A mischievous force pulled at his lips, lifting them into a lopsided grin. He leaned in close, brushing his words against my skin. "You snapped at me?"

The pressure fell from my shoulders—the weight of the guilt I'd been carrying. I rolled my eyes and swallowed my smile, but yet another laugh muffled in my throat. James nudged my bare shoulder playfully with his, the temporary touch—the warmth—bringing a tingling sensation to my skin.

"So disagreeable," I thought I heard him utter.

But he didn't push my apology. He didn't ask for an explanation. Something told me that he didn't need one. That whatever trivial words were said between us were nothing more than that—trivial. Because there was something deeper that connected us now. Standing on the porch of his parents' guest house, just him and me and the glittering stars above, I realized how comfortable I felt in his presence. How calm. And, for a moment, I wondered if he felt the same.

"Stay the night."

I jolted a little at the roughness in his voice. "What?"

"I convinced my parents to let us have the guest house. Holly's staying." James whispered, "Stay."

"I shouldn't."

"We're on break next week. Surely you can take one night off from studying. What's the worst that could happen?"

"I fail."

He cocked a brow. "Would that really be so bad?"

Yes. Not failing in general. But failing this. My experiment. Because if I didn't prove that heartbreak was inevitable—not to Devi, but to myself ... It meant that it wasn't. It meant that, maybe, in another life, if things were different or if I was different, then maybe Eli and I wouldn't have fallen apart. Maybe he wouldn't have gone elsewhere, or gone to someone who gave him what I couldn't. Maybe I could have done something to stop him from hurting me. Maybe I could have been enough.

Maybe heartbreak wasn't inevitable.

Maybe people leaving me was.

"Madison?" James' voice drew me back. His face hovered in front of mine, his eyes a little blurry. "I lost you."

"Sorry," I murmured.

"You don't have to apologize." His smile was quaint. Almost ... sad. He cleared his throat. "If you go, I go."

I blinked. "What?"

"It's late. And you've been drinking."

"I had one glass of champagne. Half a cocktail."

"Still." He shrugged. "You're not driving yourself back to campus. No way."

"Don't do that." I frowned. "Don't force my hand—"

"I'm not. I don't care if we go back. Makes no difference to me."

I searched his gaze. It was open. Honest. He was telling the truth.

But ... why? Why didn't it make a difference? Sure, Noah had said that James thought his parents were a lot, and they were ... interesting. But they were lovely. So why didn't it make a difference to him if he spent the weekend at campus rather than at home, with them?

I didn't know. Didn't ask. And I might not have been drunk, but I was tired. Too tired and numb to trust myself behind the wheel.

"I'll stay," I decided.

"Yeah?" James straightened with near-laughable shock. "And you won't sneak off in the middle of the night? Because I'll follow you."

"I'm pretty stealthy."

"You're really not."

I gaped, feigning offense.

But I was smiling.

James laughed. A golden, vibrant sort of laugh that rippled like water in the wake of a skipping pebble. The kind I could let warm me, if I dared to.

"You're secretive." He looked up at a sycamore as a nightingale began to sing from the branches. "I'll give you that. You're ... intriguing. But you're my partner—in sleuthing and in dancing. Where you go, I go."

I was desperate to puncture it—that cozy familiarity seeping into our situationship. I had to. No men, no men, no men ...

"Careful, Bennet." I bit my lip when it tried to curve upwards. "It almost sounds like we're friends."

When James glanced back at me, his smile had wilted. His brow was furrowed, his voice so devastatingly soft it sliced my heart.

"We are friends, Madison." There was a long pause before he added, "At least, I think we are."

Something inside of me warmed. No ... melted. I tried not to let it show.

But a veil of security came over me, and I had the strangest urge to ask him—about Joanna. To ask how anyone could ever be attracted to someone so phony, so malicious, so narcissistic. Especially someone like him, a person who had extended such raw kindness to me on more than one occasion. Sure, Joanna was beautiful. But so was wolfsbane.

I bit down on my tongue, tearing my gaze from his and throwing it across the lawn.

It wasn't any of my business.

Hi guys!

The comment of last chapter goes to bianca_ib13 —

Something tells me that Madi is ✨this✨ close to joining a nunnery.

Much love,
Danielle x