The rooftop glittered above the city—
a kingdom of glass and gold where everything looked perfect from far enough away.
Willow moved through it like smoke—graceful, untouchable, perfectly rehearsed.
She laughed when expected, nodded at stories she didn't hear, and answered shallow questions with the calm precision of a woman performing surgery on her own emotions.
The emerald silk of her dress shimmered like sin under the lights, each movement catching the city's glow. Her earrings flashed like knives whenever she turned her head.
Christy glided from guest to guest, her laughter brittle beneath the music—bright, hollow, expensive.
Miles stayed close, orbiting her like guilt in a tailored suit.
He smiled when he was supposed to, said all the right things, but his eyes—
his eyes never left Willow.
She didn't need to look to know it.
She felt it—the heat of his gaze crawling across the room, a hunger he pretended was regret.
She kept Zane near but slightly apart—an anchor, a statement, a warning.
He didn't speak much. He didn't need to.
His quiet composure had its own gravity, something both grounding and infuriating.
When other men drifted too close, drawn by her laughter or the dangerous tilt of her shoulder, Zane's presence alone rerouted them.
He was restraint made flesh, and tonight restraint was currency.
But beneath her calm, the air buzzed with voltage.
She could feel the rhythm of it—Miles's guilt, Christy's insecurity, the slow, magnetic pull between her and Zane that neither of them fully named.
And when the laughter dulled, when the crowd began to thin and the rooftop's noise softened to a pulse, Willow slipped away.
She found a quiet corner near the glass railing, where the city unfolded in endless light.
Skyscrapers gleamed like watchful eyes; traffic stitched gold lines into the dark.
The wind caught the hem of her dress, lifting it just enough to make her remember her body.
She leaned against the barrier, champagne dangling between her fingers.
Her reflection in the glass looked both ethereal and dangerous—an angel sculpted from ruin.
She exhaled slowly.
The night should have felt like victory.
She'd won every small war—the whispers, the stares, the fractured moment when Miles saw her and forgot how to breathe.
But triumph carried its own kind of ache.
Winning meant nothing if no one bled.
"Beautiful view," a voice said behind her.
She didn't startle. She'd already felt him there, that steady orbit of awareness that always preceded Zane.
"Depends on what you're looking at," she murmured, eyes still on the city.
He stepped closer. His reflection merged with hers in the glass—two ghosts caught between sky and skyline.
"The city," he said quietly. "It looks clean from here. Ordered. Like it never eats people alive."
A soft laugh escaped her. "That's the trick with distance. Everything looks pure until you're close enough to smell the rot."
"Spoken like someone who's lived in the rot," he said.
"I've breathed it," she replied. "And some of it's still in me."
He studied her, the breeze lifting a stray strand of her hair.
"You don't have to stay there."
"Don't I?"
His voice lowered, the words threaded with something unguarded.
"No one deserves to be buried in someone else's lies, Willow."
Something in her chest tightened.
His tone wasn't pity—it was truth, and truth was always the most dangerous kindness.
She turned then, facing him fully. The lights painted their faces in fragments—gold, shadow, and something close to recognition.
"You talk like you've never lied," she said.
"I talk like a man who's seen what it does."
That silence afterward wasn't empty—it throbbed.
The distance between them seemed to breathe.
He stepped closer. The fabric of his sleeve brushed her bare arm, and every nerve in her body woke up.
"You don't have to keep fighting ghosts," he said softly.
Her voice trembled, but not from fear. "You think that's what I'm doing?"
"I think you're trying to prove something to someone who already knows what he lost."
That struck deep, precise as a blade. She turned away before he could see it land.
Her voice was a whisper sharpened on grief. "Don't make this sound noble."
"I'm not," he said. "I'm saying you can stop bleeding for him."
Her grip tightened on the champagne stem until her knuckles whitened.
The wind pressed against her back. For a heartbeat, she hated how much he could see.
"Maybe I like bleeding," she said.
He exhaled—a sound somewhere between frustration and ache.
"You don't mean that."
She turned toward him again—too close now.
The night pressed in around them, all sound distant except the sound of their breath.
Her eyes searched his face, the steady lines of restraint holding back something volatile.
His jaw was tight, his hands fisted at his sides as if even touching her would set off an alarm.
And then, over his shoulder, she saw him—
Miles.
Standing at the bar, watching.
Trying and failing to look anywhere else.
Perfect.
The last piece clicked into place.
She set her glass down, turned toward Zane, and in one fluid motion, slipped her arms around his neck.
His body went rigid.
Her breath brushed his ear. "Don't move."
Then she kissed him.
It wasn't soft.
It was a collision—heat against restraint, desperation disguised as precision.
Her lips met his like a secret detonating—slow, deliberate, consuming from the inside out.
For a heartbeat, he stood perfectly still, his hands suspended between disbelief and desire. Then instinct broke the leash.
He exhaled against her mouth, the sound raw, involuntary. His fingers found her waist, hesitant at first, then firm. The distance between them dissolved. She felt the line of his chest against hers, the solid warmth of him, the tension in his jaw as if he were fighting himself even as he leaned in deeper.
Her mouth moved against his—measured, devastatingly slow—each brush of lips a deliberate threat. Her pulse roared in her ears. The champagne sweetness on her tongue mixed with him—warmth, breath, and something darker she couldn't name.
When his hand slid into her hair, it wasn't gentle. It was desperate, unspoken. The world narrowed to the press of his thumb at the base of her neck, the faint scrape of stubble when their faces shifted, the shock of oxygen every time they parted just long enough to breathe each other in.
He kissed her back then—no longer restrained, no longer polite. His control cracked open, and what poured out wasn't anger or caution but hunger he'd been hiding since the hospital.
It was steady, deep, the kind of kiss that rewires everything you thought you understood about yourself.
Her fingers dug into the fabric of his jacket. The wind caught in her hair, wrapping them in motion. The city stretched beneath them—lights blurring, sound dropping away. All that remained was heat, heartbeat, and the unbearable truth that this wasn't pretend anymore.
When she finally broke away, air rushed between them like a gasp from the world itself. Her lipstick smeared faintly across his mouth; her breath trembled.
He stared at her—not angry, not confused—just wrecked.
"What was that?" he asked, voice low and frayed.
She steadied herself, forcing the mask back on. "A message."
"For who?"
Her smile was small, deliberate, almost cruel.
"For the man who thought I'd beg to be remembered."
But as she turned away, her pulse betrayed her—fast, wild, ungoverned.
Because what lingered on her lips wasn't triumph.
It was want.
And that was the most dangerous lie of all.
From across the rooftop, Miles's glass trembled in his hand.
Christy followed his gaze, her laugh dying in her throat when she saw.
And in that suspended second—
before the excuses, before the performance—
the empire of glass began to crack.