Chapter Three: Worth it
"You're going to get us fined for noise," Kyara said, but she was already grinning walking toward the car.
"Worth it." Ellie jumped out and grabbed her by both arms, holding her at arm's length and looking her over with the focused intensity of someone conducting an inspection.
Ellie herself was in gold, head to toe, because Ellie Spore did not do anything halfway. Her family had built NovaStar Entertainment from a small recording label into one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates in the country, and she had inherited every bit of her father's go-big-or-go-home energy.
"Okay," Ellie said, looking her over slowly. "Okay, okay, okay. The dress. The hair. The heels." She pressed both hands to her chest. "I want to cry. I genuinely want to cry right now."
"Please don't cry, your makeup took so long to apply."
"It took two hours and it is waterproof, don't change the subject." She pulled Kyara into a hug, sudden and fierce and the kind that meant something. "I missed you," she said quietly, just for a second, just long enough to mean it. "The real you. I missed her."
Kyara hugged her back just as hard.
"She's back," she said. "She's working on staying for a while"
Ellie pulled away and sniffed exactly once, then clapped her hands together. "Right. Priya and Coco are already inside. Let's go. Tonight we are not responsible adults. Tonight we are going to be the problems."
"That's genuinely concerning. I like it."
"That is genuinely the point. Get in the car."
Blaze was everything she had forgotten to miss.
The bass found her before she cleared the entrance, rolling up through the soles of her heels and settling deep in her chest like a second heartbeat. The lights were low and shifting, gold and violet strobing slowly across a crowd that was already thick and warm and moving. The air smelled of expensive perfume and cold cocktails and that specific electricity that only exists in rooms full of people who have decided, collectively, to have a good time.
Priya and Coco were already at a table in the main section with drinks ordered, and they both stood up when they saw Kyara, which she found both embarrassing and incredibly touching.
"She lives!" Coco announced.
"I live," Kyara confirmed.
"Red dress," Priya said approvingly. "I respect this era."
Ellie slid into the booth and immediately waved down a server. "Okay we need the mango something, you know the one, and whatever that blue thing was last time, four of those, actually six, actually just bring us a round of everything good and we'll sort it out."
The server blinked. "I'll see what I can do."
"You'll do great," Ellie told him sincerely.
Kyara slid in beside her and felt the tightness she had been carrying in her shoulders for four years begin, very slowly, to loosen.
She danced. Not the careful, contained swaying she allowed herself at Casper's business events, standing at his side like a tasteful accessory. She actually danced, in the middle of the floor with Ellie's hands in the air beside her and Coco shrieking something about this being the best day of her life.
She laughed too loudly.
She kicked her heels off under the table at some point and forgot about them.
She talked, actually talked, loud and fast and interrupting and being interrupted, the way she used to before she learned to wait for a pause in the conversation before speaking so she wouldn't seem like too much.
She had been so afraid of being too much.
For a man who gave her so little.
She was coming back from the bar, a cocktail in each hand, weaving through the crowd, when the feeling hit her.
That specific prickling at the back of the neck, that screams someone's looking at you.
She looked up toward the VIP mezzanine.
Two men. Suits. Drinks in hand. Looking directly down at her with expressions caught somewhere between shock and fascination.
Dorian Walsh and Felix Carr.
Casper's closest friends. Both of them.
The reaction came before she could stop it. Her shoulders pulled inward. Her chin dropped. Her feet rerouted automatically, pushing deeper into the crowd, muscle memory from four years of making herself invisible snapping back into place like a rubber band. She pressed the drinks into the nearest hands, and found Ellie's arm in the crowd.
"I need some air," she said quietly.
Ellie read her face instantly. "What happened?"
"Nothing, just give me a minute."
She was out the side exit before she finished the sentence.
The night air was cool and sharp against her skin.
She stood on the pavement with her back against the brick wall, the bass humming faintly through it, the city loud and indifferent around her.
She looked down at her hands.
Why did I just do that?
She had run.
Tucked herself away and bolted for the exit like she still had something to protect. Like there was still a reputation to manage, a version of herself to maintain, a husband whose opinion was worth shrinking for.
Casper's friends are upstairs.
So what?
The question landed in her chest with a quietness that surprised her.
So what if they saw her? So what if they told him? So what if Casper Hartwell found out that his wife wore a red dress to a club on a Wednesday evening and danced with her shoes off?
What was he going to do about it?
Not pick up the phone on the seventh call? Too late.
Send a text about tidying the house? Already done.
She stood on that pavement and felt something settle inside her. Not anger. Not even sadness. Something quieter and more final than either of those things. Like a door closing gently after years of being left ajar.
Ninety days.
She had ninety days and she had just spent five minutes hiding from them.
She pushed off the wall.
Straightened up. Rolled her shoulders back. Reached down and adjusted the strap of her heel with the focused calm of a woman who had made a decision and intended to keep it.
Then she turned back toward the entrance.
She was three steps from the door when her phone lit up in her clutch.
She looked at the screen.
Casper: Where are you? The house is dark.
Kyara stared at the words for a long moment.
Then she did something she had never done in four years of marriage.
She put the phone back in her clutch without replying.
Pushed open the door.
Walked back into the noise and the light and the music.
And went to find her friends.