🥀Chapter 04🥀

Selene took a slow sip of her champagne. Her eyes didn't budge from across the room.

"I'm not planning anything," she said.

Jessica gave her a look that clearly said I wasn't born yesterday, and I have the receipts to prove it. "Whatever you're cooking up in that head of yours that involves Finn Leighton..." she dropped her voice on his name like it was radioactive, "...I am asking you, as your best friend, to please please drop it. We will find another way. A safer way. A way that doesn't involve...."

"Planning with Finn." Selene turned to look at her. "Did I say a single word about planning anything with him?"

"You didn't have to say a word, Selene. You have a face. I know your face..."

"You know what I think? I think you're making huge assumptions just because of the direction my eyes happened to wander." Selene tilted her head slightly. "That's honestly not fair."

Jessica stared at her. "You are definitely planning something."

Selene took another sip of her drink.

Jessica wasn't completely wrong.

Selene knew the rumors. Everyone in their social circle knew them, they floated through rooms like smoke in an old building, leaving stains on the walls. Finn Leighton. Thirty years old. CEO of L.T cooperation, a company he built from scratch with the kind of ruthless style that made older businessmen nervous and younger guys take notes.

He was cold in the way that certain weather is cold,not loud or dramatic about it, just a plain fact of the atmosphere around him.

He smiled sometimes. But when he did, the smile never really made it past his mouth. His eyes stayed exactly the same, light, watchful, and doing math behind whatever expression the rest of his face was showing.

Selene had never spoken to him directly. Not even once. For years, they had existed in the same rooms at the same parties in the same tiny social world, keeping that specific, polite distance of two people who had silently agreed to remain strangers.

But she had listened.

She listened to him the way she listened to everything in her house, carefully, from far away, filing details in the back of her mind until she found a use for them. She had heard her dad on the phone in his office, his voice dropping to that low tone he only used when something actually stressed him out. She had heard Finn Leighton's name in those calls more than any other. She had overheard phrases like bring him down and he's getting too close, and once, through a door that wasn't completely shut: that man will be the end of me if I let him.

Victor Calloway was afraid of maybe three things in the entire world.

Finn Leighton was one of them.

She didn't know why. She didn't know the backstory or the specific reasons for the hatred that clearly went both ways.

The media had covered the drama too, the cold war between Calloway Industries and L.T the deals that fell apart the second both names showed up on the same contract, and the way both men would literally walk out of a room if the other one entered.

She didn't know the exact details.

But she knew the shape of the problem.

And shapes, her grandpa Edmund used to tell her, were sometimes all you needed.

She set her champagne glass down on the nearest table with a thud.

Jessica's eyes went wide. "Where are you..."

"I'll be back," Selene said. She squeezed Jessica's shoulder once, a quick, warm, totally fake reassurance and stepped out into the crowd.

"Selene.." Jessica's urgent whisper chased her for about four steps before the noise of the party swallowed the distance between them.

-----

Selene didn't rush.

Rushing looked like she was unsure of herself. And uncertainty was something she couldn't afford tonight, not with the full weight of her dad's betrayal settling into her bones.

She walked steadily through the crowd, and somewhere along the way, she felt his eyes find her.

She didn't look up right away. She kept walking, kept her face totally blank, and counted three full steps before she let her eyes wander across the room to meet his.

Finn Leighton was already staring right at her.

He wasn't watching her the way the other guests did, with that curiosity people give the birthday girl before looking away.

He was watching her the way he seemed to do everything: with his full attention, like he'd decided she was worth looking at and saw no reason to fake otherwise.

She held his gaze and kept walking.

He didn't look away either.

Then she arrived.

Up close, in person, for the first time after years of sharing the same world without ever sharing the same space, he was something else entirely. He was tall. He wore a dark suit with no tie, and the top button of his shirt was undone in a way that looked less like he was messy and more like he just refused to dress up for a crowd that hadn't earned his respect. His jawline was sharp, and his features looked almost sculpted rather than normal.

And then there were his eyes.

She had heard people say his eyes were light, but that word hadn't prepared her. They were a pale, deep blue, the exact color of the ocean in pictures taken from a satellite. They were beautiful, completely unreadable, and gave her the creepy feeling that his brain was working ten times harder than his face let on.

He looked down at her.

The corner of his mouth twitched upward on just one side. It wasn't a real smile, it was something much more highly aware of itself.

"Well." His voice was low, the tone of someone who never felt awkward during a silence. "What a surprise." He held her gaze for one more second before giving a small nod. "Happy birthday, Miss Calloway."

"Thank you." She matched his tone without even trying, totally unfazed. "Though I'd say tonight has been more educational than celebratory, so I appreciate the thought."

Something flickered in those ocean-blue eyes. Interest, maybe. The exact kind of interest that happens when someone says something you didn't expect.

"I'll take that as a warning about the food," he said.

"Take it however you want." She kept looking right at him. "Actually, I was hoping to talk about something with you, if you have a minute. Just briefly."

"Mm." He looked at her, straight at her with the full weight of that calm attention. "Now I'm curious."

"Can we talk outside? It won't take long."

He was quiet for a moment. It wasn't the kind of silence where someone is hesitating; he was just thinking things through, totally unbothered by the clock. She got the distinct feeling he was doing the kind of mental math in four seconds that took most people four minutes.

Then he reached to the side and set his drink on the table.

He looked back at her and gestured toward the doors, a single, relaxed movement, almost lazy, as if the entire night had been leading right to this spot and he'd just been waiting for her to catch up.

"Ladies first," he said.

As if she needed directions to the exit at her own party.

She turned around and led the way out, and she could feel him falling into step right behind her, completely quiet.

----

The night air hit them the second they stepped out, It carried the muffled sounds of the party behind the closed doors like a distant heartbeat through a wall.

They were on a private terrace right off the main hallway. The event planners had decorated the space with soft lights strung along the stone railing, and small warm lanterns sat along the wall. It was dim, but not totally dark. It was the exact kind of lighting that made conversations feel like confessions.

Finn stopped a comfortable distance away from her and turned around.

He slipped both hands into his pants pockets, looking like a man who was always working and had stopped pretending otherwise. The lantern light caught the sharp lines of his face, the pale blue of his eyes, and the slight tilt of his head that suggested he was already listening before she even said a word.

"So." The corner of his mouth lifted in that almost-smile again. "Miss Calloway." He looked at her with the patient attention of someone who had all night and knew it. "I'm all ears."

Selene opened her mouth.

And for the first time in a very long time, maybe the first time in years, the words just wouldn't come out.

She had walked across that ballroom with a direct plan. She had crossed the terrace with pure purpose. She had built a whole script in her mind on the way over here. It was supposed to be logical and structured, a clean opening that would make everything sound like the reasonable, strategic business deal it absolutely was.

But it completely dissolved.

She swallowed hard.

Finn watched her. He didn't say a single word. He didn't rush her, and he didn't try to fill the empty silence. He just stood there in the dim light, looking like a man who had dealt with way more awkward silences than this one and found them all mildly interesting.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

She lifted her chin slightly.

"I want you to marry me," she said.

The words just hung in the air between them.

Finn Leighton didn't move. He didn't blink. He didn't change his expression in any way she could read or prepare herself for. He simply looked at her, for one second, two, three, with those ocean eyes giving absolutely nothing away.

The silence was huge.