Tory pressed on the rim of her glass making it pass her tongue. The dinner party buzzed around her—clicking glasess, polite laughter, and the occasional murmuring of gossip—but she was trapped in her own head. In her own regret.
Across the table, her husband, Daniel, was in conversation with someone she didn't care to recognize. His laughter was familiar, warm, sounded calm the kind she once fell for but now it barely reached her.
She had spent years convincing herself she was happy. That stability mattered more than passion. That a safe, predictable love was better than a wildfire that almost consumed her alive.
But then she saw him.
Nathan.
She had caught a glimpse of him earlier in the evening, across the crowded room, and it had felt like the wind had been knocked from her lungs. He wasn't supposed to be here. She had spent years trying to avoid places where their paths might cross, conditioning herself to believe he was just a memory from her past.
But he was here. Real. Alive. And now walking towards her.
Tory's breath hitched as Nathan slid into an empty seat beside her, his scent—flowery, familiar, intoxicating—a man that could smell like flowers, candies and sweet, how so inviting and alluring.
Wrapping around her like a web. He leanded forward slightly, his voice low, just for her ears alone.
"Still pretending,Tory?"
Her heart slammed against her ribs. The heat of his body, the way his voice dripped with knowing, with dare, with something dangerously close to longing-it was too much.
She turned to face him, fully aware how close to her body he was, of how his presence broke all her carefully built walls.
" I don't know what you mean".
She spoke softly, though her pulses betrayed her.
Nathan let out a soft laugh, dark and amused. "Liar".
Tory's fingers tightened arougher wjne glass, her body betraying her with the way it leaned, just slightly, in his direction.
"Don't", she said, her voice barely audible.
He studied her, his gaze dipping her lips, then back to her eyes. "You're still mine,Tory. You don't want to admit it, atleast not yet".
The words sent shockwaves through her, dissolving the years, the distance, the consequences.
Deep down, in the part of her she vc wished didn't exist, she knew he was right.