He didn’t finish.
Carissa picked up her clutch. “I know.”
“You’re not going.”
She smiled. “I absolutely am.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Which part?” she asked. “Attend my husband’s reunion? Wear black? Or arrive with better company than you?”
Color rose in his neck. “You think this is some game.”
“No,” she said. “I think this is an ending.”
Jackson picked her up at seven sharp.
He was in a charcoal suit with a black tie and no trace of nerves in the way he held himself, though when Carissa got in the car he looked at her for a full second and said, “He really was insane.”
She laughed. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.”
The reunion was being held in a ballroom at a historic downtown hotel that had hosted too many weddings and political fundraisers to care about one more beautiful scandal. Valets took the car. Doormen opened the entrance. Through the revolving doors, Carissa could already see clusters of people under chandeliers, drinks lifting and lowering in practiced circles of recognition.
And there, near the registration table, stood Damen.
With Nikki on his arm.
She wore emerald green.
Of course she did.
It was close enough to bridal without being white, dramatic enough to signal victory, soft enough to claim innocence later. She had curled her blonde hair into loose waves and painted her mouth a glossy pink that made her look younger than thirty, which was likely the point. She was smiling up at Damen with the shiny, eager face of a woman who believed she had finally been chosen in public.
Carissa felt Jackson’s hand settle lightly at the small of her back.
“Ready?” he asked.
She looked straight ahead.
“I’ve never been more ready for anything.”
They entered together.
It took less than ten seconds.
That was all it took for the first friend to notice Jackson, the second to notice the woman on his arm, and the third to realize that the woman on Jackson’s arm was not the blonde standing beside Damen.
Conversations faltered.
Damen looked up.
The expression that crossed his face would remain with Carissa long after every other detail of the night blurred. It moved in clean stages—recognition, confusion, calculation, fear. Fear not just because she had arrived, but because of how she had arrived. Because she was radiant. Because Jackson was beside her. Because nothing about her looked wounded or pleading or private.