Page 80

“You’re not…notwrong.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Am I allowed to say no?”

Ezra’s gaze is soft, searching my face. “You can always say no, Dani. But do you really want to?”

“I…” The air in my lungs seems to expand, making my chest tight, and that feeling of the room spinning hasn’t entirely subsided. “Grant is my ex.”

“I gathered,” he offers gently.

I arch a brow. “How?”

“You looked…devastated. For a moment. I have to assume the only person who could put that look on your face is someone who hurt you very badly.”

How does he know that? How is it that Ezra can take one look at me and see all the things I so desperately try to keep hidden?

We continue to sway, the warmth of his palm on my hip a soothing presence, and I let my eyes drop to his chest, focusing on the silk of his tie. “We met in college. He sat next to me in Civil Procedure. He was drenched from the rain. Looked like a wet puppy.” My brow furrows, remembering. “He apologized for dripping all over the floor near my desk.”

“How long were you together?”

“Right up into third year. We had all these plans…We were going to…” I feel the traitorous sting of tears prickling at the corners of my eyes, and my neck heats with embarrassment over letting Ezra see me this weak. “It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Ezra says softly, soothingly. “Not if it makes you look like you do right now.”

I shut my eyes tight, getting a handle on my emotions before opening them again. “He got a job offer from a big firm in Los Angeles. Someone his father had connections with.” I laugh humorlessly. “Stupidly, when he first told me that he was going to take the job, I thought he was asking me to go with him.”

“Dani…”

“He said that he needed to focus on his career,” I bite out. “That he wouldn’t be able to give me thetimeI deserved. He made it sound as if he were doing me some sort offavor.”

It isn’t lost on me that I’m allowing Ezra to hold me a little closer than I probably should, just like it doesn’t escape me that I don’t fight it when one large palm cups the back of my head, pulling me into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he says simply, his voice soft and full of meaning.

I nod into his suit jacket, not knowing what else there is I can do. “It’s over now,” I mumble against the fabric of his lapel. “I’mover it. I just…Seeing him…it took me off guard.”

“Understandably.”

“You really didn’t have to save me,” I sigh, pulling back to look at him. “I could have handled it.”

Ezra’s mouth turns up at the corner in a lopsided grin, and the sight of it almost steals my breath all over again. “Dani, I have no doubts that there isn’t a single thing onearththat you need savingfrom, but…” He shrugs one shoulder. “I’m selfish. I couldn’t stand to see you looking sad for another second.”

The shock and the rawness of seeing Grant again begin to ebb away, my heart thudding with a new purpose as the weight of all the changes between Ezra and me that have been happening comes flooding back.

We’re still moving to the quiet music, both of us staring at each other like we don’t know how to look away, and my voice is barely there when it leaves me. “Why?”

“I think you know why, Dani,” he sighs.

I worry that I do, but worse than that—I worry that his reasons might match mine now. I worry about what that means for us.

I turn my face to look at some bland painting of abstract grays and blacks hanging on the wall beside us, willing my cheeks to cool. “I met your mother earlier, by the way.”

Ezra goes still, his feet coming to a halt as we both stop dancing.

“What?”

I frown up at him. “Your mother. I met her.”