Page 15 of Dangerous Men

“Who?Caroline? We just work together, babe.” He said it so dismissively, waving the mention of her away like it was nothing at all.

“You guys seemed close, is all. You certainly havechemistry.” I was seething as I said it, the words coming out caustic.

Chase didn’t even acknowledge that I had said anything at all. And he never brought her up again.

But, months later, when I walked in on them fucking on our couch—the couch I had inherited from mygrandmotherand brought to his apartment, the couch we watched movies together on, cuddled together on—this was the moment he pointed to. The moment he claimed absolved him of all of it. After Caroline had grabbed her clothing and run out the door and I was sobbing on the floor of our apartment, Chase had leaned over me, lifted my chin, and told me, “It didn’t mean anything, babe. I don’t even find her that attractive. It’s just…you kept going on and on about how we havechemistry.And it just…it made me look at her differently.”

And then he said the words that broke me. Truly broke me. “Really, this is your fault, you know,” he’d told me. “I never would have even considered it if you hadn’t put the idea in my head.”

Even remembering it makes me sick with rage. Makes me want to break something. Makes me want to?—

“Earth to Syd!” Jade’s hand appears in front of my face, waving. “Hello? You still in there?”

I blink, pulling myself out of my thoughts and back to reality. The anger I was feeling dissipates into nothing, leaving me feeling oddly shaky and empty in its absence.

Shit. I must have zoned out. What were we talking about? I glance down at the tickets next to the register and remember, my stomach sinking.Oh, right. The charity event.

“No. That’s not happening,” I say decisively. Well… semi-decisively. There’s a little decisiveness in there, I swear. I push the tickets back toward her.

Jade’s eyes are big as a kitten’s as she stares at me. “Oh, comeon.Please?”

I draw a deep breath. Jade’s hair is purple today, a startling change from the pink, but like all the fashion colors she chooses, it suits her somehow. I used to think there was a method to her madness, an emotional explanation behind every color Jade picked when dying her hair.

Now? Now I suspect she just gets bored and grabs whatever bottle of hair dye she finds first, to hell with any logic or reason.

“You have been looking forward to this formonths, Sydney,” Jade whines. “You can’t just not go!”

I frown at the tickets. Expensive tickets. Printed on expensive paper. The calligraphy is handwritten, not printed. Everything about them screams wealth and class. “Yeah, Iwaslooking forward to it. But that was… before,” I finish.

Before. It feels like my life is now permanently divided into two parts:before, when I was still with Chase, andnow. When I’m alone.

“You have two tickets!” Jade presses, tapping them with afingernail. She’s painted them purple too, I notice, to match her new hair. “I’ll even go with you if you need company! But you can’t let that dress go to waste, Sydney. It would be acrime. And I will call the police. I swear I will.”

She’s not wrong. The dress I picked out for the annual Sterling Charity Banquet is extraordinary. And there’s no way I could return it now, so long after buying it and with no idea what happened to the receipt. It would be a waste of money to just let it sit in my closet, forever unworn.

When I first picked up two tickets to the charity banquet almost half a year ago, I was so excited to go I could hardly think of anything else. It sounded like a dream, like something out of a fairytale or one of my romance books. Chase and I, all dressed up and fancy, rubbing elbows with Fortune City’s elite.

Sure, the tickets had beenwaytoo expensive, and the dress had a price tag that almost made me faint when I first saw it, but it was all for charity! And the idea of going there together, of dancing with my boyfriend? It sounded magical. Special.

He'd laughed at me.

I came home so excited that day, giddy to surprise him with a night just for us. Not with our friends, not arguing in our apartment, not in tears. Just one magical night to go back to how things were when we first met. Maybe this would be the thing to fix us. Maybe this would remind him I was supposed to be the love of his life. He would hold me close, press a kiss to my forehead, and we’d dance the night away. Hopelessly, deliriously in love.

But instead, he’d laughed at me.

He said it “wasn’t his thing,” and that was that. Discussion over. I hid the dress in my closet and haven’t felt excited about it since.

I groan, putting my face in my hands and pushing the memories away.

“Youhaveto go, Sydney,” Jade insists. And I know she won’t give up until I agree.

“Fine. I’ll go,” I mutter into my hands. I feel Jade break out her victory dance next to me but refuse to dignify it by looking. Even though her victory dances are glorious. The stuff of legends, really. “But only if you come with me!”

“Yes!” Jade squeals. “Oh, I’m going to meet a rich sugar momma, just you wait. This time next week, I’ll be retired on a private beach in Fiji.”

“And leave me here, to run this place all on my own?” I lower my hands to glower at her. “You wouldn’tdare.”

“The heart wants what it wants, Sydney. What can I say?” Jade lifts her shoulder in a casual shrug. “You wouldn’t stand in the way of me and true love, would you?”