Page 188 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
Before either of us can say more, a waiter appears at our elbows with a silver tray.
“Champagne?”
Maria takes one immediately. So does Cheyenne, both of them with the shameless enthusiasm of girls who have decided tonight is for bad choices dressed elegantly. The waiter turns to Silas next, offering him a glass with the same polite little nod.
Silas doesn’t take it.
His gaze has already shifted past the tray, past the little clusters of talking people, all the way to the dance floor where the music has softened into something slower. The lights there are dimmer, the couples moving in quiet little circles that make the whole thing look easy from a distance.
“Not tonight,” he says absently.
Tightening his arm around my waist, he yanks me with him before I can ask what he’s doing.
A laugh escapes me on instinct, half startled, half delighted, my arms wrapping around his neck as he moves us through the edge of the crowd. People part for him automatically. A few of them stare. A few more pretend not to. I catch questioning looks from girls I know, from boys I don’t, from one professor wholooks mildly scandalized. Silas either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care enough to pretend he does.
He stops with us at the edge of the dance floor, where the music is loud enough to settle into the body instead of just the ears.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, my voice caught between laughter and panic. “I can’t dance.”
“Neither can I,” he says with a grin. “I’m not missing an opportunity to at least try to give you a perfect date.”
The word catches me off guard badly enough that I blink.
“Date?” I repeat, softer now.
He sets me properly in front of him, both hands finding my waist with an ease that suggests they were always meant to live there.
My smile grows despite myself. “Silas Corvin, is this your way of asking me on a date?”
His mouth quirks, the look in his eyes a little too pleased with himself. He leans in just enough that his answer brushes warm against my cheek.
“Well,” he murmurs, glancing briefly at the room around us, at the school already watching, “the whole school sees us now. What do I have to lose?”
The joke is light, but the truth of it still glows underneath.
Nothing is hidden anymore.
Not really.
“Noted,” I say, smiling as my arms settle more comfortably around his neck. “It’s about time you asked me out.”
That earns me a real laugh, devastating for how rare it still is. One of his hands shifts slightly at my waist, drawing me closer until the space between us disappears. Around us, the formal continues to murmur.
At the center of all of it, Silas looks down at me like this might actually be a date. Like the lights, music and the room full ofstaring people don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that for once, we are not hiding.
When he starts to move with me, awkward and sure at the same time, I realize I don’t care whether either of us knows how to dance.
The point is that he asked.
His first step is terrible.
So terrible that I laugh into the space between us before I can stop myself, the sound slipping out warm and breathy. Silas’s mouth curves immediately, the hand at my waist tightening just enough to let me know he heard it, that he likes it, that if humiliating himself on a dance floor is what it takes to keep that sound coming out of me, he might actually do it all night.
“Told you,” I murmur. “You can’t dance.”
“Neither can you,” he says, not even pretending to be offended.
The truth of it softens the whole thing. Neither of us is graceful. Neither of us belongs in the neat, polished little circles turning around us. We move too close, even when we’re trying not to be. But somehow that only makes it feel more personal. Less like dancing for the room, more like swaying inside our own private gravity.
