Her perfume was sharp, cloying. Her smile was brittle.
No one turned.
Maddy had floated like a leaf through the groups, had drunk too much wine, laughed a little too riotously, and had hung on the fringe of the conversations that included her very little.
She went so close to Ethan she leaned over him when she arrived.
“You’re watching her again.”
He didn’t reply.
She downed another sip of wine and exhaled through her nose. “You lost her. And now you’re losing me.”
He still didn’t speak. Because it was true.
She scoffed. “Say something, Ethan.”
He turned slowly to face her. “What do you want me to say?”
Maddy’s eyes glistened. “That you regret it. That you regret us.”
His silence was answer enough.
She went as she had come, unseen, but to the guards, who are so tactful as to tu
