POV: Florence
After dinner we drifted back into the living room, parents included, and the night settled into that easy rhythm of old stories and fresh embarrassment. River and Brielyn's girlfriends got the full treatment: every humiliating childhood memory dragged out and polished up for maximum effect while the boys tried and failed to shut us down.
Killian had gone quiet toward me specifically. All night his eyes found everyone else in that room without effort, easy smiles, easy laughs, but the second they landed on me they moved somewhere else just as fast.
He was avoiding me. Plain as that.
Made sense, I told myself. What we'd had was one night, no names attached until they were forced on us, no strings, no expectations. Strangers who'd stopped being strangers for exactly one even
