Somewhere Between Us

Chapter 8: Playing Pretend in Public

The invitation had called it a "fundraising gala for children's medical research," which meant, in practice, several hundred wealthy people standing in a ballroom pretending to care about a silent auction while actually watching each other's outfits. Zoey stood at the edge of it in an emerald dress that Dylan got for her, a glass of champagne she wasn't drinking, and Dylan's hand resting warm and easy against the small of her back.

"Smile," he murmured. "There's a photographer at three o'clock and he's been circling us for ten minutes."

"I am smiling."

"That's your customer-service smile. I need the real one."

"You don't get the real one for free."

"Fair." He turned her, subtly, angling them both toward the light, and murmured something in her ear that had nothing to do with the photographer at all, something about the man across the room wearing a bow tie shaped like a duck, delivered so dryly that her laugh came out completely unguarded, bright and real, exactly in time for the camera's shutter.

"There it is," he said, satisfied, like he'd engineered the whole thing on purpose. Which, she realized a beat too late, he probably had.

"You're better at this than you should be."

"I've had a lot of practice being watched." Something flickered behind the words, gone before she could examine it, replaced immediately by the easy performance he wore like a second suit. "Come on. There are people I'm supposed to charm into believing this deal is a sure thing."

The evening dissolved into a blur of introductions, investors, board members, a senator's wife who complimented Zoey's dress twice and asked, both times, exactly how she and Dylan had met, a question Zoey had by now polished into something smooth and unremarkable. She was good at this part, she realized somewhere around the fourth conversation. Good at reading a room, good at knowing which questions deserved real answers and which deserved a laugh and a change of subject. It was, in its own strange way, not unlike waiting tables, everyone wanting something, everyone easier to manage if you figured out what that was quickly enough.

Dylan, for his part, was magnetic in the way she was slowly learning was entirely genuine and not performed at all, people gravitated to him, laughed too easily at things that weren't especially funny, seemed to want, above all else, his attention. She watched him work a circle of investors with the same lazy confidence he'd used on her in a coffee shop weeks ago, and thought, not for the first time, that it must be exhausting, being the kind of person everyone wanted a piece of.

It was during a lull near the bar that a man in his fifties, silver-templed and faintly self-satisfied, sidled up to Dylan with the particular energy of someone who considered himself an old friend despite clear evidence to the contrary.

"Sterling. Been a while." He clapped Dylan's shoulder, gaze flicking to Zoey with polite, appraising interest. "And this must be the wife everyone's talking about."

"Zoey, this is Marcus Feld. He runs Feld Capital, and he's spent the last decade trying to buy out my company at a discount."

"Slander," Feld said cheerfully. "I've spent the last decade offering you very generous exits you keep declining." He turned back to Zoey, dropping his voice into something conspiratorial, the tone of a man who enjoyed being the one with information. "You know, it's still the talk of certain circles, how quickly this one built his empire back up. One minute the company's practically dormant, the old man barely holding things together near the end, and the next," he snapped his fingers, "Dylan's running the whole operation like he'd been groomed for it his entire life. Some of us have theories."

"Theories," Dylan repeated, voice light, though Zoey caught the almost imperceptible stillness that settled over him, the kind of tension a person learned to hide only through years of practice.

"Nothing sinister. Just, it's an unusual inheritance story, is all. Man shows up out of nowhere after years off the map, takes the helm like it's nothing." Feld shrugged, already losing interest, already scanning the room for his next conversation. "People talk. You know how it is."

"I do," Dylan said, and smoothly redirected the conversation toward something about the fundraiser's silent auction, and within thirty seconds Feld had wandered off entirely, satisfied with having delivered his little piece of gossip, unaware he'd left anything behind at all.

Zoey said nothing, but the words sat with her the rest of the evening, years off the map, out of nowhere, another small, strange detail that didn't quite fit with anything Dylan had told her about himself, joining in a growing pile of things she didn't understand yet and wasn't sure she was allowed to ask about.

Zoey was standing near the dessert table when a woman approached, stunning, poised, clearly familiar with Dylan in a way that made something small and unwelcome twist in Zoey's chest before she'd even fully registered why.

"Dylan Sterling," the woman said, sliding into his space with the easy confidence of someone who'd done it before. "I heard the rumors, but I didn't believe them until now."

"Vivienne." Dylan's voice carried genuine warmth, the kind that made Zoey's grip tighten slightly around her champagne glass. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"I go where the money is. You should know that better than anyone." Vivienne's gaze slid to Zoey, assessing, not unkind but thorough, the way one might inventory competition. "So this is the wife. I have to say, I didn't picture you settling down quite this... suddenly."

"Life's full of surprises." Dylan's arm found its way around Zoey's waist, an easy, practiced motion that should have felt like performance and somehow, in that moment, felt like something else entirely. "Zoey, Vivienne and I dated. Briefly. Ages ago."

"Briefly is generous," Vivienne said, amused. "But sure. Ages ago." She lingered a moment longer than necessary, something considering in her expression, before excusing herself toward the bar with a parting look that Zoey couldn't quite decipher.

"You didn't have to do that," Zoey said, once Vivienne was out of earshot.

"Do what?"

"The whole," she gestured vaguely at his arm, still resting at her waist, "performance."

"Wasn't a performance." He said it simply, almost surprised by his own honesty, and didn't move his arm. "I don't particularly enjoy watching women look at you like an obstacle."

The admission landed somewhere she wasn't prepared for, warm and unsettling in equal measure, and she found herself without a witty response for the first time in weeks. Dylan seemed equally thrown by his own candor, clearing his throat and reaching for his drink with the air of a man retreating from a door he hadn't meant to open.

"Anyway," he said, too casually. "Ready to go home? I've charmed enough investors for one evening."

"Past ready."

They said their goodbyes in stages, the way these things always seemed to require, another twenty minutes of handshakes and promises to follow up, Marguerite intercepting them near the coat check with a kiss on each cheek and a comment about how lovely they looked together, her eyes tracking something in Dylan's face for a beat too long before she smiled and let them go.

It wasn't until they were in the car, the city sliding past dark and glittering outside the window, that Zoey allowed herself to replay the evening properly, the photograph that would run somewhere tomorrow, the senator's wife's question, Feld's careless little grenade of gossip, the warmth of Dylan's arm at her waist that had lingered a beat too long to be entirely business.

"Feld's an i***t," Dylan said suddenly, into the quiet, like he'd been turning something over the whole ride and finally decided to address it. "For what it's worth. People like theories. Doesn't mean there's anything to them."

"I didn't ask."

"You were thinking about it. I could tell." He glanced at her, something careful in the look, testing the edges of a subject he clearly didn't want examined too closely. "Just, don't put too much stock in gossip from a man who's been trying to buy my company for a decade."

"Okay," she said, because it seemed like the answer he needed, though the word theories stayed with her all the way home, small pieces of a shape she still couldn't quite see.