Chapter 8

The air on the rooftop terrace was thick with the scent of roasted peanuts, expensive perfume, and the electric charge of a thousand people waiting for the sky to break open. I stood near the railing, the cool metal pressing against my palms, watching the city below pulse like a living heart. Above us, the Manhattan skyline was a jagged silhouette of black and gold, but my eyes kept drifting back to him. Julian. He stood just behind me, close enough that I could feel the radiating heat of his body, close enough that the faint, masculine scent of sandalwood and cedarwood clung to my skin, mixing with the summer humidity. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The silence between us was heavy, charged with the unspoken promise of what we had done, and what we were about to leave behind. We had spent the last three hours in a bubble of our own making, ignoring the rest of the party, the clinking glasses, the laughter of friends who thought we were just two colleagues enjoying the holiday. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know that under the table, our knees had been pressed together, a silent anchor in