Chapter 24: The Gala Trap
The champagne tasted like acid. Dee stood near a towering floral arrangement that probably cost more than her first car, trying to blend with the hydrangeas. The emerald silk of her gown felt like a cage. She’d come for the charity, for the exposure, for any reason other than the faint, stupid hope she’d buried after the numb emptiness of Alex’s floor. She was here to move on.
Then she saw him.
Matt Bomer stood twenty feet away, a glass of whiskey in his hand, listening to some studio exec with a placid, bored smile. The charcoal tuxedo fit him like a second skin, the lights catching the silver in his hair. Her breath hitched, a physical jolt to her system. She hadn’t known. He hadn’t known. That was the brutal, unspoken rule they’d shattered. No calls. No texts. Just the echoing memory of her hand connecting with his cheek in the stark silence of his apartment.
She turned to flee, to find the bathroom, the exit, any hole to crawl into.
“Dee! Over here!”
A voice, bright and merciless, cut through the murmur. Sarah Lin from Celebrity Pulse, phone already up, camera app open. Her eyes darted between Dee and Matt like she’d just hit the jackpot. “You two! Come on, one picture for the feed. The internet misses you.”
Matt’s head turned. His blue eyes found hers across the gilded room. For a fraction of a second, all the polished charm vanished, replaced by something raw and startled. Then it was gone, smoothed over into a pleasant mask. He gave the exec a parting nod and started toward them, his gait easy, as if this was all planned.
Dee’s feet were rooted to the parquet. Play the game. Always play the game.
He stopped beside her, the familiar scent of his cologne—sandalwood and something clean—wrapping around her, a scent that used to make her feel safe. Now it just felt like a trap.
“Sarah,” Matt said, his voice a warm, practiced rumble. He slid an arm around Dee’s waist. His hand settled on the dip of her spine, a point of contact that burned through the layers of silk. She forced her muscles not to stiffen, forced a smile onto her face.
“There we go! A little closer,” Sarah chirped.
Dee leaned into his side, her cheek hovering near his shoulder. She felt the taut strength of him, remembered the feel of that same body pulling away from her in a different kind of silence. The camera flashed once, twice, three times, blinding her.
“You could have warned me,” she hissed under her breath, the smile still plastered on her face.
His own smile didn’t waver. “My team doesn’t exactly run my schedule by yours anymore, Dee.” His voice was low, for her alone. The words were casual, but the subtext was a minefield. Since you walked out. Since you hit me. “But we have to play the game.”
Sarah lowered her phone, beaming. “Perfect! You two are just… perfect. The followers are going to melt. How’s the collaboration going? Any new videos in the works?”
Matt’s hand tightened infinitesimally on her back. Dee felt the pressure like a brand.
“We’re always scheming, Sarah,” Dee heard herself say, her tone miraculously light, teasing. She tilted her head up to look at Matt, and damn if it didn’t feel like the hardest acting job of her life. “Isn’t that right? He’s just been swamped with that new thriller. I can barely get a booking.”
She watched his jaw flex. He looked down at her, and for the public, it was a look of fond amusement. For her, it was a challenge, a question. “You know you’re always my first priority, Waldorf. My hair has been a tragedy without you.”
The banter was there, the easy rhythm they’d built over countless hours in her salon studio. But every syllable was glass, ready to cut.
“A national tragedy,” Dee agreed, laughing a little too brightly. “I’ve seen the paparazzi shots. Brutal.”
Sarah laughed, eating it up. Another photographer drifted over, sensing the photo op. Matt’s arm stayed around her, a prison of perfect propriety. They turned, posed, smiled. He whispered something in her ear that made her laugh again, a hollow, pretty sound. He leaned his head against hers for a shot, and the ghost of his breath on her temple sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with the room’s chill.
They were good at this. Damn them, they were so good. They could sell this story of effortless friendship to anyone in the room.
When the small crowd of phones finally dispersed, searching for the next shiny thing, the space around them became a vacuum. The noise of the event faded to a dull roar. Matt’s hand finally dropped from her back, the absence of its weight suddenly as profound as its presence.
She stepped away, putting a foot of expensive carpet between them. The icy mask she’d worn since his apartment threatened to crack. “I need a drink,” she muttered, not looking at him.
“Dee.”
“Don’t.” She finally met his gaze. The charming mask was gone from his face too, replaced by a weary intensity. She saw the faint, long-healed cut on his lip from a stunt weeks ago, remembered the way it had felt under her thumb when she’d tended to a smaller one years ago. The memory was a physical ache.
“We should talk,” he said, his voice stripped bare of its performer’s resonance.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She hugged herself, feeling the ghost of Alex’s hands, the frantic, empty purging of that night. It hadn’t worked. Nothing worked. “The game’s over for now. You can go mingle with your actual friends.”
She turned to go, the emerald silk swirling around her legs.
His voice stopped her, quiet but carrying. “It wasn’t what you thought. That night.”
She froze. The ballroom, the chandeliers, the perfume of a thousand roses—it all sharpened into a single, painful point. He was talking about the slap. About the woman in his apartment. About everything she’d run from.
She didn’t turn back. She couldn’t. If she looked at him now, she’d either start crying or start screaming, and this gown was too expensive for both.
“It never is,” she said, and walked away, leaving him standing alone in the shimmering light, the perfect picture of a man who had everything and nothing at all.