Kelly slid off her stool, already digging through her clutch, “Bathroom emergency.
Don’t let anyone steal my seat.” She pulled out her car key fob and dropped it into Camille’s palm without waiting for a response.
“Hold that for me — this bag has zero room left and I refuse to lose it in this crowd.”
“Since when do you trust me with your car?”
“Since you’re the only person here I trust with anything.” Kelly was already walking backward, pointing a warning finger.
“Don’t move.” Then she was gone, swallowed into the crowd near the hallway signs.
Camille turned the fob over once in her hand, dropped it into her own clutch, and reached for her drink again — content, for a minute, to just sit with the noise.
That was when the ruby-red dress cut through the crowd toward her.
Camille’s stomach dropped before she’d even finished turning around.
She’d have known that voice anywhere — sharp under its sugar, the same one that used to trail her through lecture halls years ago, laced with an envy she’d never once understood how to defuse.
“…Brielle.”
Brielle’s smile only widened at the recognition, like she’d been waiting for it.
“Still just as easy to unsettle, I see.” She slid onto Kelly’s empty stool without being invited, propping one elbow on the bar.
“Where’s your shadow tonight?
Usually you don’t go anywhere without her.”
“She’ll be back.”
“Pity.
I was hoping for an audience.” Brielle’s eyes swept over Camille’s dress and back up to her face, slow and deliberate.
“You look exactly the same.
Not a single improvement.”
The bartender reappeared.
“What can I get you, Miss?”
“Cosmopolitan.” The moment he stepped away, Brielle’s attention swung straight back to Camille.
“I met Adrian Romano tonight, actually.” She drew a sleek black card from her handbag, edged in gold, tilting it so the light caught the lettering just right.
“Gave it to me himself.
His private line.
An invitation to his residence.” She tucked it away like something rare.
“That’s the kind of attention people notice.
The kind of status that demands a room’s respect.”
Camille lifted her glass, keeping her face still.
“I’m happy for you.”
The reply landed harder than any insult could have.
Brielle’s laugh sharpened at the edges.
“You know, it’s funny — I was just thinking.
Same hall as the almighty Camille Wilson.” Her fingers curled into mocking air quotes.
“And I’m the one turning heads tonight.
Reminds me of college, doesn’t it?
Every professor adored you.
You made everything look effortless.”
Her smile went cold at the corners.
“Guess life finally showed you your place.
Underneath me.
Must sting, having your life now.
Doesn’t it?”
Camille’s breathing caught, just barely.
She lifted her drink again, chasing a calm that had already left the building.
“I used to wonder,” Brielle went on, leaning in like she was sharing a secret rather than delivering a blow, “what it would take for someone like you to finally stop acting so perfect.” A pause, timed to cut.
“Then life answered that for me.
When you lost your mum.”
Something flickered across Camille’s face — there and gone, too fast to name — but Brielle caught it anyway, and her smile widened like she’d just won something.
“Funny, isn’t it?
One bad night, and the girl everyone worshipped forgot how to smile.”
“Stop it, Brielle.” Camille’s fingers tightened around the glass until her knuckles paled.
“Oh, I’ve barely started.”
Kelly came back from the restroom just then, slowing the second she felt the air change.
Her eyes moved from Brielle’s face to Camille’s and stayed there.
“What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Camille said, too quiet to be convincing.
“We were just reminiscing,” Brielle said sweetly.
Kelly didn’t buy a word of it.
She slid back onto the other stool beside Carmille, her gaze directed at her, watching Camille’s jaw tighten by degrees.
“I almost feel sorry for you,” Brielle continued, unbothered by the audience she was gathering.
“Some people never really recover.
You can bury the past as deep as you like — it always claws its way back up.”
The music seemed to recede without actually getting quieter — laughter, glasses clinking, someone whooping near the dance floor, all of it blurring at the edges of Camille’s hearing like it was happening in another room entirely.
Kelly understood exactly what Brielle had just done, and something in her expression went flat and dangerous as she stood.
“Shut your mouth, or walk away from us.
Pick one.”
“Watch your tone.”
“Excuse you.”
“You know I’m right.
You can’t even deny it.”
Kelly’s palm hit the marble hard enough to turn heads two stools down.
You don’t get to talk about her past at all.”
Brielle folded her arms, entirely unmoved.
“There she is.
Loyal to the last.
The sooner someone hands her the truth, the sooner she actually has to face it.”
Nearby guests were turning now, drawn by the rising voices the way people always are by a fight that isn’t theirs.
The bartender froze mid-pour.
Kelly’s hands curled into fists at her sides.
“Apologize.”
“For telling the truth?”
Neither of them noticed Camille slide off her stool, drop enough cash on the counter to cover both drinks, and walk away — throat locked too tight around anything she might have said, Kelly’s voice already fading behind her as she pushed through the crowd and out into the cold.
The night air did nothing to loosen the fist closed around her chest.
Kelly’s key fob was already in her hand from earlier — she hadn’t thought to give it back, and no one had thought to ask for it.
She fumbled the car door open with fingers that wouldn’t quite hold still, dropped into the driver’s seat, and gripped the wheel like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
She breathed in.
Out.
It didn’t help.
Some people never really recover kept circling, looping tighter each time it came back around, until she started the engine just to have something else to listen to.
She pulled into traffic without fully registering she’d done it.
Neon smeared past the windows in long colored streaks.
The radio murmured something she didn’t hear a word of, because her mind had already gone somewhere else entirely — back to a marble floor, a lazy voice, a sound that fourteen years had never once managed to soften.
“No.” She said it out loud, like it might actually work this time.
“I’m not doing this right now.” Her foot pressed down harder without her permission, the city blurring faster past the glass —
— and a figure staggered out of a dark side street, straight into the road.
Her eyes went wide.
“Oh my God—”
Both feet slammed the brake at once.
SCREEEECH.
The tires tore a long scream through the night as the car lurched, and for one suspended half-second she saw him clearly — a tall man swaying, white shirt gone dark and wet at the abdomen, one side of his face bruised, every step visibly costing him whatever strength he had left to give.
Then he hit the hood and rolled, and the road took the rest.
The silence after was total.
Her heart slammed against her ribs loud enough to drown out everything else, hands still locked white-knuckled around the wheel.
“Oh God.” She threw the door open and half-fell out onto the asphalt.
He wasn’t moving.
Blood was already spreading beneath him, dark and unhurried, soaking into the pavement like it had all the time in the world.
Her breath went ragged in her throat.
“What have I done.”
She asked herself, as she glanced around, hoping to call for help, but the road was just lonely apart from the two of them.