The library was the last place Sophie expected to find him.
She had spent most of the evening avoiding Daniel with a degree of determination that would have been impressive had it not also been completely exhausting. During dinner she'd seated herself between his aunt and a painfully enthusiastic cousin from Edinburgh, survived two hours of speeches without looking towards the top table more than she considered absolutely necessary, and disappeared upstairs before anyone could suggest another glass of champagne. By half past one, the enormous country house had finally surrendered to silence, but sleep had refused to cooperate. She'd lasted another twenty minutes in bed before accepting defeat, pulling on a cardigan over her dress and going downstairs in search of something to read.
Finding the groom standing beside the fireplace was considerably less reasonable.
Daniel looked up when she entered, and for one ridiculous second neither of them spoke. His jacket was draped across the back of a leather chair, his bow tie had disappeared and the top two buttons of his white shirt were undone. A glass of whisky sat untouched beside him. He looked less like a man preparing for his wedding and considerably more like the Daniel she remembered from Sunday mornings six years ago, when shirts were optional, breakfast rarely happened before noon and he'd considered coffee an adequate substitute for most nutritional requirements.
She hated that she remembered all of that. She hated even more that her body apparently remembered him too.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, keeping one hand on the brass door handle as though physical contact with the exit might somehow qualify as good judgement.
One corner of his mouth lifted. "It's my father's library."
"You know perfectly well what I mean."
"I do." He picked up his whisky, looked at it for a moment and placed it down again without drinking. "You shouldn't be here either."
"I came down for something to read. It's a library, Daniel. People occasionally do that in them."
"At two in the morning?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"Neither could I."
She released the door handle before realising that doing so meant she'd apparently decided to stay. "You're getting married tomorrow. Aren't you supposed to be excited?"
Something changed in his expression, so slight she might have missed it if she hadn't once known every version of his face. "Is that what I'm supposed to be?"
There it was. The reason she'd avoided him all weekend. Daniel had always possessed a remarkable talent for taking an ordinary conversation and finding the one sentence capable of making it dangerous.
"Don't do this," she said.
"Do what?"
"Whatever this is. I'm not interested."
His eyebrows lifted. "You don't even know what this is."
"Exactly. And I'd like to keep it that way."
That almost made him smile. Almost. Instead he watched her for long enough that she became conscious of the distance between them, the silence in the house and the fact that the only thing separating them from several spectacularly bad decisions was approximately fifteen feet of antique carpet.
"We haven't spoken properly in three years," she said.
"Four."
Sophie stared at him. Of course he knew exactly how long it had been.
Their last proper conversation had taken place in the kitchen of her flat at seven seventeen on a Tuesday morning. She remembered the time because she'd watched the clock rather than look at him while he'd explained why taking the job in New York was something he had to do. She'd told him to go. He'd asked her to come. She'd refused. Neither of them had been brave enough to say what they actually wanted, and by nine o'clock he'd been gone.
"You've been counting?" she asked.
"Haven't you?"
"No."
"Liar."
She nearly smiled, which annoyed her enough to make her turn towards the shelves. "I came down for a book. I'm going to choose one and go back upstairs, and tomorrow I'm going to watch you get married like a perfectly normal, well-adjusted adult."
"That sounds ambitious."
"Fuck you."
"There's the Sophie I remember."
She turned to glare at him just as music began playing somewhere behind her.
The first few notes were enough.
Her eyes closed. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I didn't choose it."
"Of course you didn't."
"I pressed shuffle."
"And out of several thousand songs, that one happened to play?"
Daniel glanced towards the speaker and then back at her. "Apparently the universe has a sense of humour."
"The universe is an arsehole."
His laugh came before he could stop it, warm and familiar, and Sophie immediately wished she'd said nothing because hearing that sound again was considerably more dangerous than the music.
It had been their song without ever officially becoming their song. There had been no romantic declaration attached to it, no anniversary, no sentimental story they told friends. It had simply played one evening in his first apartment while they'd eaten Thai food from cartons on the floor because Daniel had owned an obscenely expensive sound system and precisely one chair. Halfway through dinner he'd stood, offered her his hand and announced that she was dancing with him.
She'd laughed at him then too.
And she'd danced with him anyway.
Now Daniel crossed the library and stopped in front of her. He didn't say anything immediately, which was worse because Sophie knew what was coming before he extended his hand.
"One dance."
"No."
"Sophie."
"Absolutely not."
He kept his hand there. "Why?"
She stared at him in disbelief. "You're getting married tomorrow."
"I know."
The simplicity of his answer stripped every trace of humour from the room.
Somewhere upstairs Olivia was supposed to be sleeping in a bedroom filled with flowers, wedding cards and the dress she'd spent half the evening describing to anyone willing to listen. Sophie had been perfectly pleasant to her. She'd complimented the flowers, admired the earrings Daniel's mother had given her and even listened to a detailed explanation of the seating plan without once allowing herself to think about the fact that she'd once believed Daniel might marry her.
"This is a terrible idea," Sophie said.
"Most of our good ones were."
"That's hardly an argument in your favour."
"No." His hand remained between them. "Probably not."
He should have withdrawn it. She should have walked away. Instead Sophie looked at the hand she had known almost as well as her own and remembered it on her waist, tangled in her hair, reaching across supermarket aisles for things she couldn't reach and once holding hers beneath a restaurant table while her father told them he was ill.
Four years was apparently nowhere near long enough to forget somebody properly.
She placed her hand in his.
Daniel drew her towards him slowly, giving her every opportunity to change her mind. His other hand settled against the bare skin above the low back of her dress, and Sophie's body betrayed her with humiliating efficiency. Heat spread beneath his palm while every sensible thought she'd had on the way downstairs packed its belongings and left.
"This changes nothing," she murmured as she rested her free hand against his shoulder.
"I didn't say it did."
"Good."
"You're talking too much."
"I'm nervous."
The admission escaped before she could stop it. Daniel's thumb moved once against her back, and when he answered, his voice had lost its teasing edge. "So am I."
That surprised her enough to make her look at him. Daniel had always possessed the irritating ability to appear completely in control, particularly when he wasn't, but she knew the signs. The slight tension in his jaw. The way his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around hers. His attention fixed entirely on her as though everything outside the small circle of his arms had ceased to exist.
"You don't look nervous," she said.
"You never looked closely enough."
The words landed harder than they should have. Sophie shifted as if to step away, but his hand tightened gently against her back.
"Don't," he said. "Just finish the dance."
So she did.
They moved slowly between the shelves while candlelight flickered across his face and rain tapped against the tall windows. Sophie became painfully aware of every place they touched: his fingers threaded through hers, his chest brushing her when he turned her, the warmth of his hand against her bare back and the faint trace of the cologne she'd spent years pretending she no longer remembered. When she moved closer, she told herself it was because of the dance.
Then she saw his left hand.
It was bare.
She stopped so abruptly Daniel almost walked into her. "Where's your ring?"
His gaze remained on hers. "Upstairs."
"Why?"
He released a slow breath. "Because I couldn't wear it when I came down here."
Sophie stepped out of his arms. The sudden absence of his hand against her back felt colder than it had any right to. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
"No, it isn't." She folded her arms, partly because she was angry and partly because she needed something to do with them. "Jesus Christ, Daniel. What are you doing? You don't get to stand here looking at me like that ten hours before you marry somebody else and tell me you don't know."
"What would you prefer I said?"
"The truth would be a refreshing start."
For several seconds he said nothing. Then he turned away, dragging one hand through his hair, and Sophie recognised the gesture immediately. He'd done exactly the same thing whenever they argued and he knew she had a point.
"When Olivia asked whether I wanted you invited, I said yes before she'd finished the question."
Sophie remained silent.
"I told myself it was because we'd all known each other for years. Because not inviting you would look strange. Because we were adults and whatever happened between us was ancient history." Daniel looked at her then, and the expression in his eyes made her wish she'd stayed upstairs. "Then you walked into dinner last night wearing that dress."
She glanced down instinctively. "What's wrong with my dress?"
A short, humourless laugh escaped him. "Absolutely nothing. That's the fucking problem."
Her pulse stumbled.
Daniel came closer, though this time he stopped before touching her. "I've spent two days watching you talk to everybody except me. I've watched you laugh with my brother, dance with my father, compliment Olivia on the flowers and behave as though you and I once having a life together is something you barely remember."
"We didn't have a life together."
"We nearly did."
"And then you left."
"I asked you to come."
"You asked me three days before you moved to another continent."
"I thought you'd say yes."
"I thought you'd stay."
The words were out before Sophie could pull them back.
Daniel went completely still.
For four years she'd convinced herself that morning had ended because they'd wanted different things. It was cleaner that way. Easier. He had chosen New York and she'd chosen London, and two adults who loved each other had simply discovered that love wasn't enough.
Except that wasn't what had happened at all.
"You never said that," Daniel said.
"You never asked."
"I asked you to come with me."
"That's not the same thing and you bloody know it. You'd already accepted the job, already found an apartment, already decided what our life was going to become, and then you asked whether I'd like to tag along."
His jaw tightened. "I waited at the airport."
Her anger faltered. "What?"
"For an hour."
Sophie stared at him.
"I changed your ticket twice because I convinced myself you were going to appear. Every time somebody came through those doors with dark hair, I thought it was you." His voice dropped. "I didn't board until they told me they were closing the gate."
She didn't know what to do with that information. It arrived four years too late and landed somewhere painfully close to everything she'd spent those four years trying to bury.
"You still went."
"Yes."
"And now you're marrying Olivia."
Daniel looked at her for a long moment. "No."
Sophie frowned. "What?"
"I'm not marrying Olivia tomorrow."
The library seemed suddenly too quiet.
She stared at him, waiting for the sentence to rearrange itself into something that made sense. It didn't. "What do you mean you're not marrying her?"
Daniel reached into his trouser pocket and placed something on the table beside them.
His wedding ring.
"What did you do?"
"I spoke to Olivia before dinner."
"Before dinner?" Sophie's voice rose despite the sleeping house above them. "You let me spend the entire evening sitting there believing there was a wedding tomorrow when there isn't?"
"Nobody knows yet. She didn't want tonight turned into gossip before we'd spoken to our families. She left about an hour ago to stay with her sister."
Sophie thought back over the evening and suddenly details she'd ignored began rearranging themselves. Olivia disappearing early. Daniel's mother drinking rather more champagne than usual. His father vanishing after the speeches. The strange tension she'd dismissed as nerves.
"You cancelled your wedding."
"We cancelled our wedding."
"Because of me?"
"No." His answer came immediately, and despite herself something in Sophie's chest loosened. "I didn't end my engagement for you. I ended it because Olivia asked me a question I should have asked myself months ago."
"What question?"
"Whether I loved her enough to marry her."
Sophie swallowed. "And you don't?"
"I love her. Just not the way a man should love the woman he's about to promise the rest of his life to." His eyes held hers. "And marrying her while wondering whether another woman might walk into the room would have been a spectacularly cruel thing to do."
Sophie looked away. She didn't want to know who he meant. Worse, she already did.
"And now?" she asked.
"Now I'm standing in a library at two in the morning having the conversation with you that we should have had four years ago."
Daniel lifted his hand towards her face but stopped before touching her. It was such a small thing, that hesitation, yet Sophie felt it everywhere. The man she'd known had always been certain of her. Certain she would kiss him back, certain she would reach for him, certain she'd be there when he turned around.
This time he waited.
She could have stepped back.
She didn't.
His fingertips brushed her cheek, and the contact was so gentle it irritated her almost as much as everything else about him. She had prepared herself for anger, perhaps even for regret. She had not prepared for tenderness.
"This is still a terrible idea," she whispered.
"Almost certainly."
"You've just cancelled a wedding."
"I am painfully aware of that."
"I'm not going home with you."
"I haven't asked."
"You were going to."
"Eventually."
She laughed before she could stop herself, and his mouth curved into the smile that had once persuaded her into missed trains, expensive hotel rooms and one memorable swim in the Mediterranean at three in the morning when both of them had been old enough to know better.
There he was.
The impossible, infuriating man she'd loved enough to let go because neither of them had known how to ask the other to stay.
Daniel's thumb moved slowly along her cheek. "One thing at a time, Sophie. I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight. I'm not asking you to decide anything. I'm certainly not asking you to trust a man who was supposed to be standing at an altar tomorrow morning."
"Good, because that would be an exceptionally difficult sales pitch."
"I know."
"What are you asking?"
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth before returning to hers. "Finish the dance with me."
Sophie glanced towards the speaker. "The song ended."
"I'll play it again."
"Absolutely not."
"Why?"
"Because we've already made enough terrible decisions to that song."
Daniel's smile deepened. "Fair point."
She stepped away from him and walked towards the music player. Behind her, she could feel him watching, but for once he didn't follow. He didn't persuade, didn't tease, didn't reach for her. He simply gave her the space to decide what happened next.
Perhaps that was why she stopped.
Through the tall windows, the black sky was beginning to soften at its edges. Dawn was still some distance away, but morning was coming, and with it would come explanations, embarrassed relatives, cancelled flowers, unanswered questions and the inevitable discovery that four lost years couldn't be repaired during one conversation in a candlelit library.
Sophie knew that.
She also knew she wasn't ready to go upstairs.
She scrolled through the music until she found something she liked, pressed play and turned around.
Daniel was still beside the fireplace.
"Well?" he asked.
She held out her hand.
His expression changed, and for the first time that evening she saw something in his face she hadn't expected.
Relief.
"One dance," she warned as he crossed the room.
"Of course."
"And tomorrow we talk."
"Properly?"
"Painfully."
"I was afraid you'd say that."
His fingers closed around hers, and this time when his hand settled against her back she didn't pretend she wasn't pleased to feel it there.
They began to move.
No promises. No declarations. No convenient rewriting of the years they'd spent apart. There would be time for anger tomorrow, and explanations, and perhaps the uncomfortable discovery that wanting somebody after four years was very different from knowing how to build a life with them.
But for the first time in a very long while, neither of them was leaving.
And for tonight, Sophie decided, that was enough.
Seraphine 🖤