Chapter 1:At the club

Thalia hadn’t worn anything but a blazer in four years, and she was starting to remember why.

The dress Mila had zipped her into clung everywhere her work clothes were built to hide, and the heels made her feel like she was standing on stilts outside a building she had no business being in. WESTHOOD CLUB glowed in gold script above the entrance, the kind of place she’d only ever heard mentioned in passing — by coworkers who actually had weekends.

“You promised me one night,” Mila said, looping an arm through hers before Thalia could talk herself back into the cab. “One. It’s your birthday, Thay. You’re twenty-five, not eighty.”

“I have a report due Monday.”

“The report will survive without you for six hours.” Mila pulled her toward the door, and the noise hit before they’d even crossed the threshold — bass through the floor, glass and laughter, the low gold light of a room built for people who never had to think about Monday at all.

Thalia had spent so long avoiding rooms like this that she’d forgotten how loud wanting nothing could feel.

They found the bar. Mila ordered something bright pink and insisted Thalia drink it, and for a while it worked — the tightness in her shoulders eased half a degree, and she let herself watch the room instead of the exits.

That was when she noticed him.

He wasn’t dancing. He wasn’t doing much of anything, which was somehow what made him impossible not to look at — a stillness in a room that didn’t know how to be still, a glass in his hand he wasn’t drinking from, eyes moving over the crowd like he was cataloguing it and finding most of it disappointing.

Then his eyes found her.

Thalia looked away first. She told herself it meant nothing — men like that looked at every woman in a room like it was his to look at — but her pulse hadn’t gotten the message, and neither had the heat crawling up the back of her neck.

“Okay,” Mila said, following her line of sight and grinning. “That’s who you’ve been not-looking at for the last five minutes.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Thay. He’s coming over here.”

He was.

He stopped close enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly, and up close he was worse — sharper jaw, unreadable eyes, a suit that fit like it had been made for exactly this room and no other.

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” he said. No greeting. Like he’d already decided small talk was beneath both of them.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’ve checked the exit twice since I started walking over.” A faint curve at the corner of his mouth. “I’m Alexander.”

“Thalia.” She hadn’t meant to say it. Giving her name to strangers wasn’t something she did — but something about the way he said things made silence feel like the harder option.

“Thalia.” He repeated it slowly, like he was testing the weight of it. “Let me guess. You didn’t want to be here tonight.”

“My best friend disagrees with how I spend my birthdays.”

“And how do you spend them?”

“Working.”

Something shifted in his expression — not quite surprise, more like interest sharpening into focus. “Twenty-five and married to a desk. That’s either very disciplined or very sad.”

“Depends who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

Across the bar, Mila was watching with the barely contained delight of someone already planning how she’d tell this story tomorrow. Thalia ignored her.

“Disciplined,” Thalia said. “Most days.”

“Most days.” He said it like he’d filed the exception away for later. “Dance with me, Thalia-who-works-on-her-birthday.”

“I don’t dance.”

“Then let’s make tonight the exception too.”

She should have said no. She’d said no to easier things than this.

But the champagne Mila had been feeding her all night had gone past pleasant into something warmer, looser — her usual guardrails felt like someone else’s rules tonight, not hers. When he took her hand to lead her onto the floor, she was aware of every point of contact: his palm against hers, the heat of him even through his jacket sleeve.

They didn’t really dance. Dancing implied space between two people, and by the second song there wasn’t any. His hand settled low on her back, guiding rather than asking, and every time she meant to step back, her body seemed to have already decided not to.

“You’re not as disciplined as you think,” he murmured against her ear, and she felt it more than heard it.

“Give me one good reason to prove you wrong.”

“I can’t think of a single one.” His mouth grazed her jaw — not quite a kiss. “Come home with me.”

It should have been an easy no. She’d built her whole life on easy no’s. But her pulse was doing something reckless, and four glasses of champagne had quieted the part of her brain that usually ran the numbers on decisions like this, and when he pulled back to actually look at her — waiting, for once, instead of assuming — she heard herself say, “Okay.”

By the time the sun came up, Thalia’s carefully ordered life — the one with no time for men, no time for birthdays, no time for anything that wasn’t work — had already stopped existing, though she wouldn’t understand how completely for another few weeks.

She just didn’t know it yet.