“Hey,” Eli said, coming up beside me, hand sliding up under my hair to the back of my neck and squeezing gently. “What’s going on?”
“Maven thinks I’m balanced.”
He glanced at Maven, who smiled, and then back at me. “Well, that’s a nice compliment she just gave you, don’t you think?”
“Sure, but it’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Eli replied easily, smiling at me. “You have an amazing career, and you’ve got your personal life sorted now. You’re the very definition of balance.”
“Now,” I countered. “Now I am, but not before. Not for all the time she’s known me.”
He squinted at me. “I think you have been, and I think that’s the point. Don’t you?”
Someone called his name, and he gave my neck a final squeeze and walked away. I watched him cross the room, and it was like there was a light shining on him, illuminating all of him so I couldn’t miss seeing him in all his glory. Eli Kohn, the man I loved, who apparently loved me right back.
Here I was thinking I saw everything and Eli saw nothing, but instead, he’d been going along, under the guise of friendship, loving me the whole time. He did, in fact, give me everything I needed, all the time. What I was missing was sex. I didn’t have a physical relationship with him, but I had everything else, and everyone but me saw it clear as day.
I exhaled sharply, and Maven, who had dropped my hand when Eli walked over, took hold of it again. When I turned to her, she was smiling at me.
“What?” I asked, breathless.
“You didn’t know,” she whispered, utterly delighted. “Oh my God, that’s adorable. You just walk around in your love bubble every day, all confident with the world, and you thought that was all you?”
“I—”
“You didn’t think that him loving you made you impervious to all the bullshit the rest of us were dealing with?”
I was at a loss.
“You need to open your eyes andseethat man over there because, Celso Harrington, we all think you’re beyond lucky, and that goes for the boys too, not just me and Luna and all the girls who swoon every time Eli picks you up after practice.”
“This isn’t high school,” I scolded her.
Maven scoffed. “Like any of us went to high school. I was dancing professionally at fourteen. Weren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So shut up about high school.”
My gaze met hers. “Don’t leave the company yet. See what happens after Lincoln leaves.”
“I have no confidence in Delon,” Maven confessed. “If he allowed a disruption like this once, he’ll do it again.”
“Wait and see. Please.”
“I’ll be here until the end of July. I’ll give it until then.”
It was all I could reasonably ask of her.
“Hey,” Eli called over to us. “Would you come here, please?”
Luna, who’d been chatting up one of the female marshals, rejoined us, and we all clustered around Eli, who was standing in front of a large monitor displaying a photograph of a handsome man in an expensive Italian bespoke suit.
“That’s him,” Maven announced. “I mean, look at him. I bet he gets his picture taken a lot looking like that, but I wouldn’t have bothered if Senan wasn’t there.”
“I one hundred percent agree,” Luna backed up her friend. “I took a pic of him and Senan, not just him. I was sure Senan was getting a little something on the side, and I wanted to screw him over if I could.”
“Same here,” Maven said with a shrug. “I just wanted something on Senan.”