I pushed through and found Sloane standing in front of her floor-length mirror, fussing with her hair in a way that suggested she’d been fussing with it for twenty minutes and was now annoyed at herself for caring this much.

She’d gone with the dress.

Black, fitted, shorter than anything she’d wear to class. The straps sat thin on her shoulders, the neckline low enough to make a statement without making a promise, the hem stopping mid-thigh in a way that put her legs on display and dared anyone to mention it. Her pink hair was down for once, loose around her shoulders instead of pulled into the high ponytail she used for training, and she’d put on makeup, subtle, just enough to make her blue eyes look brighter and her lips look fuller.

The choker was there. Always there. Black against her throat like a statement of identity.

"Hey." My voice came out rougher than I’d intended.

She met my eyes in the mirror. Something flickered in her expression, quick, satisfied, gone before she could pretend it wasn’t there.

"You wore the blue thing."

"You told me to."

"I suggested." She turned away from the mirror, facing me fully, and crossed her arms in a way that pushed her modest chest up slightly. The dress did not have a lot of room for error. "There’s a difference."

"Uh huh."

"Stop staring."

"No."

Her cheeks went pink. The flush crept down her neck, across her collarbone, toward territory the dress barely concealed. Nine years I’d known this girl. Nine years of watching her blush when I said things that landed too accurately, nine years of the gap between her aggressive presentation and the softness underneath, and it still did something to me every single time.

"You’re doing it on purpose." She tried for annoyed and landed somewhere closer to breathless. "The staring. You know it makes me, you know."

"Makes you what?"

"Shut up."

"Tell me."

"Lukas."

"Sloane."

She crossed the distance between us in three steps and grabbed the front of my shirt, dragging me down to her height, which was a full eight inches shorter than mine, and kissed me like she’d been thinking about it all day.

Which she had. I could feel it through the bond, the accumulated tension of hours spent in classes that weren’t anywhere near as interesting as my mouth, the frustration of sitting through Hero Law while imagining this exact moment.

"Mmph." The sound came from her, muffled against my lips. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling, and I let her pull, let her set the pace, let her have the control she needed because Sloane Fitzgerald handled vulnerability by pretending she was in charge of it.

When she finally released me we were both breathing harder than the contact warranted.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey."

"You’re late."

"I’m early."

"You smell different." Her eyes narrowed, sharp, the observation landing before I’d had time to decide how to handle it. "Not bad different. Just different. Like, nngh." She leaned in, pressing her nose to my collar, inhaling. "Vanilla? You don’t use vanilla anything."

And there it was.

I could lie. Sloane would believe me if I committed hard enough. We’d had this conversation a dozen times in the last month, the one where I told her I understood what I was asking and she told me she’d try to be okay with it even when she wasn’t, and lying now would set all of that progress on fire.

"I was with Felicity today."

The words sat between us. Sloane went very still.

"With," she repeated. "Define with."

"She took me to the campus theater. The Reel. We watched a movie. Things, ah." I met her eyes because looking away would be worse. "Things got physical."

"Physical." Her jaw tightened. The competitive fire flared in her expression, familiar, the same look she got when someone scored higher than her on a combat assessment. "How physical."

"Not all the way. But close."

"Close."

"Sloane."

"I’m processing." She stepped back. Turned away. Her shoulders were rigid under the thin straps of the dress, her hands clenched at her sides. The bond pulsed with emotion, complex, layered, jealousy and anger and something underneath both that felt uncomfortably like relief. "You said you’d tell me. When it happened. With someone else."

"I’m telling you."

"Before I had to ask."

"I’m telling you before you asked."

She laughed. It came out sharp, bitter, and cut off too soon. "You smell like her. You show up to our date smelling like another woman and you expect me to just, what. Be fine with it."

"I expect you to feel whatever you feel." I didn’t move toward her. Didn’t try to touch her. Sloane handled things better when she had space to handle them, and crowding her now would make it worse. "I expect you to be pissed. I expect you to yell. I don’t expect you to be fine with it, because you’re not fine with it, and pretending would be lying to both of us."

She turned. Her eyes were bright, not with tears, Sloane didn’t cry in front of people, but with the intensity that meant she was fighting the urge.

"I hate this."

"I know."

"I hate that I agreed to this."

"I know."

"I hate that part of me, haahh." She dragged her hands through her hair, messing up twenty minutes of careful styling. "Part of me isn’t even surprised. Part of me watched you two at breakfast last week and knew this was coming and decided to be okay with it before it happened because the alternative was losing you entirely and I can’t, I won’t, nnh."

The sound she made was halfway between a growl and a sob. The bond flooded with everything she couldn’t say aloud. The possessiveness. The fear. The deeply buried acknowledgment that she’d chosen this, chosen me, knowing exactly who I was and what I’d eventually ask of her.

I closed the distance between us and pulled her into my chest.

She resisted for a half-second. Then her hands found my shirt again, gripping, and her forehead pressed to my sternum, and she was shaking, fine tremors running through her body that had nothing to do with cold.

"I’m yours." I said it into her hair. "That doesn’t change. Nothing that happens with anyone else changes what you are to me."