Under the blinding wash of lights and the feverish chaos of the red carpet, perfection was expected demanded at every angle. The air was thick with perfume, flashbulbs, and the silent politics of who stood next to who. Publicists hovered like vultures, stylists stood just off frame with last-minute lint rollers, and celebrities smiled so long their cheekbones ached. This was where brands were built, where illusions were fed to the world in high definition gloss.

Rowe Ellis stood at the center of it all.

He wore his tux like a second skin, sleek and black with lapels so sharp they could cut. His collar was unbuttoned just enough to suggest effortlessness, yet every detail had been calculated by some invisible hand. A few camera crews murmured how good he looked he always did but tonight, there was something off. Something too still about him.

His girlfriend, draped in an iridescent gown that screamed magazine cover, walked slightly ahead of him. Her posture was flawless, chin tilted in defiance of gravity, eyes scanning only where the cameras lived. The two of them made the perfect silhouette until they didn’t.

Rowe reached for her hand with casual familiarity, offering a palm she’d once clung to during their earliest appearances. But tonight, her fingers didn't find his. Instead, she shifted her arm with the tiniest movement graceful, practiced, deliberate and posed on her own. It wasn’t cruel. It was worse. It was indifferent.

He adjusted the sleeve of his jacket as though that could fill the space her hand had left behind. The cameras didn’t miss a beat, but Rowe’s smile faltered just slightly, just enough for someone watching closely to see the truth.

He said something to her. Just a whisper. Something soft, probably kind. And she didn’t even turn.

Only then did his gaze wander.

It slid off the crowd, off the velvet rope, and landed on you. Not far from the flash, just outside the frame. You were posing alone and glance at him giving him a smile. And he saw it.

He saw you.

The corners of his mouth lifted, not like a performance this time but like muscle memory. Then, for the first time all evening, he moved with intention.

He stepped off the main stretch, his handlers murmuring objections behind him as he strode past the photographers with smooth precision. The night swallowed the noise as he neared, as the air changed around him no longer the pop sensation, no longer the man standing next to a woman who didn’t want to be touched.

He paused in front of you, just outside the lights, just inside reach.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, voice low and even. There was a faint rasp in his throat, like he hadn’t spoken all night.

His eyes held a strange kind of warmth tired, restrained, grateful and something else under that, something careful.

He didn’t ask why you were here.

He didn’t need to.

Because in that moment, it wasn’t about the carpet or the cameras or the woman still posing without him.