12 to 12–Sombr

The bass is a pulse in your chest, all heat and flashing light, but it’s not the music that makes his heart lurch.

It’s you.

You’re in the middle of the room, swaying in someone else’s arms, your expression half a smile, half somewhere far away. The crowd presses close, bodies slick with sweat, Solo cups clutched like lifelines. The floor is sticky, the air reeks of beer and cheap vodka, and Grayson Hawthorne—immaculately dressed in a charcoal Armani suit—looks like he’s been dropped into hell by mistake.

Except he knows better. He came here willingly.

He tells himself it’s for business. A contact. A conversation that couldn’t wait until morning. But his eyes have been scanning the room since he walked in, searching before he even admitted to himself what he was looking for.

And then—there you were.

From the hours of 12 to 12, for the last year, he hasn’t wanted anyone else. No one else has even come close. People have tried. He’s been polite. Detached. Unmoved. You’re the only one who ever got past his armor.

Your gaze catches his. One second, maybe two. It’s enough to melt something inside him he’s been keeping frozen. He swallows, slow, as if the motion might anchor him here instead of pulling him toward you.

You look away first.

It shouldn’t sting. Not after everything. Not after Paris.

The Paris café was small, crowded, warm in a way this place will never be. He’d been on the other side of the city, walking without direction, when he saw you sitting alone at a corner table, book open beside a half-empty cappuccino. “Can I sit with you?” he’d asked. You’d glanced up, eyes bright with mild surprise, and answered, Comment ça se fait?—how come? He still doesn’t know why he’d stayed. Maybe he’d already known. Maybe some part of him recognized the danger in your smile.

If he’d known it would end like this—like you swaying halfheartedly with another man under flickering strobe lights—would he have sat down anyway?

He tells himself no. He tells himself he would’ve walked away. But even now, he knows that’s a lie.

The fight that ended it all plays in the back of his mind, a reel he can’t stop. Accusations. Raised voices.

The hollow look in your eyes when you told him you couldn’t do this anymore. He’d wondered then if it had always been your plan to leave. If he’d ever been more than a temporary chapter in your story.

The music thunders, the beat relentless. Still, in a room full of people, he’s only looking for you.

And even when he finds you, he wonders—are you avoiding him, or are you circling the same gravity that’s pulling him apart?

You disappear into the crowd, swallowed by laughter and noise.

He stays where he is, jaw tight, drink untouched. His mind slips again to the puzzle you solved together once, spread out on the floor of his study, the two of you cross-legged on opposite sides. He remembers the gleam in your eyes when you found the final piece. You were the last thing he didn’t know he was missing. The last piece that made sense.

Someone bumps into him, spilling beer down their own shirt. They apologize. He doesn’t spare them a glance. He’s still thinking about that week before you left, when everything felt sharper, more fragile. Like loving you was something he could only do at the edge of an ending. You’d waited until the very last moment to show him you could walk away this easily.

He sees you again later, outside on the balcony. You’ve traded the heat of the party for the cool night air, hands braced against the railing, eyes fixed on the glow of the city beyond. The music is muffled here, a steady heartbeat behind closed doors.

He steps out, and for a moment, you don’t turn. You know he’s there. He can tell by the way your shoulders stiffen.

“Is our story through?” he hears himself ask, the words leaving him before he can pull them back. “Or do our hearts still beat in tune?”

You don’t answer.

You just look at him, the city light catching in your hair, and for the smallest, most dangerous moment, he thinks—

Maybe not.