Chapter 12: The Toast

I showed Jace the texts over coffee.

He read them twice.

"He's going to use it," he said. "At the formal. In front of everybody."

"Use what? You told me. It's out."

He set his mug down.

"It's out to you," he said. "It's not out to them."

"Then we go," I said. "We walk in together and let him try. He's got nothing on you I don't already know."

Jace didn't answer that.

I took it for nerves.

Friday, Gretchen lent me a dark green satin dress with thin straps that she said made me look like a Bond villain's ex-wife.

"That's a compliment," she said, zipping me up. "Bond villains have taste. And alimony."

Jace picked me up in a charcoal suit that fit him so well I forgot my coat on the hook and had to go back for it.

"You clean up," I said in the truck.

"My mom bought it. For job interviews." He pulled out onto Johnson. "Guess I'll need it."

The hotel was the old one on the lake, with a glass ballroom that hung out over the water.

The Langdon house threw its fall formal there every year.

Jace had been on the list since freshman year, and I was his plus-one.

We were in the valet line when he said, "Linnea."

He was staring straight ahead at the brake lights in front of us.

"Some of what he says tonight is going to be true," he said. "I want you to hear that from me first. Whatever he says. It's going to be true."

My stomach dropped.

"You said you told me everything."

"I told you what happened," he said. "I didn't tell you all of what I did."

"Then tell me now."

The valet knocked on my window.

Through the glass doors I could see Kenzie in the lobby in a silver dress, waving at us with both arms, mouthing, Hurry, hurry.

"After," Jace said. "I swear to God. After, I'll tell you every word."

The valet opened my door and held out his hand.

I took it.

I'd think about that later. That I got out.

The ballroom was all candles and white flowers and the black lake behind the glass, and two hundred people in suits and dresses.

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