“She came alone, didn’t she?”
“I heard she’s married to her job.”
“Honestly… she looks out of place.”
Lucía’s fingers traced the edge of her wine glass the way people touch a nervous habit without realizing it. She pretended to be absorbed by the music. Pretended she wasn’t listening. Pretended she didn’t care.
She was a financial journalist. She questioned billionaires for a living. She stared down CEOs who could move markets with a sentence. She’d built a career on asking the kind of questions that made powerful people uncomfortable.
But at that table, surrounded by laughter and couples leaning into each other, the weight of being alone felt heavier than any interview she’d ever done.
She checked her watch.
Eight o’clock.
Too early to leave without looking rude.
Too late to pretend it didn’t sting.
Lucía took a slow sip of wine and told herself she’d wait another hour. She’d smile, hug Mariana when the time came, and then escape to the quiet safety of her apartment and her coffee machine and her spreadsheets.
She was just about to stand up—something about the bathroom, something polite—when the air around her changed.
It wasn’t the music. It wasn’t the lights.
It was the sudden, unmistakable awareness that someone important had entered her orbit.
A man approached her table with the kind of calm certainty that didn’t ask permission from space. He didn’t hover or hesitate. He pulled out the chair beside her and sat down like the seat had been waiting for him all night.
Lucía froze. Her first instinct wasn’t fear—it was suspicion.
Who sits at a stranger’s table at a wedding?
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a perfectly cut charcoal suit that looked expensive in a way that didn’t need to announce itself. His hair was dark, styled neatly but not overly polished. His face had sharp lines—cheekbones, jaw, and a seriousness that made him look like he didn’t waste time on anything that didn’t matter.
But it was his eyes that caught her.
Gray. The color of storm clouds. The kind of gaze that didn’t flicker, didn’t dart around the room, didn’t perform.
The room noticed him instantly. Lucía felt it—heads turning, whispers rising, a ripple passing through nearby tables.
He didn’t look at any of them.
He leaned in toward Lucía as if they’d been talking for years and whispered, low and direct:
“Pretend you’re with me.”
Her heart jumped so hard it felt like it hit her ribs.
“Excuse me?” Lucía shifted back slightly, instinctively creating distance.
His gaze stayed calm. Focused.
He wasn’t watching her. He was watching a table across the room where a group of guests had openly turned to stare.
“They’re talking about you,” he murmured, barely moving his mouth. “And they’re talking about me.”
Lucía blinked, trying to understand what kind of problem this was.
“If you don’t mind,” he continued, “let’s act like we came together. You stop being ‘the woman sitting alone,’ and I avoid a setup I have no interest in.”
