Not Made to Be Prey

The night outside was flawless. No chill in the air, no threat of rain, not even a cloud daring to cross the moon, just a gentle breeze that carried the faint scent of jasmine and a sky so bright the streetlights almost seemed unnecessary.

Inside the ballroom, however, I couldn’t breathe.

It wasn’t just the crowd. It was everything, the sheer scale of it. I felt so tiny standing there, swallowed up by a hall so gigantic the ceiling seemed endless, stretching upward like it was genuinely reaching for heaven. Every surface glittered. Crystals caught the light and threw it back in every direction, chandeliers dripping with diamonds above tables draped in ivory silk, gold fixtures gleaming on every wall. It was beautiful and completely suffocating at the same time.

Everything around me was screaming, ‘You don’t belong here.’

And the worst part?

I agreed.

So why was I here?

Because I was desperate.

Because I wanted to prove that leaving everything behind meant something. That it was worth it.

So, grow up, Maggie. Grow some courage. Swallow your pride. Bury your morals for one night and smile as your life depends on it.

Because maybe it does.

I watched them move through the room in their extraordinary clothes, clothes I could only dream of. One of these gowns could make a family back home live for a year, and comfortably at that. Yet here they were laughing, leaning in, clinking glasses like this was the most natural environment in the world, like they were born here.

My eyes caught on an older woman nearby. Pink. She was wearing a deep blush pink gown with a mermaid silhouette that had no business looking as expensive as it did on someone her age. It didn’t fit her body, it didn’t suit her coloring, and yet something about the cut was so divine I couldn’t stop staring.

Emma would look absolutely stunning in that design. Not in pink, obviously, God no. But that exact cut in red? Criminal.

Keep scanning the room, you lunatic.

Oh. Now this one, she’s wearing something that actually fits. Wait, isn’t that

Yes. Yes, it is.

The Russian food blogger. The one with the channel Emma had been obsessed with for the past six months. Standing right there in an absolutely stunning gown at a corporate gala, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

What an interesting gathering indeed.

One call. Two. Nothing. Why isn’t she answering her phone?

God, I’m so stupid. I keep trusting her, and she keeps doing this, and I have absolutely no one to blame but myself.

Is it only my mind playing tricks on me, or am I starting to have a panic attack? Am I imagining things, or is every set of eyes in the room finding me at once like I’m a wild animal being dragged into their fancy ballroom for them to ogle at?

Don’t you know what they’re ogling at, Maggie? Really? Are we going to fool ourselves now?

It’s the dress.

Or should I call it a nightgown because, honestly, my actual nightgown is more modest than this thing Emma poured me into tonight. No wonder I can’t breathe like a normal human being. I am one breath away from my pops spilling out completely. I genuinely feel like I’m wearing nothing; it fits like a second skin and that slit. The one that climbs almost to my waist. Absolutely not. The only redeeming quality of this abomination is that it’s black.

I really want to tear it off.

Oh God, how I hate this place. All I want to do right now is run outside... if only I can find this traitor first.

EMMA! EMMA!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Across the glittering expanse of the ballroom, past the champagne towers and the chandelier light and the hundred conversations happening at once, someone else was having a remarkably similar thought.

“I’m exhausted, Mike. Why couldn’t you come to this thing alone? I have a million other things I could be doing right now instead of standing here listening to business pitches that wouldn’t turn a profit in a million years.” He glanced around the glittering ballroom, already restless. “And why is it always the same crowd? Does anyone actually invite women to these things anymore?”

Mike opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, a hand extended between them.

“Mr. Collins! What a pleasure, I was hoping to catch you tonight.”

Don stepped back slightly, giving Mike the floor with a polite nod that clearly said you handle this. He lifted his glass to his lips, let his eyes drift across the room, and stopped listening almost immediately.

The room was loud, crowded, relentlessly golden, with chandeliers, champagne, and expensive suits. The usual.

He was mid-thought about making his escape when he saw her.

And for a moment - just a moment - he forgot what he had been thinking about entirely.

She was standing completely still in the middle of all that noise, which was somehow exactly why she stood out. Not because she was performing stillness the way people at these events often did, carefully arranged, deliberately composed, aware of every eye that might find them. No. She was still the way a person is when they have completely forgotten that anyone might be watching. Phone in hand, eyes sweeping the room with barely contained panic, like she had lost something - or someone, and the rest of the world had temporarily ceased to exist.

He should have found it amusing.

He did find it amusing.

But there was something else underneath the amusement that he didn’t immediately have a name for.

She was tall, the kind of tall that didn’t announce itself but simply exists, effortlessly, like it was the only natural way to occupy space. And the way she stood, even in her distraction, even in her obvious panic - there was something in it. Something that had no business being as captivating as it was.

Don set his glass down slowly.

He had been in rooms full of beautiful women his entire adult life. He knew beautiful. He had grown comfortable with beauty, indifferent to it even, the way you grow indifferent to any landscape you have seen too many times.

This was something else.

He couldn’t have explained it if someone had asked him. It wasn’t one thing. It was the bronze warmth of her skin, so natural and unguarded, it looked like sunlight had simply decided to stay. It was the dark curls she had attempted to pin up for the evening and that were now escaping in every direction, absolutely refusing to cooperate, as if even her hair had its own opinions about the night. It was the legs, the waist - yes, all of that - but it wasn’t that either, not really. Not entirely.

It was the way she looked completely, utterly, magnificently out of place.

And completely, utterly unaware of how extraordinary she looked out of place.

Like a gem that doesn’t know yet what it is.

LOOK AT ME! he thought - and he hadn’t thought of anything so involuntary in longer than he could remember. He was a man who believed that the eyes told you everything worth knowing about a person. More than words. More than carefully constructed first impressions. The eyes were the whole story. And he wanted, with a quiet urgency that surprised even him, to read hers.

LOOK AT ME! Just for a second. Let me see what story you’re telling.

And as if the universe had decided, just this once, to be generous

She looked up.

Straight at him.

And the world, for just a fraction of a second, went very quiet.

Because of that face.

That face was something crafted with uncommon care and unhurried attention. Every feature placed deliberately - the dark sweep of her brows, the mouth that somehow managed to be both soft and stubborn at the same time, and those eyes. Those enormous, impossible eyes. The color of the Tuscan hills in the full height of summer, that green that isn’t just a color but a feeling, something warm and alive and endlessly deep.

There was a small imperfection in the nose. The faintest crook.

It made everything else about her face somehow unbearably perfect.

He looked into her eyes the way he always did - the way he had done a thousand times with a thousand different people in a thousand different rooms. Reading. Decoding. He had never met a pair of eyes that didn’t eventually give themselves away entirely.

These gave him - something. But not everything.

Innocence, yes. That was there, unmistakably, sitting right at the surface. And something that looked very much like naivety - though something told him that wasn’t the whole truth of it. And underneath both of those, buried but visible if you knew where to look - desperation. A quiet, fierce, determined desperation. For what exactly, he couldn’t say.

And then - nothing. A wall. Not a cold wall, not a calculated one - but a wall, nonetheless. The rest of her story was locked away somewhere he couldn’t quite reach.

He was a man who could read anyone.

He could not read her. Not fully. Not yet.

An enigma.

In a room full of open books, he had finished before he’d even opened the cover - she was something else entirely. A story he couldn’t skim. A language he almost, almost spoke.

Don was not a man who lost his footing.

He felt his footing shift.

Then her eyes went wide - like a person who had just been caught doing something they shouldn’t - and she looked away so fast it almost made him want to laugh.

Almost.

Instead, he reached for his glass again, looking at nothing in particular, feeling something settles in his chest that felt dangerously close to resolve.

“Don, what do you think?” Mike’s voice cut through from somewhere beside him.

“Sounds promising,” he said quietly.

He wasn’t talking about the business pitch, of course.