The Saturn Awards after-party was basically a buffet revenge tour.
Every actress who'd been surviving on coconut water and prayer for two weeks to look snatched on the red carpet suddenly turned into a pack of starving wolves. Five-gallon chocolate fountains, towers of oysters, two-hundred-pound seafood spreads, endless banana-chocolate cakes shaped like little gold statues; nobody was playing coy anymore.
Joy made a beeline for her personal kryptonite: cold Spanish almond-and-white-grape gazpacho. She downed a bowl in thirty seconds flat, then hijacked an entire skillet of seafood paella like it had personally offended her.
She had zero clue that across the room, Tom hadn't taken his eyes off her once.
He'd been scanning for her the second he walked in. Not obvious about it (God forbid the tabs caught him looking thirsty), but his gaze kept drifting back to her like gravity.
He told himself to chill. Keep distance. Don't feed the gossip machine.
His eyes didn't listen.
Finally he just sighed (screw it) and gave in. If he didn't talk to her tonight he was gonna lose his mind anyway.
Joy was mid-bite when the voice floated down from above her.
"Looks like even directors starve themselves for awards night.
She mumbled around a mouthful of shrimp, "Duh. We're all vain."
Then she turned and (bam) there was Tom, leaning in just enough to make the air feel different, flashing that half-cocked grin that sold a billion tickets.
Everyone's out there dancing. You hiding from the floor?
Joy took a glorious gulp of Austrian white wine (first real food in weeks, she was basically purring). "I've got the rhythm of a shopping cart with one bad wheel. You did offer to teach me, but I ghosted you. Sorry, life got insane."
Tom's smile went softer. "Still offering. Crash course starts now."
"Huh—?"
Before she could blink he'd plucked the wine glass from her hand, set it down, and was tugging her gently by the wrist past the dessert table, past the dance floor, all the way to a quiet little fountain courtyard no one was using.
Moonlight, trickling water, zero witnesses. Perfect.
He stopped under the strings of fairy lights and murmured low in her ear, "We can start with the basics."
Joy grinned up at him. "I'm a very willing student."
His hand slid to her waist (slow, deliberate). Fingertips brushed the embroidered roses on her pink-and-green gown like he was reading braille. "You pick dresses the way you pick shots. Perfect. You look insane tonight."
Her palms landed on his back (broad, solid, warm). "Thanks. Feels nice to hear that when I'm not hangry."
He laughed under his breath, then dipped his head until she caught the faint cedar-and-citrus thing he wore. "Just follow my feet."
Music from the party drifted over, something slow and swoony. He started moving, guiding her in tiny circles around the fountain.
Lily perfume, he realized. She smelled like lilies and trouble.
One spin, two. His thumb traced lazy figure-eights at her waist through the silk.
Joy tipped her head back to look at him and (Jesus) the man was stupidly beautiful in moonlight. All sharp cheekbones and soft eyes and that reckless little half-smile like he knew exactly how lethal he was.
She suddenly remembered watching Jerry Maguire as a kid and thinking, If a guy ever looked at me like that, I'd follow him anywhere.
Careful, girl.
Tom's voice dropped even lower. "You're getting it."
"Only 'cause you're a good teacher," she teased, then promptly almost tripped him.
He tightened his grip to steady her, accidentally tickled her side in the process, and she squeaked and hopped away laughing.
"Sorry," he chuckled. "Heavy hands."
"All good."
She needed a subject change before her heart exploded, so she blurted, "Saw Meg earlier. She's glowing again. Source Code really brought her back.
Tom smirked like she'd said the sky was blue. "I met Meg when I was a nobody shooting Top Gun in '85. She was already America's sweetheart."
Joy slapped her forehead. "Duh, brain fart. But yeah, when she first came to me for the movie she looked like the world had kicked her puppy. Now she's on fire again."
Tom shrugged, not unkindly. "She played 'sweet' for twenty years. That's a hell of a run. Also proof she's maybe too sweet for her own good."
Joy grinned. "Not your type, I take it? You two would've been the ultimate golden couple back then."
He gave a soft, almost bitter laugh. "Back then I was a cocky kid from nowhere with fifty bucks and a dream. No woman with options was looking at me."
He didn't say the rest, but she heard it anyway: he'd clawed his way to the top and the view from up here was terrifying because the fall would kill you. One slip and you're done forever. Hollywood doesn't forgive has-beens.
That's why he'd never let go of the edge, power, relevance. Ever.
He glanced down at her silence. "You wouldn't get it."
Joy met his eyes, steady and sharp. "Try me. I crawled out of the same mud. I know exactly what it feels like to know one wrong move and you're erased."
Something electric passed between them (two people who'd both sworn never to fall again, recognizing the same scar tissue).
Tom's hand slid a fraction lower on her waist, thumb brushing the curve of her spine. The smile he gave her this time wasn't for cameras.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I keep forgetting you speak the language."
The fountain gurgled. The music swelled. And for a few more minutes they just swayed there under the stars, two survivors who'd made it to the top of the food chain and still couldn't quite believe the other one was real.