Page 43 of Until You

“Another?” he asks.

I should say no. “One more,” I hear myself say.

He adjusts. Pulls me fractionally closer. I let him, because apparently my self-preservation instincts took the night off. I let myself lay my head on his chest and feel a moment of pure contentment.

He turns us, smooth and practiced. The string lights blur at the edges of my vision like streaks of warm gold.

And then they don’t stop blurring. The lights smear. The music goes tinny and distant, like someone shoved cotton in my ears. The warm night air, which had felt pleasant five seconds ago, suddenly feels like a wet wool blanket pressing against my face.

I blink. Hard.

The ground tilts.

Not dramatically. Not a movie swoon. Just a slow, nauseating shift, like the world is on a turntable and someone bumped it. My fingers tighten on Oliver’s shoulder without my permission.

“Cora?” His voice reaches me from a distance. Muffled. Wrong.

“I’m fine,” I say automatically. The words sound like they’re coming from inside a jar. “I just need⁠—”

The second wave hits harder. A rush of heat floods up from my chest to my scalp, and my vision goes white at the edges, and the last coherent thought I have is not here, not now, not in front of all these people before my knees decide they’re done participating in this evening.

I don’t fall.

I don’t fall because Oliver catches me.