I took another drink of beer. “Sit down. We’re taking a break from dancing.” I willed my pulse to stop racing. Victor and everyone else had promised that there was no way Daiyu could remember me. What if they were wrong? There was an anomaly for everything. Never mind the photo her father had been sending around. Surely, she’d seen it too. Would I blow this on our first meeting? “I’ll get you a drink.”

I tried to stand again and Daiyu laughed, a surprisingly full sound. “I really wish I could.” She touched my shoulder this time, a light touch, and I remembered how that same hand had grabbed my shirt with such strength during our last exchange. When she had begged me not to use the memory-wipe on her. “My father’s waiting for me.” She rolled her eyes and Angela made sympathetic noises.

“We could come with you,” Angela offered. “Would that make it better? You could introduce him to Jason.”

I swallowed my beer too fast and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, clearing my throat. How could I get out of this?

Daiyu brushed her fingertips against my arm this time before I could respond. “You’re a darling, Ange. But you know how my father gets with boys.” She let her hand drop. The familiar way she had touched me made my palms sweat. “Nothing personal, Jason. My father’s just a bit of a hard-ass.”

“I get it,” I replied.

She gazed down at me; her eyelids were shadowed in a silvery blue, matching the glow of her necklace. “But I look forward to meeting you again.”

“Don’t forget he’s mine.” Angela grabbed my arm and hugged it to her chest, dragging me toward her. She gave an impressive pout.

Daiyu’s dark eyebrows lifted. “Are you?” she asked me. “Hers?”

I almost dropped the beer in my other hand as I pulled my arm back. “I . . .” My eyes darted from Angela to Daiyu, and I felt as if I were the punch line of some private joke between them. I’d never had to deal with you-girl games before. “No. I’m not.” I grinned apologetically when Angela stuck her tongue out at me. “I don’t belong to anyone,” I said.

“You don’t belong to anyone,” Daiyu repeated. “I like that. See you around, then.” She paused after a few steps. “Where do you live, Jason?”

I tried to keep my expression smooth, shocked that she would ask so directly. “Twenty floors below this one. On the sixty-eighth floor.”