Cornelius gives me a skeptical blink and yawns.
“Hint taken,” I tell him. “I’ll let you get back to your fun.”
Sitting up, I return Cornelius to his cage and watch him waddle toward his little sandbox to scratch around. “I wish I had your prickles, Cornelius. It would make it so much easier to protect myself.”
My fingers slide along the screen, tracing the arch of his quills. “But my prickles are inside. And those seem to hurt a lot more. Me more than anyone, I think.”
Cornelius turns around and peers my way, looking vaguely concerned.
“Don’t worry. I’m just tipsy and getting pointlessly in my feelings.” I stand, a little ungainly, feeling the shot with Margo along with the cocktail I pounded when I got to the party creeping up on me. “I’m going to go to bed and sleep it off.”
After turning off the light in Bea’s room and traipsing back across the hall, I fall into bed, curl up, and thankfully, not long after, sleep wraps around me, though it’s anything but peaceful.
It’s filled with dreams. Terribly vivid dreams.
A warm, strong body, guiding mine from a dance floor, down the hall. A hand holding me steady, until it touches me where I ache and thoroughly unsteadies me.
A deep, decadent dip to a bed.
A new, feverish dance that lasts all night long.
? EIGHT ?
Christopher
If the tango incident at Sula’s birthday party affirmed anything, it’s that maintaining my distance from Kate is the only way to survive this.
Especially if I want to keep my toes.
And yet here I am, strolling down the sidewalk from the nearest train stop to the Wilmot sisters’ apartment.
Walking right toward her.
To my credit, it’s been ten days. I’ve stayed away for a week and a half, busied myself with work, declined friend-group invitations. For ten days, I’ve surrendered the world that’s mine. I was so sure ten days would be more than enough time for Kate to grow restless and leave town, like she always does.
I was wrong. And like hell was I going to just stay away forever, let her take from me the people who are like family because she’s decided to stick around.
Even though it’s just game night, I feel like I’m about to head into battle. So, like any sensible person who’s possibly marching to their doom, I’ve brought a right-hand man.
“Christ, it’s cold,” Nick mutters. Icy wind hits us like a hard uppercut that I lean into, cold and sobering. Nick’s shoulders climb toward his ears. “How are you not freezing your nuts off?” he asks.
I slant him a wry grin. “Have you ever seen someone built like me complaining of being cold?”
Our reflections glance back at us from a building’s darkened windows—wiry, mid-height Nick, and my tall, bulky frame like my dad’s. Tonight, my reflection could be his double, with my face hidden in shadow, the only part of me that favors my mother obscured. It makes me do a double take.
“Stop checking yourself out,” Nick says.
I shove him away, making him laugh. “I wasn’t, you ass.”
“Sure you weren’t.”
“Where’s this bullshit coming from? You mad I gave you a bigger client portfolio at work? Bummed we’re slated for our best quarter yet?”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s not about work. Believe it or not, some of us think about things besides ROIs and investment strategies. It’s about you pulling your Casanova bullshit on my baby sister.”
“I did not!”
“Maybe not on purpose,” he grants, “but the end result was the same. Forgive me if I still haven’t recovered from the fact that, after you left early from our happy hour meet-up last week, Gia said she would, and I quote, ‘let you step on her neck.’?”
I cough, studiously avoiding his eyes. “For the record, all I said to her was, ‘Good to see you, too.’?”
He shakes his head wearily. “Just isn’t right. You can get any woman you want and you refuse to date. Then there are guys like me who’d settle down in a heartbeat, and nobody wants us. They want you and your Henry Cavill bubble butt.”
I stop dead on the sidewalk, making Nick trip into me. “What the hell did you just say?”
“That’s what Gia told me. Do you know how much I didn’t want to think about my baby sister thinking about your ass? How much I didn’t want to google Henry Cavill’s ass—spoiler alert, curiosity won out and I did google Henry Cavill’s ass—only to then have to look at your ass to form my own opinion on this comparison? I’m very upset to report, by the way, that my sister was right, you have Superman’s butt.”
I turn away and start walking. “I deeply regret bringing you with me.”
“Ah, c’mon, it’ll be fun. At least, it will be once you fess up about why you really want me to be there. You’ve been doing these game nights for years and never once have I had an invitation. What’s different tonight?”
I slant him a menacing glare.
He lifts his hands and widens his eyes. “Oooh, now I’m scared.”
“You should be. I don’t just have Superman’s ass, I have his biceps, and they’ll happily launch you toward the nearest train station.”
“You’d never.” He hooks an arm around my neck, tugging me close and ruffling my hair. “Beneath that grizzly-bear growling is just a big old teddy.”
“Get off,” I tell him.
“C’mon.” He claps his hands and rubs them together, trying to warm himself up. “Let’s hear it. Let’s hear why your old pal Nick Lucentio is being dragged to board-game night when he’s never been dragged there before.”
I sigh, planting a hand on his chest to stop him from marching into the intersection and getting flattened by a cab that runs the light. “I have to be around someone who . . . I’m not sure how to . . .” Sighing, I scrub my face. “I just need a little backup tonight, okay?”
Nick frowns my way. “Is this you being . . . sincere? Expressing . . . emotion?”
I mutter something very rude in Italian and start across the street.
“I’m just fucking with you,” he says on a laugh. “You know I’m happy to come. Besides, you never know. Tonight could be the night I meet my lady fair after all.”
* * *
—
“Sweet God.” Nick gapes as I shut the apartment door behind us and shrug off my coat. I’m roasting already. “Who is that?”
I frown, trying to follow the line of his gaze. Everyone’s crammed in the kitchen, animated about something I can’t make sense of amid the laughter.
Jamie, taller than everyone, spots us first and steps out of the crowd, walking our way. “There you are!” he says, taking our coats and hanging them up. “You, uh”—he lowers his voice—“know that Kate’s here, right?”
“I’ll be on my best behavior,” I reassure him. We do our typical handshake to backslapping hug, then I introduce him to Nick, who can barely drag his gaze away from whoever’s caught his eye.
“Lucentio.”
Nick doesn’t blink. “Huh?”
“How about you stick your tongue back in your mouth and use it to tell me what’s gotten into you.”
“She’s perfect,” he whispers. “Who is she?”
Jamie and I glance in the direction of his gaze.
“Sitting on the counter?” Jamie asks. “Petite, light brown hair?”
“Eyes bluer than the sea and a smile brighter than the sun?” Nick adds.
I snort.
Ignoring me, Nick sighs. “That’s her.”
Jamie clears his throat uneasily. “That would be Bianca, who’s just taken a job in the city and moved here. She’s Bea and Kate’s—”
“Cousin.” I groan, shaking my head. “No, Nick. Anyone but her.”
Finally, he peels his gaze away long enough to look at me, distraught. “Why?”
“Because she’s . . .” My voice dies off as the crowd shifts, a rift just wide enough that I see Kate, her head thrown back in laughter, before she tips up her beer bottle and takes a long, deep drink. Her hair’s piled high on her head, an auburn-streaked chestnut mess. Her cheeks are pink. Her shirt’s black but a little see-through. Before my gaze drifts any lower, I make myself look away.
“She’s what?” Nick asks me.