“Does he normally invite celebrities to stuff like this?”
“Every time.” She drifts down effortlessly into a corner of a long leather couch, leaving room for me to sit next to her. “But he held back tonight. Kept it small.”
“Why?”
She eyes me steadily. “Because of you.”
“Me?”
“He told me you’re not a fan of fame, so he kept it low key. To be honest, I don’t blame you. It’s some real bullshit. I see tabloids all the time telling me that Trey is out banging eight other women a week and that I’m home alone crying my eyes out. First of all, my man is faithful as the sun. Second, I don’t cry. It’s all lies and exaggerations.”
“Do they exaggerate Colt?”
She hesitates, her face blank, and I think that non-answer is a pretty big answer. “Yes and no,” she replies vaguely. “He’s out there, he’s a partier, women love him. None of that’s a lie. But it’s not the whole story, and right now it’s not the right narrative at all.”
“What’s his story now?”
Sloane smiles. “Right now his story is about you.”
I feel myself start to blush again. I wish I could make it stop. I wish I could be stronger than this, more controlled, but when it comes to Colt I can’t. The butterflies go into full swing where he’s concerned and I turn into a malleable mass of emotions and expressions. I’m reforming, reshaping, becoming something old and familiar on the inside. Something happy. Something sweet. I’m becoming me again. Me before the bakery hijacked my life. Before Cassie crushed us all under the weight of her shadow. Before my dad and I started to fall apart.
Me, a girl who could definitely see herself falling for a guy like Colt.
CHAPTER TWENTY
COLT
Kurtis is gone. He was here for all of twenty minutes, then he disappeared as mysteriously as he appeared, taking the raven haired girl with him.
Taking Rona.
“She left with him?” Lilly asks, shocked. She pulls out her phone to check it.
“That’s my guess. They vanished at the same time.”
“Wait, Kurtis was actually talking to someone?” Sloane asks in disbelief.
I turn my phone toward her. “I took pictures. I wanted to be able to prove it. Like when you see aliens or sasquatch.”
“Wait, when you see them?” Trey clarifies. “Not if?”
“Yeah.”
“Avery, do you think sasquatch is real?”
“Son of a bitch,” Lilly mutters. She’s reading a message. “She did. She left with him. She ditched me.”
“No fucking way,” Sloane breathes.
I shake my head. “This is blowing my mind.”
“What are you talking about?” Trey asks. “I’m happy for him. He should get some. It’s about time.” He cringes in Lilly’s direction. “Sorry, that’s your friend. I should have phrased that differently, but you know what I mean.”
She shrugs, stowing her phone. “If she wants to get some strange, she should get some strange. I’m not gonna hate.”
“Did you drive here?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No. We took a cab together.”
“You live together?”
“Since we moved out after high school.”
“Can I drive you home?”
“I’ll take a cab back. We’ve all been drinking.”
“I haven’t.”
She looks to my hands, somehow surprised to find them empty. They’ve been empty all night. “You haven’t, have you?”
“Not a drop.”
“But it’s your party.”
“I wanted to stay sober.”
“Why?”
“So I could drive you home,” I answer honestly.
She hesitates before smiling at me. It’s different than her bittersweet smile. It’s smoldering in a way that makes me anxious and agitated.
“Who says I’m going home?” she asks slyly.
That question fucks me up. It takes me by surprise and sends me into high gear where I want to pounce on her. Kiss her. Sex her. Marry her.
I settle for taking her hand, pulling her off her seat on the couch and onto my lap. She drapes her arm around my neck, smiling down at me as my arms go around her waist, and I can’t imagine a better feeling than this. Than being with her and that look in her eyes that’s unguarded in a way I unlocked the night I kissed her. The warmth on the other side of her frost that’s hotter than the sun in July.
“I thought we were going slow,” I remind her quietly, privately.
“We are. I was planning on stealing your bed. You can have your couch.”
“This isn’t my couch, and that’s not my bed.”
She blinks, confused. “What?”
“This isn’t my apartment.”
“Whose is it?”
“My mom’s. She rents it out to execs in town on business and families on vacation. I don’t live here.”
“Where do you live?”
“Upstairs.”
“Can I see it?”
I hesitate, not sure what to say here. I don’t show anyone my place. It’s why I hold parties down here. Only a handful of people have ever been up there and none of them after I’d known them for a few days.