He is so stunningly perfect it almost hurts to look at him. There’s a timelessness about his beauty, too. Like he’s lived a thousand lives already and will live a thousand more. There is no era he wouldn’t belong in.
And the control he holds shocks me to my very core, and somehow, I don’t seem to be exempt from it. The kind of control you wouldn’t expect from an eighteen-year-old boy.
People part for him without instruction, their silence not born of fear, but awe.
It’s then that I notice the hoodie he’s wearing. And not just any hoodie.
The hoodie from the bus.
My blood chills.
“That,” Lilia says, “is Kai Steele.”
I knew that, of course.
I had just… gotten lost for a second there.
However, he might have looked online or in the magazines didn’t compare to seeing him in real life. Pictures didn’t capture the entirety of him. How the world shifted to make room for him when he entered it. They didn’t show how the air bent around him, how people stopped and stared because they couldn’t fathom missing a second of his presence.
And so I watch, like everyone else in the room, as he walks straight toward Paris and the boy still looming over her. Every pair of eyes in the room follows him like the floor might shift depending on where he steps.
He reaches them, steps in between without saying a word, then leans in toward the boy, just slightly, and says something I can’t hear.
Whatever it is, it works, because the boy’s posture suddenly stiffens and his face blanks. For a moment, his mouth twitches, and I think he might even argue—but he doesn’t.
He just steps back, shoulders tight. Then he turns and walks away without another word.
“Do you think he enjoys all the attention he gets?” Lilia asks, dragging my focus back to the table.
Bea doesn’t look up. “Seems exhausting.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Like being under a microscope all the time.”
“It’s like he’s not even real,” Lilia mutters, stirring the ice in her drink.
And I know what she means. There’s something about Kai Steele that feels more idea than person—as if someone carefully carved him out of marble and everyone just agreed to go along with it.
“He’s just a boy,” I say quietly, half to myself. “Not a god.”
Bea glances at me, and there’s something in her eyes—not quite surprise, but something close to agreement. “You’d be surprised how many people forget that.”
Lilia smirks. “Not when he walks around like that. Honestly, I think people would faint if he so much as dropped his pencil.”
But I keep thinking about it. About how lonely it must be, to be held up like that. Like a statue on a pedestal.
The next time I look up, Kai’s already seated with Will, Christian, and Liam.
Lilia follows my gaze. “Bea’s family used to be close to theirs,” she offers casually. Her lips twitch upward in a small, amused smile. “Even had dinner at the Steele house.”
Bea’s expression darkens, her gaze fixed on the group. “Never again,” she says flatly.
“What was it like?” I ask, unable to resist.
Bea doesn’t answer immediately, her focus still on the boys in the centre of the room. When she does speak, her voice is clipped. “Suffocating.”
Lilia, on the other hand, looks like she’s about to choke on her laughter. “She got a good telling off from Gabriel Steele too,” she adds, but as soon as she sees the look on Bea’s face, she cuts herself off with a sheepish grin.
“I didn’t get told off,” Bea retorts, though her cheeks flush slightly. “Apparently, my table manners aren’t up to the proper Steele standard.” She rolls her eyes.
