“You treated me like one.”
“That’s not—” I scrub a hand through my hair. “That’s not why we did it.”
“Then why?” She opens her arms, a bare, exasperated offering. “Enlighten me. Why did you spend years making sure I couldn’t have a normal teenage life? Why follow me everywhere, scare off anyone who looked at me, treat me like I was your responsibility?”
Because you were never just Charlie’s sister to me. Because the idea of anyone else touching you made me want to break things. Because I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen, and the only way to live with that truth was to salt the earth around you and pretend it was for your own good.
I don’t say any of it. The code stands where it always has—best friend’s sister, off-limits, forever.
“It’s not like we were friends,” she says when my silence stretches. The fight has gone low and steady in her voice, like a flame refusing to die. “You were Charlie’s friends who tolerated me because you had to. That’s all it ever was.”
There it is. The thing that sent Silas stalking down the hall last night like he needed to hit something.
I laugh. I don’t mean to. It comes out wrong—bitter at the edges, cracked through the middle. “So that’s what set him off. You actually believe that.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No, angel.” I meet her eyes and hold them, let her see the part of the truth I can give. “We really didn’t.”
The words hang between us, heavy as the heat that followed her in. She swallows, and for a second the room narrows to the point where her breath touches mine, and the harbor light cuts a bright line across her throat. I’m two seconds from telling her everything I shouldn’t when a shadow shifts under the door, a footfall pauses, and the latch whisper-clicks like a trigger being pulled.
7
JACE
Cal’s phone hasn’t moved from Parker’s suite in twenty-one minutes. Twenty-one minutes is twenty minutes longer than it should take to drop a bag, say “you’re welcome,” and leave. The hallway hums with the steady breath of the vents and the quieter pulse of the harbor below. Through the door, we catch the rise and fall of voices—hers high and sharp with heat, his low and infuriatingly calm. A zipper rakes shut. A muttered curse. Cal’s soft laugh.
Silas drags a hand through his hair, standing next to me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Apparently not.” I slide the master key card. Green. Click.
Lemon polish and ocean salt meet us as the door swings open. The afternoon throws broken light across the floor, and Parker stands in the middle of it, yoga leggings inked to her thighs, crop top damp from rehearsal, curls sticking to her neck. She looks flushed and fierce and done with the day. Cal leans near the window like it’s his living room, arms folded, eyes bright with the kind of interest that gets him into trouble.
She whips around when we enter. “Are you kidding me?” Her voice fractures on the second word. “Is there a schedule where you take turns invading my space, or did you all decide to do it at once? Did Charles send you?”
“Your space,” Silas says, shutting the door with a soft click.
Cal sighs. “Bold, considering you just charged half the boutique to my account.”
“That was different,” she fires back. “That was a lesson in hospitality.”
Cal’s mouth curves. “Consider all of us being a tax, then, angel.”
Silas pushes off the door and drifts deeper into the room with that predatory patience people mistake for laziness. He clocks the open case, the neat stacks of hotel bags, the garment bag loose on the bed like a secret deciding whether to be told. He reaches for it, peels it back, and holds up the costume between two fingers. Red and black, glitter catching sunlight, more suggestion than fabric. He turns it once, studying it like evidence. “Is this what you’re wearing to the party, killer?”
Parker lunges, breathless. “Give me that.”
He lifts it out of reach, eyes flicking over the sheer panels and straps. “Doesn’t look like a bridesmaid dress.”
“It’s for the dance,” she says, frustration shivering through the words. “For Sienna’s bachelorette. Put it down.”
The worddancelands in my gut like ice water. I’d half-listened when Sienna mentioned choreography, filed it beside cake flavors and seating charts. Not this. Not Parker under lights while a room of drunk men measure her with their eyes and talk about Carter’s daughter like she’s an open question.
“The dance is canceled,” I say.
Silence tightens the room. She turns to me slowly, eyes gone very still. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
