“Aiden,” I hiss, tapping him on the shoulder. When he doesn’t respond, I tap him again. My heart has dropped to my stomach, and there’s a zoo’s worth of hyped-up animals rioting in my veins—stampeding masses in the strangest fight-or-flight dance my body has ever done. I’m somehow both frozen in place and full of purely adrenal energy at the same time. “Aiden!”
“What?” he whisper-yells, finally standing up again. “Stoppokingme—” But he breaks off when he sees what I’m staringat.
Or rather,whoI’m staring at.
“Aiden,” I whisper as my eyes catalog every inch of Lionel Astor I can see. “That’shim.”
“It is,” he says, sounding dazed. Slowly he reaches into his pocket.
My brain whirs, tying itself in knots, until one crystal-clear thought emerges: this man might be my father.
Unfortunately, somewhere between my mind and my mouth is a disconnect. So instead of commenting that Lionel Astor might be my father, what pops out is this: “Should I go introduce myself and call himPapa?”
Aiden snorts as he pulls his phone out, holding it up. “I would pay good money to see that.” Then he starts snapping photos of Lionel.
“What are you doing?” I say, my body still buzzing unpleasantly.
He zooms in, his brows furrowed as he concentrates. “Gonna blow one of these up and use it as a dartboard later.”
I almost laugh out loud at this, catching myself at the last second and slapping my hand over my mouth instead. “He might be completely innocent in all this.”
Aiden raises one skeptical brow. “Sure, he might be,” he says, though I can tell he doesn’t actually mean it. “Probably going to do it anyway. He just has one of those faces you want to punch.”
He’s not wrong there. “Your brain works in mysterious ways,” I say with a little smile.
Aiden’s finger, just about to snap another photo, pauses briefly over his phone’s screen. He shoots me a sideways grin. “Yours is pretty interesting too.” Then he turns his attention back to the pictures he’s taking. “He’s heading this way,” he says. “Are you gonna say anything?”
“Yes,” I say, taking a deep breath. And normally I have no problem breathing, but currently the air feels clunky,difficult to find—I keep wheezing and pulling until enough oxygen has toppled down my throat like a child’s falling tower of blocks. “I’m going to talk to him.”
“I do need to tell you, though, that if you call that manPapa, we can no longer be friends.”
“Are you sure we’re friends? You don’t even like me, remember?” I throw the jab with zero hesitation, and I don’t feel bad about it, either. It was a harsh thing for him to say, yes, but more than that, I want to see how he responds. If I’m going to broach the subject of my feelings later, I need to know what I’m getting into.
But he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say a single thing.
I swallow, take a deep breath, and give myself permission to worry about it for exactly five seconds. Then I put all those concerns about Aiden somewhere where I can look at them later. Right now I have other things to focus on.
Time slows to a molasses crawl as Lionel approaches us. He moves up the driveway and past the sidewalk that leads to the front of the house, heading instead for Tonya’s home office just like we did—he’s obviously the one Tonya told to come over straight away in order to get rid of us. His shoes make a pleasant sound on the pavement, his tan peacoat pulling this way and that in the crisp autumn wind. My eyes narrow as I study him more closely.
He’s impossibly tall, with thick, black hair and an icy blue gaze. I do see the resemblance between him and his brother, but where Rocco is warm and smiling, the man heading toward me is not.
He is arctic. Smiling, yes—it appears as soon as he makes eye contact—but cold.
That unnaturally white smile begins to fade as he zeroes in on me, though, his eyes sharpening.
I tilt my head, approaching him slowly. I don’t know whatI’m doing or how smart it is. My body can certainly tell that something’s going on; it’s hovering between fight and flight, and I can feel my hands shaking, my legs wobbling as I stare down the man in front of me.
We come to a stop, mere feet apart, in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Do I look familiar to you?” I say to him.
I don’t know why this is what I lead with. A greeting would probably be more standard. From behind me, I hear Aiden sigh. I imagine he’s also rubbing his temples again. He really has no faith in me.
“Yes,” Lionel Astor says. His eyebrows, two dark slashes, climb ever so slightly as he looks me over. Then those icy shards return to meet my gaze once more. “I imagine you must be Nora Bean’s daughter. You look very like your mother.”
I nod, little more than a shaky wobble of my head. “I’m Nora’s.”
Lionel’s head tilts to the side, and I swear I’ve never felt more like prey than I do in this moment. But when he speaks again, it’s accompanied by another glacial smile. “I do have to be going, but it was lovely meeting you, Juniper. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again soon.”
