Who else would it be?He cringed as soon as he said that.
An unfamiliar feeling of awkwardness passed through him, and he remembered how he could barely speak words to her that night in Berlin.
But this was not Berlin.
Yom pressed on with, “I… I am happy you are coming to my game. That makes me—you are making me very… happy.”
Yom’s heartbeat had moved from his chest to his ears at this point. The new plan had been wise. The plan had been the safestway to ensure he would not be damaged by these feelings he could not help having for Lydia again.
But she had come to his game.
And now…
Now, he took another deep breath and said, “I will add new item twenty-three to the Anything List. You will share my bed.”
No answer.
Yom swallowed. “There will be no making you have sex with me. You will—I would like you to sleep beside me. But no sex is okay, of course. I would never…”
Yom trailed off, too embarrassed for himself to go on.
But Lydia—who could be a chatterbox—still did not say anything.
Yom’s brows drew together, and his chest tightened with unease.
Was she asleep?
He tipped down the handle as quietly as possible to open the door. He needed to check on her, but he had no wish to wake her if she’d fallen asleep earlier than usual.
However, all his wishes not to disturb her fell away when he found nearly every light in the room blazing and her laundry basket tipped over on her bed.
His heart seized. Had something happened to her?
Dark, terrible possibilities ran through his head as he pulled out his phone to call Rina, cursing himself for only putting a guard on Lydia when she was at school.
But then, he saw the voice text notification on his phone’s front screen. It was from Lydia. And it looked as if she’d left it just a few minutes after their kiss.
Glowering, he tapped on it and put the phone on speaker.
“Hey, Yom, it’s Lydia! Duh, of course, it’s me—sorry. Congratulations again, by the way. You were so amazing tonight. Seriously. But I meant to tell you I have a thing this weekend, and I won’t be back until late Sunday night. So, have a great weekend. And I’ll see you Monday morning.”
A thing.
A thing that would apparently take all weekend.
Yom’s frown deepened. And this time, he cursed himself for not putting spyware on her phone.
Lydia was in the wind, and he had no idea where she’d gone.
Lydia
“There you are, darling!”Mom said as soon as I walked into Paul’s birthday party, which was being held in the penthouse of the Benton Chicago. “Don’t you look adorable?”
Adorable was one way to put it. “To Abigail Carrington’s exact specifications” would be another.
My hair was pinned up in the roll we agreed on after another exhausting conversation about how I should consider a “more feminine” style. Read: bone-straight extensions, just like her—only 1B instead of a tastefully highlighted blonde. This morning, Nancy, the assistant that had replaced my birth mom after she died, had stopped by my hotel room to drop off a high-necked red evening gown that somehow managed to age me up by at least twenty years while simultaneously screaming, “President of the Young College Conservatives Club.”
“Hi, Mom.” I hugged her instead of pointing out how much of a hand she’d had in how I looked tonight. “You look great.”
