My stomach drops.
Lance’s eyes flick to mine.Don’t.
“Jules.” His voice is low.
“You’re my brother.” Her voice cracks. “Something’s going on with you, and it scares me.”
The silence is heavy. I watch Lance fight between wanting to reassure her and needing to keep his secrets. My chest aches for both of them.
“I’m fine,” he says. “I promise.”
Liar.
She stares at him for a long moment, then sighs, the fight leaving her.
“Pax and Tiffany’s anniversary party.” She says it like a command. “Him and Roman are using it to announce the Calloway and Montgomery merger, and I need all hands on deck.”
“That’s why you came here?” Lance’s nose scrunches.
“I came to tell you that if you skip another family event, I will personally drag you there by your ear. Be there. Wear something nice.” She pauses at the threshold. “And maybe put on a shirt before you give everyone the wrong idea.”
The door slams.
The silence she leaves feels enormous.
Lance exhales, running a hand through his hair. “Well. That was fun.”
“Does she always barge in like that?”
He laughs. “Juliette’s never met a door she’s liked.”
“She cares about you.”
“Yeah.” He stares after her. “That’s the problem.”
Chapter 25
Lance
Training Genevieve is a terrible idea.
I knew it a week ago when I agreed to it, and I know it now as she steps onto the mat at Lovers’ Alcove, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and her jaw set like she’s preparing for war.
We’ve fallen into a rhythm, the two of us. A dangerous one.
Every morning, I bang on her door at dawn. She curses at me through the wood, stumbles out looking like she wants to commit murder, and we run. Cavall bounds ahead, deliriously happy, while she wheezes creative insults at my back. We end up here, and I teach her how to throw a punch without breaking her thumb. How to use her size to take a grown man down with a joint lock. How to stay alive if someone bigger and meaner corners her in the dark.
Then she goes to work at the tavern, and I disappear underground to train Percy, and we don’t talk about the hours in between.
Art hasn’t been by once. He’s conveniently gone out of town on last-minute business for his dad—the visit he promised her,the one that was supposed to happen “sooner rather than later,” quietly shelved.
He texts me. Campaign stuff. Party prep. Asks how she’s doing. I tell him she’s fine. Safe.
I don’t tell him the other things. Mainly because they’re things I shouldn’t be noticing, and partly because every time I try to type the words “you should come see her,” my hands won’t do it.
“Feet wider,” I say, circling behind her. “You’re standing like you’re waiting for a bus.”
She glares.
