Page 104 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

Instead, I finish stacking the glasses, stacking the silent tension right along with them, until the urge to fill the space or clear the table becomes too mutually exclusive, and I have to make a choice.

“I think,” Willow says, dragging her fingers along the edge of the table, “you’re all so used to getting what you want, you’ve forgotten the fun of not being sure you will.”

I’m about to retort, but Julian beats me to it. “It’s possible to want something and not expect it.”

“Okay,” she agrees. “So, what about spin the bottle, but whoever the bottle lands on gets seven minutes in heaven?”

Is she serious?

My heart damn near stops beating.

Julian sounds delighted. “That’s a classic escalation. Respect.”

Willow gives him a salute.

I catch Xander’s face across the room, trying to gauge how serious any of this is. His mouth is a line, but there’s a fire behind his eyes, heat drifting up as old ice goes subglacial.

He’s considering it. He always considers it.

I remember how it was the first time I met him, a dangerous sense of patience, a predator that would rather wait until you threw yourself on the knife.

The question is: who’s the knife tonight?

“We’d have to find a bottle,” I say.

My voice comes out light. Too light. I’m trying to land on the right stripe of camaraderie for this to be a harmless joke, but the words taste of something else in my mouth.

Julian leans back, graceful as sin. “Any glass with a neck will do.”

Willow picks up the bottle she’s been drinking from and twirls it between her hands, the green glass catching light in reptilian flashes as it spins.

“We could use this.” She places it in the center of the table and looks down at it, then up at us, challenging. “I’ll spin it.”

Julian raises an eyebrow and gestures gallantly for her to proceed, the wicked delight in his mouth now spreading to his eyes. I’m not sure if it’s admiration or amusement, but it pulses in him as a dare. I look at Xander, half expecting him to scoff or shut it down, but he merely watches, stoic.

Willow leans forward, one hand bracing the neck, and sets it spinning with a flick that leaves her wrist, almost caressing, on the glass.

The bottle whirls, catching the fracture of all four of us in its blur, and I realize there’s an uncomfortable vulnerability in being chosen this way.

Even if this is all a ploy. Even if it’s a joke. Even if she’s about to pull the rug at the last second and remind us all that there are only so many layers between desire and farce.

The bottle slows, its dance narrowing, friction biting into the game. Willow’s eyes are fixed, not on its path, but on the shadow it throws across the white oak table.

I imagine the mathematics roiling behind her careful blankness, the private slips of hope or dread.

Is she hoping for me? Or for the safer, more calculated danger of Julian? The cold purity of Xander, who would never break unless the situation demanded it?

It lands on me.

Technically, it stops two degrees short of me, but there’s no ambiguity in the hesitation of its neck, the way Willow’s glance locks on mine, green glass catching the reflection of silent expectation.

A murmur from Julian. Xander’s expression twitches, but not in a way I can read. My own pulse kicks up.

Willow holds the gaze for a one, two, three count, then shrugs. “Rules are rules.”

I clear my throat. “So, that’s supposed to mean we go somewhere?”

“Anywhere,” Julian stage whispers, “where you can be alone.”