Chapter Seven

**LILY'S POV**

I woke up to grey light coming through an uncurtained window and a headache that felt entirely earned.

For a few seconds I didn't remember where I was. Then I felt the weight of an arm draped loosely over my waist, warm and heavy and unmistakably not mine, and everything came back in one nauseating rush.

I lay very still, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, doing the math on exactly how much of last night had actually happened and coming up with an answer my stomach did not appreciate.

Aiden was asleep beside me, face slack in a way I'd never seen on him before, all that careful control gone soft and unguarded. In another version of this morning, in another life entirely, I might have found that beautiful. Instead it just made the panic worse, because some small, traitorous part of me did find it beautiful, even now, even with everything it meant.

I eased his arm off me an inch at a time, holding my breath every time he stirred, and slid out from under the sheet like I was defusing something. My dress was crumpled on the floor where I'd apparently had no regard for it whatsoever last night. I pulled it back on with shaking hands, wincing at every small sound the fabric made, and found my phone dead in my bag, which felt like the final insult of the morning.

I didn't look back at him before I left the room. I told myself that was practical, not cowardly.

It was cowardly.

The hallway was empty, party debris scattered across the stairs on my way down — a fallen picture frame, someone's abandoned shoe, a red cup crushed flat against the carpet. I found my charger in Samantha's bag, thankfully still by the door where she'd dropped it, and by the time my phone blinked back to life I had four texts from her, the last one sent at 3 a.m.: *staying at jake's, be safe, love you, don't do anything I wouldn't do 😘*

I let out a laugh that came out closer to a sob.

I called a car with hands that wouldn't quite stop shaking and sat on the curb outside the lake house until it arrived, replaying the entire night on a loop I couldn't turn off — the dance floor, his hands, the words I'd said out loud that I could never unsay now. *What if we stopped pretending.* God. What had I done.

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**AIDEN'S POV**

I woke up reaching for her before I was even fully conscious, some instinct already searching for warmth that wasn't there anymore.

The other side of the bed was empty. Not just empty — cold, like she'd been gone a while, like she'd made a very deliberate point of leaving before I woke.

I lay there for a long moment staring at the ceiling, feeling something settle in my chest that was heavier than a hangover had any right to be.

I told myself I understood it. Of course she'd left. What were we supposed to do, wake up together in some stranger's guest room and have breakfast like a couple? This was exactly what we'd agreed to — one night, no consequences, back to normal by morning.

I didn't feel normal. I felt like something had been rearranged inside me that wasn't going back to where it used to sit.

I got dressed slowly, in no hurry to face whatever the rest of the day had planned for me, and texted Tony that I needed a ride, and spent the entire drive home staring out the window instead of answering any of his questions about where exactly I'd disappeared to last night.

I told him I didn't remember. That was the first lie of the day. It would not be the last.

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**LILY'S POV**

By the time I got home, showered, and changed into something that didn't smell like someone else's house, I'd almost convinced my face to cooperate.

Almost.

"There she is," Richard said cheerfully from the kitchen table, newspaper open in front of him, coffee steaming beside it. "How was the sleepover?"

"Good," I said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere closer to strangled. "We just watched movies and stuff."

My mother looked up from the stove, smiling. "You look tired, baby."

"Didn't sleep much." That, at least, wasn't a lie.

"Aiden didn't get in till late either," Richard said, not looking up from the paper, entirely oblivious to the way my stomach dropped through the floor. "Tony's roommate had some party. I told him he's getting too old for those nights."

I busied myself with the orange juice in the fridge so I wouldn't have to arrange my face into anything specific. "Guess it runs in the family," I said, and was almost proud of how normal it sounded.

"Speak of the devil," my mother said, and I turned around just as Aiden walked into the kitchen, hair still damp from a shower, expression carefully arranged into something unreadable.

Our eyes met for exactly one second before he looked away, toward the coffee pot, toward anything that wasn't me.

"Morning," he said, to the room in general.

"Morning," I said back, to no one in particular, and the space between us felt like it had teeth.

Richard, thankfully, kept talking. "Actually, good timing, both of you here." He folded the newspaper and set it aside with the air of a man about to deliver news he was pleased with. "Sarah and I have been talking, and we think it would be good for all of us — really cement this as one family, you know — if we did a trip. Two weeks, the lake house up in Cedar Point. All four of us."

My mother's face lit up. "I already looked at flights."

"Two weeks," I repeated, my voice coming out thinner than I intended. "I start my second year in a few weeks, Mom, I still have to get my books together and figure out housing—"

"It's before classes start," my mother said gently. "You'll have time when we get back, I promise."

"And I'll clear it with the office," Aiden said, reaching for the coffee pot like this conversation required caffeine to survive. "Dad, you know Marcus is going to lose his mind managing the Ellison account without me for two weeks."

"Marcus will survive," Richard said, waving a hand. "It's my company. If I say the VP of Operations can take two weeks off, the VP of Operations can take two weeks off."

"Right. Because that's not going to make the office talk at all," Aiden muttered, but there wasn't much fight in it.

"It'll be good for you two to actually get to know each other properly," Richard said, nodding between me and Aiden like this was the most natural suggestion in the world. "You've barely had time to really bond since the wedding."

I did not dare look at Aiden. I could feel him not looking at me either, the two of us united, for once, in matching, silent panic.

"Sounds great," Aiden said, in a voice so flat it was almost impressive.

"Can't wait," I said, and reached for my orange juice like it might drown out the sound of my own heartbeat.

Two weeks. One house. No parties, no Samantha, no strangers to hide behind.

Just the two of us, pretending we hadn't already ruined whatever we were supposed to be to each other.