Chapter four

# Chapter Four

Two weeks had passed since the party, and I'd turned avoiding Aiden into something close to an art form.

"Morning," I'd say, already moving past the kitchen doorway before he could answer, my eyes fixed somewhere over his shoulder like the fridge behind him had suddenly become fascinating.

"Goodnight," I'd call down the hallway, not slowing my pace enough to catch whatever he said back.

It wasn't that I hated him. It was that every time I let myself actually look at him, I saw the exact shape of his back in that lamplight, and my whole chest did something humiliating and involuntary, and I refused — absolutely refused — to let it happen in front of him.

So I got good at the sideways glance instead. A flick of my eyes toward him while he was reading something on his phone at breakfast, gone before he could catch it. A look at his hands while he loaded the dishwasher, because apparently even that was something I found worth cataloguing now. I told myself it was just curiosity. I was, demonstrably, lying to myself.

My phone buzzed on the counter while I was pretending to read a magazine I had no interest in, and Samantha's name lit up the screen.

"Okay, so, don't say no before I finish," she said the second I picked up.

"That's never a good start."

"There's a party this weekend. Marcus Whitfield's — you remember, the guy from Bio who has that lake house? His parents are in Europe for two weeks, and he's throwing something that's already all over everyone's stories, and I need you there because I am not going alone."

"Sam—"

"I already checked, it's an hour out, I found us a ride, and I have the perfect dress for you, so really the only thing left to figure out is how you're getting out of that house for the night."

I glanced toward the hallway out of habit, like Richard might materialize just from the topic being discussed. "I don't know. Things are still kind of weird here."

"Which is exactly why you need one night that has nothing to do with that house," Samantha said, and it was hard to argue with logic that convenient. "Tell your mom you're staying at mine. Sleepover, very believable, we've done it a hundred times."

I chewed my lip, already halfway convinced. "Let me talk to my mom, just so she doesn't worry."

My mother didn't put up much of a fight when I brought it up later that evening — a little surprised, maybe, that I already had plans, but she just smiled and told me to have fun and text her when I got there. It almost made the guilt worse, how easy it was.

"I will," I said. "Promise."

---

Samantha's house was quiet when I got there — too quiet, in the specific way houses get when the people who own them are perpetually somewhere else. Her parents were away again, some conference in another city, which barely registered as news anymore. They were always somewhere else. Samantha had been raised mostly by her grandmother, who'd spoiled her rotten and then some, and if it ever bothered her, she'd gotten very good at not showing it.

She waved off the empty house before I could even ask, already dragging me up the stairs by the wrist.

"Okay," she said, spinning to face me with the particular energy of someone who'd been planning this moment for days. "I got us these."

She held up two dresses. Hers was black and barely-there in the way that only Samantha could pull off with total confidence. Mine was deep green, silky, cut low enough that I opened my mouth to protest before she cut me off.

"Don't," she said. "You're wearing it. Sit."

An hour later, I barely recognized myself in her mirror. She'd twisted my hair into loose waves that fell over one shoulder, done something with eyeliner that made my eyes look sharper, older, like I belonged somewhere I definitely hadn't belonged two weeks ago. The dress fit like it had been made for me instead of borrowed.

"Okay, and this," Samantha said, holding up a shot glass she'd produced from somewhere, "is for pregaming. Don't argue with the process."

"I haven't said anything."

"You had a face. I know your faces." She knocked hers back without flinching, then pointed the empty glass at me like a warning. "Tonight you're not allowed to overthink anything. You've been walking around that house for two weeks like you're auditioning for a hostage video. You need to dance, drink something that isn't sparkling water, and honestly? Get laid. Whoever he is, work him out of your system."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." She turned back to her own reflection, working a curling iron through her hair with the ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times, then reached for her makeup bag. "That's exactly why you've had the same three-word answers for two weeks and go pink every time I mention that house."

I didn't argue, because there wasn't a version of arguing that wouldn't give me away completely.

By the time she finished, Samantha looked like a different kind of dangerous — dark, dramatic makeup, her hair falling in glossy waves, the black dress fitted to her like a decision she'd made and wasn't taking back.

"See?" she said, appearing behind me in the mirror. "Told you. We clean up nice."

"I look like a completely different person."

"You look like the person you've been hiding under all those cardigans," she said, looping her arm through mine. "Come on. Our ride's here."

---

The lake house was already shaking with bass by the time we walked in, lights strobing red and blue and violet across a living room packed wall to wall with bodies. Someone had pushed all the furniture back against the walls. A group by the kitchen was doing shots off the counter. Two people were tangled together against the staircase in a way that made Samantha laugh and pull me past them before I could stare too long.

"Drinks first," she shouted over the music, already weaving toward the kitchen.

The alcohol was warm and terrible and I drank it anyway, feeling it loosen something in my chest that had been wound tight for two weeks straight. By the time Samantha dragged me onto the dance floor, I felt looser too — lighter, less like myself, in the best possible way.

The music had a pulse you could feel in your ribs, and I let it take over, arms up, head back, eyes closed, laughing at nothing in particular. Samantha was somewhere beside me, and then not, swallowed into the crowd, and I didn't notice when someone else's hands found my waist from behind.

I should have opened my eyes. I know that now. But the drink and the music and two weeks of coiled-up tension made me careless, and I let myself lean back instead, moving with whoever it was instead of against them.

He was tall — taller than me even in heels — and his hands settled low on my hips like he had every right to be there, steady in a way that didn't match the chaos around us. The room was too loud to hear footsteps, too dark and strobing to make out faces more than a few feet away, and I told myself it didn't matter who it was. It felt good not to think for once. It felt good to just move.

His hand slid up along my side, unhurried, and I tipped my head back against his shoulder, giving in to it completely.

Then his mouth dropped to my ear, and his breath was warm enough that I felt it more than heard it over the bass.

"Careful, little sis," he murmured. "Before I lose control."

Every muscle in my body went rigid at once.

I knew that voice. I'd know that voice anywhere — low, rough at the edges, the same voice that had said *hello, baby sister* to me on a dance floor two weeks ago, except this time there was nothing teasing in it at all.

I spun around so fast I nearly lost my footing, and the lights swept red, then blue, then violet across his face as if to confirm what I already knew before I'd even turned all the way.

Aiden.

His hands were still loosely at his sides where they'd fallen the second I moved, and for one long, terrible moment neither of us said anything. His chest was rising too fast. His jaw was tight, like he was working hard to stay exactly where he was standing instead of closing the distance again.

"You," I said, and it came out breathless instead of accusing, which was somehow so much worse.

"Me," he said. Not an apology. Not quite a challenge either. Just an admission, low and rough, like the word had cost him something to say.

Neither of us moved to step back.