CHAPTER SEVEN: THE PARTY I WASN'T INVITED TO

MIA'S POV

I found out about the party by accident, the way I seemed to find out about everything in that house — a text left open on the kitchen counter, Finn's phone lighting up while he ran upstairs for his jacket, a single line glowing on the screen before it locked itself again.

*Everyone's already at the lake house. Don't bring the new girl.*

Don't bring the new girl.

I stood there in the kitchen for a long moment, feeling something hot and humiliating climb up the back of my throat. Three days since the terrace. Three days of Sebastian being careful and distant, of Finn being just slightly too bright, of Julian watching all of us like a man cataloguing a problem he hadn't decided how to solve yet — and apparently, underneath all of it, there'd been a whole other life happening without me. A party. A lake house. A version of this family that closed ranks the second I wasn't looking.

I told myself I didn't care. I told myself that twice, which was becoming a habit with me, and it worked about as well as it usually did.

By ten p.m. I was standing in front of the mirror in a dress I'd packed for exactly this kind of reckless decision — dark red, closer to nothing than something, the kind of dress that wasn't for anyone in particular except the version of myself who'd once kissed a stranger in a backyard and meant it. If I wasn't invited, fine. I'd go anyway. I'd go looking like I hadn't spent three days quietly falling apart over four men who couldn't decide whether to want me or warn each other off me.

I called a car. I didn't tell anyone where I was going.

---

The lake house didn't look like a house so much as a glass box built to be photographed — floor-to-ceiling windows, a deck strung with lights, music loud enough to feel in my sternum before I'd even reached the door. Rich kids everywhere, draped over furniture and each other, the particular careless glitter of people who'd never once worried about anything mattering.

I found Theo first, near the drinks table, and the look on his face when he saw me — surprise, then something more complicated — told me everything about how unwelcome my arrival actually was.

"Mia." He said my name like a warning. "Does anyone know you're here?"

"Does it matter?"

I didn't wait for an answer. I moved past him into the crush of bodies, chin up, refusing to let this house make me small twice in one week, and that was when I saw him.

Sebastian. On the far side of the room, back against the wall, and around him — on him — three girls, laughing, hands sliding over his shoulders, one of them pressed close enough that there was no space left between them at all. He wasn't pushing them away. He wasn't leaning in either, not exactly, but he wasn't doing anything to stop it, and something in my chest went white-hot and ugly and entirely unreasonable, because he wasn't mine. He'd never once said he was mine. I had no right to the feeling currently tearing through me like a struck match.

I didn't examine it. I just turned away before he could see me.

That was when the guy found me.

I don't remember his name. I don't think I asked. He had an easy smile and a drink in each hand and said something forgettable about my dress, and I was so full of something reckless and furious that when he leaned in, I didn't pull back.

I kissed him.

He followed the movement immediately, hands finding my waist, and I let it happen — let myself disappear into it the way I'd disappeared into a stranger's arms once before, chasing the same anonymity, the same uncomplicated nothing —

Until I heard the crash of a chair hitting the floor.

Sebastian crossed that room like something had come loose inside him. He didn't say a word before he grabbed the guy by the collar and hauled him bodily away from me — the girls scattering, the music seeming to falter, forty strangers turning to watch.

"What the hell do you think you're doing," he said, and his voice wasn't careful anymore. It wasn't quiet. It was raw and furious and aimed entirely at me.

I made myself hold his gaze and feel absolutely nothing. "Having fun. Isn't that what tonight's for?"

"Mia—"

I turned away instead of answering, walked back toward the same guy like Sebastian hadn't spoken at all, and I felt the room hold its breath around us right before Sebastian made a sound I'd never heard from him — something torn loose and furious — and shoved the guy backward, straight off the deck and into the lake.

Then he jumped in after him.

What happened next was chaos — shouting, splashing, someone screaming for him to stop, Theo and Julian both wading in fully dressed to drag Sebastian off a guy whose nose was already bleeding, Finn shouting something I couldn't hear over the blood roaring in my own ears. And in the middle of all of it, soaked and furious and held back by both his brothers, Sebastian's eyes found mine across the water.

I didn't wait to see what was in them.

I turned and walked out into the dark.

---

The road back to the house was long and unlit and I walked it anyway, heels in one hand, the cold night air doing nothing at all to put out whatever was still burning in my chest. I heard the car before I saw it — headlights sweeping the road behind me, slowing, keeping pace.

The window came down. "Get in."

"No."

"Mia." Sebastian's voice, still wrecked, still furious, water still dripping from his hair. "It's a mile back. Get in the car."

"I said no." I kept walking, refusing to look at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a single one of the things currently breaking apart in my chest.

He didn't ask a third time.

The car door slammed. I heard him get out, heard his footsteps closing the distance behind me fast, and then his arms were around me, lifting me clean off the ground while I fought him with everything I had — shouting, shoving, absolutely humiliated and absolutely unable to stop him — and he carried me the whole way back to the car like my struggling weighed nothing at all.

He set me down in the passenger seat and locked the door before I could open it again.

Neither of us spoke the whole drive.

"Why did you kiss him," Sebastian said finally, low, tight, eyes fixed hard on the road like it was the only thing keeping him from saying something worse.

I didn't answer. I turned my face to the window instead, exhaustion and adrenaline finally catching up with three sleepless nights, and somewhere on the dark ribbon of road between the lake and the house, I fell asleep.

I woke to being carried — his arms under me, the house dark and silent around us, his heartbeat unsteady under my cheek in a way that told me he wasn't nearly as composed as he was pretending to be.

"Put me down," I said, voice thick with sleep. "I can walk."

He set me down immediately, like my voice had burned him. I walked ahead without looking back, up the stairs, down the hallway, and he followed the entire way, saying my name low and urgent behind me — *Mia. Mia, wait* — and I didn't answer once, not until my hand was actually on my bedroom door.

That was when he caught it first.

He pushed the door open and followed me inside before I could stop him, and the second it clicked shut behind us he had me backed against the wall, both hands braced on either side of my head, close enough that I could feel the leftover cold of the lake still clinging to him.

"Why did you kiss him," he said again, rougher this time, nothing careful left in it at all.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My whole chest was a fist.

His eyes dropped to my mouth — just for a second, just long enough that I felt it everywhere, that same reckless heat from the lake house rising back up in me despite every single reason it shouldn't — and I hated him for it, hated myself more for wanting to close the last few inches between us.

I shoved him back instead, hard enough that he had to catch himself against the doorframe.

"What the fuck, Sebastian." My voice cracked right down the middle. "We're *step-siblings.* I can't — I can't do this with you. It'll break me."

He didn't step back. If anything, something in his face went more determined, not less, and he started closing the distance again slowly, deliberately, like my words hadn't touched him at all —

I put both hands flat on his chest and pushed.

"Don't," I said. "Please. Don't."

Someone knocked on the door.